EC Environmental Policy

London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen have announced they will work together to design a project that will improve the capture of plastics. City officials from the three capitals will share information and experiences on the development and delivery of circular economy action plans. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation recently estimated plastic packaging waste at $80-120 billion annually. 

Oregon just became the first state to pass legislation to get off of coal and double down on renewable energy instead.

Clean energy has become a driving force in the US marketplace as costs have declined and major companies have unveiled investments in wind and other renewables, writes Chris Brown, Vestas' president of sales and service operations in the US and Canada. Wind, in particular, can provide the nation with a winning combination of affordable yet reliable electricity. "Whatever the courts rule on the CPP, there's no turning back or stopping this economic trend. Clean energy makes good sense for business, good sense for consumers, and good sense for the country," he writes.

Sports organizations are increasingly rallying together to promote environmental causes, reduce their climate impacts and try to persuade their fans to go green. "There is a global recognition now of the power of sports to advance environmental messaging," said Green Sports Alliance director Allen Hershkowitz.

China recently pledged to max out its carbon emissions by 2030 -- but some researchers say the country's carbon output might already have peaked. "We're reaching a point in much of China where the cities have been built, the roads have been built, a lot of the demand for cement and steel is essentially slowing," explained energy researcher Joanna Lewis.

JetBlue Airways became the first U.S. airline company to join the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials, a multi-stakeholder coalition that works to promote the sustainability of biomaterials. 

India's largest automobile manufacturer Tata Motors has pledged to source 100% of its electricity from renewables as part of The Climate Group- and CDP-led RE100 initiative. The company is currently sourcing around 8% of its electricity from renewables.

Consulting firm Ecofys entered a 3-year partnership with advocacy initiative The Generation Foundation to address the challenges of carbon pricing and identify the role of carbon pricing in achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

The Coalition for Higher Ambition issued a statement calling on EU officials to "act on the Paris Agreement and ensure that EU climate policies are coherent with its goals." The Coalition for Higher Ambition is an informal group of businesses, investors, NGOs, and others working together to promote leadership on climate change mitigation in the EU.

Supermarket chain Albertsons Companies has pledged to source 100% of its eggs from cage-free operations by 2025.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial leaders met Thursday and pledged to double clean energy investment and meet or exceed Canada's international emissions-reduction commitments. "We are moving toward a pan-Canadian framework for clean growth and climate change," the leaders said in a joint statement.

James Cook University researchers are teaming with Australia's Fibercon company to create a greener concrete by using recycled plastic to reinforce it. "Using plastic to reinforce concrete instead of steel can reduce carbon dioxide production by about 50%," said Rabin Tuladhar, associate dean of engineering at the institution. "However, with recycled plastic, you can save 50% more carbon dioxide than you could with virgin plastic -- because you are using plastic that has already been made and repurposing it."

Apple frequently uses debt rather than its flush cash coffers to finance corporate initiatives, such as stock repurchase programs - it makes sense to do so for tax reasons. But, the company's latest appeal to the public debt markets includes another "first" for Apple and the tech industry at large: Apple is issuing $1.5 billion in green bonds to pay for a wide range of environmental initiatives.

If the 5,589 largest publicly traded companies in the US reduced their paper waste by a mere 1 percent, it would save them nearly $1 billion in total, according to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council playbook series in time for its annual summit.

These small-scale fishermen in southern Japan are up against an industrial fishing juggernaut that is rapidly depleting stocks of Pacific bluefin tuna. A prime culprit behind the crisis, the Iki fishermen said, is a high-tech Japanese fishing armada that mines the waters northeast of Iki where Pacific bluefin tuna congregate to spawn. For the past 11 years, convoys of boats have waited in the Sea of Japan for these fish to gather, then used sonar tracking devices and huge purse seine nets to scoop them up by the thousands and sell them to global seafood giants such as Nippon Suisan Kaisha and Maruha Nichiro Corporation.

The small country of Denmark is making a big commitment to renewables. Today Denmark's electric grid is over 40 percent renewably powered, and the country is aiming to reach 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 and 100 percent renewable energy in all sectors by 2050. 

Last week, the king of Morocco officially launched the first phase of the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, the Noor Complex.

Most people know that properly inflated tires can improve a vehicle's fuel efficiency, but did you know that properly maintained roadways can improve fuel efficiency across an entire pavement network?

"Without increasing connectivity and basically building wildlife crossings like a tunnel or an overpass, I think the mountain lions here are definitely going to be lost," Park Service wildlife ecologist Seth Riley said.