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After more than US$400 million in outlays and months behind schedule, dozens of electric cars have hit the road in Israel, the test site Agassi chose for his Better Place venture. Four stations where the cars can get a new dose of juice when their batteries run out are operating, and the plan is to ramp that number up within months. The concept: to wean the world from oil and eliminate the biggest hurdles to environmentally friendly electric cars - high cost and limited range. To do this, Better Place has jettisoned the fixed battery. Instead, drivers can swap their depleted batteries for fully charged ones at a network of stations, receiving a full, 160- kilometre range in five minutes. Better Place owns the batteries, bringing down the purchase price of the cars using the network. People driving shorter distances, the vast majority of customers, can plug in their batteries each day to chargers installed at their homes, offices and public locations, which will fully recharge in six to eight hours.
Photo taken from... http://www.ibelieveinadv. com/2011/10/mitsubishi-i-miev-imiev-electricbillboard/ Advertising Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Sydney, Australia Executive Creative Director: Paul Nagy, Mike Spirkovski Creative Group Head: Adam Whitehead, Matt Vandermark Art Director: Adam Whitehead Copywriter: Matt Vandermark Group Account Director: David Hallett Agency Producer: Vincent Prochillo
taken from http://www.emercedesbenz.com/autos/mercedes-benz/c-class/mercedes-benz-c63-amg-coupe-black-series-print-ads/
The needles, used again and again, kill at least 300,000 people a year.
The needles, syringes and other medical waste that have washed up on beaches this summer point to a larger problem confronting every medical institution: how to deal with infectious wastes that are increasingly barred from the hospitals own incinerators. State regulations are becoming extremely stringent, said Arthur E. Weintraub, president of NorMet, the regional association that helps hospitals increase their operating effectiveness. Many incinerators built recently dont meet current standards. But when hospitals must dispose of the wastes off-site, he said, it is a situation that represents real economic hardship. Using private carters, Mr. Weintraub added, also reduces a hospitals control over the disposal process and hospitals are caught in the middle. Hospitals want to be leaders in serving community environmental-health needs, Mr. Weintraub said, but if they dont have a place to put their infectious wastes, it becomes more than an issue for a single hospital. As a society, we have a problem. Mr. Weintraub said the 40 hospitals that are members of his association, which represents a seven-county region including Westchester, have called on state officials to form a task force to study the problem, including finding regional sites for incineration. As it is now, he said, the situation lends itself to violations of the law. year for which figures were available; 54,000 pounds were incinerated on site while 44,000 pounds were shipped out of the county for disposal to sites as far away as South Carolina. Infectious waste, commonly referred to as red bag waste because state law requires that it be segregated in red disposal bags, includes any surgical, obstetrical or pathological material, Mr. Weintraub said, and all blood-soiled materials. State law requires all such material to be incinerated. Review of Disposal Options Several hospitals in the county are reviewing their disposal options, with some electing to build onsite incinerator units and others hiring private carters. Some hospitals own incinerators that do not comply with existing state regulations and therefore are not supposed to be used.
Text by By TESSA MELVIN Published: August 14, 1988 new york times website: http://www.nytimes. com/1988/08/14/nyregion/copingwith-medical-waste.html?src=pm
Test by By WILLIAM K. STEVENS Published: June 27, 1989 Taken from New york times http://www.nytimes. com/1989/06/27/science/ medical-waste-is-piling-upgenerating-new-concerns. html?src=pm
Local hospitals, the organizations data indicate, are using both methods to dispose of medical waste. Westchester hospitals burned 98,000 pound s of infectious waste in l986, the last http://www.jennwarren.net/#/slumdog-scandal/jw_syringe008
http://www.jennwarren.net/#/slumdog-scandal/jw_syringe008
The regions most hard-hit by onshore dumping are the most popular stretches for cruisers: the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia, beaches throughout the Mediterranean, and increasingly, the coastline along the globes most popular route (because its furthest from potential terrorism and piracy)the run from Rio de Janeiro around Cape Horn and up to Valparaiso, Chile. Cruise companies get away with dumping both black water (waste from toilets and medical facilities) and gray water (from showers and sinks) far too close to shore due to the complexity of international, federal and local laws the companies choose to either follow or ignore. Borders on the ocean are hard to define; laws are very hard to enforce. Most solid waste is burned onboard, and the incinerated ash falls into the sea. Plastic is often chipped, pulped or ground into tiny pieces and dumped overboard. The ships that carry solid waste back to shore hand it off to haulers on land, who may take it to landfills, or perhaps dump it straight into the sea themselves. The maritime business is the last under-regulated bastion of the corporate world, Fred Felleman, Northwest consultant for Friends of the Earth, told Seattles InvestigateWest. Because it falls between the borders of the world, its been hard to figure out how to get our arms around it. A new U.S. federal law would forbid ships of more than 300 tons from dumping treated or untreated sewage within three miles of Californias 1,624-mile coast, which would close a major loophole in state law; the law is expected to be enacted in 2011. The EPA suggests the law would prevent 20 million gallons of sewage from swirling into the states coastal waters and improve the overall quality of Californias beaches. Last year, the EPA studied California beaches and found that 85 percent of San Franciscos had experienced advisories for high levels of pathogens; in L.A., all beaches had advisories, as did 75 percent of San Diegos. While some of that pollution is attributable to runoff from shore, the EPA estimates that cruise ships spill more than 25 million gallons of sewage into California waters each year. According to the cruise industry, most boats have been complying with the three-mile zone for the past five years; many even wait until theyre 12 miles offshore to dump treated waste into the ocean. Out beyond three miles, few laws apply to most sewage. Most pollutants are not supposed to be dropped into the ocean until ships are 25 miles from the coast; discharge of oil or oily water into U.S. navigable waters cannot take place within 200 miles of shore. The saddest aspect of this story, to me, is that dumping into the ocean is still legal, almost everywhere. Shouldnt all ships garbage and waste be cleaned and re-cleaned and cleaned again, and brought to shore where modern systems can dispose of and or recycle it? Shouldnt that be the law, around the globe? Text taken from, http://neptune911.wordpress. com/2011/01/20/medical-waste-foul-beachescruise-ships-foul-waters/
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that passengers aboard a typical cruise ship will, on an average day, generate 21,000 gallons of sewage, one ton of garbage, 170,000 gallons of wastewater from sinks, showers and laundry, more than 25 pounds of batteries, fluorescent lights, medical wastes and expired chemicals, up to 6,400 gallons of oily bilge water from engines, and four plastic bottles per passenger (which factors to about 8,500 on average aboard the Carnival Spirit, which can hold 2,124 guests, 1,000 crew, has 16 lounges and bars and carts about 900,000 tourists in and out of the port of Seattle and up the British Columbia and Alaska coastlines each year).
Cruise ships are supposed to dump sewageblobs of concentrated toxins from the bottom of wastetreatment facilitiesat least three miles from the coastline. Given the number of fines dished out in recent years, even that small request is clearly being ignored by many companies. The good companies talk about using cleaner fuels, recycling more, boosting the efficiency of sewage and gray-water treatment systems. But its hard to judge just how much the ships are improving. Even the best onboard waterquality systems still allow high levels of ammonia, bacteria and other pollutants to escape with the mix into the ocean.
Hospitals are also paying a wide range of different prices for exactly the same item, with some paying 50% more than the best performers. We estimate that there is something like 500m being lost every year on spending of 4.6bn. Its the prize thats being lost by the NHS if only they could get themselves together and procure more efficiently, says Mr Davies. Health minister Simon Burns insists that the waste must stop: It is absolutely crazy; this is why we need to get greater transparency into the system, to get better practice and for trusts to look more at how they can bulk purchase, he says
It was going to cost an extra 100,000 a year to procure our prostheses via the hub rather than carrying on doing it ourselves because we had already achieved very low costs locally with our suppliers, says orthopaedic surgeon Andrew Brown. My expectation would be that the hub should look at the lowest price currently being paid, and bring everyone to that lowest price, because unless the companies are selling at a loss to ourselves, theres no reason why everyone else shouldnt be buying things for the same price as we do. What it seemed to end up with was an average cost across what people were paying at that moment, which meant there were always going to be losers within the system. Leicester decided to go it alone for orthopaedic supplies, and the East Midlands procurement hub has now folded. The NAO inquiry concluded that there were too many NHS hubs in the marketplace, says its author, Mark Davies. There is no consistent basis for measuring their performance. So you have got this vicious circle that individual trusts dont know if theyre getting value, he says.
You cant lose sight of the fact that the NHS trusts are independent organisations, he says. It is important that they have got the freedom to be able to make the commercial decisions that they believe are right for their community including the products that they buy. But what we are doing is working with the existing networks to raise awareness of efficient procurement practice. This is something that needs to be recognized at a trust board level, and we are developing standards for good procurement so they can be understood and brought in throughout the organisation.
Text and photo 1: Taken from File on 4, BBC Radio 4 By Andy Denwood on 27september 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14971984 photo 2: taken from http://static.tumblr.com/mum7bpy/VfMlfyj6m/elasticbandages-6w-yards-ben-_i_lbm40669.jpg
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Hospitals like Barts in London are already successfully collaborating with other trusts in England to compare prices and reduce costs. But attempts by hospitals to work together to maximize their buying power with suppliers have not always worked. Orthopaedic surgeons at the University Hospitals of Leicester tried to secure a better deal on the price of knee joints by banding together with other hospitals in a body called the East Midlands procurement hub. Figures nationally suggest the price paid by trusts for the same knee joint can vary from 1,400 to 2,500. Orthopaedic surgeon Andrew Browns department is already saving thousands of pounds on knee joints With Leicester performing 1,600 knee and hip replacements each year, the trust hoped to make significant savings. However, it found that its existing deal was better than the average price the hub was able to deliver.
They think if they go to a hub that they might get a better deal [but] they dont really know what a better deal looks like. The hubs may be competing with each other in a not very effective way. Our conclusion in the report was that there needed to be a fundamental rationalization of the hubs, because too many of them are doing the same thing not very effectively. By not setting procurement as a performance target, the government is banking on trusts taking the initiative. It hopes a new system of barcoding hospital supplies will help trusts shop more effectively for low-cost, high-value consumable goods, and wants trusts to cooperate more to negotiate the best deals from suppliers. Health minister Simon Burns insists that the impetus must come from the trusts themselves:
now served by kerbside collection schemes. To improve recycling, the government established WRAP7 (Waste & Resources Action Programme) in 2001 to stimulate markets for recycled materials. Recycling Recycling is widely assumed to be environmentally beneficial, although collecting, sorting and processing materials does give rise to environmental impacts and energy use. The pros and cons of recycling some common components of household waste, that is, paper, glass, metal cans and plastics, are outlined in box 1. Table 1 summarises the current impact of recycling in the UK, compared with manufacture from raw materials. The elements of household waste most commonly collected for recycling are garden waste for composting, then paper and third glass. Metal cans make up only 1% by weight of the material collected for recycling, but recycling them offers high energy and material savings Plastic recycling is not very common, partly because few facilities exist to handle the material. Collection is complicated by the need to segregate waste plastics into the various different types. Since plastic bottles are made from only three different types of plastic, collecting them offers the greatest potential for increasing household plastic recycling.
Plastic bags make up only 1% of household waste by weight, but some 20% of total household plastic waste. Some groups argue that we should recycle more plastic bags as they are a highly visible and persistent feature of the litter stream that also pose a threat to wildlife. However, plastic bags are not routinely collected by kerbside recycling schemes. One of the reasons for this is that their low density makes their collection and recycling uneconomic. Government recycling targets currently focus on weight of waste rather than volume, so plastic recycling schemes are difficult to operate economically because plastic is so light. This approach was criticised in a 2003 report on waste management by the Commons Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Select Committee, which recommended that the government move away from targets based purely on weight8.
The root of our current policy is the EC Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste (94/62/EC), as amended by Directive 2004/12/EC). The Directive was introduced to create a single market for packaging and to increase recycling and recovery levels across the EU. Two sets of regulations transpose the Directive in the United Kingdom. The UK Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 2003 (as amended) cover, among other things, the Directives provisions on minimisation, requirements for recoverable and re-useable packaging, and excess packaging. These Regulations require packaging to be manufactured so that its volume and weight are limited to the minimum adequate amount to maintain the necessary level of safety, hygiene and acceptance for the packed product and for the consumer. (BIS) The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007 (as amended) require businesses with an annual turnover in excess of 2 million and which handle more than 50 tonnes of packaging a year to recover and recycle a proportion of the packaging they handle. (Defra). The UK Government has set business targets which must be met by obligated companies each year to ensure that the UK meets its national targets as set under the EU Directive. The UK business targets are higher than the Directive targets because under the UK system smaller businesses, and the packaging they produce, are exempt from the obligations, whereas the EU directive targets apply to all packaging waste. In December 2011, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published a consultation paper on increased recycling targets for packaging producers from 2013 to 2017 and on a sub-target for recycling of glass into re-melt applications. A final decision will be made in the 2012 Budget. Text from Costing a packet minimising packaging waste:a London Councils position paper. by London Councils http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/environment/ waste/costingapacket.htm
Often packaging of fruit and vegetables comprised plastic bags, although the market did provide paper bags. This is an approach that could be taken by more retailers to improve the proportion of their waste that is recyclable. The majority of packaging on the meat products was rubbish. The packaging on a fresh pizza varied between retailers, from a simple cardboard box or a cardboard base and shrink-wrapping - both good approaches - to a plastic or polystyrene base, shrink-wrapped and contained in a box. While the cardboard box is recyclable, the number of layers in these cases seemed excessive.
The plastic tubes provide sufficient packaging for the cookies but in some cases a tray was also part of the packaging, providing further waste in a layer of packaging that could be considered unnecessary. Retailers could also focus on reducing the size of the packaging in relation to the volume of the product, to reduce the quantities of waste produced. The market set a good example by providing a loaf of bread in a paper bag, whilst the seven other retailers had wrapped the bread in a plastic film or plastic bag. The baked beans, jam and milk came in the same form of packaging for all retailers: a can for the beans, a glass jar for the jam and a plastic bottle for the milk. Apart from the tops on the jar and milk bottle, the packaging for these products were all recyclable. The objective of this research was to inform the Local Government Associations War on Waste campaign, which seeks to address the amount of rubbish produced and the way in which it is thrown away. BMRB Social Research were commissioned to monitor food packaging levels in a shopping basket, in terms of amount of packaging (including in relation to volume of food)
and composition of that packaging (for example, whether the packaging is recyclable). A range of common food items (29 items), representing a regular shopping basket were purchased from eight retailers (six supermarkets - ASDA, Lidl, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Tesco - a local high street and a large market) Analysis involved recording the total weight of the product and recording the total weight of the packaging. The component parts of the packaging were weighed separately to measure the proportion of packaging that was recyclable or rubbish. An estimate of the volume of the food in relation to the packaging was also provided, to consider cases of excessive packaging. Photographs of the shopping baskets were taken before analysis and of the piles of waste created. This exercise will be repeated every six months for two years, in order to record the trends in food packaging over time.
Five of the ten fruit and vegetable items were available to purchase without any packaging. The researchers drew the following conclusions: There were some items on the shopping list that appeared to be somewhat over-packaged, such as shrink-wrapping on peppers and broccoli, or excessive layers of packaging, or packaging that was much larger than the contents of the product and had low volume measures (for example, cornflakes, meat, tomatoes and crisps).
Taken from the war on waste packaging study, from the local governmanet assosiation. http://new.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/1098616
This also leads to massive movements of heavy goods vehicles that contribute to Kents general traffic problems. He thinks the answer lies with the public, though. If people favour goods with minimum packaging then the message will get home, he added.
Consumers have the power, supermarkets will only do so much. Theyll be led by the consumer. The LGA is instead calling on the Government to make retailers responsible for funding the collection of packaging so they have a direct incentive to produce less
Cllr Margaret Eaton, chairman of the LGA, said: Britain is the dustbin of Europe. Taxpayers dont want to see their money going towards paying landfill taxes and EU fines when council tax could be reduced instead. If retailers create unnecessary rubbish, they should help taxpayers by paying for it to be recycled.
Text by : Caroline McGuire - Tuesday, February 17 2009 For kent online http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ kentonline/newsarchive. aspx?articleid=57342 photo top : photo from : http:// www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1147321/Waitrose-worstusing-excess-packaging-Callrecycling-levy-supermarkets. html photo below : photo from : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-2075942/Storestold-cut-packaging-year--facecrackdown.html
Recycling still the most effective waste disposal method, report finds
Report for UK government refutes persistent claims that recycling is a waste of time, calls for better facilities and an increase in incineration. Recycling is almost always the best way to get rid of waste, even when it is exported abroad, according to the biggest ever report on the industry for the UK government. The report, which addresses persistent claims that householders are often wasting their time recycling, calls for better recycling facilities but also an increase in incineration of waste, an option that is opposed by many environment groups. It also backed up last weeks controversial report
published by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs warning that biopolymer plastics made from crops should be recycled rather than put into compost, despite being widely marketed as biodegradable. Wrap, the governments waste and packaging agency, said it had analysed 200 reports covering seven different materials: paper and cardboard, plastics, bio polymers, food, garden cuttings, wood and textiles. The experts then looked at the evidence for seven methods of disposal, including recycling, composting, incineration and landfill, measured by four different criteria: energy use, water use, other resource use, and greenhouse gas emissions. In more than four out of five cases, recycling was the clear winner, said Keith James, Wraps environmental policy manager. But there were different messages for different materials, said James. For biopolymers, I think the preferable option is recycling, which isnt what people have commonly thought, he said
For textiles, theres not very many statistics, but what there is shows reuse is clearly optimal, followed by recycling and then energy recovery [incineration]. For food and garden waste, anaerobic digestion looks preferable; then composting and incineration with energy recovery come out very similar. For plastics, we have got strong evidence this time that recycling is the better option, because recycling has improved. For wood, recycling looks preferable. For paper and cardboard, what the statistics throw out is the importance of quality: the higher the quality [paper and cardboard], the better it is to recycle, but as you go down to the lower end, energy recovery [incineration] may be preferable. The good showing for incineration preferred for a small number of items and often the next best option after recycling will be controversial with some environmental campaigners who worry about the pollution from recycling plants,
and that incineration becomes an easy option that deters investment in proper recycling. However, the option of incineration was only preferred when it was using the best technology and generating energy, preferably energy that was directly replacing fossil fuel use, which is blamed for the greenhouse gas emissions that help cause global warming, said James. Energy recovery has a role to play, and if were trying to divert more waste from landfill, we need to increase recycling and increase some energy recovery. But we need to make sure we get the right technologies, he said. As well as analysing recycling in the UK, the study also considered the impact of transporting waste to other countries often China for recycling. It found that overseas transport was still better than sending it to landfill. The important thing is, because were in an international economy ... [that if] were sending metal back to China for recycling, its coming back around the circle again, said James.
According to Defra, in 2008-9 the total waste collected from the UKs 25m households dropped slightly to 24.3m tonnes, or 473kg per person. Of this, 9.1m tonnes 178kg per person was recycled, a bit more than a third. Almost all of the remainder went to landfill. Defra has a policy of encouraging more incineration, but no formal targets, said a spokesman. We cant keep on sending waste to landfill, said the spokesman. People are already reducing the amount of waste they produce, and are reusing and recycling more, and we are working hard to increase this. Some waste will always be produced, but it can be valuable in generating renewable energy through anaerobic digestion or incineration. In 2006, Wrap published a preliminary analysis of a different set of materials. But it used a much smaller collection of evidence. And it did not examine the newer energy-from-waste options of gasification and pyrolysis, both of which involve not burning but heating materials until a chemical reaction changes them into gases and residue
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Our waste costs are actually lower now than when we started and we even turn a slight profit some years when the commodity prices are high. As a non-profit, this money just gets reinvested. Further proof that the system works is provided by neighbouring regions which use different systems. For example, one charges according to the number of people who live in the home, whereas another offers one option: a weekly collection of a 100l bin. These regions both produce 100kg more waste per person per year than we do here, says Weiss. But he also believes that Neustadt has probably gone as far as it can with maximising recycling. Getting to 80% would be impossible. There are behavioural issues such as those few people who still mix up their waste. Plus, there is a fixed percentage of people who live in high-density housing without access to gardens or outside storage. Gabrielle Stahl lives on a hill overlooking the town in the leafy suburb of Hambach. She didnt even know Neustadt boasted Germanys best recycling rates, but isnt surprised:
We are all very normalised to the system here. There is no controversy or debate whatsoever about our rubbish. Stahl, who lives with her husband and shares bins with her mother who lives next door, opens the cupboard beneath her sink to reveal two waste caddies containing vegetable peelings and non-recyclable domestic waste. In the cellar below, the family stores its bottles and yellow bag material. They have paid extra to have a dedicated wheelie bin for their paper and card outside. The bags kept splitting, she explains. One day every fortnight, four lorries pull up outside Stahls home to separately collect each waste stream. If they miss a bag, you just ring them up and a car comes back to collect it. Once or twice a year, I will drive down to the depot and get rid of things like old furniture or a broken appliance, but thats it. And in the summer, I buy a chemical patch from the supermarket to stick on the inside of the bin to kill the flies and maggots.
The only thing that could be improved is that I would like a separate collection for organic waste as sometimes I produce too much for my compost heap. Back at the recycling depot, Stefan Weiss moves on to the subject of enforcement. Or rather, the lack of it. In theory, we have the power to fine people if they dont sort their waste. But we never do this because it costs too much to investigate. And we just dont have an issue with flytipping because we make the system so cheap and easy to use. We still get the odd complaint about the move to fortnightly collections, or that our bins are ugly, but that really is about it. A car towing a trailer full of construction waste pulls up at the weigh-station by the entrance gate. Weiss wanders over to inspect the contents. This weighs about half of tonne. If will cost 270 to dump it as it is. Or if the car owner sorts it into separate types of waste timber, paper, plasterboard etc it will cost him just 17. That, in summary, is our system. We provide a major incentive to recycle.
Bigger loads command much higher commercial fees. For those without a car, a calendar is provided each year to households marking pick-up days for different types of waste, or private firms are available to take away waste on demand for a fee. We started this simple fee system in 2006 and we find it works, says Weiss. We have been sorting our waste since the early 1980s, but in 1989 we joined up with other towns in the region and formed our own waste company to process the waste more efficiently.
Text and photos taken from, Leo Hickman in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse The Guardian, Friday 18 March 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/ mar/18/recycling-waste
Photo 1: taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/5/5d/Glass_and_plastic_recycling_065_ubt.JPG photo 2 : taken from German Missions in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland http://www.southafrica.diplo.de/Vertretung/ suedafrika/en/10__GIC/05__Env/Nature__Env/ Awareness.html photo 3 : Taken from the guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/ mar/18/recycling-waste
The government must be ambitious in setting recycling rates better product design, as well as action to stop supermarkets and producers selling products that cant be recycled, means that we could easily achieve upwards of 75% recycling rates by 2025. If the coalition is serious about creating a green, jobsrich economy then it must unlock the wealth in our waste and help consumers to recycle as much as possible. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/14/recyclingjobs-england