Read the full story in The Atlantic.
The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, announced Wednesday in a letter hand-delivered to President Trump, could bring about sweeping changes to U.S. environmental law, endangering the federal government’s authority to fight climate change and care for the natural world.
Read the full story in High Country News.
Missteps by agribusiness giants allowed the invasion. Now they’re off the hook.
SACAME stands for the Socio-economic Analysis of Chemicals by Allowing a better quantification and monetisation of Morbidity and Environmental impacts.
Under the REACH legislation as well as other national legislations for managing chemicals, socio-economic analysis is an established method of weighing the pros and cons of an action for society as a whole when taking decisions on restrictions and authorisations processes. Marketing restriction proposals usually need to contain a description of the risks as well as information on the health and environmental benefits, the associated costs and other socio-economic impacts. Such analysis is also important for policy makers in justifying the value of investment of public funds in a chemicals management system.
This research builds on the OECD’s work on quantifying the social costs of environmental externalities, particulary in recent years on the costs of air pollution.
The objective is to support the socio-economic analysis of chemicals by allowing a better quantification and monetisation of morbidity and environmental impacts. The SACAME project is funded by the European Commission.
Working Papers
Read the full story in Beverage Daily.
North Carolina-based Clear Water Manufacturing has launched a machine that can filter, fill and cap more than 300 bottles of water per one-hour cycle on-site at any location, including campuses, hotels, stadiums or in retail spaces.
Read the full story from the Environmental Working Group.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Leonard Lance, R-N.J., have developed bipartisan legislation that has the support of cosmetics companies, large and small. These bills would require FDA to review the most dangerous chemicals in cosmetics, require companies to tell FDA when contaminated products are in the marketplace, and give FDA the power to act to keep us safe.
Read the full story from the United Nations Development Programme.
Chemicals are a part of our modern society, and each day we use various chemical-based products to make our lives more comfortable and productive. However, without good management practices, chemicals and the hazardous waste they generate can pose significant risks to human health and the environment.
Read the full story at Plastics Recycling Update.
An application seeks to tighten international regulation of recovered plastic movement.
The government of Norway on June 2 submitted a proposal to create a new waste category for plastics under the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention is an international convention that went into effect in 1992 with the goal of limiting global trade in hazardous wastes, especially between developed and developing countries. There are currently 186 parties to the convention.
Read the full story from Science Daily.
Researchers found that painted lady butterflies return from the Afrotropical region to recolonize the Mediterranean in early spring, traveling an annual distance of 12,000 km across the Sahara Desert.
Read the full story in WasteDive.
The food waste movement is alive and well, experiencing rapid growth and continually attracting awareness, according to discussions at this week’s 2018 U.S. Food Waste Summit.
While many attendees at the Cambridge, Massachusetts event have been working in this field for years, something about the recent boost has felt different. Even since the inaugural event at Harvard Law School in 2016, the organizers have seen a big uptick in interest. Yet all involved also recognize there is significant work left, likely decades more, to truly reckon with the full scale of this issue and the opportunities it presents.
Among the many takeaways and pieces of news during the two-day summit, here are three areas that bear watching for the waste and recycling industry.
Read the full story in e360 Digest.
Freshwater fish play an important role in global food security, particularly in low-income nations. But scientists and policymakers have never had a good grasp on exactly how much freshwater fish people eat. Now, a new survey of 548,000 households in 42 low-income countries finds families eat 9.26 million metric tons of wild-caught freshwater fish annually — 65 percent more than previously estimated.
Environmental News Bits 