Tag: sustainability

From pet food manufacturing to wastewater treatment, companies show no lack of imagination when it comes to improving water efficiency at this year's annual Green Week event in Brussels.

By 2025 half the world’s population will not have enough water to meet its needs, warns Rashad Kaldany, urging governments and the private sector to work on solutions, which he says, do exist.

The EU has established resource efficiency as one of its seven flagship initiatives for the 2020 agenda, and its roadmap is supported by many programmes and initiatives on the ground. Yet, it is a tiger without teeth, claims the latest report by the Transatlantic Academy, a research institution that aims to create common approaches for the long-term challenges faced by Europe and North America.

Having safe drinking water should be a basic human right, but consumers and governments also have a duty to set a price high enough to encourage efficiency, says Hans Telgan, who heads Europe’s plastic pipe industry trade association TEPPFA.

The European Commission needs to take the implementation of recycling laws more seriously, says green campaigner and waste policy expert Stéphane Arditi in an interview with EurActiv.

Many of the water systems in major cities around the world, including in developed countries, have losses of 30-40%, says Lars H. Thunell of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC). And that’s not viable, he insists, so we have to make sure we invest.

The European Union needs to "radically transform" the way it manages water, energy and land to ensure the needs of the poorest people are met and the environment is protected, according to the new European Report on Development.

In an old harbour crowded with houseboats, Amsterdam is looking to the future with plans to construct low-energy homes in a climate-neutral neighbourhood.

Biodiversity has decreased by an average of 28% globally since 1970 and the world would have to be 50% bigger to have enough land and forests to provide for current levels of consumption and carbon emissions, the conservation group WWF said today (15 May).

MEPs have cancelled plans to send a delegation to the UN Rio+20 summit on sustainable development, due to take place in June in Brazil. 

Shanna H. Swan, a renowned scientist specialising in reproductive medicine, has warned about the health effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) such as phthalates which can end up in food via pesticides or plastics. In an interview with EurActiv, she calls on regulators to better protect consumers against those "hidden chemicals".

An extraordinary ‘orientation meeting’ between the European Union's 27 commissioners has instructed the EU executive's energy and climate departments to sit down and jointly draft a legal proposal addressing indirect land use changes (ILUC) caused by the biofuels industry.

The European Parliament's environment committee backed a proposed resource efficiency roadmap for Europe on 25 April, marking an important step in EU policymakers' efforts to decouple natural resource use from economic growth. However, in an effort to find a compromise, they left aside proposed ambitious deadlines and measures.

Europe faces major obstacles in achieving two of its goals at the upcoming sustainable development conference in Rio de Janeiro, a top EU official admitted yesterday (24 April), but will remain an “ambitious partner”.

While the EU is discussing the further steps to Europe’s 'greener economy' as a way to emerge from the financial crisis, its energy dependency on 'dirty fuels' has failed to be addressed, writes Elena Gerebizza of the Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank.

European plans for promoting public and private solutions to a pressing global development need - electricity - will do little to address the immediate challenges of one of the world’s poorest countries, Liberia’s energy minister said.

Environmentalists are calling on European countries to achieve a minimum 50% reduction in marine waste as part of commitments they must make under EU law.

Faced with stagnant economies and rising fuel prices, Europe's airline industry is pressing leaders to speed up the modernisation of the continent’s air traffic control system as a way to improve efficiency.

China has established a rare earth industry association, state media reported, in a move to speed up consolidation of its sprawling industry that has drawn fire for what overseas trade partners call unfair export quotas.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) seems confident that research on the toxicity of low doses of chemicals in food is irrelevant to risk assessment. This is despite mounting evidence that low-dose exposure, particularly to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, could be contributing to rising rates of a number of diseases, writes Paul Whaley.

The EU’s emissions reduction target for 2020 could be facing an unlikely but grave obstacle, according to a growing number of scientists, EU officials and NGOs: the contribution of biomass to the EU’s renewable energy objectives for 2020.

After years of trying to persuade consumers that their products present no health or environmental risk, the pesticides industry has now recognised its failure to address wider society concerns. Friedhelm Schmider of industry group ECPA promises "a huge change of mindset" in engaging with consumers and farmers.

European efforts to make farming more environmentally friendly have done little to address its growing ecological footprint abroad, says a UN expert who calls for a shift to more sustainable consumption.

European regions are gearing up for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June by drawing up a list of “key ingredients” in a bid to make sustainable urban development a focal point of the Brazil discussions.