Environmental News, Articles & Information | Global Warming News | EcoWorld

T-Mobile has begun to drastically cut plastic use by up to 45 percent in it’s pay-as-you-go phone packages. This results in to almost half the original plastic being used in packaging as well as a 40 percent cut in materials transportation.

The packaging is manufactured by Alloyd Brands, a division of Tegrant Corporation. The company specializes in packaging that reduces material use and weight, in addition to reusable packaging.

The new packaging is a paperboard and PET plastic based Natralock® blister card that is easily disassembled with scissors, but very difficult to tear.

Read more about T-Mobile’s newly reduced plastic packaging and their cell phone recycling program.

Located in Lafayette, Indiana, Perry Foam Products is a major player in the molded foam technology industry, who up until about three years ago did zero recycling. Warehouse Manager, Marvin Hills, set out on a mission to change all of that, but faced a challenging problem of finding vendors who would take large amounts of polyurethane and recycle it.

According to the Center for the Polyurethanes Industry of the American Chemistry Council, polyurethanes account for approximately 5 percent of all plastic waste.

Eventually Marvin Hill was able to locate an Ohio based recycling center that would take their polyurethane waste and recycle it in to a foam bonding agent that is used in carpeting and other and production of tire covers.

Once the biggest challenge of recycling polyurethane was taken care of, the company moved on to more common recyclables and now recycles 90 percent of their waste resulting in a costs savings nearing $70,000 a year.

To read more about Marvin Hill and how he is managing to recycle the last 10 percent of company waste please click here for the full article.

Scientist at the University of York have made recent discovers that could take discarded televisions screens and recycle them in to new medicine. The key chemical compound found in these screens is known as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), which is usually incinerated along with the TV screens in landfills.

New methods in recovering PVA from these screens helps transform the compound in to a form that is usable in medical dressings, pill coating, and even tissue scaffolds.

With 2.5 billion liquid crystal displays already reaching the end of their life, and LCD televisions proving hugely popular with consumers, that is a huge amount of potential waste to manage.

To read more about the microwave based technologies that have been developed to extract PVA from television screens, please read the full article.

Chicago based cleaners have been using a popular cleaning chemical, perchloroethylene, known for it’s ability to cut stains and lift dirt off of fabrics. Customers became very familiar with use of perchloroethylene, because of it’s sharp smell that pours out of plastic bags filled with clean laundry. Many shops used this cleaning chemical due to it’s effectiveness and the satisfaction it brought to it’s customers.

However years later the misuse of this widely popular chemical has began to severely pollute local areas in Chicago raising alarms and health concerns by both the public and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Illinois EPA is continually moving forward with efforts to clean and sterilize the almost remaining 400 polluted sites located in the Chicago suburbs.

But over the years, with little if any notice to the public, the often sloppy use of perchloroethylene has poisoned hundreds of sites in Illinois. As scientists linked perc exposure to cancer, liver damage, neurological problems and other ailments, regulators found problems in virtually every town with a dry cleaner.

Read the full article for more information on perchloroethylene health effects and Chicago’s efforts to clean these polluted sites.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture has just released information to local, specialty farmers that the Federal Depart of Agriculture will be appropriating nearly $435,000 in grants for 2010.

The grants will be issued in hopes that hey will stimulate growth of specialty crops, such as pumpkins, strawberries, and cauliflower. The stimulation in growth will provide better access to freshly grown produce grown by these specialty farmers.

Illinois agriculture director Tom Jennings says the money will further raise awareness about the abundance of Illinois agricultural production and strengthen the state’s specialty crop industry.

To find out more information on Illinois based specialty farmers and agriculture please click here to read the full article.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. are planning to roll out a program that easily identifies at a glance the sustainability of green products being placed on shelves. This program is a step in the right direction for Wal-Mart to become more ecofriendly and to better appeal to it’s green customer base. The retail giant hopes that it can push it’s suppliers to fully comply with the sustainability index and start a major trend in reMatail across the Nation.

“One of the issues consumers have is even if you want to be green, trying to navigate that is challenging,” said Neil Stern, senior partner at McMillan Doolittle LLP in Chicago and co-author of the book “Greentailing.” “There are all these labels out there, and it’s really difficult for consumers to understand what’s going on.”

Many eco-experts do admire what Wal-Mart is trying to accomplish, but also believe it is a difficult thing to accomplish simply, because it is hard to truly have green products. An article of clothing could be made from all natural, organic fibers, but if it comes from a facility that is high in emissions and power consumption, than that negatively impacts it’s status as a truly green product.

Read the full article for more information regardign Wal-Mart’s efforts to easily label products as green and reduce it’s own carbon foot print.

Located in New York, The Omega Center for Sustainable Living has literally raised the bar for what it means to be green. The building itself is an exquisite representation of green architecture and is also a prime example of what it means to be environmentally self sufficient.

The facility utilizes green powers, like geothermal and solar to produce 100 percent of it’s own energy rendering day to day operations completely carbon neutral. The Omega Center doubles as a learning facility of what it means to be green and is also a natural water treatment facility, providing four different stages of water purification.

“The OCSL demonstrates the critical intersection of environmental sustainability, renewable energy, and the new green economy,” said Skip Backus, chief executive officer at Omega in a press release.

For more information on The Omega Center for Sustainable Living please read the full article.

Environmental activist continue push to limit the green house gas emission caused by a TransAlta Coal Plant near Centralia, Washington, which is said to be accountable for a whopping 10 percent of the state’s entire green house emissions.  The activist are urging the Southwest Clean Air Agency to step in and regulate the emissions being produced by the coal plant, because they believe that they are hazardous to public safety and health.

In what could become a national test case, four national and regional conservation groups have told the Southwest Clean Air Agency that it has “the legal mandate and the moral obligation” to limit carbon dioxide emissions from Washington’s only coal-fired electrical plant.

Executive Director, Bob Elliott, disagrees with the activist claims and says that he himself lacks the legal authority to mandate limits on the green house emissions produced by the TransAlta coal plant.

For more details and information regarding the TransAlta Coal Plant emissions please read the full article.

Macy’s now stand at No. 14 on the EPA’s list of companies who utilize green power in an effort to help curb carbon emissions.

The stores — there are 15 in Hawaii — are generating more than 10 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of solar power annually, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The California and Hawaiian based stores have received federal recognition for their use of green power, which reportedly avoids carbon dioxide emissions that are equivalent to 1,000 passenger cars a year. The same holds true for their electricity consumption as it is comparable of energy needed to power 1,000 American homes.

More information and the full details of Macy’s green power can be found by reading the full article.

Recycling just became easier for residence in the Metro Detroit area. The city now offers a curbside program that allows a person to offer up unsorted recyclables in exchange for gift cards. RecycleBank and the city of Detroit have teamed up to offer and incentive based recycling program that cuts down on traffic to the landfills and the amount of waste that is not being properly disposed.

The program is simple and hopes to stimulate recycling practices in almost 70% of the current households in the programs area and have high hopes of including apartments and businesses by the end of the year.

Officials haven’t calculated an estimated savings in landfill fees using the single-stream recycling program, which allows participants to dump all recyclables into one bin to put at the curb.

Click here to read the full article on Metro Detroit’s newly implemented curbside recycling program.