The Environmental Working Group is a high profile US non-governmental organization that uses science to support its claims but sometimes presents information in a manner that some more mainstream scientists consider distorting to the level of risk. That is GallonDaily’s caveat atop this report of a list of ‘Dirty Dozen’ endocrine disruptors that the group has just published. Despite the caveat, the list is likely to gain traction in environmental and consumer protection circles because of the shortage of other information about endocrine disruptors, those substances which mimic mammalian hormones and potentially cause such effects as birth defects, cancers, learning disabilities, and feminization of males. There is a great deal of research about endocrine disruptors going on but, beyond bisphenol A, relatively little dissemination of information about which substances may have these effects.

EWG and the Keep A Breast Foundation, a US-based international advocacy group, have stepped into the information breach with a ‘Dirty Dozen’ endocrine disruptor list. Few of the substances on this list are new to the charge of endocrine disruption but disseminating such a list may serve to increase public awareness of the endocrine disruption issue. The list is:

• bisphenol A – used to manufacture some plastics and food can linings but now banned in Canada from baby bottles and baby food containers
• dioxin – an unwanted byproduct from combustion of chlorinated materials and some plastics
• atrazine – a pesticide
• phthalates – used to provide enhanced flexibility in some plastics
• perchlorate – a component of rocket fuel
• fire retardants
• lead
• arsenic
• mercury
• perfluorinated substances – used in manufacture of non-stick surfaces
• organophosphate pesticides
• glycol ethers – used as solvents in paint, cleaning products, etc.

More information from EWG at http://www.ewg.org/research/dirty-dozen-list-endocrine-disruptors

Claiming success with its 5p (7.5 cent CDN) charge on single use shopping bags, the Welsh Government is now proposing to include in legislation a provision for a similar charge on reusable shopping bags. The reason: the Government is concerned that people are buying reusable shopping bags and using them as if they were disposable. The situation has been fuelled in part by retailers selling reusable bags at prices as low as 10p.

Wales already has one of the most complicated shopping bag fee regimes in the world. Single-use shopping bags are exempt from the 5p charge if they are used for:

• food items that are unwrapped – loose fruit and vegetables, bread, pick and mix sweets etc. This includes food items that are partly unwrapped – food placed in a sleeve or other part open wrapper.
• loose seeds, bulbs, corms or rhizomes – loose grass seed, flower bulbs, seed potatoes etc.
• unpackaged blades – axe, knife blade or razor blade.
• unpackaged plants or flowers that could have been contaminated by soil.
• packaged uncooked fish or fish products, meat or meat products, poultry or poultry products in a small bag, such as those found on a roll in the fruit and vegetable aisle.
• live aquatic creatures in water – fish, coral, crabs etc.

The government gives the following examples which to GallonDaily illustrate how complex the rules have already become:

• You could have loose apples, potatoes and pears in one bag and not have to charge. If you then placed a box of tea bags in there too, you would need to apply the charge.
• If you went to a fast food restaurant and purchased a packet of fries and a burger then the fries can be placed in a free bag as they are only part wrapped and you would not be expected to place these in a reusable bag as there could be some food safety risks.  If the burger is also placed in the bag, then the bag would be charged for.

Imagine now a similar set of rules for reusable bags!

The government is also proposing to give itself the power to redirect bag fees from environmental good causes, to which they must now be directed, to “any good cause”. No doubt the work of the government will eventually be considered a good cause!

GallonDaily must explain that it is not opposed to charging for shopping bags. Almost anything provided for free is more likely to be wasted than stuff we have to pay for, so elimination of free stuff in stores or elsewhere is a good step towards sustainability. However, governments that are imposing charges for shopping bags tend to claim that their actions are making a huge difference for the environment when in fact they are a miniscule step in the direction of a more sustainable society. There are many things that government could be doing, such as helping to reduce food waste, that would have far greater benefits than messing around with new legislation for a fee on shopping bags.

Everything you want to know about the Welsh Government shopping bag charge is at http://www.carrierbagchargewales.gov.uk and the White paper on the proposed new Environment (Wales) Bill, which is where the proposal to charge for reusable bags (known in Wales as ‘bags for life’) can be found,  is at http://wales.gov.uk/consultations/environmentandcountryside/environment-bill-white-paper/?lang=en

Last week the Los Angeles based Environmental Media Association presented the 23rd Annual EMA Awards. The Environmental Media Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to harnessing the power of the entertainment industry and the media to educate the global public on environmental issues and motivate sustainable lifestyles. EMA runs a number of programs, including supporting gardens and greenery in urban schools across Los Angeles; a recognition program honouring progress in sustainable film making and event planning; providing advice to celebrities and entertainment professionals on thought-provoking, attention-getting ways to role model healthy, sustainable lifestyles to the general public; and a green parenting program. EMA also works with business to move the green agenda forward. Its corporate program operates under the credo “We can all change the world through shopping!” [GallonDaily is only reporting, not necessarily agreeing!]

The winners of the 23rd Annual EMA Awards included such well-known celebrities, films, and programs as

• Ongoing Commitment Award: Matt Damon
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Bill McKibben
• Futures Award: Hayden Panettiere
• Screen Actors Guild Awards®
• Feature Film: Promised Land
• Documentary Film: Gasland Part II
• Television Episodic Drama: “Chapter 9,” House of Cards
• Television Episodic Comedy: “Mother Fracker,” Last Man Standing
• Reality Television: “Gangs & Oil”, VICE Children’s Television: “What’s the Deal With Fracking?”
• Nick News With Linda Ellerbee [Nickelodeon]

Additional information, including a video of the full awards show, is available at http://www.ema-online.org/23rd-annual-ema-awards/ Lots more information at http://www.ema-online.org/

Retailers have focussed on climate, sustainability, and, in one case, on environmental footprint but the UK’s Sainsbury may be the first to make water conservation a priority. In March 2013, Sainsbury claims that it achieved a 50% reduction in water use per square metre, – a saving of almost one billion litres each year (or 393 Olympic sized swimming pools) at the same time as growing its floor space by up to 40% since 2005/06.

The UK retailer Sainsbury’s has introduced Water Neutral at its ‘environmentally friendly’ store at Weymouth Gateway in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The plan is that the store will be self sufficient in water. One hundred per cent of its water demand will be met through water efficient infrastructure and offsetting partnerships in the local community. As a result of this initiative the total water used within the local catchment area will not increase as a result of this new store. Sainsbury’s will also replicate this approach at its new supermarket in Leicester, opening at the end of November.

Seventy per cent of the water demand of the supermarket will be met through rainwater harvesting and other water efficient infrastructure. The remaining 30 per cent, which needs to be drinking quality potable water for food preparation, will be offset by sponsoring water saving initiatives at partner sites in the local community. For example, this store will offset at least 4.5 m3 of potable water each day through collaborations with Weymouth College and Wey Valley School in the same community of Weymouth. This will also substantially reduce these educational institutes’ annual water bills.

Water is an increasingly scarce resource, not just in the UK but also in North America. While two stores out of more than 1000 is only a small start, GallonDaily believes that Sainsbury’s is to be congratulated for making water conservation its latest environmental priority.

The Sainsbury’s press release on Water Neutral is at http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/media/latest-stories/2013/20131021-sainsburys-introduces-water-neutral-at-new-weymouth-store-after-saving-almost-one-billion-litres-of-water-each-year/

A recent paper in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection by researchers at the University of  Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, posits that Legionella bacteria present in commercial compost and commercially blended topsoils may present a significant public health risk. The authors suggest that the addition of general hygiene warnings to compost package may be beneficial in protecting public health.

The study is based on analysis of twenty-two store-bought composts, one green-waste compost and one homemade compost. Legionella sp. bacteria were found in fifteen of the twenty-four samples.  Public concern has been enhanced by a couple of recent cases of UK gardeners being diagnosed with Legionellosis after working with compost in their gardens and one UK case of a 63 year old female death ascribed by an inquest of Legionellosis.

Experts suggest that gardeners can reduce their exposure to dust from commercial compost by wetting the material before working with it, wearing gloves and a face mask, and washing their hands afterwards. In any case the risk of acquiring Legionellosis from compost remains at an extremely low level. However, even one premature death is one too many. Gallondaily suggests that the further research is urgent because the last thing the compost industry needs, as environmental experts work to increase the amount of organic waste going to compost rather than landfill, is a barrier to markets for finished compost.

The scientists recommend further research to better understand the problem and to determine whether the results from this small scale study transfer to the larger universe of commercial compost.

An abstract and a link to the full article (payment or subscription required) are available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1469-0691.12381/abstract

In what is almost certainly a North American first, one of the major newspapers in the US, the Los Angeles Times, has announced that it will no longer publish letters to the Editor which attempt to deny global warming. in reiterating the announcement the Letters Editor makes the following key points:

• when deciding which letters should run among hundreds on such weighty matters as climate change, I [the Letters Editor] must rely on the experts — in other words, those scientists with advanced degrees who undertake tedious research and rigorous peer review.
• those scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change.
• I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published.
• saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.

Many Canadian newspapers regularly publish letters from climate change deniers. GallonDaily’s local daily paper, the Hamilton Spectator, publishes climate change denial articles on the op-ed page so frequently that GallonDaily suspects that the Editor is a climate change denier. Yet every week the Hamilton Spectator publishes its ‘accuracy pledge’ in which it claims “We strive always to ensure the information we provide our readers is factual and correct.’

It will be interesting to see whether other newspapers and media outlets follow the LA Times’ lead.

The LA Times announcement was made earlier this month and may be found at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-climate-change-letters-20131008,0,871615.story

Today we break our usual rule of no more than one article per day to let you know that we missed an environment-related initiative in this week’s Federal budget.

In the budget the government announced that the Government will:

• End “pay to pay” policies, so customers won’t pay extra to receive paper bills.

These programs, under which people pay an amount, often $2.00, to receive a paper bill instead of an electronic bill, are designed to encourage acceptance of electronic bills, saving the environmental impacts of paper making and postal delivery. The pulp and paper industry has been lobbying hard against electronic communications, (see, for example, http://www.twosides.us/President-and-CEO-of-Canada-Post-is-committed-to-stopping-misleading-environmental-claims-about-paper ) and seems to have won at least a partial victory for more paper use (or is it paper waste?) in this year’s Throne Speech.

While taking your time by presenting an extra article today, GallonDaily notes that we had hoped to present a summary of the environmental, and environment business, aspects of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement  either today or Monday. However, the federal government and the EU have not yet released the text of the Agreement and we are not expecting it for some time. Instead, the Government of Canada has released a pile of propaganda in support of CETA with no discussion of the environmental aspects or of any downsides (see http://www.actionplan.gc.ca/en/content/ceta-aecg/canada-eu-trade-agreement for the propaganda). We will publish a summary of the environmental and sustainability implications of the Agreement, as we see them, as quickly as possible once the actual text of the agreement is made available.

The United Nations Global Compact, launched in 2004, is an initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. Now the UNGC and Accenture Management Consulting have undertaken a survey of 1000 global CEOs to see how business leaders consider their community is doing to implement sustainability.

The top level findings include:

• The global economy is on the wrong track, and business is not playing its part in forging a sustainable future.
• Some 63% of CEOs expect sustainability to transform their industry within five years—and 76% believe that embedding sustainability into core business will drive revenue growth. But even as they make progress in embedding sustainability through their business they are constrained by market expectations, and are struggling to quantify and capture the business value of sustainability.
• Many business leaders feel that given the structures, incentives and demands of the market, they have taken their companies as far as they can. While a few leading companies are deepening and intensifying their commitments on sustainability, others are growing skeptical that addressing global sustainability challenges will ever become critical to their business success within current economic systems and markets.
• CEOs clearly recognize the scale of the global challenge—but may not yet see the urgency or the incentive for their own businesses to do more and to have a greater impact. This disconnect suggests that a gap persists between the approach to sustainability of the majority of companies globally—an approach centered on philanthropy, compliance, mitigation and the license to operate—and the approach being adopted by leading companies, focused on innovation, growth and new sources of value.
• CEOs are clear that action must be justified against traditional measures of success. The more adept companies become at measuring and tracking their own sustainability performance, the more their frustration grows at an apparent inability to tie performance improvements and industry leadership to the fundamentals of business value beyond incremental gains. Signals from consumers are mixed; investor interest is patchy.
• CEOs see two essential elements on the agenda for action. First, CEOs call for active intervention by governments and policymakers, in collaboration with business, to align public policy with sustainability at global, national and local levels, including hard measures on regulation, standards and taxation. In parallel, business leaders point to the need to learn from those companies already leading the way, harnessing sustainability as an opportunity for innovation and growth, delivering business value and sustainability impact at scale.
• CEOs call for government intervention to align public policy with sustainability.

This fascinating 55 page report, which may hold some important clues for increasing business participation in implementation of sustainability, can be found at http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/ungc-ceo-study/Pages/home.aspx

The good news is that yesterday’s Speech from the Throne, laying out the Federal Government’s policy agenda, contained a number of references to environmental policy. However, the value of the commitments seems to GallonDaily to be somewhat less than that which environmentally concerned Canadians might be seeking. Significantly, there is no reference in the Throne Speech to climate change, suggesting that the centre of government may not have got over its aversion to using those two words. However, the government does state that it will build on its record as the first government to achieve an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions [see EUROPE WILL MEET CARBON EMISSION TARGETS: NEW SCIENCE-BASED REPORT below for an alternate perspective on this theme] by working with provinces to reduce emissions from the oil and gas sectors while ensuring Canadian companies remain competitive.

The Throne Speech also contains the following statements of intent related to environment and sustainable development:

• Canada’s energy reserves are vast—sufficient to fuel our growing economy and supply international customers for generations to come. However, for Canadians to benefit fully from our natural resources we must be able to sell them. A lack of key infrastructure threatens to strand these resources at a time when global demand for Canadian energy is soaring. We must seize this moment. The window for gaining access to new markets will not remain open indefinitely. Now more than ever, our future prosperity depends on responsible development of these resources.
• Our Government believes, and Canadians expect, that resource development must respect the environment. Our Government’s plan for responsible resource development includes measures to protect against spills and other risks to the environment and local communities. Our Government will:
  • Enshrine the polluter-pay system into law;
  • Set higher safety standards for companies operating offshore as well as those operating pipelines, and increase the required liability insurance;
  • Re-introduce the Safeguarding Canada’s Seas and Skies Act, to protect our oceans and coasts; and
  • Act on advice from the Expert Panel on Tanker Safety, to create a world-class tanker safety system in Canada.
• Our Government has supported fishermen by ensuring proper management of fish stocks and by opening new markets worldwide. It will continue to be open to solutions, supported by fishermen, that strengthen the economic competitiveness of this traditional pillar of our coastal economy.
• Forestry remains essential to Canada’s rural economy, supporting almost 200,000 jobs across the country. Our Government secured and extended the softwood lumber agreement with the United States. And our Government will continue to support innovation and pursue new export opportunities for Canadian companies.
• Over the next decade, our Government will invest 70 billion dollars in federal, provincial, territorial and community infrastructure. Projects such as building subways in the Greater Toronto Area, replacing Montréal’s Champlain Bridge, building a new Windsor-Detroit crossing and constructing Vancouver’s Evergreen Line will create jobs across our country.
• To foster Canadian productivity and global competitiveness, our Government provided 1.4 billion dollars in tax relief to manufacturing companies investing in modern machinery and equipment. And our new Advanced Manufacturing Fund will support new products and production methods.
• Transformation of the National Research Council, doubling the Industrial Research Assistance Program, and the new Venture Capital Action Plan are all helping to promote greater commercialization of research and development.
• Building on this strong foundation, our Government will release an updated Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy.
• Our Government will continue making targeted investments in science and innovation chains from laboratory to market in order to position Canada as a leader in the knowledge economy.
• Our Government will work with the provinces and territories to further strengthen food inspection regimes.
• Our Government will consult with Canadian parents to improve the way nutritional information is presented on food labels.
• Protect Canada’s rich natural heritage by unveiling a new National Conservation Plan to further increase protected areas, focusing on stronger marine and coastal conservation.
• Complete, by 2015, its work to protect wilderness lands in Nááts’ihch’oh, Bathurst Island and the Mealy Mountains.
• Work with communities, non-profit organizations, and businesses to create and protect more green space in our urban and suburban areas.
• Take further action to improve air quality nationwide.
• We will take targeted action to increase the safety of the transportation of dangerous goods.
• Building community resilience can mitigate the worst impacts of natural disasters and other emergencies before they happen. Our Government will work with provinces and territories to develop a National Disaster Mitigation Program, focused on reducing the impact of natural disasters.
• Our Government will help the world’s neediest by partnering with the private sector to create economic growth in the developing world.

Described by its founders as a cross-sectoral leadership initiative bringing together governments, businesses, and non-government organizations to advance a national waste prevention and reduction agenda in Canada, the National Zero Waste Council is being launched on October 16 at Metro Vancouver’s 2013 Zero Waste Conference.

The Council’s mission is

To act collaboratively with business, government and the community, at the national and international level, as an agent of change for waste prevention and reduction in the design, production and use of goods.

Its goal is

To support a high quality of life, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity while consuming fewer resources and less energy. Taking early action will ensure that Canada is well placed to effectively compete in a resource constrained world.

The founding chair will be the Mayor of Richmond BC with significant participation from municipalities, including Councillor Shelley Carroll from the City of Toronto, and the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. Business representation is so far a bit sparse, comprising representatives from the Construction Resource Initiatives Council, the Globe Foundation, and Walmart. No doubt additional business participation will be welcome.

Gallondaily’s editor will be facilitating a session on The Art and Science of Zero Waste at the conference which launches the National Zero waste council. More details at http://www.metrovancouver.org/zwc/Pages/default.aspx