In February the United Kingdom Environment Agency published a report entitled Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags. The report concluded that single-use carrier bags have the lowest carbon footprint per bag when the use part of the life cycle is not taken into account – in other words when you consider only the resources used to make the bag and not how many times it can be used and hence the total amount of shopping it will carry.  Not surprisingly, paper, heavy plastic and cotton bags all use more resources and energy for their production. However, all of these last more round trips than the single use bag and when the multiple uses are taken into account the stronger bags win in terms of carbon footprint per use.

Key finding: whatever type of bag you use, the key is to reuse it as many times as possible to achieve the lowest possible carbon footprint.

The report is available at http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/127553.aspx?page=3&month=2&year=2011

The European Union Environment Commissioner announced a few days ago that the first regulation under the EU “End Of Waste” initiative has been adopted.  Under End of Waste, the EU expects member countries to move rapidly to convert waste streams to streams of raw materials for recycling and other activities. The first regulation under this initiative includes iron, steel and aluminum scrap and provides a framework under which these materials will not longer be classified as waste as long as those companiews producing such materials have a quality management system in place and certify each load of material as conforming to the EU criteria.

It is expected that this will greatly increase recycling of these scrap metals within the EU and facilitate the export of such metals to countries outside of the EU. Certainly it will significantly decrease the amount of bureaucracy associated with the recycling of scrap metals by those processors that have put a quality management system in place.

We will provide more information about the “End of Waste” initiative in a future issue of Gallon Environment Letter.

For more information see http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/11/388&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

According to a peer-reviewed pre-publication research article recently published by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, switching a group of human test subjects from a diet of mostly packaged food to a diet of mostly fresh food led to a rapid and substantial decrease in urinary concentrations of BPA and DEHP metabolites. There is some evidence that BPA and DEHP may be endocrine disruptors and the Canadian government has announced that BPA is banned from baby bottles.

Though the research sample size was quite small the results appear quite definitive. This research is likely to increase pressure on governments to further restrict use of phthalates in food contact applications.

See http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1003170

On Tuesday April 5th members of the Ontario Environment Industry Association will be holding the annual Environment Industry Day at Queen’s Park. There will be a presentation from a senior environment ministry official, roundtables with environment ministry staff, and a reception with the Minister himself, all with the objective of helping the Ontario Government undertstand the important role played by companies in the environment industry.

For more details, or to participate (members as well as non-members are invited to attend the reception) visit http://oneia.ca/Default.aspx?pageId=700336

The March issue of Gallon Environment Letter is being distributed today. The theme of the issue is Do We Have Enough Land for Biofuels? but, as always, there are a slew of interesting articles of interest to the environmental community, with a slight business bias.\

Partial Table of Contents:

WHY DOES INDUSTRY WAIT FOR FRACKING DISCLOSURE REGULATION?

IS OUR QUEST FOR BIOFUELS SUSTAINABLE?

IEA BIOENERGY: BIOENERGY, LAND USE CHANGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION

COMMODITIES AND FOOD PRICES

OECD-FAO: FOOD AND ENERGY MARKETS NOW INTEGRATED

ESTIMATING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS FROM LAND USE CHANGES DUE TO BIOFUELS

US: CORN FOR ETHANOL OR FOOD DEBATE HEATING UP

THE ENVIRONMENTAL STATE OF CANADIAN AGRICULTURE

GEORGE MORRIS CENTRE’S GRIER: BIOFUELS ARE RUNAWAY TRAIN

CFRA: BIOFUELS AND POPULAR MYTHS

LOW CARBON CRITERIA FOR FUELS

DAVID SUZUKI HONOURED

USING WASTE MATERIALS MAY NOT BE SO ‘BENEFICIAL’

HOW DARK IS OUR SPRING? HOW HIGH IS HIGH?

FLYING CARS ARE NOT ECO

The Honoured Reader (no charge) edition will be published on our website http://www.gallonletter.ca in a few days.

Unfortunately, free distribution of Gallon Environmental Letter will soon cease. We have had free, personal use, and corporate use editions for fifteen years but the reality is that Gallon Environment Letter has never been profitable. To try to rectify that situation we will be closing the free distribution lists later this year. Those who are receiving it will continue to do so but we will not be accepting any new Honoured Reader subscriptions.

For a regular subscription visit  http://www.gallonletter.ca/ and click on subscribe

To obtain an Honoured Reader subscription send a request to subscriptions@gallonletter.ca

This is the new Gallon Environment Letter daily blog. It will be in operation (and still being improved!) by April 1st 2011 with daily (Monday to Friday) commentary on environmental topics of interest to Canadian (and perhaps international) business. Initially it will be free to all readers but probably not too long before access is restricted to paid subscribers to Gallon Environment Letter. Unfortunately that is the way the world is! Watch Gallon Environment Letter for more details.

For more details about Gallon Environment Letter visit http://www.gallonletter.ca/