Author: Jonathan L. Mayuga

A waste and pollution watchdog has reiterated its call on the Marcos administration to ratify the Basel Convention Ban Amendment and immediately put in place a national waste-import ban policy to effectively prevent hazardous waste entering the country’s borders. The EcoWaste Coalition issued the call as part of the commemoration of Zero Waste Month this January.

Author: Srushti Gangdev

A Burnaby-based trading firm is on the hook for nearly $4.3 million after failing to present a defence by the deadline in a federal court lawsuit against it. Golden Trust Trading Inc. has been ordered to pay shipping company Hapag-Lloyd Aktiengesellschaft for costs it incurred in transporting 33 shipping containers filled with waste paper and plastic film from Vancouver to Bangkok in the spring of 2019.

Author: Le Monde

This scandal shed light on the global waste trade. A former Tunisian environment minister has been sentenced to three years in prison for his role in an illegal import of household waste from Italy, local media reported on Wednesday (January 4th). Mustapha Aroui had been removed from his post and arrested in December 2020 with several officials from his ministry as part of an investigation into this scandalous affair in Tunisia.

Author: News24

Spanish police have broken up a criminal group that smuggled over 5 000 tons of hazardous electronic waste from Spain's Canary Islands to several African countries, authorities said on Tuesday. Police arrested 43 people suspected of having illegally shipped 331 containers of used electronics to Africa over the past two years, the finance ministry said in a statement.

Author: The Herald

MAPUSA: A major fire broke out at an illegal scrapyard located at Murshiwaddo, Colvale, on Wednesday morning. While the blaze was reported at 10 am, the staff of the Mapusa fire station struggled to control it and spent the whole day at the spot to ensure that the fire was doused completely. 

Author: K. Oanh Ha

Muzaffarnagar, a city about 80 miles north of New Delhi, is famous in India for two things: colonial-era freedom fighters who helped drive out the British and the production of jaggery, a cane sugar product boiled into goo at some 1,500 small sugar mills in the area. Less likely to feature in tourism guides is Muzaffarnagar’s new status as the final destination for tons of supposedly recycled American plastic.

Author: The Tribune

A massive fire suddenly broke out last night at a plastic waste processing unit in the industrial area at Hatli near Sihunta in Bhatiyat sub-division of Chamba district. Two out of the five labourers sleeping on the first floor of the factory building were burnt alive, whereas the other three saved themselves by escaping from the building.

Authors: Olga Speranskaya and Alexandra Caterbow

MUNICH/OTTAWA – In late November, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution met for the first time. The INC was established by the United Nations Environment Assembly with a well-defined mission: to create the first-ever legally binding global agreement on plastic pollution. The fact that delegates and observers finally met to have this discussion is welcome. But the meeting results are just the beginning of addressing the scale or scope of the problem.

Author: Daily Hive Canada

The federal government announced earlier this year that it would ban the manufacture and import of single-use plastics by December. Now, as December 20 approaches, consumers in Canada can expect to find more sustainable solutions available soon.

Author: Joseph Winters

Plastic packaging waste from the online retail giant Amazon ballooned to 709 million pounds globally in 2021 — equivalent to the weight of some 70,000 killer whales — according to a new report published Thursday by the nonprofit Oceana. That’s an 18 percent increase over Oceana’s estimate of Amazon’s plastic packaging for 2020, indicating a growing problem that environmental advocates — and even Amazon’s own shareholders — say the company is doing too little to address.

Author: George Monbiot

There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a guess. North Korea? Russia? Wrong. Both ratified the convention years ago. One is the Holy See (the Vatican). The other is the United States of America.

Author: Joseph Winters

As international negotiators began hammering out the details of a global plastics treaty last week, legislators in the United States were busy unveiling a domestic policy to address the plastic pollution crisis. A new bill introduced by four congressional Democrats on Thursday takes aim at plastic manufacturers in an attempt to reduce the country’s reliance on single-use plastics.

Author: DeAnne Toto

The European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) voted in favor of the reform of EU procedures and control measures on waste shipments Dec. 1, with 76 votes in favor, none against and five abstentions.

Author: Jennifer Rankin

The EU executive wants to ban mini-shampoo bottles in hotels and the use of throwaway cups in cafes and restaurants, as part of sweeping legal proposals to curb Europe’s mountains of waste. A draft EU regulation published on Wednesday also proposes mandatory deposit and return schemes for single-use plastic drinks bottles and metal cans, as well as an end to e-commerce firms wrapping small items in huge boxes.