Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH formal approval being secured for the launch of the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission has promised to work swiftly so that the new body can be operational by the end of this year in its temporary home in Evere, north Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made good on its plans to table formal legislation forcing polluters to pay for the cleansing of the European Union’s land, seas, rivers and atmosphere from the toxins that they have released.

Ministers will now be asked to approve a directive on environmental liability, allowing public authorities to hold companies legally responsible, not only for repairing ecological damage, but also for taking precautions to prevent such problems.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators has been staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO), and the World Health Organisation, reflecting concern about recent food safety incidents, such as BSE, that the FAO claims have “caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGICAL advancement seems to go hand in hand with miniaturisation; witness the development of the mobile phone from its 1980’s high-tech brick to today’s tiny handset; smaller than the devices used by Captain Kirk in the early Star Trek episodes that peered centuries into the future.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has accepted a Greek government request that local small dealers in recyclable waste such as glass, paper, board, scrap iron and steel and suppliers of any size in non-ferrous metals, should be exempted from paying VAT in Greece, because of tax evasion concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming all but written, the European Commission has been considering innovative ways regarding waste management in which it can help reduce the EU’s production of greenhouse gases.

A new paper written for the Commission’s directorate general by consultants AEA Technology proposes the segregation of municipal waste, so that materials such as paper, metals, textiles and plastics can be recycled, and decomposable refuse be composted.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNATIONAL technical guidelines promoting the safe disposal of plastic wastes have been issued, following a United Nations Environment Programme backed meeting in Geneva. Representatives from more than 100 governments focused especially on the problems caused by developing countries lacking the necessary legislation and facilities to cope with the ongoing dramatic growth in the quantity of plastic their waste disposal organisations have to deal with.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
A SYSTEM for turning crushed and pulverized waste glass into powder with a particle size finer than 5mm has been developed by Japan’s Garasu Resourcing Co, for use as an alternative construction material solidifying flimsy terrain in place of natural sand.…

Keith Nuthall
ONE of the more uplifting stories to emerge from the World Trade

Centre disaster was the way Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest stockbroker,

got its people back at work and its systems running again so quickly

afterwards. Ian Ross, business continuity manager at Merrill Lynch, told

delegates at this week’s 2-day contingency planning and disaster recovery

in financial services conference in London how it happened and what was

learnt.…

Keith Nuthall
THE ATTACK on the World Trade Centre has put a new focus on the

provision of third party recovery contracts through which companies can

purchase back-up facilities in the event of disaster. Some 80 per cent of

all financial sector companies now have some kind of third party contract

giving them access to offices and other premises, computing and

communication facilities and processing resources that can make the

difference between going bust and carrying on business reasonably normally.…