Search Results for: Environmental health

Higher education and research institutions in Burkina Faso are under threat from a jihadist insurgency, as the west African country’s military government struggles to secure the security initiative. Human Rights Watch says insurgents control 40% of the country’s territory and 1.4 million people have fled their homes out of an overall population of 22.1 million, recounting hundreds of deaths in the conflict – civilian, military and insurgents – although it has not released an overall figure, and nor has the UN.…

India’s Birla Cellulose, a world leader in producing viscose staple fibre, is targeting improvements in production sustainability. After achieving production of fibre comprising 20% textile waste and 80% wood pulp from certified sustainably grown and harvested forests, Birla Cellulose now plans to raise the proportion of waste in inputs to 30% textile waste, with the goal of producing 100,000 tonnes of this circular fibre across all categories in its products by 2024.…

The precious metals and stones sector is increasingly under the spotlight regarding ML and TF, particularly gold. Given the fungibility of precious metals, the complexity of their supply chains and the varying levels of oversight worldwide, they continue to be an attractive means to launder money – especially gold, which remains the precious metal of choice for launderers.…

Better analytical capabilities should be implemented to reduce the incidence of adulterated honey being imported into the European Union (EU), industry observers claim after a testing programme revealed almost half of the samples were fraudulently labelled. This concern was uncovered by a research initiative, ‘From the hives’, led by the European Commission’s directorate-general for health and food safety.…

The European Union (EU) has taken fresh action to reverse the decline of honeybees in Europe, with the European Commission revamping the EU Pollinators Initiative. The revised strategy involves spending on conservation, species reintroduction, research, monitoring and restricting dangerous pesticides. https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5692-2023-INIT/en/pdf;…

Australia is at the forefront of developing innovative marine coatings that draw inspiration from nature. These have the potential to not only protect ships from biofouling but also reduce fuel consumption by up to 10% by mimicking the properties of streamlined natural surfaces.…

With European textile finishers keeping a close eye on sustainability rules being developed by the European Union (EU), the fact that the EU Council of Ministers on March 16 (2023) struck agreement (1) on European Commission proposals (2) for reforming the EU industrial emissions directive will require particularly careful attention.…

The 11% year-on-year increase in output by Canada’s automotive manufacturing industry in 2022, reverses a five-year trend of contraction, but will this increase be sustained?

Canada’s 2022 production uptick, according to figures from Wards Intelligence, is certainly significant. The bulk of the expansion was in the dominant light truck segment, with 933,091 vehicles being produced, compared to 814,263 in 2021.…

The international clothing and textile sector will have to take account of the first global sustainability reporting standards designed to become compulsory in many countries worldwide from January 1, 2024. These will be published by June, having been approved in February by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).…

Food security concerns have driven China’s ministry of agriculture and rural affairs to push Chinese soy output in the past two years as growing tension with its main western trading partners – coupled with the inflationary impact of the invasion of Ukraine – has preoccupied officials at the ministry’s complex in the Tuanjiehu neighbourhood of Beijing.…