Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MINING companies planning projects in the tropics should conduct detailed assessments of potential disruption to indigenous peoples, before going ahead, the United Nations has said. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said that the same legally binding standards regarding environmental impact assessments should apply to anthropological checks on the “life-styles and cultures of indigenous peoples.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IT might seem a long way from South Hams District Council’s public tendering process to world trade negotiations in Geneva, but thanks to the globalisation process that upsets so many protesters with metal rods stuck through their noses, the two are actually closely related.…

BY MARK ROWE
FAST food outlets in Taipei have started providing information about the nutritional value of the food they serve up as part of the city’s drive to slim down and get healthy. McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Asian chains Mos Burger and Yoshinoya started providing details of the calories, protein, fat and sugar contained in their food as a result of rules introduced by Taipei city health director Chiu Shu-ti.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
MOST businesses install computer software because it makes their operation more efficient and so helps them to keep abreast of, or outdo, the competition. However, the growth in national and international regulations affecting the drinks industry has opened up a lucrative business opportunity for companies producing industry-specific computer software.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE WORLD Bank has warned Indonesia that foreign donors may further reduce their environmental grants to the country in response to the government’s recent decision to allow several mining firms to operate in protected forests. “We can’t give our funds to improve environmental conditions where there is a high risk of not succeeding,” said Kathy MacKinnon, the World Bank’s senior biodiversity specialist.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FINNISH Energy Industries Federation has published guidelines on how to improve corporate social responsibility in its sector. The European Commission said that the paper was of particular relevance to the nuclear industry, as four reactors supply 30 per cent of the country’s electricity, a figure set to grow because of the approval of a new reactor by Finland’s parliament this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a formal investigation procedure into British government plans to grant aid north Wales newsprint producer Shotton Euro 35 million (Pounds 23 million) to enable it produce newsprint from waste paper rather than virgin pulp.…

BY PHILIP FINE

HEINZ did something this year that its rival large USA-based food producers seem to be shying away from. They put their own name on an organic product.

One would think other US companies would have, by now, employed the same strategy as Heinz: use organic-friendly Europe as a test-market for an eventual US launch of an organic product, but the idea seems to be slow in catching on.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE’S Suez and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have launched a joint drinking water improvements programme that will provide around Euro 300,000 in its first three years and will initially concentrate on the Volga-Caspian region.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE CURRENT ATM system is flawed in many ways – one key problem being the inherent inefficiencies of an airway system relying on ground-based navigational aids and routes set up around 50 years ago. ANSPs have a responsibility to ensure the environment – in the air and on the ground – is protected as much as possible from wasteful engine emissions of noxious substances.…