Plastic Overshoot Day marks the point when the amount of plastic waste generated exceeds the world’s capacity to manage it, resulting in environmental pollution. In 2024, the global Plastic Overshoot Day is projected to occur on September 5th. Each country has its own Plastic Overshoot Day, which is determined by …
The planet's amphibians are under threat. Declining populations of frogs, salamanders and toads have been reported from all over the globe and some of the amphibian groups are disappearing completely from their natural habitats. Frogs are in close communion with their surroundings - both water and soil - at different …
THE Arctic Ocean could be another Chernobyl in the making, says Alexel Yablokov, head of Russia's Interagency Commission on Ecological Security, pointing a finger at Russia's environmental callousness. He reports the scut- tling of nuclear submarines in shallow waters, careless storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, and nuclear pollution from …
THE people of Panama City are losing their battle against pollution. An everincreasing number of automobiles, overburdened roads, lack of housing and an apathetic local populace are making a problem with no easy solutions. Studies indicate that some sectors of Panama Bay, which receives the city's wastes through 21 sewage …
THE noose is tightening around the 1 lakh odd industrial units in Delhi. Close on the heels of its closure orders served on 9038 polluting industrial units in the non-conforming areas, the Supreme Court served notices on March 27 to polluting units in Wazirpur and Ashok Vihar industrial estates to …
WHILE world leaders squabbled over global strategies at the climate change summit in Berlin, an ambitious and significant effort was initiated in Tokyo between April 5-7, aimed at achieving a zero emission industrial situation. The founding of the "Zero Emissions Research Initiative" (ZERI) -- proposed earlier this year by the …
BY THE turn of the century environmental criteria and public opinion will become the decisive factors for industrial siting in the country. A "zoning atlas", the first of its kind, is to be used for identifying sites for "ideal industry location". Sources in the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which …
Factories in Pakistan's Faisalabad city are spewing one hazardous pollutants, while the water and garbage disposal systems seem to have virtually bid goodbye. Rapid industrialisation has spiralled the number of local industries from 4,533 in 1977 to 34,123 at present. These include environment-unfriendly agricultural implement manufacturing units, soap factories, fertiliser …
ALARMED by the increasing level of environmental pollution in the country, and the failure of existing organisations in tackling the problem, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment has suggested levying pollution tax and shifting polluting smallscale units out of residential areas to industrial sectors. The 42-member committee, headed by Syed …
ANTI-POLUTION GIZMO: Diesel engines will be spewing less nitric oxide fumes, promise KMH, a Doncaster-based business house, and Leeds University in the UK. They have jointly developed a steam-based anti-pollution device, which they claim is cheaper and requires less maintenance than catalytic converters. The De-NOX device, as it has been …
Will the ministry of environment and forests (MEF) never let Orissa prosper? Biju Patnaik has been claiming so for years now. Adding more grist to his mill, the MEF has recently put the spanner in the latest of Orissa's prestigious steel projects. The Rs 480 crore plant was to be …
Agra's Taj Mahal will soon heave a sigh of relief and breathe clean air, it seems. In the first week of March Satish Sharma, the minister of state for petroleum and natural gas, announced a 10-point strategy to save this pristine white monument to love from the corrosive effects of …
THAT biomass can be an antidote against global warming is an optimistic proposition. It seems unlikely that afforestation can keep pace with the rate of pollution of the atmosphere. Even if it did, it appears inconceivable that enough land would be available to grow trees to absorb sufficient volumes of …
"TO BE or not to be": one is immediately struck by the stark bipolarity suggested by the title. The show, presented by Max Mueller Bhavan and the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature, is about the destruction of nature by industries: it would seem that the alternative to nature being …
A DREAM blown to dust is how you could describe today"s wheezing New Bombay, the once promised green haven on the fringe of gas and smog smothered Greater Bombay. Two decades ago, the Bombay Municipal Regional Development Authority (BMRDA) had decided to develop a clean, self-sufficient residential area west of …
POLLUTION, like other disturbing facts, can be swept under the carpet. Thus it is that the first ever inventorisation of hazardous waste generation in the National Capital Region (NCR) by the Tata Risk Management Services (TRMS) has found that the area generates none! Even officials within the Central Pollution Control …
THE 2nd National Children's Science Congress (NCSC) was organised by the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC)-network, in the last week of December 1994. With a stated objective -- to "clean up India", no less -- the congress, unfortunately, couldn't find a cleaner venue in the capital than …
MURPHY'S oft-proven first law -- "If something can go wrong, it will" -- is something which appears to have been given the go-by, on their fast-forward to striking paydirt, by the decisionmakers at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), if the experience at the recent blowout at Allwaram village …
With a view to check pollution and discourage thermal power plants from using coal with high ash content, the Union ministry of environment and forests is preparing draft guidelines for a tax on fly ash. The ministry is also working on a move to give environment clearance to new thermal …
WHY has Shimla, once the summer capital of the British Raj and now the refuge of escapees from the plains' scorching heat, lost its picturesque serenity? Manish Bhardwaj, 15, a high school student, gives a rapid-fire answer: "Unchecked urbanisation -- garbage piles, choked nallahs, polluted streams, broken sewers, chopped trees, …
Who is to blame for the world's environmental woes-the poor nations or the rich countries? The developed countries show high resource consumption patterns that make them the bigger polluters. But this is not to say that the developing nations are off the high population growth weak environmental regulations and use …
