MUNDOMATERIAL

source: www.freefoto.com I have already discussed the WEEE directive, dealing with waste of electronic and electrical equipment, in my post on WEEE and RoHS. Today I shall talk about another waste directive, the one dealing with vehicles, commonly known as the ELV directive, or directive 2000/53/EC. Similarly to the WEEE directive, the ELV directive promotes waste reduction, sets progressive recovery and recycling targets and puts responsibility on vehicles producers. These are the recycling and recovering targets set for 2006 and 2015: 2006: 85% of reuse and recovery and 80% of reuse and recycling 2015: 95% of reuse and recovery and 85% of reuse and recycling The unusually high targets were not chose at random. Before the introduction of the directive around 75% weight of a car was already being recycled, as the metal content is over 80%. This percentage tends to diminish in new cars, as more plastic alternatives are used. By increasing the percentage that needs to be recycled, the directive... 
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Earlier in Septembre the Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (CPI) part of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced the 8 finalists for the Innovation awards that will be voted attendees of “Polyurethanes 2008 Technical Conference”, to be held in San Antonio. There are three different categories for the awards chemical: Merquinsa, Ashland Performance Materials y BASF processing equipment: Graco y KrausMaffei finished products: Acma Industries, BASF y co-finalistas Fenner Precision y HP Labs You may remember my post from the 21st July, Renewable TPEs, where I discussed Merquinsa‘s new product, Pearlthane® ECO, for which is being nominated. It consists of a range of thermoplasic polyurethanes, TPUs, with a renewable content ranging from 30 to 90%. BASF is also nominated for introducing renewable content. In particular for its range of natural poliols, BALANCE, used in the production of polyurethane foam. The third nominee is Ashland Performance Materials, for... 
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Introduction A bit lost about the legal status of your rubbish? Believe me, you are not alone! The European Union has many different directives legislating the “waste” issue. The European Union presents the waste management issue like this at http://europa.eu: Every year, some 2 billion tonnes of waste – including particularly hazardous waste – are produced in the Member States, and this figure is rising steadily. Stockpiling waste is not a viable solution and destroying it is unsatisfactory due to the resulting emissions and highly concentrated, polluting residues. The best solution is, as always, to prevent the production of such waste, reintroducing it into the product cycle by recycling its components where there are ecologically and economically viable methods of doing so. If you want to know about waste and European legislation, you have to visit this link: Europe waste management, it definetely is where you should start. The mother of all waste directives,... 
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Today’s post is an invitation. I ask you to propose and vote for those real materials that could have come out of a sci-fi story. And I think you deserve a bit of an explanation on how I decided to write such a peculiar post. At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I love science fiction! I think I was hooked when I first saw Blade Runner on the cinema. Years later, my friends studying Political Sciences did a report analysing sci-fi movies and the social structures they portrayed (what is used as a money, what are the main conflicts and how are they solved, etc). It was while I join one of their very creative sessions, watching Mad Max, that I realised what science fiction is all about: what we really are, what we may become and/or what we could aspire to be. I love the freedom provided by this genre to imagine societies and technologies yet to be created. All this introduction to tell you that when Robert Frith, Director of Superblue (design company with the most appropiate name... 
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