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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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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I’m totally fascinated by a new experiment being done by a BBC reporter, Chris Jeavans: A month without plastic. As the title of her already popular blog suggests, she is going to go without plastic for a whole month. The rules of her experiment are simple: She must not buy or consumed new plastic for a month and she can keep using whatever she had before. To prepare for her experiment and fully realised of its impact, she first collected all the new plastic she consumed for a month. If you want to see a video of it – which I totally recommend – follow this link, with WRAP‘s expert Paul Davidson. He explains to her what plastic is used in each product, how it can be recycled and some of the easy alternatives to reduce plastic usage. To start with, she is getting a huge response in the media and creating a very healthy debate on how we use plastic. Just to see all the plastic an average person uses in a month can be quite a shock to some people. It has to be said... 
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