Uncategorized

There’s no question that the folks at the US-based environmental group, Upstream, have their hearts in the right place. We just wish they would get all of their facts straight. The group recently launched a wide-ranging campaign against packaging waste, including a section on what it calls paper-based “consumer” packaging. Upstream defines this as pretty […]

The average US corrugated box has registered significant environmental improvements over a four-year period, according to a life cycle analysis released today. Global warming results were 32% lower than recorded in a similar study undertaken in 2006, mainly because more old corrugated containers (OCC) were diverted from landfill (recovery increasing from 72% to 85%). Also

Corrugated, of course. The gothic stone cathedral that was the centrepiece of Christchurch, New Zealand, was badly damaged in a 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and has temporarily been replaced with a corrugated  alternative. The triangular prism shape of the 700-capacity cathedral was fashioned around 98 interlocking corrugated tubes set on a concrete base. Japanese

A few months back we reported a critique of a comparative life cycle study commissioned by reusable plastic crate company, IFCO, which is trying to displace its competitor product, the corrugated box, from the fresh produce market (blog July, 2013). IFCO’s LCA was roundly criticised by our US colleagues (who are about to release their

You hear it all the time from provincial and municipal politicians. “Industry” is dragging the chain on waste diversion, lagging way behind municipal efforts. This politically charged claim may be true for some waste streams, we don’t know. But there’s strong evidence that it’s certainly not true when it comes to packaging. Packaging is one

There’s a pie-chart in the Ontario Ministry of Environment’s Waste Reduction Strategy document that’s been bugging us for several months now, and although we’ve tried to get an explanation from the MOE both verbally and in writing, we have received nothing to date[1].       The pie-chart is titled “Ontario’s Waste Stream” and claims that

One of the interesting similarities between the life cycle of paper and that of the human species is that as we get older we become progressively weaker and wear out. Sorry for being the “bad news” guy today! But at some point, we need to be replaced by a fresh infusion of younger and stronger

The oil boom in Western Canada is having a little publicised effect on the natural environment: deforestation. As we pointed out in a blog[1] back in August last year, the extraction of oil and gas (the raw materials from which plastics are derived) is responsible for more than double the deforestation in Canada than the forest