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Dear All, I would like to take the opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2012. I hope you can enjoy some peaceful and relaxing days and look forward to a 3rd year of open-minded and well-founded sustainability debates on Sustainable | Water | Management. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Cordially yours,   Wolfram Scharnhorst, Ph.D., M.Sc. Founder Sustainable | Water | Management Sustainable | Water | Management Olten Switzerland ☎+41 (0)76 336 12 55 | ✉swm.group@gmx.net | www: http://swm-group.blogspot.com

Today, there are a number of beverage packaging materials available. Aluminum, steel, glass, PET, so name some of them. However, it is not still not clear which one stands for truly sustainable beverage packaging material. The metals can be recycled (almost) indefinitely, glass can be reused, PET can be recycled and - if not - it can be used as direct fuel substitute. Does the sustainability of the material depend on the beverage? Or on the supply chain? Is it useful/healthy to re-use PET-bottles? Is steel can recycling truly sustainable? What happens with the aluminium lid and plate? A number of questions/issues that is addressed in a recent debate launched by S ustainable | W ater | M anagement. The results may assist in creating ideas for sustainable packaging alternatives also with regard to bottled water.

NEW: a number of sources consistently report that also Russia and Japan are about to resign from the Kyoto Protocol. This morning it became true that Canada is the first signatory state to resign from the Kyoto Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The quoted reason is that, according to Canada, the Kyoto Protocol does not work and has failed its goals. The key motivation however might be that the major greenhouse gas emitters (the USA and China) never signed the Kyoto Protocol and, secondly, that Canada would have to pay a fine about of several billions dollar due to unmatched reduction goals.  As Canada is a major industrialized country and, in contrast to other industry nations, seems to be much less affected by the current finance and state debt crisis, it is assumed to be most likely that a number of other countries will follow this step. Accordingly, a follow-up greenhouse gas protocol will have to be either very different from the Kyoto Protocol or it will rarely be signed by any state. The

Presentation download here... ( alt server ) | File Format: .ppsx | File Size: 2.21 MB Zurich/Olten In an opening talk at the 46 LCA Discussion Forum, Wolfram Scharnhorst presented his view on sustainability reflecting about the situation in two different industry sectors: the (mobile) telecommunication sector and the building and construction sector. More than 10 years of practical experience in both sectors provided the theoretical basis for this speech. In the first part, Mr. Scharnhorst gave a brief review of the past technological evolution of GSM and UMTS mobile phone technology along with a short overview about the technological development of End-of-Life (EoL) processing solutions. The presentation was further sustained by economic considerations addressing the most likely influence of the stock market on the EoL-issue. Concentrating on the situation today in particular four aspects were addressed: technological aspects environmental aspects economic aspects geopolitical aspe

As of today the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q04/2011 are released and available from http://swm-group.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html If you encounter any problems accessing the Notes please request a free copy of the Notes from: swm.group@gmx.net . You are also invited to share the download link with other interested stakeholders and/or inform concerned parties about the platform S ustainable | W ater | M anagement . As in the previous releases, the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management are intended to provide interested stakeholders with up-to-date information about ongoing developments related to water and its management, also addressing closely related issues like climate change. The present release of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management comes with contributions from key stakeholders in the field of sustainability: > Key Note (Frost&Sullivan) > Technology (Molson Coors) > Research > Politics &

With the increasing awareness of the sensitive and essential resource 'water', initiatives to strengthen legislative measures have been put forward. A key issue in agriculture e.g. is the use of pesticides and their consideration for example in the Clean-Water-Act (CWA) [1]. Also in this context the CWA seems to be considered important to broaden the scope of US EPA [2]. Another top-issue, focusing on the same subject, is addressed in a recent report about the further development of CWA [3]. It is to be expected that the 30th Annual Water Law Conference [4] is addressing this issue as well. Further readings: [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ]