Bbc | News & Views

Battery Recycling

30,000 tonnes of portable batteries enter the UK market each year.

New EU rules have come into force that require some stores selling batteries to provide in-store recycling bins. Anyone selling more than 32kg a year – equivalent to one pack of four AA batteries a day – must comply as part of targets on cutting landfill.

The UK currently recycles only 3% of portable batteries, but the aim is to raise that figure to 45% by 2016. Battery maker Varta warned that a lack of awareness among consumers could hamper the scheme’s success.

An estimated 30,000 tonnes of batteries – from those in electrical goods like torches, to rechargeable ones in mobile phones – enter the UK market each year.

At present, 97% eventually end up in landfill sites, where they can leak toxic chemicals into the soil.
The EU Batteries Directive aims to tackle that problem and cut carbon emissions by reducing the need for new batteries to be made from scratch.

All the evidence shows home collections of recyclables produce the best results

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: “This new legislation will make it easier for consumers to do the right thing whilst ensuring retailers fulfil their part of the bargain.”

But Vince Armitage, divisional vice-president of Varta, said he was concerned. ”The directive places the responsibility of meeting its stringent collection and recycling targets on the manufacturer, but it relies on the co-operation of consumers and retailers to make it work,” he said. ”However, a lack of promotion means that awareness of the directive among these key groups is low.
“This gives us great concern that, as a nation, we are setting ourselves up to fail before we even begin.” Varta estimates that just meeting the 10% target will cost manufacturers £3m.

Bob Gordon, from the British Retail Consortium, said retailers were ready for the new requirements, but called for a “comprehensive and continuing” government information campaign to raise awareness among consumers. He also said shops should not be the only route for collection, adding: “We need an infrastructure to develop which includes workplaces, schools, community centres and kerbside collection.

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China has ‘open mind’

China’s lead climate change negotiator has said he was keeping an “open attitude” as to whether global warming cop_logo_1_r was man-made or due to natural cycles.

Xie Zhenhua said climate warming was a “solid fact” and that mainstream scientific opinion held it was due to emissions of gases such as CO2.

Mr Xie’s comments appeared to surprise the other environment ministers and envoys at a news conference at the end of their two-day meeting.
He said: “It is already a solid fact that the climate is warming.
“There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself.
“I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research.”
He said that it was important to include as many views as possible “to be more scientific and to be more consistent”.

A number of scientists have recently disputed the figure. The vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last week that it was an error and would be reviewed.
But the IPCC’s vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said it did not change the broader picture of man-made climate change.

At their weekend gathering, the officials said they would announce by the end of the month their plans to cut emissions.

They also agreed to contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) this year to help poor nations combat the effects of climate change.
Brazil’s Environment Minister Carols Minc said this would be “a slap in the face to the rich countries” who pledged at the Copenhagen climate summit in December to contribute $30bn (£18.5bn) in funding for the next three years and $100bn (£61.8bn) by 2020.

See the full article at the bbc.co.uk/news

Saving the trillionth tonne

In a week that sees the final round of preliminary talks on a new UN climate treaty, where delegates seem to be focusing on emissions in 2020. Myles Allen argues that they must not lose sight of the much greater challenges that lie beyond 2020 or they risk wasting another decade in the battle against dangerous climate change.

On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a single tonne of anthracite coal was unveiled in the Science Museum in London as part of a new exhibition on climate change.

Not, you might think, anything particularly remarkable about that, except that this is not any old tonne of coal: it will be, as close as we can estimate it, the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide since industrialisation began in the 18th Century.

The Science Museum, London, and University of Oxford are committed to looking after it for as long as it takes, and solemnly escorting it down to a power station or wherever it can be used most efficiently when total carbon emissions from human activity reach one trillion tonnes.

If, that is, that time ever comes.

The trillionth tonne matters because carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Once released, it continues to influence the climate more or less indefinitely unless active measures are taken to scrub it out again, which is not something anyone knows how to do on any scale.

Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year

This is estimated to have caused just under 1C (1.8F) of global warming (other things affect global temperature as well but, as it happens, their effects more-or-less cancel out over this period).

So if we release another 500 billion tonnes, we commit the Earth to a most likely warming of about 2C, which is widely regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, and a rubicon that governments of G8 countries and other major economies pledged this year not to cross.

Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year, even allowing for the occasional blip like the collapse of the Soviet Union and this year’s recession.

Emissions from deforestation have continued steadily.

Trend setting

Emissions resulting from human activity are expected, on balance, to add to the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the future, so if we are to keep the overall warming to less than 2C (or, for that matter, retain any hope of carbon dioxide levels eventually recovering back down to 350 parts per million, or avoid dangerous levels of ocean acidity), we cannot afford to release the trillionth tonne, ever.

What can you do?

Clearly, reducing your carbon footprint helps. Emitting carbon more slowly buys time, which we will certainly need.

But to solve the problem in the long term, we need to reduce net emissions, in effect, to zero.

Campaigners say atmospheric carbon must not pass 350 parts per million

You can’t do this on your own, no matter how heroic a consumer you are.

You could reduce your lifetime carbon footprint to zero – by making your home zero-carbon, never use a car and grow your own food – and save the world from dangerous climate change for just a mere two seconds.

So the most important thing you can do is make sure your government recognises the importance of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in climate policy.

At a previous round of negotiations, in Bonn in June, a group of us presented an open letter to the negotiators urging them to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide.

We did not call for a specific cap: just an acknowledgement that the principle would fundamentally alter the focus of future negotiations. The aim would no longer be to ration out emissions; the aim would be to ban them, just as we banned CFCs. We didn’t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorant.

As far as we can tell, that request fell on deaf ears: “This was not the focus of the negotiations at present.”

Odd, when cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal determinant of the risk of dangerous long-term human-induced climate change.

And next time you are in London, drop in to the Science Museum to pay your respects to the trillionth tonne.

On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a single tonne of anthracite coal was unveiled in the Science Museum in London as part of a new exhibition on climate change. Not, you might think, anything particularly remarkable about that, except that this is not any old tonne of coal: it will be, as close as we can estimate it, the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide since industrialisation began in the 18th Century.

If, that is, that time ever comes.

Emissions since 1750 comprise of just over half a trillion tonnes of carbon (you can keep track of the number, and the countdown to the release of the trillionth tonne, on the trillionthtonne.org website). This is estimated to have caused just under 1C (1.8F) of global warming (other things affect global temperature as well but, as it happens, their effects more-or-less cancel out over this period). So if we release another 500 billion tonnes, we commit the Earth to a most likely warming of about 2C, which is widely regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, and a rubicon that governments of G8 countries and other major economies pledged this year not to cross.

If these trends continue, which is a relatively conservative “business-as-usual” scenario, we will release the trillionth tonne sometime in the 2040s – a date that is steadily advancing, as the underlying trend is for faster growth in recent years. Emissions resulting from human activity are expected, on balance, to add to the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the future, so if we are to keep the overall warming to less than 2C (or, for that matter, retain any hope of carbon dioxide levels eventually recovering back down to 350 parts per million, or avoid dangerous levels of ocean acidity), we cannot afford to release the trillionth tonne, ever.

What can you do?

Clearly, reducing your carbon footprint helps. Emitting carbon more slowly buys time, which we will certainly need. But to solve the problem in the long term, we need to reduce net emissions, in effect, to zero. Campaigners say atmospheric carbon must not pass 350 parts per million You can’t do this on your own, no matter how heroic a consumer you are. You could reduce your lifetime carbon footprint to zero – by making your home zero-carbon, never use a car and grow your own food – and save the world from dangerous climate change for just a mere two seconds.

So the most important thing you can do is make sure your government recognises the importance of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in climate policy. At a previous round of negotiations, in Bonn in June, a group of us presented an open letter to the negotiators urging them to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. We did not call for a specific cap: just an acknowledgement that the principle would fundamentally alter the focus of future negotiations. The aim would no longer be to ration out emissions; the aim would be to ban them, just as we banned CFCs. We didn’t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorant. As far as we can tell, that request fell on deaf ears: “This was not the focus of the negotiations at present.” Odd, when cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal determinant of the risk of dangerous long-term human-induced climate change.

And next time you are in London, drop in to the Science Museum to pay your respects to the trillionth tonne.

Please read the full article here: BBC.co.uk

Image from same source: BBC.co.uk