United Arab Emirates Speeds Up Ban On Disposable Plastics

The United Arab Emirates has moved forward a ban on all disposable plastic products, except those made from oxo-biodegradable plastics, from 2013 to the end of this year.

Though oxo-biodegradable plastics cannot be composted as some biodegradable plastics can, if left in the open they will decompose within 2-18 months. In a landfill decomposition occurs much more slowly however, though still far more quickly than ordinary plastics.

The ban, enacted by the Ministry of Environment and Water, was precipitated over concerns about plastic waste in the desert and the sea, and the effect of that on wildlife.

Covered in the ban are all packaging and disposable plastic products such as shopping bags, packaging for food, magazines, garbage bags, shrink and pallet wrap, cling film, as well as other plastic designed to be used over short periods and discarded. (Packaging Gateway)

The regulation also includes a standard for registration of companies manufacturing and importing biodegradable plastics. The Intelligent SMEquotes Eng. Mohammed Saleh Al Badri of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology:

ESMA officials will visit each factory and see that the manufacturing process complies with our specification. So, basically, the raw materials, additives, and manufacturing process, will be pre-approved by us. The companies will have regular monitoring, and we will collect finished samples, as well as the ones still being made for testing. Unannounced visits will be made to ensure consistency. At this point, we don’t have a testing centre, so all samples are sent abroad, but we are encouraging labs to take up this facility within the country. This regulatory measure will ensure that all the plastic bags used in the country will be degradable to harmless substances that will not affect the environment.

East Africa Pushes For Plastic Ban
All of this comes as the East African Community legislative assembly—an intergovernmental organization for Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda—has passed 'The East African Community Plastics Control Bill'.

If all heads of state of the member countries sign it, the bill would provide the legal framework for the outright banning of the manufacturing, sale, import and use of polyethylene material.

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ALL DESIGN TEWind Chime Charges Up With The Breeze For Outdoor Lighting

What if the pleasantness of a wind chime did double duty as an energy generator that powered an LED light? A team of designers including Chen Yan Zhuang, Zhou Li, Peng Qixuan, Liu Huan-jung, Ke Qi Ling and Zhong Zhida came up with the idea that shifts a wind chime into a energy-gathering device for evening lighting. Yanko Design writes, "The only difference is that the wind movement causes the lamp to harness energy to power the lamp rather than sound the soothing 'clinks'."

I think I'd like it better if it included the clinks. This is vaporware to the nth degree, but if we're in design la-la-land, I'd like to put in a request that the pleasant clinks still be included. Not only does the wind chime generate electricity for the LED light, but the wind-catching board is also a touch board for the user to write down "hopes." If we can do that then we can certainly keep it clinky.

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Climate Change May Bring '100-Year Storms' Every 3 Years

When Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern seaboard last summer, crippling dozens of communities with record flooding, many folks called the storm a '100-year event' -- but a new study suggests that it will be much sooner than century until we see the next one.

A team of scientists from MIT and Princeton University utilized hurricane simulators to determine with what frequency powerful storms could lead to flooding under a variety of climate model projections, and what they found makes all previous usage of the term 'storm of the century' mere hyperbole. According to researchers, climate change's effects on weather systems might mean storms like Hurricane Irene, once considered rare, occur every 3 to 20 years.

From MIT News Office:

To simulate present and future storm activity in the region, the researchers combined four climate models with a specific hurricane model. The combined models generated 45,000 synthetic storms within a 200-kilometer radius of Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan.

They studied each climate model under two scenarios: a “current climate” condition representing 1981 to 2000 and a “future climate” condition reflecting the years 2081 to 2100, a prediction based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projections of future moderate carbon dioxide output. While there was some variability among the models, the team generally found that the frequency of intense storms would increase due to climate change.

As was proved last year by Hurricane Irene, the floods resulting from such powerful storms are among the chief contributors to property damage and loss of human life, which makes building infrastructure to withstand them all the more important. In the wake of Irene, flooding left hundreds homeless and stranded whole communities as swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges -- some of which had stood for a century's worth of strong weather.

In light of these new findings on the increasing frequency of powerful storms, MIT researcher Ning Lin says that coastal cities must prepare to brace for these once-rare storms:

“When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be. You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

To make matters worse, another study out of Yale warns that climate change isn't the only factor that is likely to lead to deadlier and more expensive storms over the next century. As Tree Hugger Mat explained earlier this month, "tropical cyclones will cause more than four times the damage in 2100 than they do today, increasing from $26 billion to $109 billion." The reason? A rapidly increasing human population, accompanies by more and more development along flood-vulnerable coastal regions.

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