Is India exporting radiation to the world?

India has become a reprocessing hub for waste from around the world. But the regulation is lax, leading to concerns radioactive material may be in the products exported back to the world.

Greenpeace radiation expert Jan Vande Putte reviews the radiation levels in Mayapuri scrap market. (Photography: Maruti Modi / Greenpeace).

ON APRIL 7, 2010, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of India (AERB) received a fax from one of Delhi’s top hospitals, the Indraprastha Apollo hospital, that stated that a scrap metal dealer had been admitted to the hospital and was showing symptoms of radiation exposure.

Deepak Jain, a 27-year-old had been rushed to the hospital after a high fever hadn’t subsided for seven days and the skin on his hand started peeling off. He had been in his shop in the West Delhi industrial area of Mayapuri when the incident happened. Mayapuri is home to thousands of workers in the scrap trade and houses shops specialising in various metals. Most of this metal originates overseas and makes its way to Mayapuri through importers who sell it to these shops.

Jain was among the eight people who were affected by radiation poisoning. He, like the others, had been exposed to cobalt-60, which had leaked from an irradiation machine being dismantled in the area. Jain refused the Rs 200,000 (A$ 4,000) compensation offered to him by the government and is instead suing Delhi University, from whose labs the machine originated. The university had bought the gamma irradiation machine in 1970 but it had not been used since the mid-1980s.

The scrap trade

In the last few decades, India has quickly become the world’s dumping ground for all sorts of waste, including hazardous material like old electronic gadgets or ‘e-waste’. A large force of both formal and informal workers is involved in the acquiring, processing, and managing of this waste, yet, experts say the necessary checks and balances are missing.

The point was driven home by the 2010 Delhi incident, which raised several questions about the monitoring of hazardous waste in India: who was doing the monitoring? Were the materials being brought into the country being checked to see if they were hazardous? If there were leaks in the system, who would be held responsible? And most importantly, if hazardous waste is still being allowed into the country, who’s to blame for the impact that it’s having on the environment and the people?

Unfortunately, no one seems to have those answers. Although government bodies do exist to oversee waste management, they are largely regulatory bodies and don’t have any real power. Eventually, the responsibility falls on the already overburdened courts in India, a process that can take years if not decades. Furthermore, there are currently no mechanisms or systems that ensure the smooth monitoring of imported or even domestically generated waste or the steps to be taken in case something goes wrong, as demonstrated by the Mayapuri incident.

“When Mayapuri happened, people were just helter skelter,” says Satish Sinha, the Associate Director at Toxics Link, an environmental non-government organisation that aims to bring information related to toxic substances into the public domain. “Even the disaster management authorities did not actually know what they were supposed to do. The whole drill, the whole system was missing. I think these are gaps that we’ve learned exist and they need to be plugged.”

Yet, despite the tough talk by both the government and the regulatory agencies, this was not the first time that there have been concerns regarding the material that makes its way to Indian shores. In 2004, radioactive materials were found in ammunition that was imported from Iraq as scrap and in 2006, Blue Lady, a ship that came to Alang in Gujarat to be dismantled made headlines due to its high asbestos content.

This radiation then shows up in the finished products made from recovered materials that are exported back to the world. In 2007, radioactive steel originating from India was found in Germany and later that year, French officials reported that buttons for elevators, which had been made from recycled steel from India were emitting radiation.

“Many scrap dealers have bought radiation monitors,” K.S. Parthasarathy, the former Secretary of the AERB wrote in a newspaper editorial following the Mayapuri incident. “Since virtually all instances of steel contamination seem to have been caused by radioactive sources which came along with imported scrap, radiation monitors must be installed urgently at all ports.”

But it is not simply the headline cases that need to be looked at, says Bharati Chaturvedi, the founder and director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and a regular commentator on environmental issues. “Mayapuri was just incredibly dramatic and it was such high doses of radioactivity,” she explains. “But you could have really low doses and that’s not acceptable either. The other thing is that we don’t know how much radioactive waste is being generated. We have no idea what’s happening to the waste because the nuclear establishment in India, which is the main source of our radioactive waste, has no accountability to public safety and health.”

Whose trash? Whose treasure?

“Waste flows from rich to poor and that’s the nature of that flow,” says Sinha. “I find it slightly amusing to say that processing waste is perhaps an economic activity and it will add to your GDP. I get the sense from the government that they are quite comfortable about this waste coming in.” He says they routinely turn a blind eye to many of the things that are happening in the industry, which could be potential threats not only for the people involved in dealing with this waste, but the ecology and the country as a whole.

Yet, it wasn’t always this way. What has essentially caused this shift is the separation of economic and environmental issues. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (usually known as the Basel Convention) is an international treaty that came into force in 1992 and sought to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between nations, specifically from developed to developing countries. In 1992, India’s message to the West was in line with the treaty: we do not want your waste.

However, in 1995, at the Geneva Conference, under pressure from developed nations including Australia, India’s then Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, gave in and allowed the import of waste as recyclable material.

From then, there’s been no looking back. Waste is now a serious business in the country, worth billions. In response to a Freedom of Information request made by Ashish Kothari of the environment protection group Kalpavrisksh, it was revealed that the import of stainless steel waste and scrap went up from 100,899,729 kg worth Rs 4.54 billion (A$90 million) in 2003-04 to 336,114,900 kg worth Rs 40 billion (A$800 million) in 2007-08. And there’s still more profit to be had.

What happens in India, however, will have global reverberations, warns Chaturvedi. “India is exporting all kinds of things, in addition to the people who’re being exposed and getting on planes,” she says. “I think the point is how India’s own secrecy is making it pretty much a radioactive menace for the rest of the world.”

Author: Mridu Khullar Relph
Source: ABC News
Original: http://bit.ly/rrKdus

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Relatório aponta áreas de risco com mudança climática

Garoto brinca em área inundada em Bangcoc, na Tailândia; país está em 37º lugar na lista dos países com maior risco. (Fotografia: Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)

A intensa urbanização, o pouco planejamento na organização das cidades e a redução da vegetação põem em xeque os países do Sudeste Asiático e do Pacífico, que sofrem com os efeitos da mudança climática, indica uma análise divulgada nesta quarta-feira pela imprensa.

Inundações como as da Tailândia, o paulatino afundamento da capital das Filipinas e o desaparecimento de inúmeras ilhas do Pacífico pelo aumento do nível do mar são algumas consequências da mudança climática, aponta o estudo da empresa de consultoria Maplecroft.

“O crescimento da população combinado com governos pouco eficientes, corrupção, pobreza e outros fatores socioeconômicos aumentam o risco para a população e os negócios”, afirma o comunicado.

O estudo analisa e mostra em um mapa os países mais vulneráveis às mudanças climáticas, as cidades mais ameaçadas, as zonas econômicas e os perigos para a população mundial.

“O impacto e as consequências de um desastre ambiental grave não só afetam a população e economia locais, mas podem ser de importância mundial, especialmente porque o peso destas economias está aumentando”, explica o analista ambiental da empresa, Charlie Beldon.

PROBLEMA MUNDIAL

A Tailândia, que ocupa o 37º lugar da lista entre os países com maior risco, sofre atualmente as piores inundações dos últimos 50 anos que ameaçam inundar Bangcoc, já causaram 366 mortes e afetam 9 milhões de pessoas.

Um vídeo da ONG tailandesa Roosuflood culpa a destruição do ambiente para a construção de parques industriais e áreas residenciais como a causa das inundações, e aponta que o volume das precipitações neste ano não foi muito maior do que nos anos anteriores.

O relatório da Maplecroft afirma que a construção de infraestruturas para expandir as cidades pode dificultar a resposta aos desastres, cada vez mais frequentes.

Conforme o relatório, a capital Manila é “extremamente vulnerável” às mudanças pelo rápido crescimento da população, que deve ganhar mais 2,2 milhões de habitantes entre 2010 e 2020, e por seu elevado risco de sofrer inundações e tempestades.

Pelas estimativas do Instituto de Vulcanologia e Sismologia filipino, algumas áreas de Manila afundaram nos últimos três anos pela exploração exagerada dos aquíferos, o que piora as enchentes que se repetem ao longo da estação das monções.

No início de setembro, o Fórum das Ilhas do Pacífico realizado na Nova Zelândia alertou sobre a situação de vários estados insulares, como Tuvalu, Kiribati e as Ilhas Marshall, que submergem lentamente por causa do aumento do nível do mar.

Os efeitos também podem aparecer em países desenvolvidos, como ocorreu este ano na Austrália com as graves inundações em Brisbane, e na Nova Zelândia, com o terremoto que devastou a cidade de Christchurch.

Outras áreas do planeta, como a África e América do Sul, também são vulneráveis aos efeitos da mudança climática.

O relatório da Maplecroft aponta que os riscos também podem oferecer oportunidades de investimento pela “mudança na demanda de bens e serviços” e “modificar” os existentes diante das novas necessidades.

Fonte: Folha / EFE
Original: http://bit.ly/tISGqI

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Why recycling in Los Angeles is so confusing

For one thing, major new products made of mystery materials keep everyone guessing.

It seemed like a simple exercise for the Home section: Publish a short weekly feature called “Can I Recycle” that said whether a particular item — drycleaner bag, cereal box liner, milk carton — should go in the recycling bin or the trash can.

But figuring out what’s recyclable and what’s not proved to be surprisingly complicated. The system seemed to discourage the very endeavor it was trying to encourage. Some plastics were labeled “compostable” but were not, in fact, compostable. Plastic utensils were not marked with recycling symbols but could indeed be recycled — but only if you lived in certain cities.
Throwing trash all in one bin
Why is it all so confusing? And what will it take to make recycling easier?

First, the good news. Los Angeles recycled 211,300 tons of trash through its curbside program in the most recent fiscal year and diverted 65% of its total waste from landfills. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants that rate increased to 70% before by 2013. But how can residents do that when so many products and types of packaging confuse consumers and recycling companies alike?

“Twice a month, if not more frequently, we come across major new products that are using new materials, and we don’t readily know what they’re made of,” L.A. Bureau of Sanitation Director Enrique Zaldivar said.

Just one person in Sanitation — an environmental engineer — is tasked with identifying new materials and figuring out if they are recyclable in the four materials recovery facilities contracted by the city. “Poor guy,” Zaldivar said. “He cannot keep up.”

Zaldivar cited a compostable SunChips bag and the new Dasani and Odwalla plastic PlantBottles as proof that manufacturers and recyclers need better communication to identify what is and is not recyclable.

The SunChips bags are not recyclable, nor are they compostable in L.A.’s curbside bins because the packaging doesn’t break down fast enough in the city’s industrial composters. The PlantBottles, introduced in the L.A. market in April, were approved for the city’s blue bin only this week, after Sanitation could confirm the composition of the plant-based plastic.

Zaldivar said neither company reached out to the city before introducing their products to market, despite L.A.’s status as the largest municipal recycler in the U.S. It was the SunChips bag, he said, that got the department to ponder how it could make the most of manufacturers’ good intentions and increase recyclability without stifling business or inviting government regulation.

According to Scott Vitters, general manager of the PlantBottle packaging platform for the Coca-Cola Co., owner of Dasani, PlantBottle representatives met with academicians, World Wildlife Fund officials and leading recyclers in L.A. but not city officials before the bottle hit the marketplace. Vitters suggested a third-party certification system, perhaps run by a credible environmental organization, would help.

There is so much confusion in the marketplace that consumer education is key, Vitters added. Yet that education falls to myriad entities: manufacturers (who label products with recycling symbols at their discretion) as well as the municipalities and individual recyclers handling the materials.

“We’ve got to do more about reducing consumer confusion from the moment somebody picks something up from the store,” Zaldivar said.

Costs coupled with industry apathy account for part of the problem. Manufacturers of toothpaste, stilettos and so much more still haven’t figured out how to make more products recyclable.

A larger problem: the lack of uniformity about what can be recycled from city to city. What’s accepted in L.A.’s blue bins can be vastly different from what’s recyclable in New York or San Diego or even Long Beach because recycling is, in part, a market-driven business. In theory, anything could be recycled — not just obvious items like cardboard boxes and plastic bags, but also that toothpaste tube or a toy that’s a combination of plastic and metal.

The question is whether the material has enough value to be worth recycling. Although 1 ton of recycling can generate $25 in revenue and save $40 in landfill costs, some items are less valuable than others. They’re less costly to dump than to recycle.

That is why so much of recyclers’ equipment is designed to extract the items of highest value first, such as aluminum cans and plastic bottles.

Recycling’s gray area is filled with packaging and products made of mixed materials that are costly to separate (think paper envelopes with plastic padding) or low-value commodities that have few buyers (polystyrene peanuts and food containers). Some cities’ recyclers can find a market for these materials. Others don’t.

To help consumers better understand what can and can’t be recycled, the city of L.A. instituted a Recycling Ambassador program in 2006. Modeled after electrical utilities that help homeowners identify potential areas of energy conservation, the ambassadors are seven individuals who visit and educate homeowners by request or by necessity, targeting areas that have a history of badly contaminated bins or low recycling rates. The Department of Public Works also provides residents with stickers they can place on their blue recycling bins that explain what can be placed inside.

Additionally, Zaldivar proposed a system similar to the United Laboratories certification for product safety (the UL symbol you might find on, say, an extension cord) or the USDA’s organic label. He said the city is looking for a retail partner to pilot a program that would place blue dots on everything that can go in the blue bin. The questions are: Who adds the blue dot and, even more important, who pays for it?

“Retailers are already required to do a number of things in their stores, so to add another responsibility will take more time, more labor and it would have some sort of impact on cost,” said Dave Heylen, vice president of communications for the California Grocers Assn. in Sacramento. Heylen suggested the responsibility of labeling recyclable products or packaging might be better placed upstream, by the manufacturer.

Yet “rarely” does end-of-life recyclability come up in discussions with manufacturers, said Rodney Linn, who sells paper, plastic and cardboard packaging for the packaging distributor Morgan Chaney in Phoenix.

“Our clients want to tell people they’re doing their part to save the environment,” Linn said, but that discussion is usually about recycled content on the front end, not the back. They might consider packaging made of recycled material, but they care less about whether that material is recycled again. Decisions are largely dictated by cost. “The end user? Where do they take the package when they’re done with it? That question is not brought up,” Linn said.

So where does that leave recycling? Mostly in the hands of L.A. consumers. Still.

Author: Susan Carpenter
Source: Los Angeles Times
Original: http://lat.ms/rdZ7Lz

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Chevrolet Miray parece um Batmóvel coreano

São Paulo – Desenvolvido pela divisão sul-coreana da General Motors, para comemoração do centenário da marca americana Chevrolet, o Miray é um carro conceito com propulsão híbrida. Em exposição no Salão de Frankfurt, ele vem sendo comparado ao Batmóvel, veículo do consagrado homem morcego dos quadrinhos. Mas a proposta do design é remeter a modelos antigos da montadora, como o Monza 1963 SS e o Corvair Super Spyder 1962. Com um toque, claro, de modernidade e consciência ambiental.

A começar pelo nome, “Miray”, que, no idioma sul-coreano, significa futuro. O carro do amanhã segundo a Chevrolet tem carroceria construída em plástico reforçado com fibra de carbono e três motores – dois elétricos de 15kW de potência e um motor a gasolina, podendo alternar entre condução a diesel e elétrica. Como nos demais híbridos, as baterias de íon de lítio são recarregadas por um sistema de recuperação da energia cinética liberada nas frenagens.

Autor: Vanessa Barbosa
Fotografia: Divulgação
Fonte: Exame
Original: http://bit.ly/nYqbw1

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Flying With Biofuel Gets One Step Closer

Lufthansa has started adding biofuel to conventional kerosene on its Hamburg-Frankfurt route. But limited supplies of biofuel and its cost are holding back its wider use. (Photography: Markus Scholz / European Pressphoto Agency)

SINGAPORE — The future of biofuels in aviation is no longer so futuristic.

Having conducted several trials over the past three years, the airline industry is shifting into a new gear, starting to conduct regular commercial flights that rely in part on biofuels.

The international certifying body ASTM International, a standards group based in Pennsylvania formerly known as the American Society for Testing & Materials, approved in July the commercial use of renewable jet fuels derived from natural plant oils and animal fat, giving the green light for hydrotreated renewable jet fuels, or H.R.J. fuels, to be mixed with conventional kerosene up to 50 percent.

The German carrier Lufthansa immediately started a six-month biofuel trial on regularly scheduled flights with its Airbus A321 on the Hamburg-Frankfurt route eight times daily. The aircraft uses a 50 percent blend of bio-synthetic kerosene in one of the two engines while the other engine runs on pure jet fuel.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which ran its first commercial test flight with the mixed fuel in June, started regular commercial service between Amsterdam and Paris on September 30 using biofuel made with used cooking oil. Other airlines are expected to follow suit.

Joachim Buse, vice president for aviation biofuel at Lufthansa, called the move just the beginning, and said there was “still a long way to go.”

“So far the good news after three months of trials is that there has been technically no unexpected behavior,” Mr. Buse said at a press conference in Singapore recently. He said the airline had not received any passenger complaints, though he acknowledged critical articles in German media that noted the social and environmental aspects of the use of biofuel.

He pointed out that despite a tight 40-minute turnaround time for the aircraft and the need for two separate manual refueling exercises, there had been no aircraft delays. “The test is running like clockwork,” he said.

The trial has confirmed that bio-synthetic kerosene can slightly reduce fuel consumption. “Due to the higher energy content of H.R.J., we have effectively a 1 percent reduction in fuel burn of the right engine,” Mr. Buse said. “The expectation is that if we were to use a full blend the overall reduction in fuel burn would be 2 percent.” The airline is already reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by one ton per flight, he said.

According to data from the International Air Transport Association, total emissions for the airline industry stood at 649 million tons of CO2 in 2010, up 3.5 percent from the previous year.

The I.A.T.A. estimates that replacing 3 percent of the kerosene in jet fuel would reduce aviation CO2 emissions by over 10 million tons, at an initial cost of $10 to $15 billion in production and distribution facilities.

KLM, which operated its first commercial trial flight between Amsterdam and Paris in June, said its carbon dioxide emissions from the flights between Amsterdam and Paris would be reduced an average of 50 percent. An airline executive contended that this took into account the whole life cycle of producing the biofuel, including shipping it from the United States to the Netherlands.

While airline biofuels do not tend to compete with food supplies, other studies that have looked at the effects of biofuels on farm commodity prices and land use have raised questions about the benefits to be derived from biofuels.

The industry has pledged to stop increasing its carbon emissions by 2020 even as global air travel increases, and to halve its carbon dioxide emissions from its 2005 levels by 2050.

Biofuels are seen as one of the pillars to achieving this target; I.A.T.A. predicts that biofuels could replace 6 percent of kerosene in the airline industry by 2020.

But availability of supply and its cost — biofuel is more than double the price of regular aviation fuel — are now the main impediments to its wider use.

Lufthansa, for example, will need 530,000 cubic meters of biofuel a year to meet the I.A.T.A. goals, Mr. Buse said. That is the equivalent of 18.7 million cubic feet, or about 140 million gallons. The biofuel used by the airline is produced by Neste Oil, mixing jatropha oil, camelina oil, and animal fats. Mr. Buse said jatropha oil was the company’s favored biomass feedstock, as jatropha can be grown on degraded land in semi-arid areas, needs no irrigation and is not in competition with anything on the food chain. But he said there was not enough available to even complete the company’s current six-month test flights.

Christoph Weber, the chief executive of Jatro, which has been providing the jatropha oil used by Lufthansa and other airlines, predicted that biofuel prices would become competitive by 2014-2015 as production gears up to meet the increased demand projected by I.A.T.A.

Mr. Weber estimated the biofuel market could be worth $2 billion in 2015, and reach $11 billion to $19 billion by 2020 and to $57 billion in 2030.

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Weber said, “green fuel is only good if it can meet price expectations, because the willingness of the industry to pay a premium for something green and renewable is limited.”

In September, the California-based company SG Biofuels joined forces with a consortium including Airbus and the Brazilian carrier TAM to speed up the production of crude jatropha oil as a source for jet biofuel in Brazil.

Working with Bioventures Brasil, an energy crop developer, SG Biofuels plans a multiphased program intended to lead to 75,000 acres, or 185,000 acres, of intercropped jatropha plantations.

“Jatropha has proven to be the most cost-effective and sustainable feedstock for renewable jet fuel,” said Paul Nash, Airbus’s head of new energies, “but the challenge lies in scaling production to meet the demand.”

In the end, Mr. Buse said, the future of biofuel, not just in aviation but for general use, rests on policy decisions intended to more fully reflect the environmental costs of fossil fuels, through imposing a tax on carbon or expanding the market for CO2 emissions.

Author: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
Source: The New York Times
Original: http://nyti.ms/tXinos

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Nuclear: Japão e França vão aumentar a colaboração para descontaminar Fukushima

Tóquio, 23 out (Lusa) – Os primeiros-ministros japonês e francês, Yoshihiko Noda e François Fillon, decidiram hoje em Tóquio “aumentar a colaboração” para descontaminar as zonas atingidas pela catástrofe nuclear de Fukushima.

Numa declaração conjunta, os dois chefes de governo afirmaram a vontade de ambos os países “cooperarem mais no domínio da descontaminação das áreas afetadas pelo acidente nuclear” e evidenciaram a necessidade de “uma transparência total sobre o assunto”.

Noda e Fillon sublinharam a “importância vital da implementação dos mais altos níveis de segurança no domínio nuclear”.

Fonte: Expresso / Lusa
Original: http://bit.ly/q5J53c

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Power plant to convert landfill waste to energy

WA could be the first state in Australia to set up a power plant that will convert industrial and residential landfill waste to energy.

Perth-based company, New Energy Corporation, plans to build a $200 million facility in Rockingham if it is approved by the Environmental Protection Authority.

The plant would handle more than 130,000 tonnes of residential and industrial waste per year.

NEC’s general manager Jason Pugh says that would generate enough energy to power 15,000 homes.

“Essentially we’re going for waste that will otherwise always go to landfill,” he said.

“So, we understand that recycling is the most important step in waste management and we’re filling that void between recycling and landfilling.”

Mr Pugh says emission levels would be far below the legal limit.

“Essentially, what we do is convert the waste into a gas and then we fire that natural gas to create electricity so the emissions from the plant are very, very similar to a gas-fired power station,” he said.

“So, not only are we doing something better with the waste but we’re recovering that lost energy as well.”

The Sustainable Energy Association’s Ray Wills has welcomed the proposal.

“I would have had a concern 30 years ago but we’ve got great technology now,” he said.

“Technology that means that we really don’t need to be worried about the emissions from a plant like this.”

If approved, the plant is expected to be running by late 2014.

Source: ABC News
Original: http://bit.ly/vZjcUy

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Portugueses são os que menos vêem o clima como o maior problema mundial

Os portugueses são os europeus que menos colocam as alterações climáticas no topo da lista dos problemas do mundo, segundo os resultados um inquérito Eurobarómetro hoje divulgados.

O clima preocupa os portugueses, mas não é visto como o principal problema (Fotografia: Victor Fraile / Reuters)

Apenas sete por cento da população – um em cada 14 residentes – acha que se trata do mais sério problema que a humanidade está neste momento a enfrentar e 28 por cento dizem que é um dos três maiores problemas actuais. A média da União Europeia é de 20 por cento e 51 por cento, respectivamente.

Entrevistados em Junho de 2011, os europeus colocaram as alterações climáticas em segundo lugar na lista das suas preocupações, apenas atrás da pobreza, fome e falta de acesso a água.

Portugal é um dos países que mais se afasta deste padrão. A pobreza também está no topo, com 44 por cento dos portugueses a dizer que este é o principal problema actual. Mas depois surge a situação económica, com 25 por cento, seguida do terrorismo, com nove por cento. As alterações climáticas ficam em quarto lugar.

O anterior Eurobarómetro sobre a atitude dos europeus quanto ao aquecimento global tinha sido realizado há dois anos, em Agosto-Setembro de 2009, pouco antes da mediática conferência climática das Nações Unidas, em Copenhaga. Na altura, também não tinha ainda estalado a polémica sobre os emails roubados de uma universidade britânica, que alegadamente revelavam procedimentos incorrectos de climatologistas – no que ficou conhecido como o caso Climategate.

Passados dois anos, as alegadas dúvidas lançadas pelo Climategate sobre a ciência parecem não ter tido reflexo no nível de preocupação dos cidadãos. Mesmo que metade dos europeus não coloquem as alterações climáticas a liderar a lista dos males globais, cerca dois terços (68 por cento) acham que se trata de um problema “muito sério”, contra 64 por cento em 2009. Em Portugal, este valor até sobe para os 75 por cento – ou seja, os portugueses preocupam-se com o aquecimento global, mas acham que há problemas mais relevantes neste momento.

A crise económica é um deles. Em 2009, dez por cento dos portugueses apontavam o recuo da economia como o principal problema mundial, contra 25 por cento agora.

Quanto à contribuição individual de cada um para resolver o problema, a maior parte dos portugueses (56 por cento) diz que separa o lixo para reciclagem, 29 por cento evitam produtos descartáveis, como sacos plásticos de supermercado, e 14 por cento dão preferência a produtos locais. O carro, este, não é visto no país como uma arma para combater o aquecimento global. Só um por cento dos inquiridos no país admitem que isto pesou na hora de escolher um novo automóvel.

Autor: Ricardo Garcia
Fonte: Público
Original: http://bit.ly/rkUmXt

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