Tuesday 15 November 2011

The Guardian: "Air pollution in Britain: state-sanctioned mass poisoning"

Link to The Guardian

"Successive governments have found that the simplest way to end urban poverty is to encourage poor people to live near congested roads. Apart from war and fags, nothing is more certain to shorten human life than to make people breathe a daily dose of poisons, especially sooty particles known as PM10s and nitrogen oxides that largely come from traffic and factories.

"The minute particles of partially burned diesel fuel and tyres travel deep into lungs, and the gases trigger respiratory diseases. If you already have heart disease or asthma, then just living near a main road can be a death sentence."



Link to The Guardian

Plus (on a different subject):
The Guardian:
"Discussion round up: the commercialisation of waste"

"Those who have direct responsibility for waste within organisations are all too aware of the need to think about it as a resource and consider how to derive value from waste streams.

"Bringing about this shift in mindset is more challenging for those less directly involved and requires different approached for different audiences: 
  • For big businesses action is often driven by reputation risks, and consumer boycott campaigns can be effective in leveraging this. In addition, financial directors also recognise the financial and commercial 
  • For SMEs difficulties can arise as a result of competing priorities. However, where the benefits are made clear, SMEs tend to adopt changes quickly as they can lead to improvements to the bottom line in the short term. 
  • Individuals are more challenging as the financial benefit and the action tend to be disconnected. It will be hard to get people to see waste as a resource until it actually is; that is when they are paid for it."

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