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Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 01/14/05

Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 01/14/05

This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. Our pledge is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. (usually)

Titles here, abstracts below them:

1. Researchers Develop 'Green' Route to Indoles, September 2004
2. Transparency and Communities' Right-to-Know: Working Towards Better Disaster Management Through the OECD, April-September 2004
3. Sustainability Reporting Assurance Practitioner Certification Proposed, October 2004
   
4. 'Small Mistakes': Big Pollution, September 2004
5. Dow and GM Advance Fuel Cell Program, December 2004
6. EPA Removes EGBE From Hazardous List, December 2004
7. Ensuring the Future of Fiber Recovery and Utilization, December 2004
8. Introduction to the Special Issue: "Environmental Assessments and Waste Management", February 2005
9. Solar Cells Get a New Source of Silicon, May 2004
10. Don't Move the Manufacturing Before You Re-Think the Design, November 2004
    

1. TITLE Researchers Develop 'Green' Route to Indoles
AUTHOR Scott, Alex
SOURCE Chemical Week, September 22, 2004, vol. 166, no. 31, p. 51
ABSTRACT Researchers at the University of Bolgna (Italy) say they have identified a route to produce indoles, a family of key fine chemical intermediates,that is cheaper and less environmentally damaging than traditional processes. Indoles are used widely in the production of pharmaceuticals, herbicides, fungicides, and dyes. The technology converts a mixture of alcohols and anilines in the vapor phase process in the presence of a zirconium oxide catalyst supported on silicon dioxide catalyst, the researchers say. The reaction, which proceeds via an alpha-amino carbonyl intermediate, does not result in the generation of by-product amines, they say. Steam is used as the gas carrier, and can be readily condensed, reducing potential waste treatment costs.

2. TITLE Transparency and Communities' Right-to-Know: Working Towards Better Disaster Management Through the OECD
AUTHOR Huet, Marie-Chantal
SOURCE Industry and Environment, April - September 2004, vol. 27, no. 2-3, 2004, pp. 65-67
ABSTRACT Governments and industry are increasingly making efforts to share information on chemical safety. There are many national and international legal tools to ensure communities' right-to-know. In this regard, the OECD has developed guidance and adopted a number of Decisions and Recommendations related to chemical safety. Communication with the public is a joint responsibility of government, industry and the community, and public-private partnership is essential. Society generally benefits when information about the risks of chemical operations is shared broadly. Nevertheless, there is concern that making certain
types of information publicly available could endanger security.

3. TITLE Sustainability Reporting Assurance Practitioner Certification Proposed
SOURCE Business and the Environment, October 2004, vol. XV, no. 10, pp. 5-6
ABSTRACT Reporting organizations and stakeholders increasingly accept that external assurance is a key means of increasing the credibility and effectiveness of sustainability reporting. However, there is currently no systematic way to assess an assurance practitioner's competence. To meet this need, AcccountAbility and the International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA) are developing the "Certified Sustainability Assurance Practitioner Programme." The organizations hope to develop a program that will allow practitioners to communicate their competence and give stakeholders added confidence.

4. TITLE 'Small Mistakes': Big Pollution
AUTHOR Johnson, Jeff
SOURCE Chemical & Engineering News, September 6, 2004, p. 34
ABSTRACT Last year, 37 Texas and Louisiana refineries, chemical plants, natural gas processors, and other facilities emitted 63 million pounds of air pollution - by accident. These emissions are of regulated hazardous air pollutants and come on top of air emissions limits that are allowed in a company's operating permit. Such accidental emissions are legal under provisions of the Clean Air Act through an exemption for unusual, non-routine activities: malfunctions due to shut-downs, start-ups, and equipment maintenance as well as emergencies. There releases are the subject of a report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The report looked at the few states that collect these data and found disturbing levels of emissions. EIP is a Washington, DC-based environmental organization. EIP executive says the Clean Air Act emergency provisions are being used as a loophole, allowing facilities to avoid fines and other sanctions for exceeding permit emissions caps and to continue poor process management that leads to the emissions.

5. TITLE Dow and GM Advance Fuel Cell Program
AUTHOR Westervelt, Robert
SOURCE Chemical Week, December 1/8, 2004, vol. 166, no. 40, p. 18
ABSTRACT Dow Chemical and General Motors say they have launched the second phase of a joint project to evaluate the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for motor vehicles and possibly for distributed power generation.

6. TITLE EPA Removes EGBE From Hazardous List
AUTHOR Hess, Glenn
SOURCE Chemical Market Reporter, December 6/13, 2004, volume 266, number 19, pp. 1, 11
ABSTRACT In response to a petition by the chemical industry, one solvent has been removed from the federal list of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), and five other chemicals have been reclassified as posing less risk than previously thought. The solvent ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (EGBE) has been removed from the list of air toxics, and t-butyl acetate (TBAC) and four other chemicals have been exempted from control as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

7. TITLE Ensuring the Future of Fiber Recovery and Utilization
AUTHOR Friberg, Tom; Gerhardt, Terry; Kunzler, Conni
SOURCE Solutions! for People, Processes and Paper, December 2004, pp. 33-35
ABSTRACT This article examines the specific research, development, and technology transfers needed to meet future recycled fiber demands.

8. TITLE Introduction to the Special Issue: "Environmental Assessments and Waste Management"
AUTHOR Ekvall, Tomas
SOURCE Journal of Cleaner Production, February 2005, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 209-211
ABSTRACT Cleaner production is a concept that goes beyond simple pollution control. It involves the development of new processes, materials and products which are more resource and energy efficient. The prevention of waste streams through waste minimization is an attractive strategy in this context. Waste prevention is also at the top of the so-called waste hierarchy, followed by reuse of products, recycling of materials, incineration with energy recovery, and disposal at landfills or through incineration without energy recovery. Why, then, publish a special issue on the management of waste in the Journal of Cleaner Production? In my mind, there are at least three valid and partly overlapping arguments for this effort: 1) The service of waste management is, in itself, a product, and cleaner production of waste management services is increasingly important because the quantities of wastes continue to rise in spite of waste prevention and other cleaner production efforts; 2) Waste management is often not only an issue of disposal, but a question of utilizing valuable resources through the reuse of products, recycling of materials or recovery of the energy in the waste streams; 3) When a new process, material or product is evaluated through a life cycle assessment (LCA), this study is bound to include an environmental assessment also of the management of waste from the life cycle.

Articles include:
-Life cycle assessment of energy from solid waste - part 1: general methodology and results
-Life cycle assessment of energy from solid waste - part 2: landfilling compared to other treatment methods
-Municipal solid waste management from a systems perspective
-Economic assessment of municipal waste management systems - case studies using a combination of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC)
-ORWARE: an aid to environmental technology chain assessment
-Life cycle assessment of food waste management options
-Life cycle assessment of processes for the treatment of wastewater urban sludge: energy and global warming analysis
-Time-dependent life-cycle assessment of slag landfills with the help of scenario analysis: the example of Cd and Cu
-International expert group of life cycle assessment for integrated waste management

9. TITLE Solar Cells Get a New Source of Silicon
SOURCE Chemical Engineering, May 2004, vol. 111, no. 13, p. 15
ABSTRACT Because of the growing market for solar cells, the traditional source for solar-cell-grade (SoG) silicon is not sufficient to supply the demand, so efforts have been underway to find economical alternatives. With this in mind, Tokuyama Corp. has developed a vapor-to-liquid deposition (VLD) process to make multicrystalline SoG Si, with support from New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organization.

10. TITLE Don't Move the Manufacturing Before You Re-Think the Design
AUTHOR Defosse, Matthew
SOURCE Modern Plastics, Vol. 81, No. 11, November 2004, pp. 18-19
ABSTRACT Processors in many countries have seen customers pull up stakes and take work to countries with lower-cost labor. A new study from Boothroyd Dewhurst argues that getting to low-cost labor often costs quite a bit.

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