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The Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners and retailers CVS Health, Target and Walmart to identify, test and implement alternatives to single-use retail bags.
The Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, New York, has joined with the retailers CVS Health, Target and Walmart, in addition to Kroger and Walgreens, to form the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag. The initiative seeks to reinvent single-use plastic retail bags, which are typically made with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) or linear-LDPE film, by identifying, testing and implementing viable design solutions and models that more sustainably serve the purpose of the current retail bag, according to a news release from Closed Loop Partners. Collectively, consortium partners have committed more than $15 million to launch the Beyond the Bag Initiative.
The three-year consortium invites additional retailers to join.
According to Closed Loop Partners, global risks from climate change, the global pandemic and mounting plastic waste have revealed the vulnerabilities of our current system.
“The status quo has been shaken, presenting a unique opportunity to build back better and reimagine a more resilient and sustainable way of doing business,” says Kate Daly, managing director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “During challenging times, unexpected and unprecedented collaboration is required, and we’re excited to work with leading retailers like CVS Health, Target, Walmart and others—along with the entire industry—to take effective action.”
The initiative “aims to take a holistic view of the challenge and solutions, aligning consumer convenience and product innovation with the equally important infrastructure for recovery or reuse of any alternatives developed,” Closed Loop Partners says.
The consortium’s Innovation Challenge, launched in partnership with global design firm IDEO, will solicit design solutions to serve the function of today’s retail bag from around the world, with an initial focus on implementation in the United States. Closed Loop Partners says it will launch a Circular Accelerator, develop potential piloting opportunities and aim to make infrastructure investments in support of the development of market-ready solutions.
“We know how important it is to bring our customers along on our sustainability journey, keeping in mind that most are looking for convenience with minimal environmental impact,” says Eileen Howard Boone, senior vice president, Corporate Social Responsibility & Philanthropy, and chief sustainability officer, CVS Health. “This collaboration with Target, Walmart and other like-minded retailers and innovators allows for collective reach that can be truly impactful.”
President Donald Trump’s announcement expands the administration’s intervention in local enforcement as he runs for reelection under a “law-and-order” mantle.
Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters rally near the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Tuesday in Portland, Ore.
By COLLEEN LONG and JILL COLVIN Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will send federal agents into Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration’s intervention in local enforcement as he runs for reelection under a “law-and-order” mantle.
Using the same alarmist language he has employed to describe illegal immigration, Trump painted Democrat-led cities as out of control and lashed out at the “radical left,” even though criminal justice experts say a spike in violence in some cities defies easy explanation.
“In recent weeks there has been a radical movement to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police department,” Trump said at a White House event, blaming the movement for “a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence.”
“This bloodshed must end,” he said. “This bloodshed will end.”
The decision to dispatch federal agents to American cities is playing out at a hyperpoliticized moment when Trump is grasping for a reelection strategy now that the coronavirus has upended the economy and immigration is largely at a standstill. With less than four months until Election Day, Trump has been warning that violence will worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden is elected in November and Democrats have a chance to make the police reforms they seek.
Crime has surged in some cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia before any major policing overhauls could be made. In trying to explain violence in some cities, experts point to the unprecedented moment in the country — a pandemic that has killed more than 140,000 Americans, historic unemployment, stay-at-home orders, a mass reckoning over race and police brutality, intense stress and even the weather. And compared with other years, crime in 2020 is down overall.
Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder arrested in bribery scheme
CBS News reports
The powerful Republican speaker of the Ohio House and four associates were arrested Tuesday in a $60 million federal bribery case connected to a taxpayer-funded bailout of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants. Hours after FBI agents raided Speaker Larry Householder’s farm, U.S. Attorney David DeVillers described the ploy as “likely the largest bribery scheme ever perpetrated against the state of Ohio.”
Householder was one of the driving forces behind the nuclear plants’ financial rescue, which added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo. After Householder’s arrest, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine called on him to resign.
Also arrested were Householder adviser Jeffrey Longstreth, longtime Statehouse lobbyist Neil Clark, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matthew Borges and Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group, a Columbus-based consulting firm.
Previous attempts to bail out the nuclear plants had stalled in the Legislature before Householder became speaker. Months after taking over, he rolled out a new plan to subsidize the plants and eliminate renewable energy incentives. The proposal was approved a year ago despite opposition from many business leaders and the manufacturing industry.
Generation Now, a group that successfully fought an effort to put a repeal of the bailout law on Ohio’s ballot, was charged as a corporation in the case.
A criminal complaint filed by the FBI says Generation Now received $60 million from an unidentified company over the past three years. In exchange, Householder and the other defendants worked to pass the nuclear plant bailout and block attempts to overturn it.
Householder and the others used the money to preserve and expand his political power in Ohio, the complaint said.
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The company has commitments from over 70 suppliers to use 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production
By Derick Lila pvbuzz
Apple announced it plans to make its entire business — including its supply chain and resulting products — carbon neutral by 2030. This strategy includes reducing emissions from the production process, removing carbon from the atmosphere, and working with renewable energy suppliers.
The tech giant plans to focus on creating new renewable energy projects and moving its entire supply chain to clean power.
The company currently has commitments from over 70 suppliers to use 100 percent renewable energy for production — equivalent to nearly 8 gigawatts in commitments to power the manufacturing of its products.
Globally, Apple is launching one of the largest new solar arrays in Scandinavia, as well as two new projects providing power to underserved communities in the Philippines and Thailand.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve done so far, but we also know that the moment we’re in calls us to meet this generational challenge of climate change, and to accelerate industry-wide change, to show what’s possible,” says Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, and a former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
With this new pledge, Apple is following the announcements of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, all of which have introduced revised climate-related goals within the past year.
The company’s global corporate operations are already net-zero, and this new initiative means that by 2030, every Apple device sold will be carbon neutral.
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Waste Management of New York (WMNY) and plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit over the company’s High Acres Landfill in Fairport, New York have proposed a $2.3 million settlement, court documents show. Led by plaintiff James D’Amico, the original lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in January 2018.
Under the terms of the proposed July 14 settlement, WMNY will pay $1.3 million “into a fund for the benefit of the Class Members” from that date over a 30-month period and an additional $1 million into “improvement measures” at the landfill. Those measures include installing a gas collection system and waste mass dewatering pumps and control, along with synthetic alternate daily cover systems and “nearly 1 mile of an additional water- and vapor-based odor control misting system.”
“High Acres has been part of the Perinton and Macedon communities for nearly 50 years and our relationships with our neighbors are very important to us,” Garrett Trierweiler, senior manager of public affairs for Waste Management, told Waste Dive in a statement. Trierweiler said the company is “pleased” by the tentative resolution, but could not offer further comment as the settlement is pending court review.
If approved by a judge, the 130-page proposed settlement would end an ongoing dispute brought by D’Amico and his neighbors over the landfill’s alleged impacts on their homes. The plaintiffs sued over claims of nuisance, negligence and gross negligence regarding odor effects stemming from the upstate New York site.
