The American Chemistry Council this year voluntarily withdrew a lawsuit in Colorado regarding mass balance allocation methods in the state’s extended producer responsibility for packaging program plan. But the wider debate about what counts as recycled content is far from at rest.  The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the defendant in the lawsuit, “will have further discussions this summer” about the excluded methodologies, according to an emailed

Without serious intervention against corruption, it will be impossible to address the problem of illegal timber trafficking in Europe. Presenting its findings in Rome, the TREES project has successfully shed light on the role that bribes play in encouraging the illegal timber trade in Europe. “Corruption is strongly connected to the illegal timber trade, but at the same time appears to be a ‘victimless crime’,” said Antonio Brunori, Secretary General of PEFC Italy, a TREES partner. Identifying corruption It is traditionally very hard to identify corruption, as it is based on an agreement between several parties, all involved with mutual benefits. Moreover, the corruption (at least formally) produces documents that hide the irregularities - when all the documents appear to be legal and correct, it is extremely difficult to detect the crime. “It is vital that we act to minimize this type of criminal activity occurring within the forestry sector, in order to minimize the damage to the environment and the enterprises that work legally,” Mr. Brunori continued. “The findings from the TREES project will provide an important starting point.” click Read More below for additional information

One year into its five-year strategy to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, Crown Holdings, Inc. has already surpassed one of its stated goals. In 2016, the Company announced its plan to reduce energy consumption by 5% per billion standard units of production from 2015 levels by the end of 2020. As of December 31, 2016, Crown has reduced energy consumption by 5.3% per billion standard units. Absolute energy consumption has decreased by 1.3% while the Company increased production by over 4.2%. In addition, the Company is more than halfway towards its goal of reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 10% per billion standard units of production from 2015 levels. As of December 31, 2016, Crown has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 6.25% per billion standard units. Click Read More below for additional detail.