There’s your total for the weather damage in Britain in 2007. [Envirostats author] 

- The (British) Environment Agency via the Guardian, Dec 7 2007

The Greenland ice sheet melted at a record rate this year, the largest ever since satellite measurements began in 1979, a top climate scientist reported on Monday.“The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile deep covering Washington DC,” said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Greenland is about one-fourth the size of the United States and about 80 percent of it is covered by the ice sheet. One-twentieth of the world’s ice is in Greenland; if it all melted it would be equivalent to a 21-foot (6.4 meter) global sea level rise, the scientists said.

- Reuters, Dec 10 2007

This is late news for those in Canada now but for those in the United States who might not have heard, one of Canada’s more prominent retailers, specializing in outdoor and healthy lifestyles, has stopped selling Nalgene bottles out of concern for bisphenol-A used in the bottles’ polycarbonate coatings. They say they are playing it safe, though, and will look to the Canadian federal government for guidance once the Feds come out with some review comments in May 2008 (originally next Nov), as I had commented before in Commentary 033.

I don’t have the time to share what I know on BPA but I’ll just say I affirmingly applaud MEC’s decision and that I’d be willing to bet that even if the Feds say BPA is safe, MEC will probably say it’s not convincing enough and standby this policy. We’ll see in May 2008.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

Postscript: Several days after the original post, an article came out about Sears stopping sales of products with polyvinyl chloride (PVC). PVC isn’t nearly as controversial in harm, but it’s nice to see retailers stopping the flow of products that aren’t good for people and/or the environment because getting people to boycott or avoid buying certain products is tough to do!

- MEC BPA story via Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) , Dec 7 2007 

- Sears PVC story via Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Dec 12 2007

I LOVE these statistics!

I wish I could find more lifestyle impact statistics to blog more often but I’ll take whatever I can find. Too bad it took me so long to get around blogging it in trying out some advanced blogging schedules that I have fixed to accommodate for interesting new statistics that come in by the day.

Note the end part about resource consumptions returning to the original average levels of married couples if divorcees remarried (not necessarily to the original partner), so there’s hope for all you divorced people out there! [Envirostats author]

Divorce pollutes the environment, because it splits households in two, doubling the demand for electricity and even water. 

The extra totals from US divorce is more than what Canada’s most populated province, Ontario, consumes in a year, and the water consumption is more than 4X what Toronto uses in a year.

The study analyzed data from 12 countries, including Cambodia and Greece, but not Canada.

While no country had the U.S. rate of 14.8 per cent divorced households, all showed a climbing number – a trend that presents a “global challenge,” according to Liu, who began studying the issue while researching the impact of humans on a panda reserve in China.

“If people really can’t get along and have to get divorced, maybe they could consider getting remarried with somebody else, or staying together with somebody they like – their relatives, or whatever,” said Liu.

“There are some potential solutions to this problem.”

Separation, prolonged singledom and empty nesters present the same environmental challenges, Liu said.

But they won’t have wasted electricity and consumer goods on a big wedding.

Liu’s next study is on the increased waste divorced households send to landfill, and their carbon emissions.

And the problem is likely to get worse, warns Liu. Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of households headed by divorcees soared from 5 to 15% of all US households. Divorces are also steadily increasing in China, note the authors, where divorce rates have traditionally been low.

“Divorce escalates consumption of increasingly limited resources,” the authors warn.

Liu urges governments to publicise the hitherto unanticipated environmental costs of divorce, and couples to consider the potential impacts of a divorce before going ahead.

- Jianguo Liu and Eunice Yu, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Dec 3 2007 week or DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707267104), via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), The Star (Toronto) and New Scientist, Dec 3 2007

Five U.S. states — Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont and Washington — have passed legislation banning dishwasher phosphates by July 1, 2010. Massachusetts and Michigan have proposed similar legislation.

An interesting story, to say the least, because the Canadian Consumer Specialty Products Association (CCSPA), whose member companies produce 86% of the household automatic dish detergent sold in Canada, will be working with the province to prepare for the ban. That’s the kind of government-industry relationship we all would like to see. I’ve got other reasons for which I am interested in this story, but I’ll leave my actions to do the talking in about a year or so, when it’ll still only be 2008. Nova Scotia isn’t considered an environmental leader for no reason, you know!

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Nov 29 2007