Italy has been a busy bee trying to save the bees on their land. News is that the government has banned several pesticides that are believed to have caused the deaths of millions of honeybees. Neonicotinoid pesticides like clothianidin and imidacloprid are used in sunflowers and sweet corn but not anymore. These chemicals attack the nervous system of insects and can also get to the pollen and nectar, thereby damaging beneficial insects like bees.
Italy is not the only nation to be taking such stringent steps. Germany and Slovenia had introduced a similar ban early this year while France had done its bit way back in 1999. Clothianidin and imidacloprid are produced by the famous German company Bayer CropScience that has made profits to the range of 800 million in 2007. And now the German Coalition are after Bayer to stop marketing harmful pesticides after thousands of hives were lost due to poisoning.
Via enn

Today every positive move towards curbing pollution counts and whenever I hear about any such development I like to share it with you all. After a ban on plastic bags in China, Israel, Australia (Melbourne) and San Francisco, it’s now Los Angeles’ turn. The city dwellers want to green-up their homes, offices and play grounds by completely shunning plastic bags by 2010. The positive move is now going to materialize with the coming in effect of Assembly bill (AB 2058) next month. The latter will addresses recycling issues and a fee for plastic bags. This means the new legislative measure will take care of the 2.3 billion bags consumed by LA’s population. Until now, there was a voluntary program residing in the city which involved encouraging customers to opt for reusable bags (which sums up to 5% of entire lot).

But as it turns out the move is not enough to tackle the problem of growing numbers of plastic waste. Besides plastic, a ban on Styrofoam will also be implemented by 2009 at all city-owned facilities (including LAX). The enormous Styrofoam and plastic waste piled up in LA contributes to direct pollution of Pacific Ocean owning to the city’s prime location. After hearing all this good news from Melbourne, San Francisco and now Los Angeles too, I whole heartedly feel others should also embrace such bans, especially India where plastic nuisance has choked her major rivers like Yamuna and is daily adding on to its pollution scale.

Via: inhabitat