The Environment Chronicle

Notable environmental events between 2006 and 2006 Deselect

  1. The Elisabeth Mann-Borgese Sea Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Government has been awarded for the first time on the 26th November 2006 in the Schleswig-Holstein Land representation in Berlin. The prize, worth €20,000 and named for the daughter of writer Thomas Mann, honours in the one case an outstanding contribution to the marine sciences and in the other political and social commitment to the conservation and protection of the marine environment.

  2. Friends of the Earth in Germany, Italy and Switzerland together with the Dutch Vlinderstichting call for a nationwide butterfly counting on the 1st and 2nd of July. The count is to take place during the 1st International Butterfly Day.

  3. The former "German Environmental Information Network (gein)", established in June 2000, has been relaunched by the "German Environmental Information Portal (PortalU)". PortalU is the result of a cooperation between the German "Länder" and the German Federal Government, implementing requirements of the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information.

  4. The compulsory deposit has been extended to all ecologically unfriendly one-way packaging and the so called individual solutions were discontinued. Under the "individual solutions", discounters only had to take back one-way drink packaging sold by their own sales chain. Since May 2006, stores that sell drink cans, glass or plastic bottles are obligated to take back corresponding packaging from other drinks manufacturers. Empty one-way bottles and cans can be returned to any outlet where one-way packaging is sold. This is also done to promote the development of a uniform nationwide return system which is now being build up by the economic operators.

  5. On March 20, 2006, the members of the NaDiNe expert group working on the topic of oil spills gathered at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven for their first meeting. Participants were scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), and the GKSS Research Center Geesthacht.

  6. Adopted by the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) on 6 February 2006 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is a policy framework to foster the sound management of chemicals. SAICM was developed by a multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral Preparatory Committee and supports the achievement of the goal agreed at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development of ensuring that, by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health. Another goal of SAICM is to bundle the variety of existing activities and initiatives for a safe chemicals management within an overall framework .