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The Precautionary Principle
The EEB (European Environmen-
tal Bureau 1999) defines the Pre-
cautionary Principle as follows:
2.1 The Precautionary Principle
justifies early action to pre-
vent harm and an unaccept-
able impact to the environ-
ment and human health in the
face of scientific uncertainty
2.2 Precaution places the burden
of proof on the proponents
of the activity.
2.3 Precaution applies the substi-
tution principle, seeking safer
alternatives to potentially
harmful activities, including
the assessment of needs.
2.4 Precaution requires public
participation in decision-
making.
REACH (See Montebello
Agreement)
Registration, Evaluation, Authori-
zation and Restriction of Chemicals
(REACH)
The European Union’s REACH EC
1907/2006 regulatio estab-
lished on December 18, 2006 and
became law on June 1, 2007. The
regulation’s intent “should ensure
a high level of protection of human
health and the environment as well
as the free movement of substances,
on their own, in preparations and in
articles, while enhancing competitive-
ness and innovatio ulation
should also promo lopment
of alternative methods for the assess-
ment of hazards of substances.”
This law is the most compre-
hensive legislation ever completed
regulating all chemical substances. A
full 401 pages of this 849 page docu-
ment are 10 appendices that mostly
call out carcinogens, mutagens and
substances toxic to reproduction. The
rest of the document outlines and de-
fines the requirements of compliance.
REACH will affect chemical indus-
tries worldwide by requiring testing
and registration with the European
Chemicals Agency on any imported
chemical substance over 1,000 kg in
weight. Chemical substances manu-
factured in the European Union are
subject to the same regulation.
Recycling
The U.S. Department of Energy
defines recycling as “the process of
converting materials that are no lon-
ger useful as designed or intended
into a new product.”
Renewable Energy
The U.S. Department of Energy
defines renewable energy as “energy
derived from resources that are
regenerative or for all practical pur-
poses cannot be depleted.
“Types of renewable energy
resources include moving water
(hydro, tidal and wave power),
thermal gradients in ocean water,
biomass, geothermal energy, solar
energy and wind energy.
“Municipal solid waste (MSW) is
also considered to be a renewable
energy resource.”
Reservoir
The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change defines reservoir as:
“A component of the climate system,
other than the atmosphere, which has
the capacity to store, accumulate or
release a substance of concern, for
example, carbon, a greenhouse gas or
a precursor. Oceans, soils and forests
are examples of reservoirs of carbon.
Pool is an equivalent term (note that
the definition of pool often includes
the atmosphere). The absolute quan-
tity of the substance of concern held
within a reservoir at a specified time
is called stock.” For example, up-
take or (carbon) sequestration, adds
greenhouse gases to rainforests (res-
ervoir) and their soils (reservoir).
RoHS
An acronym for Restriction of
Hazardous Substances Directive (the
lead-free directive).
Although not a law, the European
Union passed this directive in 2006,
limiting the use of six materials in
any part of electronic and electrical
products. The six materials limited
by RoHS are: lead, mercury, cad-
mium, hexavalent chromium (chro-
mium VI or Cr6+), polybrominated
biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominat-
ed diphenyl ether (PBDE). PBB and
PBDE are flame retardants used in
some plastics.
Similar standards have been
adopted in China, Japan, Korea
and California. The U.S. federal gov-
ernment currently has no plans to
adopt a similar directive.
Sink
“Any process, activity or mecha-
nism that removes a greenhouse
gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a
greenhouse gas or aerosol from the
atmosphere” is considered a sink,
according to sources at the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A sink removes a greenhouse gas,
for example, from the atmosphere,
then by uptake or (carbon) seques-
tration, the green
ed to a reservoir (see Reservoir and
Uptake/Sequestration).
Stakeholder(s)
The online Business Directory
describes this as, “Person, group or
organization that has direct or indi-
rect stake in an organization because
it can affect or be affected by the
organization’s actions, objectives and
policies. Key stakeholders in a busi-
ness organization include creditors,
customers, directors, employees, gov-
ernment (and its agencies), owners
(shareholders), suppliers, unions and
the community from which the busi-
ness draws its resources. Although
stake-holding is usually self-legitimiz-
ing (those who judge themselves to
be stakeholders are de facto so), all
stakeholders are not equal and dif-
ferent stakeholders are entitled to
different considerations. For example,
a firm’s customers are entitled to fair
trading practic
entitled to the
the firm’s employees.”
Sustainable development
Economic, social (political) and en-
vironmental development that is har-
monized for the good of all interests.
Many, including the United Na-
tions, use the definition from the
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