Swedish Match reported slightly lower than forecast quarterly operating earnings on Wednesday, and said it expected continued rapid growth of the nicotine pouches market in 2021.
6 Min Read
KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indonesia’s ambitious biodiesel programme will increase the risks of deforestation as more tropical forest could be cleared to grow palm oil, environmentalists have warned, urging policymakers to implement a long-term ban on new plantations.
Indonesia - which is home to the world’s third-largest tropical forests but is also its biggest producer of palm oil - has steadily increased the portion in its biodiesel mandate derived from palm oil since 2018 to boost demand.
Looking to also curb costly fuel imports and its planet-heating emissions, the Southeast Asian country raised the “bio” content in its biodiesel to 30% in late 2019 from 20% the year before, with the rest being fossil fuel.
2 Min Read
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s animators are losing one of the tools of their trade after Mitsubishi Pencil said this week it would scale back a long-running line of coloured pencils.
Slideshow ( 2 images )
Mitsubishi Pencil will reduce its 7700 line of hard coloured pencils to a single red iteration starting in June. The three colours to be cut - orange, yellow-green and pale blue - were saved from a broader cull in 2015 after an outcry from the animation industry.
“The 7700 line is an indispensable tool for animation production, with a large impact on individuals and companies anticipated by the end of production,” the Association of Japanese Animators said in a statement.
By Reuters Staff
(Adds details, background)
Jan 28 (Reuters) - Finnish forestry group UPM has decided to start the basic engineering phase for a biorefinery with annual capacity of 500,000 tonnes of high-quality renewable fuels including sustainable jet fuel, it said on Thursday.
These initial preparations for the plant - to be located either in Kotka, Finland, or Rotterdam in the Netherlands - would last at least 12 months, after which UPM said it would make the investment decision.
The company said its solid wood biomass-based residues and side streams would play a substantial role in the feedstock pool.
UPM said in January last year that it had decided to invest 550 million euros ($665 million) in a new biorefinery in Leuna, Germany, to produce a range of 100% wood-based biochemicals, enabling a switch from fossil raw materials to sustainable alternatives. ($1 = 0.8269 euros) (Reporting by Tarmo Virki in Tallinn Editing by David Goodman)
5 Min Read
(Thomson Reuters Foundation) - COVID-19 relief and recovery plans aimed at recycling and reusing more of the billions of tonnes of materials consumed each year could slash planet-heating emissions and limit the impacts of climate change, researchers said on Tuesday.
By developing and promoting ways to reduce the amount of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass used in new products, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 39%, or 22.8 billion gigatonnes annually, said a report by Amsterdam-based social enterprise Circle Economy.
“Governments are making huge decisions that will shape our climate future,” CEO Martijn Lopes Cardozo said in a statement.