The British, Germany and Spanish governments had put forward plans to implement the European Union's 2000 end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive in advance of next April's legal deadline for transposition by all 15 European Union member countries.

Under the new directive, the EU is aiming to ensure that at least 85 percent of old cars by weight is recycled by 2006. That proportion will rise to 95 percent from 2015. Most or all of the costs of taking back and recycling the vehicles will be borne by the manufactures from 2007 and a range of hazardous substances will be banned in new cars from July 2003.

Spain had approved a five-year national plan for end-of-life vehicles. The German government proposed that car makers would bear the full costs of achieving the directive's scrap vehicle recycling targets. However, the German Environment Minister is proposing substantial tax breaks for manufacturers in order to soften the blow of the annual costs of about 409 million euros after 2007.

The Australian federal Environment Minister announced new standards, which limit the levels of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and olefins in petrol. The limits for MTBE will be set at 1 percent by volume for all grades of gasoline as of Jan 2004. Likewise, the standard for olefins for all grades of gasoline will be set at an 18 percent pool average over six months, with a cap of 20 percent. "Pool average" is defined as the average content of the chemical applying to the overall output of the company. This enables companies to use sources of petrol with different specifications as long as they make sure that they stay below the overall pool average. The 20 percent cap is the standard that must be met by any single gallon of petrol sold by the company. In Jan 2005, the maximum olefin content will be set at 18 percent by volume.

The National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) announced that it would develop a national environment protection measure (NEPM) on ambient air toxics. An air toxics working group would first refine a list of 28 priority pollutants identified under the commonwealth's Living Cities-Air Toxics Program. The air toxics include volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and aldehydes.

A company in Vancouver developed a new electrochemical technology, which convert ammonia present in wastewater directly into nitrogen gas, thereby, eliminating the potentially harmful by-products. The new electrochemical technology could be used for the remediation of wastewater contaminated with ammonia.

The results of the laboratory tests showed that the new technology could remove more than 95% of ammonia in wastewater that contained a concentration of 250 mg/l of ammonia.

A scientist from the Purdue University in United States had cloned a gene that facilitates the uptake of toxic nickel from soil into the leaves of a species of hyper-accumulating mustard plant. Hyper-accumulating plants store toxic metals in cellular structures called vacuoles, which are lined with membranes to protect the rest of the cell from the toxic effects of the metals.

A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in United States developed a small chemical patch containing a sensor that changed colour when exposed to minute amount of dangerous chemicals.

The researchers created the sensors by evaporating gold to produce an ultra-thin corrugated film and liquid crystals were bonded to the thin, nano-engineered gold surface. When the crystals bind to a 'matched' chemical, they change orientation. This changes the way the crystals refract light and hence alters the colour or brightness of the patch. Depending on the chemical to be detected, different crystals would be used. The sensors had been shown to work with the chemicals produced by decaying food and organophosphate pesticides and the system is sensitive enough to detect target chemicals in concentrations as low as a few parts per billion.

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University in United States found that curbing greenhouse gas emissions would have immediate benefits for human health.

The researchers used data on air pollution and hospital records from New York City, Mexico City, Santiago and Sao Paulo to estimate the health effects of implementing simple, "readily acquirable" measures to combat greenhouse gas emissions, such as restricting traffic and cleaning up dirty power stations, over the next 20 years. The findings showed that these measures would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent, and prevent 64,000 premature deaths. The measures would also prevent 65,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and 37 million days of "restricted activity" or work loss by 2020.

Researchers from the Imperial College London found from a study that babies born to mothers residing near landfills are slightly more likely to suffer from congenital defects.

Research engineers from the Purdue University had shown that electricity costs for office buildings could be reduced by up to 40 percent by running air conditioning overnight.

Sun-heated walls contribute to a building's rising daytime temperature. But pre-cooling the building by running the air conditioning overnight helps to control the temperature rise because the structure's mass has been cooled down and the building does not require as much energy for cooling during the day, when electricity is most expensive. The engineers created a computer simulation tool to document the savings that would be realised by using the pre-cooling technique for a specific building. The computer simulation tool could also be used to tailor the best pre-cooling strategy for individual building.

The engineers used the tool on a four-floor, 1.4 million square-foot office building in Chicago suburb area and the simulation showed that the pre-cooling technique could reduce electricity costs by as much as 41 percent during the hottest summer months. The energy-saving strategy that work best for this office building was to cool it overnight at about 67 degrees Fahrenheit and the thermostats were turned up to a more conservative temperature, such as 74 degrees Fahrenheit, shortly before the employees arrived for work.

The United States Department of Energy is funding 12 research and development projects that are designed to improve energy efficiency in commercial and residential buildings. In the United States, residential and commercial buildings account for approximately 65 percent of the electricity and 40 percent of the natural gas used. Planned improvements include using less electricity and reducing pollution from heating and cooling systems, lighting systems and appliances.

The Department of Energy will fund research and development projects in three broad areas:

• Building Equipment - Energy-conversion and control equipment for lighting, space heating, cooling, ventilation and appliances;
• Building Envelope - Construction materials and components for windows, walls, roofs and foundations; and
• Whole Building Technologies - Integrated components, systems and software governing the overall energy use of a building.