The Australian Motor Vehicle Environment Committee has started a review process to assess the adoption of Euro IV and V standards for Australia.

The review assesses the feasibility of adopting Euro IV emission standards for light duty gasoline, LPG and natural gas vehicles and Euro V emission standards for heavy-duty diesel, LPG and natural gas vehicles. The review will also consider the implementation of the following regulations:

• Euro IV for gasoline, LPG and natural gas vehicles in 2008
• 50 ppm sulphur limit for gasoline in 2008
• 10 ppm sulphur limit for gasoline in 2010

Vehicular emission standards currently adopted in Australia include Euro III limits for gasoline cars effective from 2005 and Euro IV limits for all types of highway diesel vehicles and engines effective 2006/2007.

Australia has announced the world's first plan to compel big business and government to report publicly their greenhouse gas emissions after it passed a new act recently. The new law requires territory-owned enterprises, government departments and private businesses with turnovers higher than the payroll tax threshold to report their emissions publicly, particularly from electricity usage.

A Planning and Environment Committee has also been set up to explore the best ways for businesses to report their emissions. The Committee has decided that from 1 July 2003 all electricity bills would include details of the greenhouse gases produced for the electricity consumed.

When the greenhouse gases emission information becomes public, it would be possible to compare one company against others and encourage all of them to become more energy efficient. Companies respond to the public image of being seen as good corporate citizens and, conversely are keen not to be seen publicly as not meeting their responsibilities to the environment.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District in the US has passed stringent rules recently to regulate refinery emission. Oil refineries are now required to systematically monitor and report the release of pollutants from flares, which are safety devices used to burn excess hydrocarbon emitted from their processes.

The new rules are adopted after communities in the area complained about emissions from oil refineries and a study carried out last year found higher-than-expected amounts of pollution released from local flare stacks. The rules will affect 25 flare stacks at the region's five major oil refineries.

Under the new rules, oil refineries will have to monitor not only the volume of pollution, but also its composition and causes. Oil firms will also have to provide monthly reports to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and to record flare activity by video for future investigations.

The US House Revenue Committee has approved a new bill under which businesses that attempt to regulate pollution would get expanded tax breaks.

The bill would allow tax credits up to 50 percent for pollution control equipment installed after 31 Dec 2005, an increase from the present 35 percent credit for pollution controls that go above and beyond those already required by state or federal law.

The bill also would allow solar electric systems and renewable energy manufacturing facilities to qualify for tax credits. The tax credit program would be extended from its current expiry date of 2007 to 2014.

A company in the United States has invented a new type of green packaging material called bio-plastic. The material looks like plastic but turns into compost after disposal. This agriculture-based product will reduce petroleum dependency, environmentally harmful emissions and landfill waste.

Aside from packaging, the material is being used to spin fibers for products such as mattresses, comforters, pillows and rugs. The bio-plastic company expects to produce 140 million metric tons of the material annually. This will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 to 60 percent.

Since 1996, the Solar Hydrogen Energy Corporation (SHEC) has been developing renewable energy resources as viable and cost-efficient energy substitutes to traditional fossil fuels.

The latest advanced solar concentration technology developed by the company uses sunlight-derived power to convert water into electricity by using a solar concentrator. The solar concentrator uses mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver attached to the system's focus. The receiver absorbs the directed sunlight, which generates heat. The heat is used to convert water into steam, which is then transferred in pipes to a generator to produce electricity for common use.

SHEC is hoping to make this technology affordable for small-scale application and is optimistic that this technology will revolutionize solar energy.

A company in the Great Lakes region of United States has developed a new process that could convert trash into fuel such as ethanol. The process will convert green and paper waste to sugar, distill the sugar into alcohol and transform the alcohol into ethanol.

The company is negotiating a contract with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio to build a trash-to-ethanol plant, which will reduce reliance on landfills.

The US government is considering tax breaks and financial assistance to encourage new ethanol plants so as to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to replace MTBE in gasoline with ethanol. MTBE is used to reduce ozone pollution but it could contaminate water supplies.

China has announced a plan to invest over RMB 7 billion to build medical waste disposal and treatment facilities in the coming 2 to 3 years.

China's State Environmental Protection Administration said that large quantities of medical waste were produced in the fight against SARS and it was found out that sewage disposal and solid waste treatment facilities in hospitals across the country were far from adequate.

Only few cities, such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Dalian, etc have implemented centralized waste disposal of medical waste. In most other cities, medical wastes are mixed with and treated as household wastes. Large quantities of sewage from hospitals are also discharged directly to urban sewage pipes without any treatment.