Nearly 10% of a typical product's price is for packaging.
The global packaging market is worth $429 billion.
Nearly 1/3 of Americans' waste is packaging. Just 43% is recycled after use.
In 2007, Americans threw away 78.5 million tons of packaging—520 pounds per person. That's a 71% increase from 1960.
A 2008 bill written by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) would have required the EPA to find ways to reduce packaging waste by 30% in a decade. It died with no cosponsors.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A report on the official Iranian news agency says Iran is planning naval maneuvers in international waters near strategic Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of world oil supply passes.
The IRNA new agency quotes Iran's navy chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, as saying the maneuvers will begin Friday from Strait of Hormuz to the northern part of Indian Ocean in an area of about 1 million square kilometers (400,000 square miles).
Iran threatened to close the strait over Western sanctions aimed at its suspect nuclear program but has not repeated the threat lately.
A Mississippi mayor accused of misusing taxpayer money to buy personal items, including at a Canadian sex shop, was indicted Tuesday on embezzlement, false pretense and making fraudulent statements charges.
Southaven Mayor Greg Davis has been under scrutiny since November 2011, when the Mississippi Auditor's office told him to repay $170,000 for allegedly improper billings, including travel, food, liquor and one bill for $67 at Priape, described on its website as ‘Canada's premiere gay lifestyle store and sex shop.’
Authorities said Davis has paid back some of the money, but still owes about $73,000.
FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.
The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.
MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida's Republican governor wants President Barack Obama to invoke federal law and order a cooling-off period if nearly 15,000 longshoremen walk off the job in a looming strike that would be a big blow to the state's economy, according to a letter he sent the president this week.
The International Longshoremen's Association union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance grouping of shippers and ports have been bargaining since March but reportedly remain far from a deal covering cargo handling at 15 ports on the U.S. Gulf and eastern coasts.
In October, when a previous contract expired, the sides agreed to a 90-day extension of terms that runs out on December 29.
Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.
Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.
During Friday’s press conference, National Rifle Association President Wayne Lapierre shifted blame away from his own organization and onto 'evil' people and violent video games.
But what influenced the son of NRA head David Keene, who fired into the car of another motorist in 2002?
The New Yorker previously reported on how Keene’s served jail time for his misuse of a firearm.
In 2002, Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”
While perusing the news today, I came across this most interesting article in Bloomberg, Swaps ‘Armageddon’ Lingers as New Rules Concentrate Risk'. Before we delve into it, I want to review how vehemently I've sounded the alarm on this topic over the last 6 years. Let's start with So, When Does 3+5=4? When You Aggregate A Bunch Of Risky Banks & Then Pretend That You Didn't?, where I've aggregated my warnings into a single article. In a nutshell, 5 banks bear 96% of the global derivatives risk. The argument to defend such ass backwards risk concentration is "but it's mostly hedged, offset and netted out". Right! You know that old trader's saying about liquidity? It's always available, that is until you need it!
Even though I've made this point of netting = nonsense multiple times, I must admit, ZH did a more loquacious job, as follows:
When Monsanto revolutionized agriculture with a line of genetically engineered seeds, the promise was that the technology would lower herbicide use—because farmers would have to spray less. In fact, as Washington State University researcher Chuch Benbrook has shown, just the opposite happened.
Sixteen years on, Roundup (Monsanto's tradename for its glyphosate herbicide) has certainly killed lots of weeds. But the ones it has left standing are about as resistant to herbicide as the company's Roundup Ready crops, which are designed to survive repeated applications of the agribusiness giant's own Roundup herbicide.
Main 
