From Green Right Now Reports

Kimberly-Clark Professional, a division of the paper products company serving commercial and institutional facilities, said today it is launching an awareness campaign that encourages industry professionals to go beyond recycling and think about reducing what we use in the first place.

The company said the campaign called “Reduce Today, Respect Tomorrow” will be its first environmentally focused, global communications push.

One of four global business sectors within Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Kimberly-Clark Professional is one of the largest manufacturers of washroom products in the world, serving commercial and institutional facilities such as office buildings, hotels, schools, health-care facilities, manufacturing plants, and other public buildings.

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Los Angeles’ program to reduce trucking pollution is working faster than planned, but it has come under attack by the trucking industry.

Today, the city celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Clean Truck Program (CTP), which has taken more than 2,000 polluting trucks off the road and helped placed more than 5,500 clean vehicles into service. The changes mean that ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are now two years ahead of schedule in their master plan to reduce shipping truck emissions by 80 percent. The two ports have collaborated to reduce air pollution from both trucks and ships using the hubs.

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Green Right Now Reports:

FedEx has added 92 hybrid-electric trucks to its fleet, all of which are converted standard delivery trucks.

The increase represents a jump of 50 percent in the company’s hybrid fleet, bringing it to a total of 264 hybrid-electric vehicles. FedEx estimates that its hybrid fleet has saved an estimated 1,521 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2004. That’s equivalent to taking 279 cars off the road annually.

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By Harriet Blake

The EPA announced this week that it is moving closer to a new global agreement to lessen ship pollution within 200 miles of American shores.

The U.S., along with Canada, has asked the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to create an emissions control area around the countries’ coastlines. Under the new proposal, U.S. and foreign-flagged ships will be required to use cleaner fuel and more effective pollution controls for their engines.

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By John DeFore
Green Right Now

Wondering how much it matters that your sneakers were made in China and your coffee grown in Kenya? Consider this: The ships that brought those goods to America belch enough particulate pollutants into the world’s air to match half of all cars combined.

So says a paper just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, in which scientists led by Boulder, Colorado researcher Daniel A. Lack analyzed readings taken in and around the Gulf of Mexico during the summer of 2006. The team trailed over 200 commercial vessels that summer, measuring the emissions of everything from cargo freighters to cruise ships, and what they found isn’t happy news for those living in coastal areas.

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