This week:

• Letitia Henville interviews Danielle Murray and Devyani Srinivasan, part of a team of University of Toronto graduate students in the Planning Programme about their recent proposal to the City of Toronto for boosting Toronto’s waste diversion rate. Their report is titled Talking Trash: Options for Increasing Toronto’s Waste Diversion Rate. Note that due to technical difficulties, the introduction to this segment was lost in the podcast version of this program.

• Jordan Poppenk speaks with Professor Miriam Diamond from UofT’s Environmental Chemistry Research Group about what polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are, why they’re showing up in the news, and why they’re showing up in your bloodstream.

Special web feature:

• Sign the petiton in support of the Ontario Climate Change Act, which would require the Ontario government to achieve Kyoto targets and develop a plan for doing so (similar to recent federal legislation). The act was tabled in December by Ontario’s NDP Environment Critic Peter Tabuns.

The headlines in brief:

• Two-thirds of consumers are likely to switch their spending to companies that have demonstrated a commitment to green policies, according to a new survey;
• The Ontario NDP party is spearheading an effort that would help consumers identify what carcinogens or toxins in everyday products;
• The federal conservative government and the private firm Energy Alberta are promoting the idea of using nuclear energy to develop Alberta’s massive oil sands reserves;
• The Commons environment committee has endorsed a motion calling for an independent environment commissioner with the power to advocate who can’t be fired by the auditor-general;
• All three federal opposition leaders dismissed as inadequate a draft conservative government plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions;
• The US Energy Department has announced that it will provide up to 385 million dollars to six ethanol refinery projects.
• Beekeepers in the US are becoming increasingly alarmed as a massive honeybee die-off threatens their livelihood.
• In Indonesia, scientists discovered twenty new species of sharks and rays. In a few weeks, Australia will fire up its first wave-generated power station.
• Tajikistan is suffering from an energy crisis, and some citizens are building homemade hydroelectric stations that can power entire small villages.

You can download the show here (right click, save as…), or listen in the player ** Note: player will close if you surf away from the page**