CPSC calls for compliance on bedroom furniture tipover hazard
February 27, 2019, Woodworking Network
In a letter addressed to manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers of residential bedroom furniture, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that products failing to comply with the industry’s voluntary stability standard, ASTM F2057-17, will be regarded as a “substantial product hazard.”
“CPSC received numerous reports of child fatalities that occurred between 2000 and 2017 associated with clothing storage unit tip-overs,” CPSC deputy executive director DeWane Ray stated in the letter. “We believe many of these deaths could have been prevented if the clothing storage units complied with the current ASTM F2057-17 standard.”
How people rationalize bad choices
March 1, 2019, Insurance Journal
When a reward is tempting enough, people will break their own moral codes to gain the desired prize. Afterward, they’ll tell you exactly how they were justified: “It wasn’t as if anyone was harmed,” “I was only borrowing …,” “My boss told me to” or “It’s our customers’ responsibility to read the fine print.” It’s a rationalizing process called “moral disengagement” that Darden Professors Sean Martin and Jim Detert have studied. People are self-interested, but we don’t like to face that about ourselves because we also have a strong need to see ourselves as good people, they argue, so we unintentionally, and quite effortlessly, use a series of cognitive maneuvers to justify self-interested choices that don’t align with who we say we want to be or what we want others to think about us.
Brexit—Where do we stand at end of February, 2019
March 1, 2019, National Law Review (Squire Patton Boggs)
The UK’s progress towards leaving the European Union has been a tortuous and turbulent affair. It has been marked by Prime Minister Theresa May’s Government suffering repeated heavy defeats in Parliament, which would normally have led to a change of policy if not of Government, but carrying on with its Brexit stance unchanged. So you could be forgiven for assuming that a series of votes initiated by backbenchers at the end of February in which the Government suffered no defeats would also signal no change. Not so.
Exclusive: UK chemicals industry says Brexit could cost sector £500 million
February 28, 2019, EuroNews
UK chemicals companies face being shut out of a common EU products registry after Brexit and would need to pay around half a billion pounds to set up a British counterpart, the head of the Chemicals Industry Association told Reuters. The sector – which includes companies such as Ineos, Johnson Matthey, Croda and Synthomer – is bound to the European Union by an especially dense web of laws and safety standards as well as supply chains which loop back and forth repeatedly across the English channel. If the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal, it will immediately be excluded from a strict set of EU laws on safety and production of chemicals called REACH and locked out of a Helsinki-based data registry underpinning trade called ECHA.
Upcycling plastic bags into battery parts – ACS Headline Science (video)
January 23, 2019, You Tube
Researchers reporting in ACS Omega have developed a new approach to upcycle plastic bags into battery parts. ACS Headline Science shows how the inexpensive new method could help convert plastic waste into useful carbon-containing materials. “Amorphous Carbon Chips Li-Ion Battery Anodes Produced through Polyethylene Waste Upcycling” – Vilas Pol, Ph.D. (corresponding author)
Canada gets closer to right-to-repair law
March 1, 2019, CBC
When Michael Coteau’s daughter dropped his Samsung Galaxy S8 this past fall, cracking it all over, the Ontario Liberal MPP kept using it for a while. “But then it started irritating my ear, because the glass was kind of breaking apart,” he said. It’s greener to repair such a device than recycle it and buy a new one — Nicole Mortillaro has pointed out how environmentally damaging it is to manufacture mobile devices. Recycling and disposal is also energy intensive, and many parts end up in the landfill. But manufacturers often make it expensive and difficult to get devices repaired.
Mandatory Reporting: Duty to report to the CPSC: Business rights and responsibilities
February, 2019, cpsc.gov
If you are a manufacturer, importer, distributor, and/or retailer of consumer products, you have a legal obligation to immediately report the following types of information to the CPSC. Failure to fully and immediately report this information may lead to substantial civil or criminal penalties. In this explanation of business rights and responsibilities, CPSC staff’s advice is “when in doubt, report.”
Compliance programs in Australia
February, 2019, ACCC.gov
Compliance programs help owners and managers to become more aware of the day-to-day operations of their business, therefore reducing the risk of supplying unsafe and non-compliant products. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wants companies to know of the benefits to introducing a product safety compliance program to your business.
Meritas guide to defective products litigation in Italy
March 2, 2019, JD Supra
What claims may be brought for liability for defective products? Is liability based on fault/negligence, or strict liability, or both? A defective product claim may be brought in contract, in tort and/ or under Legislative Decree no. 206/2005 (“the Consumer Code”), which implemented in Italy the EU Product Liability Directive.
Testing, inspection and certification market production by major players…dynamic forces market forecast 2023
March 2, 2019, Sierra Leone View
“Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) Market Report 2019 to 2024” is the definitive study of the global Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) market. The content includes orientation technology, industry drivers, geographic trends, market statistics, market forecasts, producers, and equipment suppliers. The report firstly introduced the Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis
