Reports

Textile manufacturers, the obvious target audience of textile machinery manufacturers, have a lot to say – from the brands they use and prefer to the problems they face during the production process. And they have their own set of solutions and suggestions on how machinery manufacturers can make life easier for them. Most are plausible and can be implemented. On issues that machines face There are a number of issues that cropped up when Fibre2Fashion spoke to textile manufacturers. Ravi S Jalan...

Shipments in most of the textile machinery segments experienced worldwide declines in the last year. The deliveries of new short-staple spindles dropped 15 per cent from 2013 to 2014. Shipped long-staple spindles and open-end rotors increased by 70 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively, and the number of shipped draw-texturing spindles grew by around 12 per cent. Shipments of both shuttle-less looms and new large circular knitting machines also fell by 14 per cent and 22 per cent year-on-year...

Earlier this month, the world's largest PR firm Edelman ended its decade-long relationship with the world's largest oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API). A welcome step, and high time too, as climate change activists would likely assert. API's contracts with Edelman had been big; so massive that it amounted to 10 per cent of the PR firm's revenues. Its Blue Advertising subsidiary helped API run commercials that promoted the idea that oil and gas were plentiful, and were viable too...

The forests scene the world over is depressing, quite depressing indeed. The ones plundering forests are not complying with international benchmarks, and the impunity with which the ravaging of forests is under way will leave one frustrated and in utter despair. There are as few as 250 companies across countries that are engaged in this unfettered loot, and the ones from India come a cropper when it comes to performance. The Global Canopy Programme (GCP), which evaluates and ranks 500...

At a time when an increasing number of decisions made by consumers are being based on recommendations that gush forth from social media, hospitals cannot remain untouched, or for that matter shy away. Hospitals en masse are not really getting there as yet, but some have started taking small, furtive steps into a realm that where a hospital needs to take measured steps. One institution that has a sizable presence is Manipal Hospitals. Certainly sizable if one goes by the 1.5 lakh likes that it...

Purportedly entertaining films that feature global warming and climate change can indeed affect public understanding. But films are often bound up in problematic and limiting identity politics, which commonly reiterate racial, gender and sexual stereotypes positioning as they do white men as being the decisionmakers and the voice of authority. These are findings of Bridie McGreavy and Laura Lindenfeld of the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, who analysed...

If there’s one hurdle that the proposed Ganga project will not run into, it will be water supply. Not till 2050, at least. And there’s going to be an abundance of it. The reasons, however, should be disconcerting — this will be on account of climate change. A projected increase in precipitation and glacier melt due to climate change, in fact, will result in greater runoff from rivers in High Asia until at least 2050, a paper published online in Nature Climate Change has projected. This suggests...

The Union government has reconstituted Karnataka's State-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) for a period of three years. The announcement was made through an extraordinary gazette notification dated May 2, 2014. Technically, there had been no SEIAA in operation in the state for seven months — from October 1, 2013 to May 1, 2014, since the three-year term of the previous panel had expired on September 30, 2013. Projects or activities falling under Category ‘B’ in the Schedule...

The United Breweries Limited (UBL) brewery at Nelamangala on Tumkur Road has been running without an environment clearance, according to the findings of an official study that was meant to look at the working of the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC). United Breweries purchased the brewery from Karnataka Breweries and Distilleries Ltd (KBDL) in 2006, and affected a change in name in 2008. It is a comprehensive brewing and bottling facility, and the product is the Kingfisher brand of...

The automobile manufacturing sector in the state is in dire need of stricter regulating and monitoring. So asserts the report of an official study team that was constituted to look into the state of environmental clearances in Karnataka. The research team came to this conclusion after studying the facilities of and environmental clearances accorded to two of the largest automobile manufacturers in the state — Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts Pvt Ltd and Toyota Kirloskar Motors Pvt Ltd at Bidadi, and...