Garbage: To Burn or To Bury

 Renewable Energy World.com, March 29, 2011

Europe burns heaps of garbage, getting lots of electricity and some heat. The United States does not. Proponents say incineration shrinks the waste and produces heat and electricity while reducing the need for landfills and the diesel-drinking trucks tasked with taking trash to often-distant burial grounds.

These folks acknowledge that incinerators were rather dirty 25 years ago, but note that current air emissions are below Environmental Protection Agency standards. In a modern garbage incinerator, a complex set of filters removes heavy metals and other pollutants; high-temperature operation reduces the output of ultra-toxic dioxins.
On the other side, opponents say incinerators create global warming gases, still release toxins, divert money and attention from recycling, and tend to excuse extreme extravagance on the grounds that we can always turn our trash into energy. Read more...

Forget ‘Dark Green’ Shoppers – ‘New Consumers’ Will Drive Sustainability, Report Says

Environmental Leader, March 25, 2011

Brands can no longer rely on “dark green”, hyper-ethical consumers to drive the growth of sustainability, but must engage a broad swathe of consumers making up 30 percent of the market, according to new research.
Brand consulting firm BBMG said a group of 70 million shoppers branded “New Consumers”, making up 30 percent of the U.S. population, will help sustainable brands to enter the mainstream while forcing large brands to accelerate their adoption of environmental initiatives.
These shoppers are “values aspirational” because they are as interested in sustainability as the hard-core “dark green” consumers. But they are also “practical purchasers” because they are forced to make pragmatic trade-offs every day, according to the BBMG report, Unleashed: How New Consumers Will Revolutionize Brands and Scale Sustainability. Read more...

Google HQ Installs First Wireless Electric Car Charger

GreenTechies, March 23, 2011

The system is the first to offer consumers a simple way to charge their EVs with the ease of hands-free, automatic technology. Google is famous for giving the digital generation what it wants, so it only makes sense that the search giant would branch out into other technologies it feels are worth of its attention. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they would already be dabbling in smart grid technologies, and positioning themselves to be a leader in the future of both energy creation and distribution. Read more...

Expanding Forests in the Northern Latitudes

ENN, March 23, 2011


According to a recent United Nations report, forested areas in Europe, North America, the Caucasus, and Central Asia have grown steadily over the past two decades. While tropical areas have steadily lost their forests to excessive logging and increased agriculture, northern areas have seen increases caused by conservation efforts. However, the long-term health and stability of northern forest lands may be imperiled by the effects of climate change. Read more...

Brussels wants no oil-fuelled cars in cities by 2050

EurActiv.com, March 23, 2011


The European Commission plans to step up its battle against oil- and gas-fuelled cars, and is drawing up strict targets to halve their urban usage by 2030 and "phase them out by 2050," according to an EU road map on transport to be published on Monday (28 March) and seen by EurActiv. These objectives will play an instrumental role in achieving the more comprehensive target of cutting CO2 emissions from transport by 60% by 2050. Currently, a quarter of EU greenhouse gas emissions come from transport.
The Commission is therefore proposing an ambitious plan which eyes significant reductions of emissions especially in road transport, while it intends to increase rail traffic, on the grounds that is by far cleaner and more environment-friendly.  Read more...

Valvoline Launches 50% Recycled Motor Oil

Environmental Leader, March 16, 2011

Valvoline has introduced a 50 percent recycled motor oil, which will be available at retailers and through participating installers and oil change centers.
The company said that its NextGen brand of motor oil cuts down on fossil fuel use, lowering emissions and helping to ensure that used oil doesn’t make its way into the water supplies. The new product takes advantage of the latest innovative manufacturing processes, Valvoline said, to offer superior engine protection while reducing environmental impacts. Read more...

News at the North Pole Ozone Layer

ENN, March 16, 2011

Unusually low temperatures in the Arctic ozone layer have recently initiated massive ozone depletion. The Arctic appears to be heading for a record loss of this trace gas that protects the Earth's surface against ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This result has been found by measurements carried out by an international network of over 30 ozone sounding stations spread all over the Arctic and Subarctic and coordinated by the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association in Germany. Read more...

Honeybee End?

ENN, March 11, 2011

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon. Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations. Beekeepers in Western countries have been reporting slow declines of stocks for many years, apparently due to impaired protein production, changes in agricultural practice, or unpredictable weather. Read more...

Eco-farming can double food output by poor: U.N.

Reuters, March 8, 2011

Many farmers in developing nations can double food production within a decade by shifting to ecological agriculture from use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, a U.N. report says.
Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and Bangladesh's use of ducks to eat weeds in rice paddies are among examples of steps taken to increase food for a world population that the United Nations says will be 7 billion this year and 9 billion by 2050. "Agriculture is at a crossroads," according to the study by Olivier de Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming. Read more...

Costco, Sodexo Make Sustainable Seafood Pledges

Environmental Leader, February 28, 2011


Food giants Sodexo and Costco have both committed to improve the sustainability of their seafood.Sodexo, the $21 billion food service company, has announced a goal for all its contracted seafood to be certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) by 2015. Under the plan, Sodexo will review all wild caught and farm raised seafood purchases and set short, medium and long-term goals with its contracted seafood vendors. Read more...

Sea turtles' migration mystery is 'solved'

BBC News, February 25, 2011

Until now, how species such as loggerhead sea turtles manage to migrate thousands of miles across oceans with no visual landmarks has been a mystery.
Now researchers from the University of North Carolina believe they have found the answer. Loggerhead sea turtles appear to be able to determine their longitude using two sets of magnetic cues. It is the first time this ability has been shown in any migratory animal. This research is published in the journal Current Biology. Read more...