tagged w/ Sustainable Solutions
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I'm starting to see these little empty non-recyclable, non-biodegradable petroleum-based plastic containers everywhere. I've seen entire trash cans filled with these things at convenience stores after the morning rush... day after day.
In this day and age, you would think that Keurig and the companies associated with this product (Paul Newman's Own, Heifer, Green Mountain Coffee, Celestial Seasonings, Ghirardelli) who claim to be "organic" and/or "sustainable", would be more aware of it's impact to our environment.
You can contact these companies at the blog post above.
"The Keurig single-cup brewing system uses a special packaging for coffee, tea and hot cocoa called K-Cup portion packs or "K-Cups". Each K-Cup is an airtight, mini-brewer that locks out oxygen, light, moisture and humidity while locking in freshness and flavor. "
Personally, I'll take a french press any day over hot plastic brew.
http://www.coffeehabitat.com/images/2007/05/15/pitfall.jpg
About the K-Cup:
http://www.keurig.com/explore/choose.asp?mscsid=M4DDGKT2QWHL8LUSJH2PWEX7NT2PDTGFI'm starting to see these little empty non-recyclable, non-biodegradable... more
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Looking forward to purchasing this book, though I have to admit I was more excited about purchasing Earth In The Balance. In a way it is a true statement about our politicians and people that these kinds of books are put out still because on the whole we haven't gotten it yet. I suppose until America gets beyond its addiction to partisan political bantering as well as oil we will not truly be able to keep our eye on the prize. I'm glad to see that Mr. Gore is still out here speaking about this, even though our Congress ignores his vision.
And he is right, it is Our Choice. Our choice to continue listening to those who would stop progress for their own monetary and socio- political agendas. Or our choice to see above the rancor and do what is morally right to save the sustainability of this planet for our children. I think the choice is clear.Looking forward to purchasing this book, though I have to admit I was more excited... more
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The following are actual Soil Carbon case studies and further information.
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Sequestering carbon in soil is the most natural, effective, and cost effective way to mitigate global warming and maintain soil health for optimal food security. There are no other methods that can produce the results achieved with soil carbon sequesration. This is the answer to the overabundance of Co2 emissions from fossil fuels, to global poverty, to food insecurity, and the antithesis to the "clean coal" rhetoric that is a fiction.
However, it will not work when attached to a cap and trade mechanism that would allow corporations to continue emitting at present levels while claiming to be financing soil carbon sequestration in a developing country. There must be two sides to this equation in using soil carbon sequestration and rewarding those at the source who are doing it, and also holding those accountable who continue to emit GHGs that nullify the effects of natural sequestration.
This is a very well done presentation that I recommend you watch to understand how very important soil and sustainable agriculture are as solutions to this crisis. Soil carbon sequestration and reforestation along with better grazing management are positive responses that can be achieved that are the quickest ways to absorb the overabundance of carbon in our atmosphere to give us a balance that will work to get us to 350. But it must be fair and equitable to all in order to work.
http://www.soilcarbon.com.au/case_studies/pdf/08TL_SCCPPP_En.pdfThe following are actual Soil Carbon case studies and further information.
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Eco fabrics and brands have been hanging around in the fashion world for a couple of years, but critics waived it off as a fad from the jump. I wonder if those critics are the same people that called Hip-Hop a fad in the '80s? But I digress...anyway, brands like Diesel, Burberry, H&M, and Christian Dior attended the Interstoff Asia Essential exhibition last week in Hong Kong to learn more about "eco fabrics, safe dyeing processes, and good working conditions"Eco fabrics and brands have been hanging around in the fashion world for a couple of... more
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There are growing numbers of reclaimed wood sources perfect for re-purposing and re-use.
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The price of coffee and tea might be on the rise soon, again.
What's crucial is that there's an option of sustainable adaptation to safeguard the supply chain. Climate change is affecting those least able to deal with it. We can't underestimate that."
Tea and coffee are on the climate change front line because they only grow in a relatively narrow temperature range. Research suggested that all four of the countries involved would see the quantity and quality of their crops decline sharply over the coming years.The price of coffee and tea might be on the rise soon, again.
What's crucial is... more
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quanta
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1 month ago
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And a revenue neutral carbon tax will not increase electricity rates if applied correctly, so people can dispense with that propaganda right now. This would actually bring revenue back to consumers. This is really the best and most effective mechanism to bring down carbon emissions considering the precipice we are currently hanging from. I said it before and I will say it again: cap and trade will be abused, it will not bring down emissions in line with scientific warnings, and it will work against the poor and indigenous peoples of our planet and consumers. Politicians across the aisle, economists, and business executives (most currently from Fed Ex) are all calling for a revenue neutral carbon tax as the best way to decrease emissions at a faster pace, spur investment in and usage of alternate energies, and actually benefit consumers and workers. It is a win win. Time for Congress to get some guts and stop putting politics before principle.
Excerpt:
It’s time to look for climate change legislation that works politically. There are 26 senators from states where electricity production from coal — a major source of global warming — is above the national average. They are understandably nervous about voting for something that would raise electricity rates on voters in the middle of a recession. A carbon tax could be designed to take into account the geographic location of the taxpayer, so that taxpayers in states reliant on coal receive a larger reduction in their payroll taxes than others. This should make it more politically acceptable to congressmen from coal states.
The economists may say we have seen the worst of this recession, but with unemployment at nearly 10 percent, most Americans don’t agree. A Congressional Budget Office estimate released last week said the current legislation would cut the gross domestic product 3.5 percent by 2050, news that, despite the distant prediction, plays into the worst fears about this legislation — that it would hurt growth when we desperately need it.
A carbon tax can be designed to accomplish what most environmentalists see as the major advantage of cap and trade — the “cap” itself, which guarantees definite reductions in emissions. The tax can be automatically reviewed and raised (or lowered) every three to five years depending on whether it is achieving real reductions in carbon emissions.
The purpose of climate change legislation should not be to close the deficit or to give Wall Street another commodity to trade. The purpose should be to affect the economic transformation away from fossil fuels. The next generation of energy entrepreneurs is ready to build large-scale wind farms and solar facilities, but they can’t raise the money. A cap-and-trade system that enriches traders but doesn’t guarantee a continually increasing price on carbon will not help create the green industries and the green jobs of tomorrow.
It has been 30 years since the first congressional hearings on the topic of climate change. Compared with health care, the issue is a mere adolescent. And yet the planet can’t afford 30 more years of discussion. A carbon tax shift is a climate policy that is transparent and easy to understand. It can be designed to be revenue neutral and therefore politically palatable. Gore’s first idea was the best one. We should go back to it.
end of excerpt.And a revenue neutral carbon tax will not increase electricity rates if applied... more
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Soils contain more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere according to estimates (Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations, FAO). Increasing the amount of carbon naturally stored in soils could provide the short-term bridge to reduce the impacts of increasing carbon emissions until low-carbon and sustainable technologies can be implemented. A group called Soil Carbon, based in Australia, makes the case for soil carbon storage in a presentation available in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Mexican and Portuguese. The Soil Carbon report includes impressive photographs, such as those above, demonstrating the difference between well-managed and poorly managed soils.
The Soil Carbon report makes a good read in a powerpoint format rich in pictures, and is an easy introduction to a complex topic for the interested layman. The more scientifically oriented, and truly committed, will want to review the FAO report, Carbon Sequestration in Dryland Soils which goes much more in depth in the science and facts behind soil carbon.
The FAO report sheds some doubt on the optimism in the figures presented by Soil Carbon. For example, Soil Carbon calculates the potential for CO2 sequestration in soil by starting from the assumption that soil organic matter can be increased 1% of the total weight of the soils to a depth of 1 meter. By this calculation, Soil Carbon claims a potential increase of 47 tons of carbon per hectare. As reasonable as a simple "1 % increase" may sound, it appears not to be scientifically valid.
According to the FAO (FAO report, page 28): the carbon content of dryland soils is estimated to be 4 tons/hectare. Carbon content ranges between 7 tons and 24 tons in normal (non-depleted) soils, depending on the climate zone and vegetation. Studies show that non-degraded savannahs can have up to 18 tons C/hectare (top 20 cm). Based on this, one can conclude that an increased carbon sequestration of 18 - 4 = 14 tons/hectare is the most optimistic potential achievement, well under the 47 tons/hectare that Soil Carbon suggests is achievable. Nonetheless, the FAO report point out that increasing the carbon content by only 1.5 tons/hectare on 2 billion hectares of degraded lands could balance out predicted increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere due to annual emissions increases. (FAO report, page 6) This would buy time while fossil-fuel free technologies are developed.
Soil Carbon also targets exclusively the use of ruminant grazing as a soil restoration method. This is only one of many methods, which must be used in combinations depending on the local conditions.
end of excerptSoils contain more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere according to estimates... more
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Envirobank is planning to turn the vending model on its head with their reverse vending machines. These contraptions look similar to average vending machines, but they’re designed to accept, clean and crush recyclable materials. Individuals who recycle, say a plastic bottle, will receive coupons, cash credit or vouchers from the machine to be used at neighboring shops.Envirobank is planning to turn the vending model on its head with their reverse... more
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What does the future hold for the traditional billboard? There are so many ways for advertisers to reach people with today’s technology, haven’t they become practically obsolete? What’s more is that with each billboard that goes up there’s an increasing economic and environmental impact from the cost of transportation and recycling of old signage. One solution to the problem, as proposed by Front Architects, suggests transforming billboard structures into small homes that just so happen to be located in some really interesting placesWhat does the future hold for the traditional billboard? There are so many ways for... more
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Follow Steve Thomas as he checks out a net zero house that generates all its own energy using solar panels.
Great video. I want one ;-).Follow Steve Thomas as he checks out a net zero house that generates all its own... more
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Applications: 2getthere provides applications, wether they concern simple connections or complicated networks, ranging from city centers to residential areas, business and industrial parks, institutions, theme parks and resorts.Applications: 2getthere provides applications, wether they concern simple connections... more
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New technology about wind power could possibly power the entire city of New York.
he wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn't power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could.
The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over.
The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept. Up near the jet stream above New York, the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter. The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy, if its intermittency can be overcome.
Even better, the best high-altitude wind-power resources match up with highly populated areas including North America's Eastern Seaboard and China's coastline.New technology about wind power could possibly power the entire city of New York.... more
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Access to healthy food is not just restricted in developing countries. It is also in many cases restricted right here in our own inner cities and it is making us fatter and sicker. Community farming and giving access to healthier food to urban and poor areas of America is definitely a goal that should be entertained in addressing poverty, disease, and obesity in our country. I have heard President Obama speak to many people since his inauguration, except the poor in this country. When are we going to REALLY tackle homelessness and poverty right here in America? Why can't every community in this country have an organic garden like the one he now has outside the White House that feeds his family? Why isn't THAT in any of these politician's healthcare bills?Access to healthy food is not just restricted in developing countries. It is also in... more
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Agriculture, so often cited as a factor in global decline - for claiming natural grasslands that store carbon, soil erosion and pesticide runoff - could become a big part of the solution to global warming, according to a hopeful report by Worldwatch Institute released today.
Innovations in food production and land use that are ready to be put to work could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 25 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and be managed to reduce carbon already in the atmosphere as well, according to WWI and Ecoagriculture Partners.
Carbon capture technology remains unproven and will take a decade at least to put into operation. By contrast, agricultural and land use management practices that are ready today could be employed to sequester carbon through photosynthesis by growing and sustaining more plants.
To understand how and why the agricultural approach to climate change must be a part of the solution, the public first needs to recognize that the world must "go negative" with carbon emissions - producing fewer than it churns out to reach the necessary reductions by 2050, said Sara Scherr, co-author with Sajal Sthapit of the report, Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.
Policymakers must go beyond improving energy efficiency and scaling up renewables and add ways to pull down emissions from forestry and agriculture operations.
The report outlines five ways to reduce and sequester carbon using farming strategies:
* Enriching soil carbon.
* Farming with perennials.
* Climate-friendly livestock production.
* Protecting natural habitat.
* Restoring degraded watersheds and range lands.
For more detail on the report: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18158.cfmAgriculture, so often cited as a factor in global decline - for claiming natural... more
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Fixing deforestation, preserving peatlands and ending reckless agricultural methods could be a major weapon in tackling climate change, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday.
Biological systems, if responsibly managed, can absorb billions of tonnes of the dangerous carbon gases that fuel the greenhouse effect, the agency said in a report coinciding with World Environment Day.
Trees and plants suck in carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, through photosynthesis.
But this natural "sponge" is being damaged by deforestation and agricultural use, which releases the stored carbon to the air.
Around 20 percent of annual greenhouse-gas emissions are imputable to logging, farming and burning of peatlands, according to scientists.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said major countries had earmarked tens of billions of dollars in investments in carbon capture and storage technology, by which CO2 is siphoned off at power stations and then pumped underground or under the sea.
"But perhaps the international community is overlooking a tried-and-tested method that has been working for millennia -- the biosphere," he said.
"By some estimates, the Earth's living systems might be capable of sequestering more than 50 gigatonnes [50 billion tonnes] of carbon over the coming decades with the right market signals."
The report touched on areas that are up for debate in talks to craft a new global pact on climate change. The accord, scheduled to be sealed in Copenhagen in December, will be take effect from the end of 2012.
Separately, a study published in a science journal said the future pact, by incorporating an innovative mechanism, could deal a blow to tropical deforestation while also preserve precious biodiversity.
The paper looked at the scenarios by which this proposed mechanism, called Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), could work.
Under REDD, countries that conserve their tropical forests and tackle deforestation would earn credits for reduced emissions. These credits would be sold on an international carbon market, or compensated through an international fund.
But REDD is making slow progress in the UN talks, amid worries about its cost and how it would work in practice.
end of excerptFixing deforestation, preserving peatlands and ending reckless agricultural methods... more
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Louise Fresco, expert on agricultural and sustainability, presents a TED talk on rethinking small scale solutions to our agricultural crisis. Fresco explains that our romanticism of small scale solutions begins with the "mythical image of how life was in rural areas in the past" which undermines the reality of poor farmers and the hard morally unjustified work that is required to feed the world.
Linking historical traditions to our modern world, Fresco talks about the costs of industrial farming, environmental (such as pollution and species annihilation) and health (such as diabetes), but asks us to rethink small scale farming as a solution to these costs. Fresco demands that technology not need to create these costs but to increase to avoid them. Fresco says the world needs "cheap, affordable, and safe foods" and not "luxury solutions" which has so far characterized small scale, organic solutions.
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We need not only be skeptical of our industrial routes of food and the costs which are now unarguable, but also skeptical about how our alternatives are truly approaching and solving the problem. Many of us will never know how the food gets to our plates and will never know about the millions of poor farmers that must work to bring us our alternatives. Technology has allowed us the privilege be free from having to farm and also for civil rights to be given to those that were forced to work farms. Slavery still exists in the agricultural sector, small scale solutions will not free them. I believe small scale can help empower those who can't afford to eat healthy (see South Central Farms http://escapefromsuburbia.com/southcentral.html) , but small scale will not feed the world or free people we take advantage of. One thing to think about is our technologies don't have to make bad foods cheap (i.e. HFCS) but they can make good food cheap. Fresco does an amazing presentation to outline these ideas.
Please watch the video and share your thoughts.Louise Fresco, expert on agricultural and sustainability, presents a TED talk on... more
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Counting the climate-warming carbon dioxide locked up in forests could offer a cheaper way to curb the greenhouse gas than by considering only emissions from industry and fossil fuels, according to a new study.
Factories, power plants and petroleum-powered vehicles are likely to emit some 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere this century, according to the study released on Thursday in the journal Science.
By contrast, the world's forests hold some 2 trillion tons of carbon. As long as the forests stand, that huge amount of greenhouse gas stays out of the atmosphere, but if some of these woodlands are cleared for farming -- including biofuel crops like ethanol -- they start releasing carbon into the air, where it can add to the problem of climate change.
snip
To keep atmospheric carbon concentrations at 450 parts per million -- the level advised by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to avoid the worst impacts of global warming -- the model that factored in forest carbon had a carbon price of about $1,300 a ton by the year 2095.
The model that considered only industrial and fossil fuel emissions had a carbon price of $3,500 a ton by century's end.
Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is currently between 380 and 385 parts per million, compared with a pre-industrial level of about 280 parts per million.Counting the climate-warming carbon dioxide locked up in forests could offer a cheaper... more
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New Energy Technologies has announced that the Company is continuing to further advance the development of its tinted transparent glass SolarWindows capable of generating electricity by coating glass surfaces with the world's smallest known organic solar cells.
New Energy's SolarWindow technology uses an organic solar array, which achieves transparency through the creative use of conducting polymers which have the same desirable electrical properties as the world's most commercially popular semiconductor, silicon, yet boast a considerably better capacity to 'optically absorb' photons from light and generate electricity.
The Company's ultra-small solar cells measure less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice, are fabricated using environmentally-friendly hydrogen-carbon based materials, and successfully produce electricity, as demonstrated in a published peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy of the American Institute of Physics.
"Our use of these new, readily available and easy-to-apply ultra-small solar cells marks an important advance over the early research and development of our transparent photovoltaic SolarWindow technology, and directly addresses numerous commercial and technical limitations posed by conventional materials, including thin films, polycrystalline solar cells, and silicon," stated Mr. Meetesh V. Patel, Esq., President and CEO of New Energy Technologies, Inc.
"I'm particularly impressed by the potential application of this technology in areas where direct exposure to sunlight is limited or unavailable, since these ultra-small solar cells have demonstrated a special ability to generate electricity in both natural and artificial light conditions."
Unlike other solar technologies, New Energy's ultra-small solar cells generate electricity not only from the visible light spectrum found in sunlight but also by using the visible light found in artificial light, such as fluorescent lighting typically installed in offices and commercial buildings.
Commercially, while the majority of today's solar cells can only be installed where direct sunlight is available, New Energy's ultra-small solar cells can be installed anywhere that direct sunlight or artificial lighting such as fluorescent systems emit visible light.
Ultra-Small Solar Cells: Generating Electricity on Transparent Glass
New Energy's SolarWindow technology makes use of ultra-small solar cells which allows for the fabrication of solar arrays on a broad range of substrate materials such as glass, plastic, and even paper. Made of natural polymers which can be dissolved into liquid for easy application, these ultra-small solar cells do not require expensive and complicated high-temperature or high-vacuum production techniques common to other solar coatings.New Energy Technologies has announced that the Company is continuing to further... more
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When you think “FEMA Trailer” the first images that pop into your head aren’t exactly pleasant, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Artist Paul Villinski has taken a typical FEMA trailer, repurposed and transformed it into what he calls an Emergency Response Studio.When you think “FEMA Trailer” the first images that pop into your head aren’t... more
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