ECOLOGY

THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF BIOFUELS

JEFFREY A MCNEELY, BBC - The grain required to fill the petrol tank of a
Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person per year.
Assuming the petrol tank is refilled every two weeks, the amount of
grain required would feed a hungry African village for a year Much of
the fuel that Europeans use will be imported from Brazil, where the
Amazon is being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and Southeast
Asia, where oil palm plantations are destroying the rainforest habitat
of orangutans and many other species. Species are dying for our driving.


The expansion of biofuels would increase monoculture farming If ethanol
is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses
fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation
using fertilizers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing
maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces,
and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind.

[Jeffrey A McNeely is chief scientist of IUCN, the World Conservation
Union, based in Switzerland]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/sci/tech/5369284.stm

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FREE OR LOW COST WAYS TO GREEN YOUR KITCHEN AND LAUNDRY

[From Consumer Reports]

Run the dishwasher and the washing machine only when they are full.

Don't prerinse dishes before loading the dishwasher. You'll save as much
as 20 gallons a load, or 6,500 gallons per year. Our tests show
prerinsing doesn't improve cleaning.

When your dish load is small, fill the sink or basin and wash dishes by
hand. Place soapy dishes on a rack, and spray rinse.

Wash vegetables and fruits in a bowl or basin using a vegetable brush;
don't let the water run.

Use recycled water on plants. Sources: water left from boiled eggs, tea
kettles, and washed vegetables; dehumidifier condensate.

Investigate using waste water from the washing machine, bathtub, or sink
on outdoor, inedible plants. States vary in their approach to so-called
gray-water use. . .

Steam vegetables instead of boiling. Besides using less water, you'll
retain more vitamins in the food.

Chill drinking water in the refrigerator instead of running the faucet
until the water is cold.

Defrost food in the refrigerator, not in a pan of water on the counter
or in the sink. Besides saving water, it's less likely to breed
bacteria.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/
50-ways-to-save-water-805/index.htm


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SHOULD YOU OBSERVE 'USE BY' LABELS ON FOOD?

LUCY SIEGLE, OBSERVER, UK - According to a recent report, 70 per cent
of produce is dumped by producers and retailers before it even gets to
the store. . . One quarter of all the food waste that goes into British
landfill is reckoned to be edible, and a sizeable portion of that will
be food with highly conservative end-of-life dates. Whether you observe
dates depends on whether you view them as labels that protect our health
or as a ruse to get you to buy more. If it's the latter, you'll
appreciate the freegan movement, which throws all culinary caution to
the wind by advocating urban and rural foraging - from dumpster diving
and skip harvesting (rooting in bins outside restaurants and
supermarkets) to plate scraping (going into restaurants and scraping the
leftovers straight from diners' plates - you can't be shy in this
business). I am yet to find one freegan who admits to ever having had
food poisoning.

Noticeably, if you buy produce unwrapped from a farmers' market it comes
without a directive on when to throw it out, requiring use of eyes, nose
and common sense to judge when food is dangerous. These are the kind of
sustainable talents worth fostering.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1880427,00.html

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GREEN GIZMO UPDATE

JUSTIN MCCURRY, GUARDIAN - Heated seats and computerized bidets are
practically standard in modern Japanese toilets, but what greenie points
the country's WCs lose in electricity consumption, they try to make up
for in water savings. The addition of a tap and basin on top of the
cistern - so that, when you wash your hands, the water from the basin
then re-fills the cistern - seems a far more elegant solution than any
of the electronic add-ons. . . Most feature handles you can turn one
way for a big flush, the other for a smaller, less wasteful one.

Modern Japanese homes are designed so that the washing machine is
installed just a few meters from the bathtub - and with good reason.
Many households now save water by feeding it from a pipe placed in a tub
of used bathwater into the washing machine. . .

Philips has come up with a new light bulb design that may eventually
replace the compact fluorescent light bulb as our best green lighting
option. Based on light emitting diodes, the bulb is said to use far less
energy even than CFLs. In the meantime, ponder the thought that, if
every household in the US replaced one traditional (incredibly
inefficient) incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would be the equivalent of
taking one million cars off the road. . .

Samsung has created a prototype widescreen LCD television that consumes
only 80 watts. . .

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,1876043,00.html

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CHURCHES COME OUT AGAINST BOTTLED WATER

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, GLOBE & MAIL, CANADA - Bottled water has never gone
down smoothly with many environmentalists, who view it as an
extravagantly wasteful way of quenching a thirst, but the product is
facing criticism from an unexpected source -- religious groups. Some
churches in Canada have started to urge congregants to boycott bottled
water, citing ethical, theological and social justice reasons. Bottled
water, they argue, is morally tainted and should be avoided. In British
Columbia, for instance, the First United Church in Kelowna no longer
wants bottled water on the premises. "We are starting to make the church
building a bottled-water-free zone," said Sandi Evans, one of the 350
congregants.

The St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ottawa used to sell bottled
water at its fundraising events, but stopped this year. "We're not doing
that any more," congregant Heidi Geraets said. And last month, the
United Church passed a motion urging its nearly one million Canadian
adherents to leave bottled water on the store shelves, unless
alternative sources of safe water aren't available.

Per capita, Canadians consume about 60 liters a year, according to trade
industry figures, roughly mirroring the average beer consumption. With
such high usage, bottled water has become a staple in millions of homes.

Rural residents living near wells or springs used by bottlers almost
invariably object to the companies arriving in their area, and
high-profile fights with bottlers over groundwater depletion have been
common in Ontario and in the United States. Congregants who object to
bottled water say they sympathize with such worries.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060923.WATER23/
TPStory/?query=water+united+church


UNITED CHURCH WATER FOCUS
http://www.united-church.ca/waterfocus/

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SAVING THE EARTH IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

MARK RICE-OXLEY, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - As the international
community faces costs in the trillions to address climate change,
businessmen are increasingly becoming aware that changing the world -
its fuels, technologies, energy sources, and waste disposal practices -
can be an opportunity as well as a cost.

For small- and medium-sized British companies, it could mean $55 billion
worth of business opportunities over the coming decade, according to a
new report commissioned by oil giant Shell UK. And globally, the market
could be worth $1 trillion over the next five years, the report found.
Such conclusions challenge President Bush's assertion that adopting the
Kyoto Protocol, which compels signatories to cut greenhouse gases, would
seriously damage America's economy.

"President Bush is right to argue that tackling climate change will cost
us money," notes Robin Smale, director of Vivid Economics, the London
consultancy that produced the report for Shell. "But for every pound or
dollar consumers spend on [green technology or services], this is going
to the people who are doing something about it: the people making the
biofuels or building new environmentally friendly housing or putting up
the windfarms."

While the costs are substantial, and some people will inevitably lose
jobs as industries adapt to new regulations and demands, dithering could
prove even more costly. An authoritative report by a former World Bank
vice president, Sir Nicholas Stern, due out imminently in Britain is
expected to argue that the future economic costs of failing to act will
far outweigh the cost of action today to mitigate climate change.
Another recent report by Friends of the Earth in conjunction with Tufts
University argued that spending L1.6 trillion ($2 trillion) a year now
could avert L6.4 trillion ($8 trillion) in annual damages further down
the line.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1025/p04s01-wogi.html

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