Toyota spends millions on solar power in Durban
April 29, 2008
Posted in Business, Renewable energy, Transport
Toyota‘s manufacturing plant in Durban is installing solar energy in a R3.5-million project that is expected to save the company R95,000 a month on energy costs, according a media release.
The car manufacturer had already installed 150 solar panels by June 2007 and has plans to install another 120 of them. So, by the end of 2008, Toyota will have installed 270 solar panels into its Durban plant, says the release.
It does not specify how much electricity the solar panels will generate or what percentage of the plant’s total electricity consumption the solar power will replace. But it does say that “the company’s Prospecton plant in Durban used electricity and gas to heat water, it will now use energy converted from the sun as a source of heat.”
The solar panels will allow the car manufacturer to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by about 1,350 tons a year.
It will also help to reduce the impact of Eskom’s “load shedding” on the company’s operations.
Source: Mediaweb.co.za
World needs another ‘hero generation’, says Al Gore
April 15, 2008
Posted in Green News
As important it is to change the lightbulbs, it’s more important to change the laws, says Nobel Prize-winning climate campaigner Al Gore in a new slide show he gave in February at the TED talks in Monterray, California.
Gore wants this generation to rise to the environmental challenge presented to us by climate change, which he calls a ‘planetary emergency’, by mobilising the political will to do something about it.
Gore says environmental problems can be classified into the same three categories military conflicts typicaly are: local battles; regional wars; and the rare but all-important world wars. Each level of conflict requires a different allocation of resources, approach and organisational model. Most of the environmental issues we think about – air pollution, water pollution, hazardous waste dumps – are local. There are also regional environmental problems, like acid rain in one area originating from industrial pollution in another. The climate crisis is a global problem, he says. “Everything is affected.”
“We need to organise our response appropriately. We need a worldwide global mobilisation for renewable energy, conservation, efficiency and a global transition to a low-carbon economy. We need to mobilise resources, but the political will needs to be mobilised in order to mobilise the resources,” he says.
To do this we need “another hero generation”, he says. ” We have to find a way to create a sense of generational mission.”
He uses the African saying that “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. He says we have to go far quickly so we have to have a change in consciousness, and a commitment to a new sense of urgency.
The world has the capacity to do something about global warming, he says. Just one week’s worth of the spending on the Iraq war would put us well on the way to solving this problem.
Mozambican musician wins top environment prize
April 14, 2008
Posted in Green News
Mozambican musician Feliciano dos Santos has won the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa for his work promoting ecological sanitation in remote areas of Mozambique. The Goldman Environmental Prize honours grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabitated continents. Dos Santos and his band Massukos use music to promote the importance of water and sanitation, HIV/Aids and food security.
As part of his work as director of NGO Estamos, he promotes low cost, “ecological sanitation”, which uses composting toilets called EcoSans to transform human waste into agricultural fertiliser. After each use a family adds soil and ash to the toilet for a number of months. The pit is then buried and left for eight months and another pit is used. “During the eight months all the harmful pathogens die off, leaving a rich fertiliser that can be dug up and used in the fields,” according to the Goldman prize website. Since 2000 Santos and Estamos have helped thousands of villagers gain access to clean water and ecological sanitation, it adds.
Read more on BBC News
Biofuel plan for Kenyan river delta
April 13, 2008
Posted in Green News
Environmental groups are concerned about plans by a sugar company to plant 20,000 hectares of sugar cane in the delta of the Tana River in Kenya, Britain’s Observer newspaper reports. Half will be for biofuels and half for food. An ethanol refinery is also part of the planned project. Although thousands of jobs will be created, environmental groups are concerned that monoculture planting will replace a large area of diverse habitat, and that irrigation will use up large amounts of the available water. Read more on the Observer
Pimp my Prius
April 11, 2008
Posted in Lifestyle
New York psychiatrist and Star Trek enthusiast Willie Yee is in the process of converting his 2007 Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle into a Federation shuttlecraft, the Toyota Open Road Blog reports. Adjustments made so far include custom graphics, “spun-alloy Moon hubcaps”, blue undercar LED lights that flash in “a cool pattern”, and new seat covers. He’s set it up so that the car’s screen “displays the vehicle’s phasers and its warp-drive system, and provides all the appropriate sound effects”. Oh, and on his wish list is a “custom-painted front bumper that displays phaser cannons on its corners”. Read more on the Toyota Open Road Blog.
Photograph from Willie Yee’s website. To see more pics of the car click here
Migrating swallows die in their thousands in Limpopo
April 10, 2008
Posted in Green News
Tens of thousands of swallows have died in South Africa’s Limpopo province, AFP reports. The birds were due to migrate to Europe, but because of a cold snap last month they were unable to feed properly, says BirdLife South Africa.
Farmers in the area were concerned that the birds had been poisoned. But News24 reports that Gerhard Verdoorn, Birdlife SA’s executive director, said that about three weeks ago, temperatures in the province had plummeted from 21 degrees Celcius to 9 degrees in Limpopo province and the conditions were too wet for the birds to feed. “They became hypothermic (low body temperatures) and hypoglycaemic (low blood-sugar levels).” The birds that managed to survive started their migration on March 28, said Verdoorn.
According to the News24 report, this is not the first mass death of birds in South Africa. Since 2000, the phenomenon has become more frequent and several birds species have been affected.
Verdoorn said climate change was to blame. “The weather changes occurring are vast. February was regarded as being the wet month and March the drier one, but now the situation has changed.”
Via :: TerraDaily and News24.com
Watch the birdies
April 9, 2008
Posted in Conservation
BirdLife South Africa has announced it will develop six new birding routes in the Western Cape and Cape Town areas. Birding Routes provide tourists with suggested itineraries, trained local guides and birder-friendly accommodation in bird-rich areas. The conservation organisation says that avitourism in South Africa is taking off, with two popular birding routes generating about $6.4-million annually for local people. The new Western Cape routes will give tourists access to about 600 bird species, says BirdLife.
LUNGLESS FROG – Scientists have discovered the first frog that gets all the oxygen it needs through its skin. The lungless Barbourula kalimantanensis, which lives in cold, fast-flowing water in Indonesian Borneo, may be new to science, but it is reportedly already threatened by illegal gold mining. Via :: Science Daily
BLOOD WITH A BITE – Proteins in alligator blood may provide a source of powerful new anitbiotics, researchers believe. Alligators have an unusually strong immune system and researchers hope that their blood may help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers, severe burns, “superbugs” as well as Candida albicans yeast infections. Via :: ScienceDaily
Wal-Mart’s green plan for its Chinese suppliers
April 9, 2008
Posted in Business
Thirty percent of the goods produced in China for export are apparently purchased by one US retail giant, Wal-Mart. And as part of moves by the mega-retailer to green up its supply chain, it plans to hold a meeting with about 1,000 Chinese producers to push them to reduce their environmental impact, Greenbiz.com reports. “The company plans to reduce the amount of packaging used by products by 5 percent by 2013 and created a packaging scorecard to help suppliers see where they can make improvements.” Read more on Greenbiz.com.
Via :: The Daily Green
Don’t forget to feed the worms
April 9, 2008
Posted in Green tips, Lifestyle
For all the eco-minded people in Johannesburg thinking of “semigrating” to Cape Town, here’s a little something to whet your apetite. Not only is the stately Mount Nelson hotel practising vermiculture, even little restaurants tucked away in shady Noordhoek are using worms to recycle their kitchen scraps. This wormery stands outside a restaurant in a little shopping centre near the start of Chapman’s Peak Drive. The headline on the information board reads: “Earthworms can teach us a thing or two about recycling!” Yup, so can Noordhoek’s restaurants. Even the one next door has its own wormery, so the waitress told me. What’s more, Cape Town’s corner shops sell Coca-Cola in those refundable 500ml glass bottles. I haven’t seen those in Joburg for years.
Climate change challenges ‘seriously underestimated’
April 8, 2008
Posted in Green News
The world’s foremost scientific body on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has “seriously underestimated” the technological advances that need to be made to stabilise carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere at acceptable levels, argues a group of climate policy experts in the journal Nature.
Roger Pielke Jr, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green argue that it is “risky” to assume, as the IPCC does, that the technological advances needed to reduce future emissions will occur spontaneously.
“The world is on a development and energy path that will bring with it a surge in carbon-dioxide emissions — a surge that can only end with a transformation of global energy systems. We believe such technological transformation will take many decades to complete, even if we start taking far more aggressive action on energy technology innovation today,” they write.
Extra policy measures are needed to stimulate the innovation that will improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide intensity in energy technologies, they argue. They also suggest that the IPPC focuses on “creating the conditions for such innovations to occur”.
Via :: SciDev.net
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