Another reason why shade-grown coffee is best
October 22, 2008
Posted in Lifestyle
Next time you buy a cup of coffee or coffe beans check if it’s shade grown. Coffee grown in this way is not only more environmentally friendly, it could also have long-term benefits for the millions of people in developing countries who rely on coffee for their livelihoods, say researchers.
Traditionally, coffee farmers in Latin America grew their plants under the shade of a diverse canopy of beans. But, in an effort to increase production, many have apparently abandoned these old methods in favour of “sun coffee”, which involves thinning or removing the canopy and using high-yield strains that grow best in direct sunlight.
Shade-grown farms boost biodiversity by providing a haven for birds and other animals and they require less synthetic fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides than sun-coffee plantations, say researchers from the University of Michigan. They also say that the canopy shields coffee plants during extreme weather events, such as droughts and severe storms, that are expected to become more frequent because of climate change.
“Shaded coffee is ideal because it will buffer the system from climate change while protecting biodiversity,” said Ivette Perfecto of the university’s school of natural resources and environment, who has studied biodiversity in Latin American coffee plantations for 20 years.
Shade trees help dampen the effects of drought and heat waves by maintaining a cool, moist microclimate beneath the canopy. They also act as windbreaks during storms and help reduce runoff and erosion, the researchers say.
“These two trends – increasing agricultural intensification and the trend towards more frequent extreme-weather events – will work in concert to increase farmer vulnerability,” said Brenda Lin, the lead author of the study, which was published in the October edition of the journal BioScience.
“We should take advantage of the services the ecosystems naturally provide, and use them to protect farmers’ livelihoods.”
Source: Science Daily
EU bans light bulbs
October 22, 2008
Posted in Green News, Lifestyle
The European Union this month pulled the plug on old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs. They will be banned in Europe as of 2010. The EU has also lifted import duties on energy-saving lamps from China, which will help lower retail prices of more energy-efficient light bulbs.
Incandescent bulbs use up to five times more energy than efficient lights, such as compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). By replacing old lamps with the best available technology the EU will reportedly reduce the energy consumption for lighting of its 500-million citizens by 60 percent, which is the equivalent of about 30-million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Australia has also banned incandescent light bulbs from 2010.
Source: WWF
eBay bans ivory
October 22, 2008
Posted in Conservation
eBay has decided to ban the sale of elephant ivory products from January 2009 and has called on all other Internet traders to do the same, a move that has been congratulated by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
IFAW says that the trade in wildlife on the Internet poses a significant and immediate threat to the survival of elephants and many other endangered species. In a report released this week the group tracked more than 7,000 wildlife product listings on 183 websites in 11 countries. eBay was responsible for almost two-thirds of the online trade in wildlife products worldwide.
According to the IFAW report, Killing with Keystrokes: An Investigation of the Illegal Wildlife Trade on the World Wide Web, more than 70 percent of all endangered species’ products listed for sale on the Internet are in the United States. The trade tracked in the US was nearly 10 times that tracked in the next two leading countries, the United Kingdom and China.
Elephant ivory made up 73 percent of the products tracked and exotic birds nearly 20 percent. But IFAW said that primates, big cats and other animals are also falling victim to the e-trade in live animals and wildlife products.
Despite the fact that the saie of ivory has been illegal since 1989, website are “teeming with ivory trinkets, bracelets, and even whole tusks for sale”, said IFAW. And every year, more than 20,000 elephants are illegally slaughtered in Africa and Asia to meet demand for ivory products.
What’s in a name? R5,000 actually
October 20, 2008
Posted in Green News
Think of a name for the Glass Recycling Company’s logo (pictured right) and you could win a nice R5,000 cash bonus for Christmas. It’s your opportunity to help convert South Africans into glass recycling champions.
The competition has been running for a while and a few hundred entries have been received already, but the closing date has been extended.
“Interestingly, many of the entries in so far have been similar in approach with a strong weighting towards names that emphasise the bottle’s characteristics, rather than what he represents: glass recycling and environmentalism,” says Shabeer Jhetam, general manager of The Glass Recycling Company.
The name should also be one that is representative of the demographics of the country, the company says. “Like Zakumi for [the] 2010 [Soccer World Cup], so too should our icon’s name be easily recognisable, it should roll off the tongue without difficulty and must be representative of what The Glass Recycling Company is trying to achieve: a nation of glass recyclers,” says Jhetam.
You’ll find the judging criteria and competition rules on The Glass Recycling Company’s website, plus an online entry form. Or you can send your entries to mel[at]simonsayscom[dot]co[dot]za or fax them to 011-465-7553 (don’t forget to include your contact details with your entry).
You have until November 30 to come up with a good name, so get your thinking caps on.
Light pollution: Join the Great World Wide Star Count
October 20, 2008
Posted in Green News
Global city lights (Data courtesy Marc Imhoff of NASA GSFC and Christopher Elvidge of NOAA NGDC. Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC. From: Visible Earth)
If you’re interested in the night skies and the impact of light pollution on the world, the Great World Wide Star Count is a fun educational activity you can take part in with your family.
Starting tonight (October 20) until November 3 all you have to do is go outside about an hour after sunset and look at the Sagittarius constellation (if you’re in the southern hemisphere, if you’re north of the equator look for Cygnus) to see how visible it is and then share your observations as a “citizen scientist” over the Internet.
“Without even being aware of it, many of us have lost the ability to see many stars at night. Part of our goal is getting people to look up and regain an appreciation of the night sky,” says Dennis Ward of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in the United States, which is organizing the Star Count in conjunction with planetariums and scientific societies around the world.
All you need to know about participating in this even is on the Great World Wide Star Count website. It contains easy-to-follow instructions on how to find the Sagittarius (and Cygnus) constellation, how to find your geographic co-ordinates (if you don’t have a GPS handy) and there’s star “magnitude charts” with which you will match your own observations. There’s also plenty of information about astronomy to help get you started.
The first star count was held last year (2007) and drew 6,624 observations taken on all seven continents. This year, the organisers expect the number of participants to double.
Last year’s observations were used to generate maps of star visibility around the world.
There’s more information on the Windows to the Universe website
Ivory sale won’t help Africa’s elephants, say conservationists
October 17, 2008
Posted in Conservation
About 51 tonnes of South African stockpiled ivory is to be sold as part of a CITES-approved once-off sale to China and Japan. This is just under half of 108 tonnes of government-owned Southern African ivory that will be auctioned in the next two weeks. Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe are the other sellers. But elephant conservationists are against the sale saying it will encourage poachers to launder their illegal stocks.
“We have no doubt that flooding the market with over 100 tons of ivory will put this endangered species in even further jeopardy,” said Michael Wamithi, programme director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (IFAW’s) global elephants programme and former director of the Kenya Wildlife Service.
“Throughout west and central Africa, isolated populations have actually been wiped out completely due to illegal hunting. If we do not take this trade seriously, we will surely continue see the demise of these majestic creatures – and sooner rather than later.”
The CITES Secretariat has certified that the South African ivory is of legal origin, the South African department of environmental affairs and tourism said in a media statement. The ivory comes from the South African National Parks (SANParks) and the parks boards of Mpumalanga, North West, and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Collectively the provincial agencies account for about 6 metric tons of the full stockpiled ivory, the department says.
About 45 percent of the ivory was obtained from culling between 1988 and 1994, when the country’s largest game reserve, the Kruger National Park, still practised this method of population control. The rest of the ivory, obtained from 1995 to the end of 2006, was from mortalities and breakages, the department says.
Ivory that was registered from 2007 onwards is not eligible for sale according to the agreement reached at the 14th Conference of Parties to CITES held in the Netherlands in July 2007.
“The tusks from elephants that have been part of the so called “big tuskers” in Kruger National Park will not be sold as it is seen as part of the heritage of South Africa that will be conserved for the future. Most of these tusks will be displayed in the Elephant Museum in Letaba Camp in Kruger National Park where visitors can see the tusks and get information on the carriers of these tusks,” said Dr David Mabunda, chief executive of SANParks.
CITES ruled only in July that China was fit to become a trading partner for the ivory. Japan was approved in 2006. Both countries stated that they would closely monitor their domestic markets, said CITES in a press release.
“The secretariat will closely supervise this sale and evaluate its impact on elephant population levels throughout Africa. We will continue monitoring the Chinese and Japanese domestic trade controls to ensure that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to launder ivory from illegal origin”, said the secretary-general of the convention, Willem Wijnstekers.
But, says IFAW, both nations are known to be among the world’s largest illegal ivory markets. “Several multiple ton seizures have been made at Chinese ports in recent years. The lack of enforcement for the registration systems in both countries also provides a convenient loophole for illegal traders,” it says in a press release.
According to IFAW, the total amounts being auctioned are: Botswana 44 tonnes; Namibia 9 tonnes; South Africa 51 tonnes; and Zimbabwe 4 tonnes. These are the remnants of at least 10,000 elephants, the group says.
Jason Bell-Leask, Regional Director for IFAW’s southern Africa office also expressed his disdain. “The international trade in ivory simply cannot be justified by a perceived short-term gain such as profits from these sales. Not only are elephants a keystone species, but African tourism relies on their existence. To toy with that is to toy with the livelihoods of the citizens within these poor African nations.”
CITES banned the international commercial ivory trade in 1989. In 1997 it permitted Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to make a one-time sale of ivory to Japan totalling 50 tons because, says CITES, it recognised that “some Southern African elephant populations were healthy and well managed”. That sale took place in 1999 and raised about $5 million for elephant conservation. The forthcoming auction will be the second sale sanctioned since the ban.
Elephant pic by: nickandmel2006 licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0
Unique ecosystem found 2,8km down Witwatersrand gold mine
October 14, 2008
Posted in Green News
The rod-shaped D. audaxviator was recovered from water collected in the Mponeng Mine. (Micrograph by Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute, and Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario, used with permission)
An organism has been found living in its own little ecosystem 2,8km below the surface of the Earth in the Mponeng gold mine on the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg.
The rod-shaped bacterium, called Desulforudis audaxviator, exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat. It constitutes the first known single-species ecosystem, say researchers.
The bacterium gets its energy from hydrogen and sulphate produced by the radioactive decay of uranium. Because it lives alone, researchers believe that it builds its organic molecules by itself out of water, inorganic carbon, and nitrogen from ammonia in the surrounding rocks and fluid.
Researchers made their remarkable discovery when they drilled into fluid-filled fractures in the mine and extracted about 5,000 litres of water, which they filtered to extract DNA. Using the techniques of environmental genomics, also called metagenomics, the researchers sequenced and analysed the bacterium’s genome.
Just one species
“We knew from previous work in these mines, using molecular biology techniques, that there seemed to be very simple communities living down there,” says Fred Brockman of the Biology Department of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where the DNA was extracted from the filtered cells.
“We expected we’d have a good chance of assembling one entire genome of the most dominant species, or perhaps 70 to 80 percent of several species.”
But, to the surprise of the researchers, only one organism was present in the DNA.
Dylan Chivian, the bioinformatics lead at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Berkeley, California, says: “What we instead discovered was that there was only one organism present in the sample. More than 99.9 percent of the DNA came from that single organism, and the tiny remainder appeared to be trace contamination from the mine and the laboratory.”
Even before the analysis was complete it was evident that the lone species’s genome was remarkable, the researchers say.
Completely independent
The genome contained everything needed for the organism to sustain an independent existence and reproduce, including the ability to incorporate the elements necessary for life from inorganic sources, move freely, and protect itself from viruses, harsh conditions, and nutrient-poor periods by becoming a spore.
“One question that has arisen when considering the capacity of other planets to support life is whether organisms can exist independently, without access even to the sun,” says Chivian. “The answer is yes, and here’s the proof. It’s sort of philosophically exciting to know that everything necessary for life can be packed into a single genome.”
D. audaxviator not only has the equipment to get its energy from sulphates, it appears to have “borrowed” genes by horizontal gene transfer from archaea. Some 280 types of bacteria and 44 types of archaea have been found in microbial communities in the South African mines.
Carbon sources
D. audaxviator can get its carbon from a number of sources, depending on the local surroundings, the researcher say. It can digest sugars and amino acids, suggesting that one source of carbon might be the dead cells of other microbes. But in the fluid from the Mponeng mine, it gets carbon from carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, bicarbonate, formate, and other nonbiological sources.
Its nitrogen comes from ammonia released from rocks and dissolved in the fluid, but could, if necessary, extract nitrogen from its surroundings after first converting it to ammonia, say the researchers.
About the only thing D. audaxviator can’t do is resist oxygen, which suggests it hasn’t been exposed to pure oxygen for a very long time – perhaps millions of years.
D. audaxviator’s remarkable capabilities gave rise to its remarkable name. The genus name Desulforudis is from the Latin for “from sulphur” and “rod,” noting its shape and its ability to get energy from sulphates. Audaxviator comes from Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, in a message in Latin deciphered by Verne’s protagonist, Professor Lidenbrock, which reads in part, “descende, Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges.” It means “descend, Bold traveller, and attain the centre of the Earth.”
The researchers reported their results in the 10 October 2008 issue of the journal Science.
Source: Berkley Lab
Africa’s largest wind farm and other renewable energy news
October 14, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
- Ethiopia has signed a $300-million deal with French wind turbine manufacturer Vergnet to build the largest wind farm in Arica. The 120MW project, to be built near Mekele in the northern Tigray region, is expected to be up and running by 2012. [AFP, Reuters]
- The US Army reportedly intends to build a 500MW concentrating solar power plant at Fort Irwin in California’s Mojave Desert. The project is five times bigger than South African electricity utility Eskom’s proposed 100MW plant in Upington. [Treehugger]
- Twenty-four schools in the German city of Berlin have been turned into “mini power plants” in a scheme that allows private individuals to rent roof space on school and public buildings for photovoltaic panels. Berlin reportedly has ambitions to become a solar power house. The city already has 10,000 jobs in the solar sector and that is expected to increase tenfold in the next decade. Germany produces about half of the world’s solar electricity and, according to Reuters, last year alone it installed enough capacity to power a million homes. [Reuters]
- US researchers have found a way to make silicon-based solar cells that are “flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars”. Using a special etching technique, brittle wafers of silicon are sliced off a bulk silicon wafer into ultrathin bits and “printed” onto a flexible surface. The slices can be adapted to suit the application, say the researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The technology has been licensed to a US company called Semprius Inc. [Reuters]
- Japan plans to subsidise households that install solar power systems in a bid to stimulate the mass production of the systems and bring down costs. The subsidy will cover about 10 percent of the total cost of the system. Home solar systems apparently generate about 1.4-million kilowatts of electricity in Japan, but the government wants this to increase tenfold by 2020. [Reuters]
- And, finally, to South Africa, where the country’s first clean technology fund was launched recently. The Evolution One fund has reportedly already raised R400-million and has a target to increase that to R1-billion by the middle of next year. The fund plans to make 10 to 15 investments over a period of three to five years in Southern Africa. According to the Engineering News, among the projects the fund is looking at becoming involved with were thin-film solar manufacturing, retail goods from recycled industrial waste, co-generation, and electric vehicles. [Engineering News]
Pic of wind farm in Illinois by Dual Freq licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Nokia offers SA’s first cellphone take-back service
October 13, 2008
Posted in Lifestyle
If each of the 3 billion people in the world who owns a cellphone recycled just one device, 240,000 tons of raw materials could be saved and greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 4 million cars off the road could be saved, says Markus Terho, a director of environmental affairs at Nokia.
But at present only 3 percent of old cellphones are being recycled because people appear to be unaware that they can be.
Nokia has started taking back unwanted cellphones in South Africa with the aim of raising consumer awareness in this country of the fact that these devices can be recycled.
The company has already placed recycling boxes at 20 of its care points, but pretty soon all 34 Nokia care points countrywide should have them, the company says. Take-back collection points should display Nokia’s “We recycle” logo on a poster in the shop window.
You can drop off any make of mobile device including accessories and batteries, the company says.
At present the phones that are handed in are shipped overseas to an accredited recycler because there are no accredited partners in South Africa with the required certifications to do the recycling locally. But the company says it is working at sourcing recyclers within the local market that can be given the necessary accreditation to ensure the proper treatment of used devices.
Between 65 and 80 percent of any Nokia device is recyclable, says Terho. Precious materials can be reclaimed and reused in products such as kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments. Plastics that can’t be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill, says the company.
Thanks to its globally expanding cellphone take-back programme, Nokia has reclaimed the top spot in the latest Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics. The company says it’s working hard to make it easier for people to recycle, providing information and take-back programmes.
A survey conducted earlier this year found that globally people on average have each owned about five phones, but very few are thrown away or recycled. More than 40 pecent of people simply had them lying around unused in drawers. About 25 percent said they passed on their old phones to friends or family, and 16 percent sold their used devices in emerging markets.
To find your closest Nokia Care point visit the Nokia website or phone 086 11 NOKIA.
Have some respect for our public spaces
October 13, 2008
Posted in Lifestyle
This is a picture of Germiston Lake, a public recreation area east of Johannesburg. It was taken at about 4pm on Sunday. It could be a lovely place to spend a weekend afternoon. But nowadays it’s not the kind of place you want to take your children. The ground around the children’s playground is littered with shards of broken glass. And despite the fact that there is a dustbin just a few metres from where this party sat, they just upped and left their beer bottles and dirty paper plates lying on the ground. It’s really sad to see people treat public spaces in this way. There are so few of them in Johannesburg as it is.
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