Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Week 3: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post by Sunday at midnight.

5 comments:

gnar said...

1. Haerang Park

2. Kraft Turns Cheese Waste into Energy

3. Two Kraft plants, which make cream cheese, will turn used whey into biogas as part of green operations. This strategy is predicted to reduce natural gas purchases and the cost of throwing away the waste. Also, it can minimize the CO2 emissions in the process of transporting waste. Until now, several global companies like General Motors and McDonald's have tried to transform waste into energy. More public attention and corporate actions have to be taken towards 'green operations' as part of efforts to realize environmentally sustainable economic growth.

4. Kraft Turns Cheese Waste into Energy
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/business/article/38227/print
GreenBiz.com, 18 September 2008 - Kraft is the latest company to turn part of its waste stream into a bigger bottom line.

Two cheese plants in New York will turn used whey into energy in a move that will supplant a third of the facilities' natural gas purchases. The company also will avoid the expense of hauling the waste away.

Digesters at the company's Lowville plant, which makes Philadelphia cream cheese, and a string cheese plant in Campbell turn the whey into biogas. It's part of the company's broader efforts to green operations in the areas of agriculture, packaging, energy, water, waste and transportation.

"Our facilities have previously used strategies such as concentrating the whey to reduce volume and finding outlets for it to be used as animal feed, or for fertilizer on environmentally approved farm fields," said Sustainability Vice President Steve Yucknut. "Both methods required transporting the whey off-site. Now, we're reducing the associated CO2 emissions that are part of transporting waste, discharging cleaner wastewater from our on-site treatment systems, and creating enough alternative energy to heat more than 2,600 homes in the Northeast."

The company's broader goals include reducing energy consumption and energy-related CO2 by 25 percent, and manufacturing plant waste by 15 percent.

Rather than sending it to landfills, companies from across several sectors are increasingly viewing waste as a commodity.

General Motors, for example, recently announced that half of its manufacturing plants worldwide would reach landfill-free status by 2010, with scrap metal sales topping $1 billion.

McDonald's successfully transformed waste into electricity earlier this year at several United Kingdom restaurants, while Chrysler is converting used paint solids from two St. Louis assembly plants into electricity. Heinz also is working on a program to transform used potato peels into energy.

5. http://www.enn.com/business/article/38227/print

Sally Paik said...

1. Sally Paik

2. Modest African Footprint Still Approaching Limits

3. It has been found that average African had an Ecological Footprint of 1.1 global hectares in 2003, according to Global Footprint Network. This shows that average African has a low environmental impact by western standards and the global level of 2.2 hectares per person. However, a growing number of African countries are now depleting their natural resources, which is bringing Africa close to its ecological limits.

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5. From: WWF
Published June 9, 2008 08:22 AM

Modest African footprint still approaching limits

Individual Africans might consume less on average than residents of any other continent, but rising population is bringing Africa close to its ecological limits, the first ever detailed assessment of Africa’s ecological footprint has found.

Africa-Ecological Footprint and human well-being, prepared for WWF by the Global Footprint Network and released at the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment today finds the average African had an Ecological Footprint (an estimate of the area of land or sea used annually in providing for personal consumption) of 1.1 global hectares in 2003, well below the global average of 2.2 hectares per person.

“Our research shows that the average African has a low environmental impact by western standards,”� said Chief Emeka Anyaoku, President of WWF International. “But a growing number of African countries are now depleting their natural resources - or will shortly be doing so — faster than they can be replaced.”�

Egypt, Libya and Algeria head the list of African countries living well beyond their ecological means, with the ecological footprints of Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe also exceeding national bio-capacity.

Globally, world consumption exceeded biocapacity by 25 per cent in 2003. Current business-as-usual projections show that humanity will require the resources and waste absorption capacity of two planets by 2050.

“In contrast, Africa’s biocapacity is 1.3 global hectares per person, slightly more than Africans use, but 28 per cent less than the world-average of 1.8 global hectares available per person,”� the report says. Clear dangers loom from a projected more than doubling of Africa’s population by 2050, taking it from about one eighth to nearly a quarter of the total world population.

The report also shows that African countries predominate in the lower end of the most widely used human welfare measure, the Human Development Index, while in much of the continent stress on water resources is increasing.

"There is a strong international commitment to improving human well-being in Africa and advancing the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty, hunger and disease,”� said Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director of the Global Footprint Network. “But for lasting success, we need to work with, rather than against, ecological budget constraints.

“Development that ignores the limits of our natural resources ultimately end up imposing disproportionate costs on the most vulnerable and the most dependent on the health of natural systems such as the rural poor.”�

The report also notes some encouraging trends, from signs of recovery in wild animal populations in East Africa to an increasing policy emphasis on the state of the environment as a key development issue. In Tanzania, for instance, the environment has been recognised as vital to the national Poverty Reduction Strategy.

“There is no doubt that Africa faces major ecological challenges, but there are positive signs that environmental impacts can be reversed,”� said Chief Anyaoku. “Africa’s Ecological Footprint is getting bigger — but it is not just Africa’s problem. It is up to us all to help reverse the trend.”�

6. ---

7. http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/37336

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Whoopsie, format issues

1. moctar aboubacar

2. A Haiti Reforestation Project

3. Sorry for the 11th Hour post. Well the last time I posted an article about Haiti it was about how deforestation leads to higher death tolls during storms, mostly. This article seemed interesting because now it is about an organization which is looking at how to create a sense of community (or country) awareness about the problem of deforestation and taking action by planting trees, mostly. This seems to me to be a good initiative, but maybe more a treatment of the symptoms than anything else. What system is in place which makes this scramble to cut down trees for charcoal possible? I was toying with the idea of the Haitian forests as a commons, please tell me what you think.
I think a very big factor here though is also the poverty of the country. It would seem to force people into an unsustainable pattern of (in this case) tree cutting, to fulfill more immediate needs.
Is looking for a solution to this problem, linked to the huge problem of poverty and political stability in Haiti, best done by shifting attitudes first, or means (ie giving people the means to shift their practices)?

4.By Alex Cequea

Haiti is the only country in the Americas on the UN list of Least Developed Countries. Ninety-eight percent of its forests have been cut down. Its population is dependant on wood-derived charcoal based energy, and it is struggling to survive. A new grassroots reforestation effort has started to train and educate over 450 young leaders in 12 cities and towns across Haiti. They are working to adopt a new vision for their country: A vision that promotes a sustainable and scalable development of Haiti.

The group hopes to mobilize young change-makers and locals to plant 1.5 million fruit trees through a Youth Leadership Training Program (YLTP). This is no small feat, considering that vast deforestation has made 70% of the land not cultivable, and the extreme soil erosion has made Haiti’s environment one of the most devastated in the world.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We need to show [the youth] a path and a motive.”� Said his holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the International Association of Human Values, and one of the main supporters of the project. The program will give young leaders a path and motivation not just through knowledge and organizational skills, but also through systematic personal development techniques. Local communities will be given organizational training to establish accountability and goal measurements, and the last stage of the project will provide technical training on proper and sustainable reforestation methods.

The group hopes to raise 138,000 dollars for the Youth Leadership Training Program. The main emphasis of the training program is to help young leaders identify and resolve community issues and even starts with an 8-day “stress elimination”� class. Their mission is to revive and enrich communities through the upliftment and transformation of youth. Then, these transformed young leaders will be better able to take responsibility for their communities.

They have already planted 250 mango, coconut, and olive trees in cooperation with local farmers.

The Haiti Reforestation Project is led by the people of Haiti, the International Association for Human Values, Friends of Petite Anse, and the Art of Living Foundation. For more info contact Bill Herman, Director of Youth Leadership Training IAHV, at billherman@iahv.org

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http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/32860

Bjoern Schmidt said...

1. Bjoern Schmidt

2. Starvation problems caused by spending the avaible money the wrong way.

3.An organisation called "CARE" alleges that the money avaible for famine and starvation aid should spend more wisely and strategically on the development of countries instead of just reducing the horrors of major crisis. They assert that this would in the long run save money by developing infra structure which carries itself.
I was interested in the topic of starvation after reading the articles referring to Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian thoughts and especiall after reading the short articel of Iyves Engler about Starvations caused by rising food prices.
I found another article which posited that food problems could be solved by an investion 36 billion dollars into agriculture every year. But when I wanted to take a second look it was not avaible anymore.


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4.

World leaders must act after number of people at risk of starvation doubles in two years 18 Sep 2008 08:45:43 GMT
Source: CARE International - UK
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Aid agency CARE International has found that the number of people living on the edge of emergency has rocketed to 220 million - almost twice as many as in 2006.

As world leaders prepare for next week's global summit on tackling poverty, CARE is calling for an overhaul of the system where aid is too late, too short-term and focused too heavily on saving lives rather than protecting people's livelihoods and building their resilience.

CARE International, one of the three biggest aid agencies worldwide, says failure to resolve the underlying issues trapping people in extreme poverty has left millions unable to cope with recent price hikes. Among the worst hit are Ethiopia and Somalia, currently facing full-blown emergency. Across the world, the poorest people are rapidly descending into food crisis.

CARE experts in the UK have produced an authoritative report ‘Living on the edge of emergency: Paying the price of inaction’ in the run-up to the high-level event on the Millennium Development Goals in New York next week. The meeting will discuss progress – or lack of - on the commitment to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

This comes two years after the charity released ‘Living on the edge of emergency: An agenda for change’, a widely respected report, warning of the dangers of failing to tackle emergencies in Africa.

CARE believes some progress has been made since 2006, for example the UK Department for International Development’s investment in disaster risk reduction and support to social protection programmes in Kenya and Zambia.

But the new report has found that by 2015, £100 billion will have already been spent this century fighting emergencies, some of which would have been preventable. And surging food prices have reversed the world’s already faltering progress towards this goal.

"The world’s inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world’s poorest people – stripped of enough to eat - who are paying the price," said Geoffrey Dennis, Chief Executive of CARE International UK. "Governments, the UN, donors and aid agencies must take this opportunity to deliver the long-term structural reforms to the aid system that will protect the most vulnerable from emergency and build their resilience to food price rises, drought and other shocks."

The report warns that billions of emergency spending will have been wasted, unless the following recommendations are heeded:

Donors must meet existing aid commitments, and then deliver significant new funds to meet the specific needs of the 100 million newly hungry.
Aid money must focus on disaster risk reduction, investing in food production and providing long-term safety nets to prevent the poorest falling over the edge into starvation.
The international aid system, including the UN must bridge the divide between emergency and development, ensuring that aid responses are better coordinated, avoid gaps and duplications and provide early and adequate funding.
The report also highlights new challenges facing the aid system in its fight against hunger, including:

Food prices have risen by an average 83 per cent in the last three years. This has a disproportionate effect on the poor who currently spend as much as 80 per cent of their expenditure on food, compared to 10 per cent in the UK.
The impact of climate change is being felt most in developing countries, where large populations depend on agriculture.
Biofuels are competing for land that could otherwise be used for food production.
Urban communities are facing large-scale food emergency for the first time.
In 2006, CARE warned of the dangers of failing to tackle emergencies in Africa. Today it says we are facing those consequences– a hunger crisis that has become more entrenched in Africa and is spreading globally.

"It is a disgrace that, despite warnings, money is still being spent in the wrong ways," said Dennis. "Leaders at the MDG meeting must ensure that the aid system can rise to the challenge of the global food crisis. Or they will measure the cost in billions of wasted emergency funds and the suffering of millions of people pushed to and beyond the edge of yet more needless emergencies."

About CARE International: CARE is one of the world’s largest aid agencies, working 70 countries to fight poverty and helping more than 55 million people every year. Our long-term programmes tackle the deep-seated causes of poverty and we are always among the first to respond when disaster strikes. We remain with communities to help them rebuild their lives long after the cameras have gone. For more information, visit www.careinternational.org.uk

For more information, or interviews with spokespeople in London or in the field, please contact:

Amber Meikle, , 0207 9349348 or 07867 585879
Deborah Underdown, , 0207 9349417




[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]




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5. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/217440/ef63c1be0cbaf5695f1d5a4c65b1ee63.htm