Labeling

Demand product labeling, correct labeling, full labeling, listing all products or ingredients used.

It is time that manufacturers were forced to the the TRUTH!

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We, the people need this information to make an informed choice!

Recycle Water

Monday Moaning

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The age of machine control has become a step closer.

Remember all those movie scenarios where machines take control and man tries to destroy the machines… and the machines just get up and keep coming on.

That has become a step closer to reality.

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Self-healing electronic chip tests may aid space travel

Tests showed small microcapsules filled with liquid metal healed fractures in a gold circuit restoring conductivity

Self-repairing electronic chips are one step closer, according to a team of US researchers.

The group has created a circuit that heals itself when cracked thanks to the release of liquid metal which restores conductivity.

The process takes less than an eye blink to bring the circuit back to use.

The researchers said that their work could eventually lead to longer-lasting gadgets as well as solving one of the big problems of interplanetary travel.

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Man against machines. As frightening a prospect as the movie makers depict. This is another step to making machines invulnerable to man.

Too close to Christmas to be serious

Power Saver

This magic box harvests spare electricity from your microwave

Microwaves aren’t very smart. It generally has no idea what you’re trying to heat up, and if it’s (say) a burrito and not (say) a frozen turkey, a bunch of extra microwave… waves… are going to waste. This blue box can suck up all of those spare microwaves and turn them back into electricity that — wait for it — can power your microwave again.

Dengyo’s “Microwave Regenerative Converter” can be installed in your microwave, where it will harvest a significant amount of the microwave energy that doesn’t get absorbed by whatever you’re trying to defreezerfy and turn it straight back into electricity. Up to 100 watts can be recovered in this way, which might be around 10% of the energy that your average microwave emits.

Source: Device

There is Hope

Mexico City closes Bordo Poniente rubbish dump

Scavengers who scrape a living at the dump are hoping for formal jobs in recycling

Mexico City has closed its main rubbish dump, Bordo Poniente, which is one of the world’s biggest open-air landfills.

At its peak, hundreds of lorries were dumping more than 12,000 tons of waste each day.

That figure had already been cut in half this year by new recycling and composting plants, officials said.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said the closure would significantly help reduce the capital’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Ebrard said his government would seek bids to establish a plant to turn the methane gas given off by the accumulated waste into energy.

A cement company has agreed to buy 3,000 tons of dry waste daily to burn as fuel.

Scavengers

The composting plant is already providing organic fertiliser for the city’s parks and gardens, as well as for farms in neighbouring areas.

There are also plans to reprocess building waste into construction materials.

The city government says it is negotiating with hundreds of people who scrape a living by scavenging for reusable material on the site to find them formal jobs in waste processing.

The Bordo Poniente dump was established on a dry lake bed in the 1980s, partly to handle rubble from the devastating Mexico City earthquake of 1985.

More than 70m tons of waste have been dumped there, and in places the rubbish lies more than 17m (56 feet) deep.

Its closure is being seen as a milestone in Mexico’s City’s efforts to make its waste management system one of the greenest in Latin America.

Source: BBC News

Opinion:

Top Marks

It is gratifying to see countries like Mexico making such inroads; it is only like this we can stall the forthcoming doom of this planet, maybe even stall it completely.

 

Monday Moaning

Food firms ‘market to children online’

Most children use the internet at home

Unhealthy food is being “shamelessly” promoted to children online to get around bans on television adverts, campaigners have claimed.

The British Heart Foundation cited websites by Cadbury’s and Nestle as examples of “cynical marketing”.

Sites used childish language, games and free gifts to appeal to children, according to the report.

But an Advertising Association spokesman insisted online promotion to children was strictly controlled.

The vast majority of UK children now use the internet at home, often in preference to television viewing.

The Advertising Standards Authority’s broadcasting code prohibits adverts for unhealthy food within children’s television programmes, or any programme which appeals to under-16s.

However, this code does not extend to material on websites aimed at children, although a separate regulation forbids any advert which might encourage “poor nutritional habits” or an “unhealthy lifestyle” in children.

Despite this, the BHF, alongside the Children’s Food Campaign, says that this different approach gives firms more scope to promote unhealthy foods.

With a significant proportion of children overweight or obese, even at primary school age, they want the blanket ban on marketing extended to cover the web.

‘Preying on children’

Examples of websites cited by the campaign was a site promoting Nesquik – a milkshake powder high in sugar.

Titled the “Imagination Station”, the site is hosted by an animated rabbit character and including a quiz game and a guide to making a spacesuit.

Another site, for Cadbury’s Buttons, which contain 6.2g of saturated fat per packet, was called “Buttons Furry Tales”, and also involved animated characters, games and puzzles, although an “adult” year of birth had to be provided to gain entry.

A third, for Cheestrings, manufactured by Kerry Foods, involves a personal greeting from another cartoon character, and a list describing 101 things they can do before they are 11.5 years old.

Cheestrings fall foul of the children’s television ban because each portion contains a third more salt than an average pack of ready salted crisps.

Mubeen Bhutta, from the BHF, said: “Junk food manufacturers are preying on children and targeting them with fun and games they know will hold their attention.

“Regulation protects our children from these cynical marketing tactics while they’re watching their favourite television programmes but there is no protection when they are online.”

Opinion:

These companies and corporations need to be stamped on, and stamped on hard!

They are totally unscrupulous, they have no conscience that is not measured in money.

They will stoop to anything, they will exploit every loophole. They don’t care if the world’s children get fat, as long as the money keeps rolling in.

High rates of morbid obesity in Brazil

Obesity in children is a major plague on this planet, not only in the developed world but other places like Brazil. Here a large proportion of the children are obese (6.7 million), what is more alarming is the high rate of morbidly obese amongst them. Obesity is considered one of the ten major causes of death.

Yet, the companies and corporations are allowed to run amok.

There needs to be worldwide control of these companies.

$75 billion of food wasted

Half the food in the US goes to waste

As the US celebrates Thanksgiving, a new study reveals that almost half the food in the country goes to waste – a statistic that should alarm an industry that is struggling to achieve greater efficiency in order to salvage profits.

Read more: Food production

.Yes, $75 billion of food wasted annually in the United States alone.

Now watch here:

 

And read the story on Reuter’s Photography Blog

The Power of Poo!

The concept is simple; Prisoners go to the toilet, their waste is collected, it makes gas, the gas goes to the kitchen, prisoners cook using the gas, eat the food they cook, go to the toilet… and the whole process starts again.

NSINDA PRISON, Rwanda, Nov 21 (Reuters) – A prisoner ignites a faint blue flame under one of 10 massive stoves in a prison kitchen in eastern Rwanda to start preparing a maize and bean lunch for the inmates.

Once powered by costly, environmentally-damaging firewood, the kitchen in Nsinda prison now runs on a free, renewable resource – the waste from nearly 8,000 inmates, many jailed for their part in the 1994 genocide, and manure from cows.

Rwanda has installed biogas plants in all 14 of its prisons, one small part of the central African nation’s plan to use renewable energy rather than the charcoal and firewood that provides 85 percent of its energy needs.

It plans to take biogas into Rwandan homes, where just 14 percent of the population currently has access to electricity, the Energy Ministry says.

“Before using biogas, we were using 1 billion Rwandan francs ($1.7 million) to buy firewood each year. After using biogas, we have reduced that amount by 85 percent.” Emmanuel Ndori, director of biogas production in Rwanda’s prisons, told Reuters. read more

Source: Kigali Wire

Canada is Going to Lose

so like a truculent child its going to take its toys and go home…

Canada condemned at home and abroad for pulling out of Kyoto treaty

China calls Canada’s decision ‘preposterous’, while Greenpeace says the country is protecting polluters instead of people

The Canadian environment minister, Peter Kent, said meeting the country's Kyoto treaty obligations would cost each family $1,600. Photograph: Fred Chartrand/AP

Canada has been condemned at home and abroad as “irresponsible” and “reckless” for pulling out of the Kyoto climate treaty, just a day after committing to a future legally binding deal at a major UN climate summit.

“I regret Canada’s withdrawal and am surprised over its timing,” said the UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. “Canada has a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.” China, which agreed for the first time to legal limits on its emissions at the summit in Durban, denounced Canada’s decision as “preposterous” in its state media and called it “an excuse to shirk responsibility” in tackling global warming.

The domestic reaction was equally fierce with the announcement by Canada’s environment minister, Peter Kent, described as “shameful” and “a total abdication of our responsibilities”. Under the Kyoto protocol, Canada was committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012, compared to its 1990 levels. But its actual emissions have risen by over 30%, making failure inevitable. Canada’s inaction was blamed by some on its desire to protect the lucrative but highly polluting exploitation of tar sands, the second biggest oil reserve in the world.

Kent claimed that Canada would have to pay billions to meet its Kyoto target in 2012: “To meet the targets would be the equivalent of … the transfer of CAN$14bn [£8.7bn] from Canadian taxpayers to other countries – the equivalent of $1,600 from every Canadian family – with no impact on emissions or the environment.” He was referring to the cost of buying carbon emission permits (AAUs) from other countries to compensate for Canada’s huge overshooting of its target.

Source: The Guardian Read more

Opinion:

Canada simply wants to have its cake and eat it too. It doesn’t matter whose toes you tread on in business.

Canada made a promise, signed the Kyoto agreement, it should be held binding.