Make you Fink on Friday

What a waste: Turning poo into plastic

Would you drink from water bottle made from raw sewage?

That rather unappetising image may soon be a reality, thanks to the rise of bioplastics.

These biodegradable materials may soon offer a realistic – and cost effective – alternative to plastics derived from oil.

They are part of a movement to better utilise the ever increasing mountains of waste created by humans.

Saima Mohsin  travels to Sacramento, California, to visit a company that is using some of the  seven million tonnes of dry solid human waste produced in the US every year, to create useful products.

Opinion:

And to think of all the poo we have been wasting…

A Better Planet, you want?

Change the World Wednesday – 28th Nov

I have to do it!

I have to do it to remain sane.

I have to write a CTWW post.

Oh, yum, yum, yum…

Wednesdays just aren’t Wednesday without one. I tried to give them up last week, but it made the week seem so empty, it was like trying to give up chocolate.

I know that Small Footprints needs a break, that she devotes a lot of time to CTWW and has a household to run and a 3D life to lead, whereas some, like me, live in a 2D world and housework involves doing the dishes and my washing once a week. The world for a hermit is vastly different to real people, so simple and undemanding.

There is no challenge as such, but rather a thought. A wander, if you like, into the far far distant future…

The Age We Made

Gaia Vince concludes her journey through the geological age humans have launched. After climate change and mass extinction, she now explores moves how the world’s cities and manufactured artefacts (from mobile phones to plastic bottles) might become ‘fossilised’ and incorporated into the geological record. Some are bound to survive in crushed form for the rest of the Earth’s existence. Any distant-future geologist would recognise them as strange features unique in the planet’s 4 billion year rock record: chaotic rock layers preserving urban rubble and underground tunnels – mudstones unnaturally rich in zinc, cadmium and mercury – and the occasional crushed mobile phone or plastic bottle transformed from polymer to delicate coal. These rocks and artificial ‘fossils’ will be evidence of a planetary shift into the new time period, which today’s geologists call the Anthropocene.

Click to listen to the BBC Discovery broadcast

So, as we have epochs of the past like the Jurassic and Triassic, those in the distant future will have the Anthropocene, us.

We are doomed to become the ‘past’ and studied much in the same way as we study our past… and so it will go on.

But a crucial question will be, if these intelligent beings from the past (us) could build and create such a world, why couldn’t they have prevented their own extinction?

Good question… next, that one is too hard to answer.

You can also listen to other episodes by visiting the BBC link.

Think, Recycle… anything

 

Monday Moaning

Pee Power

Urine-Powered Generator Could Change Lives

We’ve talked about park lamps fueled by dog poop, and now a group of teens in Africa have developed a generator that runs on urine.

Yes, there’s a bit of an ick factor any time we’re talking bodily functions, but in areas where electricity is at a premium or not available at all, this innovation could make a huge impact on folks’ quality of life. If you’re reading this on a computer, chances are electricity doesn’t feel like a luxury, but for millions of people the lights don’t come on at the flip of a switch.

While turning the lights on might not seem like a big deal, we take electricity for granted in so many other ways, like heating and cooling our homes when the weather is sweltering or freezing. Or in hospitals, where electricity saves lives by powering medical equipment.

How it Works

The generator – showcased at this year’s Africa Maker Faire – was developed by:

• Duro-Aina Adebola, age 14
• Akindele Abiola, age 14
• Faleke Oluwatoyin, age 14
• Bello Eniola age 15

One liter of urine can produce six hours of electricity in their generator using an electrolytic cell to separate the hydrogen from the urine. The hydrogen moves through a filtration system and liquid borax, a system that purifies the hydrogen gas so that it can power the generator.

Six hours of pee power means folks in rural and developing areas can generate their own electricity without petroleum products. Can you imagine the impact this could have if researchers could scale it up, so whole cities could run on pee power?

Images via Maker Faire Africa

Source: Green Upgrader

Opinion:

If four kids can do it, why hasn’t it been done before?

Of course, that wouldn’t be profitable for the oil companies, would it?

This technology needs to be exploited immediately for the benefit of the planet; to hell with the oil companies and their profits.

Imagine that, six hours of light from a litre of pee. How many billions of litres of pee, both human and animal, go to waste each year?

With this technology coal, gas, oil and nuclear generated electricity would be a thing of the past.

It is vital to the survival of the species.

 

Nature Ramble

This week we are looking at ‘ugly’.

Not so much ugly as unbecoming creatures, but creatures that never-the-less are endangered.

Are these animals too ‘ugly’ to be saved?

Clockwise from top left: Sunda pangolin, Chinese giant salamander, Mallorcan midwife toad, long-beaked echidna and Ganges river dolphin

People are used to being asked to help save photogenic pandas, but are there animals whose strange appearance hinders conservation?

Creatures that achieve world fame for being under threat – the panda, the mountain gorilla, the tiger – tend to be conventionally aesthetically pleasing, even cute.

But the scientists who study the planet’s rarest beasts say that many of the most precious and threatened creatures have physical characteristics that, although perhaps not adorable in the most orthodox sense, make them truly unique.

A project run by the Zoological Society for London (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) is trying to raise awareness of these less appreciated creatures.

“I love all the species on the Edge list,” says Carly Waterman, director of Edge.

“But I think some do need a little extra help to get them a place in hearts of the general public.”

Here are a few of the less doe-eyed and fluffy and more spiky, scaly, big-nosed and slimy animals that might be conservation icons.

Click on the BBC icon and you can read facts about each of these strange creatures.

Read more

My Backyard

Nothing startling, I was testing my new camera and this was my first result with a video clip.

It shows the pumpkin that is growing from my compost and finally my little pile of rubbish (Lixo) having a lick.

Make you Fink on Friday

Is Thanksgiving a big waste of turkey?

USDA estimates Americans throw away 35 percent of the turkey they buy

Are you really going to eat it all?

Americans love Thanksgiving, they just don’t love turkey. It turns out that more than one-third of the turkey meat we buy each holiday gets thrown in the garbage. Blame it on bad planning, lack of leftover ideas or just a wealthy, slothful society.

“We love to have the big feast at holiday time,” said Dana Gunder, food and agriculture scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That results in a lot more extra food. People do leftovers for a day or two, but people are sick by day three. I think it’s just basic math.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans throw away 35 percent of the turkey they buy, and that does not include bones. That’s compared to only 15 percent waste for chicken. What’s worse, throwing away turkey isn’t just bad manners or a big waste of money ($282 million), it’s also bad for the environment, according to Gunder.

Growing a pound of turkey meat uses 468 gallons of water and releases 12 pounds of CO2 emissions according to a report by the Environmental Working Group — equivalent to driving your car 11 miles and taking a 94-minute shower. Gunder says that nationwide, consumers will purchase around 736 million pounds of turkey this Thanksgiving, of which about 581 million pounds will be actual meat. Unless Americans change their ways this Thanksgiving, about 204 million pounds will be tossed, along with about 1 million tons of CO2 and 95 billion gallons of water.

Read more

Monday Moaning

Yes, I know its Tuesday; yes, I know I’m late. I didn’t get a chance to finish this yesterday.

We are Doomed

I am now 60+, I have lived my life in a time of plenty like most of my generation. The latter half of the 20th was good to us, however the 21st is another story. It appears that we are going to suffer the consequences of our lavish lifestyle.

The world has changed. The greedy have become greedier, technology has overtaken us in leaps and bounds and the rape of the planet has destroyed environments like never before.

Image: Salon

All this has a cost, and that cost is likely to be us, humanity as we know it.

Regardless of who is to blame, us or Mother Nature, climate changes are here. You don’t believe it, then just check the news (No! Not Fox, that’s not news, that’s placating the masses, pandering to the government); droughts, famines, floods, tornadoes where they didn’t have tornadoes before, Hurricane Katrina, and now Sandy.

If you don’t see this as ‘the writing on the wall’ then perhaps you deserve to perish, because perish we will.

London if the sea level rises

I won’t be here to see it, at best I’ve got 20 years left, but you will be. You will see things like London underwater; New York, the same, as all the coastal cities of the world where the greater part of our populations live.

The writing is on the wall, and yet we still frolic and play as though nothing is amiss, we still flock o the beaches on a hot day ignoring the fact that that very water is likely to be our demise.

Flood barriers to prevent a surging Atlantic Ocean to protect New York – image: Star Tribune

I saw a programme on TV last week about the flooding of coastal cities. The plans to erect great technological barriers to keep the sea at bay, the ideas of floating cities and houses.

Works of this magnitude would cost hundreds of billions each, trillions even. Tell me, where is this money coming from?

The world’s economy is bankrupt, all this talk of America’s fiscal cliff is not a fairy tale, neither is the collapse of the Euro, it’s fact. Contractors are not going to work if they’re not paid, or can’t see a profit. The state of the world’s economy just doesn’t begin to represent the cost of saving coastal cities around the globe.

So tell me, where are you all going to go?

I’ll be safely wrapped up in my turf blanket, but you will be fighting for survival.

The governments are too busy fighting internal battles; they don’t care. The religious are too busy fighting over who is right; they don’t care. Wall Street is too busy fighting over the last dollar; they don’t care.

Remember my analogy: If the planet were a dog, we are the fleas, and Mother Nature is having a good scratch…

Stress Free