Amplified Green

Ever thought about how a visit to a restaurant impacts your carbon footprint? Recent research shows that food served in over 40 London restaurants is not just slightly CO2 intensive, but that in many cases restaurant food produces over 100 times more CO2 than locally bought ingredients.

The research was carried out by Will Brookes, a Bsc student at the University of Nottingham (UK) and a graduate chef cook from the prestigious Leith School of Food and Wine. Brookes was so shocked at his findings that he called on the government to conduct a full environmental audit of British restaurants.
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An organization called the European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST) invites scientists from around the globe to submit proposals for projects contributing to the scientific, technological, economic, cultural or societal development of Europe. Proposals playing a precursor role for other European programmes and plans initiated by early-stage researchers are especially welcome.

The deadline for preliminary proposals is 26 September 2008 and reviewing the material takes around six months, the organizers say. COST aims to bring together researchers and experts in different countries by setting up networks of nationally funded research projects. COST financially supports the networking activities (not the research itself). For more information, visit the organization’s website.

A Welsh eco community have been granted permission to build a settlement of nine eco-smallholdings on a plot of 76 acres close to the village of Glandwr. The community submitted plans for five detached houses as well as a row of four dwellings built from straw bale, mud and timber. Water will be collected from an existing spring and rain captured from turf-made rooftops.

The community, made up of the low-impact lifestyle group calling themselves Lammas will build their off-grid, earthy homes using renewable energy derived in part from a water turbine system. They will also capture bio gas from composting all organic waste through compost toilets, compost heaps and wormeries.

The nine families plan to create fuel from coppiced willow and elephant grass which they are going to grow in the community. For their daily needs they will depend on small scale farming by producing goods such as flax-made linen shawls, compost worms and vegetables and fruits that they will sell on site and via local shops.

“We plan to be largely self-sufficient, growing most of our food. We will keep cows, geese, chickens, ducks and bees. We plan to grow hazelnuts, apples, plums and strawberries as an income. All our fuel will be grown on the plot using a willow short rotation coppice. We intend to supplement our income by continuing to work one day a week,” the village’s co-founder Paul Wimbush, told a Welsh newspaper. He added that the nine families will be 75% self sustainable.

The Lammas’ eco community is the first to be granted official approval in the UK, where thus far only two local authorities have legislation in place that promotes ecological living. After submitting their plans for the first time, the Lammas were rejected because of lack of detail and Pembrokeshire county council planning authorities’ worries that some of the building materials used and the potential graffic generation of the plans were not low impact. The group then took five months to draw up a second batch of plans, which were approved. “We made the whole application electronic and we had the idea of putting it on our website so that people can see what we are talking about,” Wimbush was quoted as saying on NewBuilder.co.uk.

Organic photoelectrochemical, dye-sensitized cells, a new type of solar energy, is expected to hit the market this Summer. The technology, which is easy and cheap to use, will be embedded in hundreds of day-to-day consumer products. The dye cells can be used for windows, building facades, gadgets and even in clothing. The pioneer behind the technology is a Swiss professor named Michael Gratzel, who claims that his invention is more robust than regular photovoltaic panel solutions.

Dye based solar cells are made of titanium oxide nanochrystals. These are coated with light absorbing dye that can be used in various materials including glass and plastic. The dye is immersed in an electrolyte solution. When light reaches the surface, the dye sets free electrons which in turn create ‘holes’ – positive charges as a result of ‘lost electrons’. The titanium dioxide semiconducts and transfers electricity to an electrical circuit and energy is created.

The solar cells convert light to electricity with an efficiency of 7.2 percent, which is a record for this type of cell. Solar panels typically convert 16 percent to 20 percent of light into energy. But the advantage of the organic dye cells is that they also convert low light and that they can be ‘tuned’ for specific wavelengths.

The first company manufacturing dye sensitized solar cells is Konarka, which is based in Lowell, MA. This company announced it had successfully conducted the first-ever demonstration of manufacturing solar cells by highly efficient inkjet printing ten days ago. Konarka is focusing on getting the technology embedded in hundreds of day to day products. In the Summer Konarka is planning on shipping out its first products, mainly gadgets, lights and smart cards.

One drawback of the solution’s first editions was that the electrolyte could start to leak in cases of high temperatures. This has been redressed by altering the electrolyte liquids. Grätzel and his team refined this original design by optimising the sensitiser and using organic dyes based on indoline. This allows the titanium oxide to be thinner, which reduces the electron path length.

Michael Gratzel explained in a recent scientific paper published in Inderscience’s Angewandte Chemie how he’s sophisticated his technology.

The director of the Environmental Defense Fund, Fred Krupp, and Miriam Horn, a journalist, have just published Earth, The Sequel, a book that´s a tad more optimistic than most environmental publications. The writers argue the case for capitalism as the driving factor that will get us out of the mess we´re in.

The subtitle of Krupp and Horn´s book reads The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming and this isn´t misleading. The authors have a firm belief that a creativity campaign by the government can lead to a shift to cleaner energy. “What we are waiting for is the government to pull the trigger and unleash a cascade of creativity and innovation,” they say.

Krupp has been instrumental in the quite successful acid rain reduction plan (part of the clean air act) in the 1990s. He believes that currently, first-mover advantages are to be had in capping carbon emissions and proposes a legal limit to slash 20% from current emission levels by 2020 and up to 80 percent by 2050.

The first mover advantage is all tied up with developing good technology. Krupp and Horn say that by going first, the US stands a chance to export, rather than import, the cleanest and best technology. “The real question is, do we want to import clean tech from Germany, Japan, and China or export it to the rest of the world?”, Krupp is quoted as saying in an interview with Wired.com. That sounds attractive and it´s possibly one of the more believable claims that science might bail us out; you´d expect business plans to evolve from this.

If you read the daily news articles outlining scientific discoveries you´ll agree that there is no lack of really groundbreaking scientific work. Perhaps Krupp has a point in saying that the leading edge technology will also provide leading edge competitive strength. But would it be naive to think that the greed element won´t take over our battle to cool the real elements?

What is certain is that there are a number of pleasant surprises in the book. One reviewer on Amazon comments; “I follow environmental and energy issues closely, but a lot in here was new to me. I had no idea that solar technology is getting so sophisticated. And people are finding so many ways to make energy — from algae and plants, from wind, from waste. Imagining a world without oil and coal is a lot easier for me after reading this.”

Even if you don´t believe in the free market theories of the writers, the book is going to inform you about things you didn´t know. Issues like those outlined in Krupp´s book are going to be a major part of the public agenda in the next few years no doubt, so to get a close insight into the mind of a man who knows the ropes is valuable.

All of the runners up in the Presidential races have made firm pledges to environmental matters and Americans don´t know any better than to approach the new challenge in ways that won´t be anything other than capitalist anyway.

As if we didn’t know it already, the Vatican says that not recycling lands us in hell. But yesterday, a close aide to the Pope officially singled out placky bags as items of the Almighty’s discontent if failure to dispose of them ethically has been diagnosed.

This is no joke. The Vatican has officially updated its Seven Deadly Sins to make them compliant with our times, and the list now includes ‘polluting the environment’ as the number three mortal sin. The author of the ranking, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, is a close ally of the Pope and he also happens to be the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary. That is a main court in Italy, not a prison. But it has an effective eery tone to it nevertheless.

Girotti was quoted by the Vatican’s official newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, as saying that the new seven deadly sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others. That means; you’re no longer on the ride all by yourself, a message that resonated from the previous list of seven deadly sins.

These are the new seven deadly, therefore mortal, sins

genetic modification
carrying out experiments on humans
polluting the environment
causing social injustice
causing poverty
becoming obscenely wealthy
taking drugs

The Church suggests you go to confession if you have sinned. But you can of course also put in a ‘good work’ to offset your lethal lifestyle. A word of advice; the more literal you take this message, the better. Look at this trash art of 1,000 statues of human bodies, exhibited until 29 March in the Piazza Del Popolo in Rome (photo). They’re made by a German artist called H.A. Schult of his personal household waste. The idea is ‘we produce trash and we become trash‘. Let’s say it’s the new take on dust.

If you saw the movie Seven you already will be familiar with the sins of yesteryear. (My favorite was the spaghetti inducing idea of gluttony);

sloth
envy
gluttony
greed
lust
wrath
pride

So you fell for it; a green, eco product was sold you and it’s a total scam. What are your options? You can yell, kick and scream in your kitchen, but it won’t help you. Go online, and yell, kick and scream!

Even though Complaints Environmentalism has convincingly been declared dead by the writers of the controversial book The Breakthrough, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, greenwashing is taking off big time. Marketing studies underscore that in some cases 99% of all products sold as green are essentially harmful to the environment. So who are we kidding here? It’s high time to gang up on the naivety!

This is a first assessment of what your legal rights are as a green consumer. Greenwashing, which has been defined as “the practice of co-opting the trappings of the green movement without the business practices to back it up” is illegal. But thus far there have been few high profile court cases.

Craig Bachman, an attorney at Lane Powell PC and intellectual property specialist, believes greenwashing is a spill over effect from the regular ad industry. He’s quoted on Bullivant.com outlining one case which set a precedent in legal history was the LePage’s ‘biodegradable’ cellophane tape. The catch was that the tape itself was biodegradable, the product’s packaging wasn’t. The Federal Trade Commission clamped down on the Pittsburg based company and an out of court settlement swept the news under the carpet.

The fact that greenwashing is mostly a marketing issue means that you won’t often get real, tangible damage cases. In the future, we will likely see battles over semantics. There’s notoriously little clarity in Green marketing so hold your breath. Companies will increasingly be held accountable for implicit claims made in their advertising. If you thought the world had moved online, think again; we’re fast dematerializing in more than one way! The lingo guidelines in the US vary from state to state AND at federal level at the moment, says Bulivant.com.

At the moment, the Federal Trade Commission is trying to clear out the wildgrowth of rules and regulations as it copes with unfair trade practices. It is redrafting its environmental guide, known as the Green Guide which helps businesses navigate the terminology of environmental marketing of offering guidelines of what might constitute “unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” prohibited by Section 5 of the FTC Act.

So what are the recourse options for green consumers?

Check out the Organic Consumer Association to complain and for clear rules about what makes a product ‘organic’.

If you feel green ads are misleading you can contact the the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau. These guys refer cases to the FTC and other agencies with oversight of particular product categories, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Go to Cornucopia. The agricultural products complaints specialists.

Write a story on your blog and submit it on MindBodyGreen. It’s a kind of digg archive for front page green stories and has a wide readership.

Check out RipOffReport. A true sour face platform (old style)! This 10 year old website is jam packed with advice for legal action. Companies accused of wrongdoings have the chance to repair their reputations and many cases get picked up by newspapers. You’ll probably need some time to go through all the options you have as a wronged consumer. But if your complaint is serious, it’s a decent option.

Go to the Yell-O-Pages and complain using a fast and easy to use form. It’s a shoutbox more than anything else. Service is new and when checked earlier today, there were no green or eco complaints.

There’s Ventbox. This site is very similar to Yell-O-Pages.com. Till now there’s a total absence of any Green, Bio, Ethical, Eco complaints.

Last but not least, check out WhoIsWrong. It’s where people go to condemn a public issue. Most of the topics are lighthearted though. No ‘Green’ or ‘Eco’ cases yet! Unless you want to know what people think of wearing a bluetooth headset as a fashion accessory is a green issue.

You can also alert us here by going to the Info/Contact page and writing a quick line.

Ever thought it would be a cool idea to write a letter to your great great great grand children? Do it! If you want to have it published online, go to the 100 Year Letter Project at DeSmogBlog and you can rest assured of its delivery.

This is what one environmental scientist, Dr Simon Donner, wrote; “I thought of you, the future Donners. Are you still shoveling snow off the lake and playing hockey at the cottage? Do you have to wait an extra month for the lake to freeze? Or does the lake not freeze at all?”

John Cooksey, a Filmmaker, wrote “It was a tough haul. There were many times when I despaired. Many times we hoped for a savior to come and take away our personal responsibility to act, but we got despots just as often as we got heroes. Maybe it was a challenge we needed, to show us that we had to take care of ourselves, and each other.”

Read this and other (rather interesting) letters in their entirety on DeSmogBlog or go and write your own!

Green weddings are all the rage. But have you ever considered how ‘green’ your wedding rings might be? If they’re red they ain’t green, that’s for sure. So what to look out for if you are planning to go and buy a ring?

One company called greenKarat, says it’s simple. Just don’t buy a Canadian diamond ever! It cites two reasons;
1. They are not environmentally clean
2. They are not conflict free

If you don’t believe this, the company says, you likely have fallen victim to a marketing campaign in which tremendous amounts of money and effort have been pumped. And if you’ve seen the film Blood Diamond, you’ll already be slightly alarmed. Canadian diamonds, even though dug up in better humanitarian circumstances, are not beyond reproach either. “Just because there isn’t blood, doesn’t mean there aren’t tears”, say greenKarat. It reprints a recent news article in which experts are outlining the Canada specific downside especially for the Boreal region. “Hundreds of thousands of hectares of mineral claims are being “staked” without consultation - let alone approved by affected communities, many of whom are in land claims negotiations and land use-planning exercises”, according to the Toronto Star.

Aside from that, the drilling, road building and, eventually, mining with its legacy of open pits, tailings ponds and the web of industrial infrastructure that comes with these billion-dollar enterprises is also a severe ecological threat.

For the best information to find out what’s ecologically and blood diamond free and what not, visit MiningWatch Canada and Boreal Canada.

In a bid to conclude talks before the G8 summit in Japan, the US has said that it is accepting binding international obligations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions so long as other nations do the same.

It’s a continuation of the line President Bush set out around a year ago and which hasn’t inspired much confidence. The fact that this news has reached the press is hopeful. Two environmental advisors to President Bush, James Connaughton and Daniel Price told a press conference in Paris that the US is hoping that the biggest developing countries China, India and Brazil are committing to reducing greenhouse gases.

“The US is prepared to enter into binding international obligations to reduce greenhouse gases as part of a global agreement in which all major economies similarly undertake binding international obligations,” the BBC quoted Price as saying.

Price is the President’s deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. The White House plans aim to eliminate world tarriffs with the aim of increasing global trade in clean energy technologies and services. Price said that a jump of 14% per year is a measure that will yield results soon.

“Europe and the US could turn out the lights today, and come 2030 or 2050 we would not have addressed the problem of climate change,” he added. This line of thinking was initiated by President Bush who envisages negotiations between 17 countries to reduce greenhouse gas output. These countries account for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The suggestion seems to be that some countries commit to firm emissions targets while others will display energy efficiency gains. Experts think this is not an option because it’s a slap dash solution for results in a 40 years time frame.

“The White House knows that taking a binding target of comparable size [to that taken by the US or EU] is neither a negotiating option nor a physical possibility for the Chinese government,” a Pew environmentalist told BBC News. Recently, a study presented at the summit of world leaders at Davos showed that the US ranks below India and just above China, measured in terms of environmental and social factors.

It’s studies like these that are causing an outcry internationally. The US has hitherto focused its environmental effort on clean air mostly and is an immense underperformer at greenhouse gas combating. The US policy makers weren’t really impervious to the international criticism, it seems. Price lashed out at the EU, saying it should stop “berating the US to do more”. Instead, people should work with developing countries to get their act together, Price said. OK then, let’s take a deep breath together then, shall we?