e-Waste Expected to Plateau by 2015

Photo via Jaymi Heimbuch

According to a study by Pike Research called “Electronics Recycling and E-Waste Issues,” the amount of e-waste heading to landfills should start to level by 2015

Pike Research expects that in 2015, our e-waste volume will peak at about 73 million metric tons, and decline after that, due to government regualtions on proper e-waste recycling, industries going green to coax consumers, as well as consumer awareness and demand that pressures industries to make their products more recyclable in the first place.

Managing Director, Clint Wheelock

“On the positive side, the European Union has established a strong regulatory framework with its WEEE and RoHS directives, serving as an example for similar initiatives worldwide. Many leading electronics manufacturers and service providers are also strong exemplars of what corporate social responsibility can achieve – in Pike Research’s analysis, this list of leading companies includes Cisco, Dell, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Research In Motion, Sprint Nextel, and Vodafone.”

It’s also safe to hazard a guess that by that time, companies will have figured out that the materials inside old gadgets are highly valuable for making new gadgets, and will perhaps be putting in place better programs for collection and reuse. This may make economic sense as the price of recycling goes down with increased demand and load, hence making it more economically viable for companies to reuse recycled materials in newer product lines.

An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.

Via Green Tech

Texas Wind Farm Uses NASA Radar to Prevent Bird Deaths

Photo Credit: Chrishna via flickr

What do you do if you build a wind farm smack dab in the middle of a major bird migration route? A radar system that’s designed to shut down the entire thing when it detects a mass of birds on the way has been installed at the 202 MW Peñascal Wind Farm in Texas.

System Detects Birds Approaching Four Miles Away
The system uses radar originally developed for NASA and the US Air Force to detect birds as far as four miles away, The Guardian reports. When it picks up the approaching birds, it analyzes the existing weather conditions and determines in real time whether those birds are in danger of flying into the blades. The system then automatically restarts the turbines when the birds have passed.

During Inclement Weather Birds May Fly Lower
The reason that the system takes into account the weather is that in ordinary conditions the migratory birds—at peaks times which can number 4,000 an hour—pass well over the wind farm, flying thousands of feet up. But when the weather turns nasty, the birds, which typically fly at night, can become disoriented. The risk which the radar system attempts to minimize is that when they’re disoriented the birds will lose altitude and crash into the turbines.

Buildings & Cats More Threat to Birds Than Turbines
It’s estimated that about 7,000 birds are killed annually in the US by wind turbines (and that in some areas bats are more in danger than birds), but all told that’s a far lower number than are killed by birds simply flying into buildings or are killed by your neighbor’s cat.

via: The Guardian

Wind Power
Offshore Wind Power in Great Lakes Touted as Untapped Resource
Common Eco-Myth: Wind Turbines Kill Birds
Cool Interactive US Wind, Solar & Biomass Power Potential map Released by NRDC

UK Grocery Chain Sainsbury’s to Start Turning Wasted Food Into Electricity

 

image: Sainsbury’s

Wasted food is a more significant problem than many realize. With the advent of just-in time supplying, and the grotesque overproduction for supermarket sales, the amount of food that isn’t bought, or eaten is staggering. A UN estimate on how much US retailers and customers (both) throw away each year amount close to US$48 billion. For the UK, a government-funded report by WRAP (The Waste and Resources Action Programme) has shown that the number is close to £16 billion. 

“About £6bn of the wasted annual food budget is food that is bought but never touched – including 13m unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 chickens and 440,000 ready meals dumped in home rubbish bins each day. The rest is food prepared or cooked for meals but never eaten because people have misjudged how much was needed and don’t eat the leftovers.

The complete £10bn consists of food that could have been eaten, not including peeling and bones, the researchers say. Tackling the waste could mean a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road. The figures have been compiled by Wrap, the waste and resources action programme, which previously made the £8bn estimate and has warned we are throwing away a third of the food we buy, enough to fill Wembley stadium with food waste eight times over in a year.

Now the UK’s third largest supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is planning to do something useful with a portion of that wasted food: Turning it into electricity. Here’s how:

Program Starts in Scotland, Nationwide by Summer
Each week Sainsbury’s will send 42 tonnes of wasted food from its 28 stores in Scotland to a biomass electric plant in Motherwell. Each tonne of food waste is is expected to be able to generate enough power for 500 homes.

By the summer Sainsbury’s stores throughout the UK will also be sending their unsold waste food to (unspecified) biomass plants. The whole thing is part of the company’s Zero Waste program, which by the end of the year will see Sainsbury’s stop sending any waste to landfills.

In the UK some 6.7 million tonnes of food is wasted every year, 50% of which is unopened or otherwise untouched, leading to 8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

via: Cleantech

New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%

Source: “New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%“, treehugger.com, Jaymi Heimbuch, 6th Jan 2009

Photo via Gizmodo

New battery technology in the 17″ MacBook Pro was shown off at MacWorld today, which lays claim to a battery life improvement of 60%. The new battery can last up to 8 hours on a charge, and can be charged 1,000 times, equivalent to about 5 years. It’s also recyclable at the end of it’s life. But there are even more green features to this new technology.

Apple made a block of batteries, rather than the usual cylindrical cells that end up wasting space. The newly utilized space allows the notebook to have a 40% bigger battery, without making the notebook bigger. The problem, of course, is that you have to take the notebook apart if you want to replace the battery. 

But the upside is that it will last three times longer than the industry standard. The trick for making it last longer is using a chip within the battery that communicates with each cell to make adjustments to the current for each cell. This means a maximized battery life.

With it lasting so much longer, and being recyclable at the end of it’s life, that alone is enough to get Dell to hush up a bit. But additionally, Apple has a take-back program for the batteries, making recycling even easier, and it is EPEAT Gold, arsenic, BFR, mercury, PVC free, and touts 34% smaller packaging.

Via Gizmodo Live Blogging at MacWorld

More on Apple
Apple’s Mac Brick Rumors and the Environmental Impact
Apple Recycles iPods, Computers, All Brands of Cell Phones
New Apple Macbook & Macbook Pro has Greener Energy Saver Icon
Steve Jobs: New Apple Nano iPods to be Greener

ASUS Gets First Ever EU Eco Flower Award

 

Photo via ASUS

ASUS, in addition to getting its N series notebooks ranked EPEAT Gold, has earned the first ever EU Flower Eco Award for computers for that very same notebook series.

While the name is rather, well, flowery, the award is not. It’s a really big deal they achieved it and makes a big green-hued statement to the rest of the computing world.

ASUS has been a quiet leader for some time in environmental sustainability in the computer world. That is recognized by its earning one of the industry’s toughest awards, and being the company that made the world’s first computers to earn it.

With the awarding of EU Flower certification to the N50, N80, N20, and N10 notebooks, ASUS notebooks have secured a spot in history as the world’s first computers to be conferred the prestigious award. Underscoring the magnitude of this achievement is the fact that 15,000,000 computers are sold in Europe each year, and ASUS N Series notebooks are the first to obtain EU Flower certification.

The award criteria includes energy savings, hazardous substances, product design, user instructions, packaging, labeling, noise, lifetime extension, and Takeback programs. A computer has to be all-around green to even rank for the EU Flower award – one of the highest rated and strictest standards for computing in the world.

Go, go Green ASUS!

Via Press Release

More on ASUS:
Buy Green: Laptop and Notebook Computers
ASUS N Series Notebooks Finally Make EPEAT Gold
Asus Bamboo Computer Arrives. Verdict: Feh
Green Geek Opportunity: Intel, ASUS Open Community for User-Created Dream PCs

Poor Management Costing Fisheries Upwards of $50 Billion a Year

Image courtesy of Greenpeace

Given the gusto with which we’ve decimated the ocean’s major fisheries stocks over the past half-century, it should hardly come as a surprise that we’ve been extremely wasteful in the process. According to a new U.N. report, entitled “The Sunken Billions: Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform,” the world’s fishing fleets are pissing away close to $50 billion a year through poor management and overfishing, reports BBC News‘ Richard Black.

The report concludes that half of the fleet could be removed without any change in catch. The two principal reasons for this waste — poor regulation and depleted stocks (which makes catching the same amount of fish every year increasingly difficult) — could thus be remedied: boosting the industry’s profits and sharply reducing its pressure on the world’s remaining fisheries stocks.

Overfishing: A major problem that is only getting worse
Recent studies have pegged the number of significantly depleted stocks at one-third of the total; as I wrote about a few months ago, a study authored by Daniel Pauly, one of the world’s foremost fisheries experts, found that catches in several tropical island countries was up to 17 times higher than officially reported, a trend that is likely replicated elsewhere around the world.

Discounting the effects of climate change and overfishing
Others have shown that the impacts of climate change — the warming of sea surface waters and an increase in sea ice melting, for example — are being seriously underestimated by fishing fleets and the world’s regulatory authorities. This impairs fish quotas and licensing decisions, resulting in commercial-scale fisheries often benefiting at the expense of small, local fisheries in developing countries.

Many of the fish stocks the scientists examined could go extinct over the next four decades if present trends continue. Even though fishing fleets have been ramping up their operations in recent years to compensate for the decline in fish stocks, the report finds that catches have not been increasing — they are stable at around 80 million tons — and that fishing isn’t become any more profitable.

One problem driving this trend is the excessive amount of subsidies, which researchers say has only helped accelerate it. The other major issue is the lack of sustainable fishery models and poor management approaches, which has caused many fisheries to repeat the same mistakes over the last decade.

Thankfully, a few countries, including New Zealand, Iceland and parts of Australia and (yes) the United States, have shown what conservation and good management can accomplish — though the report says that even they could improve. Perhaps the global adoption of a catch-share system, under which fishers are granted a percentage share of the total allowable catch, could help resolve many of these lingering problems.

Via ::BBC News: Fisheries waste ‘costs billions’ (news website)

More about fisheries
::Catch-Share System Could Save World’s Fisheries From Collapse
::Global Fisheries Hit by Climate Change and Overfishing
::Overfishing Update: Endangered Atlantic Bluefin on the Menu at Nobu in London, EU to Reconsider Fishing Common Policy

Source:

“Poor Management Costing Fisheries Upwards of $50 Billion a Year“, treehugger.com, Science & Nature, Jeremy Elton Jacquot, 11th Oct 2008

Millions May Gain Access to Clean Water After Clinton Global Initiative ‘Mega-Commitment’

 

photo: Pierre Holtz for UNICEF | hdptcar.net

Though the issue of clean water and sanitation hasn’t made it onto the environmental radar of late as much as equally critical issues such as global warming, renewable energy or tropical deforestation, it is one of monumental significance. The statistics alone are staggering: 2.6 billion people in the world lack access to sanitary toilet facilities and 1.1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water; diarrhea is the number two killer of children under age 5 in the world, ten times greater than malaria and HIV combined.

Addressing this issue is one of the most important commitments made at this year’sClinton Global Initiative‘s annual meeting, the so-called “Water & Sanitation Mega-Commitment”:

Nearly $460 Million Pledged For Water & Sanitation
In total, 15 CGI member organizations have come together in making collectively a commitment nearing $460 million dollars that will improve the very basic quality of life and improve the health of some 6 million of the world’s poorest people. There’s a lot being done here, to the point that I’m just providing links to the organizations so that readers can delve more into the work these organizations are doing.

This is a summary of the different programs which are part of the mega-commitment.

Aquaya Institute
$25,000 over 1 year
The Aquaya Institute will be undertaking a “Community Level Trial of the PUR Purifier of Water.” With support of the Tigerlake Foundation, this San Francisco-based NGO is working with the Safe Water and AIDS Project to develop small safe water vending businesses in Kenya.

Estamos
$2 million over 3 years
A Mozambique-based non-profit, Estamos will be providing “100% Access to Water and Sanitation in 50 Villages”. In addition, education about hygiene and HIV/AIDS will be conducted through music and theatre presentations.

Global Action and the Heinrich Family Foundation
$550,000 over 3 Years 
In “Implementing Safe Water Interventions in Tanzania” Global Action and the Heinrich Family Foundation will be reducing micronutrient malnutrition and increase access to safe drinking water for 25,000 children living in Tanzania by integrating in-house use micronutrient fortification and water purification interventions.

Global Water Challenge
$25 million over 3-5 years
A Washington DC-based coalition of 22 companies, non-profits, health organizations, and foundations, Global Water Challenge will be funding several innovative new local entrepreneurial water and sanitation projects through their Changemakerscompetition.

video: Global Water Challenge

Source:

“Millions May Gain Access to Clean Water After Clinton Global Initiative ‘Mega-Commitment’“, treehugger.com, Food & Health, Matthew McDermott, 26th Sept 2008

Clinton Global Initiative Highlights: Old World Is Oil, New World Is Renewables

photo: Alex de Carvalho

The Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting is in full swing in New York City. In Thursday morning’s plenary session, Integrated Solutions: Water, Food & Energy, Tom Brokaw moderated a discussion about the entwined issues of water, food and energy. He directed questions towards San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, Shimon Peres former president of Israel, oil mogul turned wind power evangelist T. Boone Pickens, leader of the Danish Social Democratic Party Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick. Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s had some interesting comments on achieving energy independence, looking beyond the short-term, and just how far the market can go… 

Renewable Energy a Political Commitment…
Speaking about Denmark’s transition from importing 99% of its energy needs not too long ago to generating 30% of its power from renewable sources, Ms Thorning-Schmidt said that ultimately this sort of transition is not about the size of a nation, it is primarily about political commitment. She said that any country can take bold action and move forward.

…And a Long-Term Investment
In describing obstacles that Denmark faced in making a transition away from imported energy sources, she said that the big thing to be aware of is that renewable energy is a long term solution; the full benefits may not be realized for ten or twenty years. In concluding her remarks on energy she said that, in her view, the old world is oil and the new world is renewable energy.

Two Lessons for the World
She went on to offer two lessons for the world regarding implementing renewable energy:

1) Markets cannot do it alone. If a proper incentive structure is in place, the market can be a good vehicle, but it cannot do it alone.

2) You cannot solve global problems individually. She used the current US financial crisis as example, saying that if you simply cannot address that issue, you must also address related problems as well.

:: Clinton Global Initiative

Renewable Energy, Denmark
On Danish Island of Samsø Wind Power is the Heart of Carbon Neutral Energy Independence
Danish Climate Goal 2009: World’s Biggest Fleet of Electric Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars

Clinton Global Initiative
Highlights from the 1st Day of the Clinton Global Initiative
Bill Clinton Chats With Bloggers About Pickens Plan, Offshore Drilling, Clean Energy–and Gives TreeHugger a Thumbs Up

Source:

“Clinton Global Initiative Highlights: Old World Is Oil, New World Is Renewables“, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, Matthew McDermott, 25th Sept 2008

Wal-Mart Goes on a Plastic Diet: 9 Million Plastic Bags to Be Eliminated From Waste Stream

photo: Jim

Another significant environmental commitment coming out of the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting comes from an seemingly unlikely paring: The Environmental Defense Fund and Wal-Mart.

Announced in the Metropolitan Ballroom by President Bill Clinton, who was keen to point out the odd-couple nature of the situation, the Global Plastic Shopping Bag Commitment stands to make a serious dent in the plastic shopping bag waste by big box mega-retailer Wal-Mart. How much waste will be avoided:

One-Third Per Store Plastic Bag Reduction by 2013
Granted the qualifying word “potentially” prefaced this next figure in the public announcement, but this commitment could eliminate 9 million plastic shopping bags per year from Wal-Mart stores. To do this EDF will help Wal-Mart develop strategies for recycling, reusing and reducing the use of plastic bags in its stores by an average of one-third per store, from 2008 levels, by 2013.

An estimated 290,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and energy consumption equal to 678,000 barrels of oil will be eliminated through this action.

Specific Measures That EDF Will Be Taking 
Proving scientific advice to Wal-Mart on the environmental impact of plastic bag use, as well as quantifying the carbon footprint of alternative bags and packing options.

Assist in developing educational materials for Wal-Mart customers.

Evaluating Wal-Mart projections for program’s environmental benefits.

Monitor and assess the project’s progress.

:: Clinton Global Initiative

Clinton Global Initiative
3500 MW of Green Power in India, China to be Developed by Suzlon Green Power
Clinton Global Initiative Highlights: Old World is Oil, New World is Renewables

Plastic Bags
Encinitas, CA – Latest City to Ban Plastic Bags
Paper Bags or Plastic Bags? Everything You Need to Know

Source:

“Wal-Mart Goes on a Plastic Diet: 9 Million Plastic Bags to Be Eliminated From Waste Stream“, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, Matthew McDermott, 25th Sept 2008

Catch-Share System Could Save World’s Fisheries From Collapse

photo: Corey Arnold

This week the European Commission announced that the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy was going to be reviewed, with the expectation being that both the number of vessels and the time they would be allowed to be at sea would be reduced so that declining fish stocks could be better protected. Well, a new article in Sciencemagazine, proposes a better method to ensure that fish stocks don’t become depleted: A Catch-Share System. Here’s how it would work:

Fisherman Have Incentive to Ensure Fish Stock’s Health

Catch share programs replace complex rules dictating how fishing will be practiced, with a method to hold fishermen directly accountable for meeting a vital conservation target: scientifically determined catch limits. Fishermen, individually or in cooperatives, are granted a percentage share of the total allowable catch. They can also be granted exclusive access to particular fishing zones. (This system is commonly referred to as territorial use rights for fishing.) As long as fishermen do not exceed their share, they have greater flexibility to fish when weather and market conditions are best. Their shares grow in value as the overall fishery improves, providing them a greater financial stake in sound resource management. (Environmental Defense Fund)

 

Only 1% Of World Fisheries Employ Catch-Share
This compares to the current open-access system used by 99% of the world’s fisheries where, as report author Christopher Costello describes it, you have a free-for-all race to catch as many fish as possible. “But when you allocate share of the catch, then there is an incentive to protect the stock, which reduces collapse. We saw this across the globe.” (Reuters)

Alaskan Halibut Hailed as Example
The report cites the example of the Alaskan halibut fishery as an example of how catch-share systems can revitalize a fishery. Prior to 1995, the season was repeatedly shrunk until in lasted just two to three days a year. In those days, fisherman tried to catch as many fish as possible, often overloading their boats to the point of endangering themselves and the catch. Now that a catch-share system is in place, the season has been expanded to eight months; and in the words of report co-author Steven Gaines, is “insanely profitable” because fisherman can better store and manage their catch, and fetch a higher price for it.

via :: EDF and :: Retuers

Overfishing
Fishing Ban Enacted for Bluefin Tuna in Eastern Atlantic & Mediterranean
Global Fisheries Hit by Climate Change and Overfishing
Pacific Tuna Overfishing to be Addressed in Panama City

Source:

“Catch-Share System Could Save World’s Fisheries from Collapse”, treehugger.com, Food & Health, Matthew McDermott, 19th Sept 2008