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Opening in 181 countries on June 5th, 2009 during the World Environment Day (WED) and thanks to the contribution of many luxury brands, this movie without copyright by Yann Arthus-Bertrand was widely broadcasted for a few days for free in french, english and spanish.

Provided also in cinemas, DVD, TV on the same day, this french documentary about the EMERGENCY to save the planet broke the world record for the largest film release in history!

Non only the message remains frightening but realistic, but also the images look astonishing, as well as the music is powerful. Watch and (re)act!

As mentioned in class, the largest trash dump isn’t on land, it’s in the ocean (Pacific ocean). It is estimated twice the size of the state Texas and it is only going to get worse as our demand for petroleum plastics only increases.

In the trash dump are bottles, plastic bags, etc. from every corner of the planet. 80% (3,5 million tons) is plastics that once got into waterways and brought, via streams of the ocean, to a central point of the ocean (the pacific).

This trash dump is the ultimate example of bad engineering, “not taking into account what to do with the product (package) when it reaches the end of it’s lifecycle and is of no use anymore”. One solution could be PLA (corn plastic, see post 24 / 07) although for the moment this plastic isn’t any better than other plastics.

The City of Ottawa took another step towards reducing the footprint of its residents. They will soon issue a letter of intent for Plasco Energy to build a waste conversion facility, which will help reduce the amount of waste that goes to our landfills.

A recent release states:

City moves forward with new clean technology for waste management

Ottawa City Council approved a resolution giving authority to the City Manager to issue a letter of intent for development by Plasco Energy Group Inc. (PlascoEnergy) of a Waste Conversion Facility to process the residual household waste that would otherwise be disposed of in the City’s landfill.

The agreement will be subject to the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) issuing a Certificate of Approval respecting environmental performance. This approval may be given only when information satisfactory to MOE is provided by PlascoEnergy.

Through our partnership with Plasco the City hopes to move beyond the current demonstration facility to a commercial-scale operation, which has the potential to provide economic benefit to the City through revenue sharing arrangements, as well as providing an environmentally friendly solution for household waste.

http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/

Discovery Channel Video: http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/?Discovery_Video

Hi.

This is a post I wanted to make already a few days ago. Because I read an article about a big recycling plant in Germany which is that huge and innovative that there is not enough waste in Germany to run it profitable. So they are obliged to buy the waste from the neighbouring countries. This highlights the statement Mr. Williams had made about the “big business” of this industry. I think that this also shows the shift in thinking. Waste has a value now, mainly because of the rising raw material prices. And this is really important. If waste becomes more and more valuable, the reuse of resources is higher and we move towards one of the goals of natural capitalism: zero waste (or the less possible). Unfortunetaly, this is not yet the case in Naples…

Nina

Over the last few years China has been importing a massive amount of waste paper. This is being recycled and saving millions of trees along the way. The paper industry in China imported almost 20 million tonnes of paper in 2006 with almost 60% of the fibre used in producing the paper being recycled. Using waste paper saved about 54 million metric tonnes of wood being harvested for pulp last year.
“In the last four years alone, China has prevented 65 million tonnes of waste-paper from heading to landfills in the US, Japan and Europe,” according to Bran Stafford the author of the article.
The worry is that the ever growing demand for paper is going to lead to the continued destruction of forest in Indonesia and Russia.
In China the Ministry for forestry have recently launched a handbook for logging conpamies to make forestry in the country sustainable.
The ministry said the booklet would “guide and standardize Chinese companies’ sustainable forestry activities overseas”, the Reuters news agency reported.
I have given you a summary of the article but if you want to read the full article follow
this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6897231.stm
How sustainable is this approach considering the reduction in paper use throughout the world? Do you think your particular country could attempt something similar?

We have been talking about recycling as an efficient and quite easy way of solving the environmental problem and specially the waste problem. By recycling, our waste is being reused again, so it could be said that “no waste” is generated which will go to dumps, etc. However, recycling is not the only way to solve the waste problem. Other initiatives like litter prevention programs have the same consequence as they do not generate any waste at all. Before I have never heard about this type of programs and it really pick my attention. I think that this kind of programs could be really useful because not only solves part of the waste problem, but also helps people to be aware of the ecological problems that we have, not only waste problem.

More in deep, this litter prevention program aims to reduce littering by: 1) influencing people’s littering behaviour; 2) supporting the expanded and stronger litter laws; and 3) encouraging key stakeholders to be active in litter prevention through an integrated approach of education, enforcement and infrastructure provision. However, I do not know if this program has been successful in New South Wales community where it was implanted. In any case, theoretically and at first sight it seems a good measure of the local government.

To conclude, I just wanted to show a recycling guide I have founded which it could be useful to guide our new ecological behaviour.

In addition to oil companies, another type of “non sustainable business” could have been mentioned in our “good, bad and ugly” presentations.
In fact, I am not sure that anybody noticed it yet, but paper industry is really concerning too.

Paper production is the fourth source of greenhouse gases emmissions.
We do not even realise but paper is all around us : newspapers, magazines, catalogs, advertisements and writing paper : we use it and throw it away every day.
Main publishers just stasr to consider the impact of their activity on the environment.

They take measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. They know that rather than printing fewer magazines (which would be syonymous of less profits), they have to improve their production process.

But they are not the worse companies in this field : in fact, I think the “ugly” award in this area could be given to supermarkets, which print and give in our mailboxes tons of thick catalogs to advertise their products each week. When you consider that the two thirds of this direct advertising catalogs are thrown away without being opened, I think that we can talk about useless waste. I tried to find some figures on this topic but curiously, no recommendations or studies have been publisehd on that topic yet.
Of course, all supermarkets do have a “sustainable development” part on their websites and mention how important it is for them. As we said in class, no firm can be perfect but cutting down trees for such a useless goal should not be allowed.

All the garbage that every day each of us generates is becoming a bigger problem and what I comment in the following lines it´s just an example of it. Nowadays this topic is creating a big debate in the region where I am from (Gipuzkoa). The debate is being generated because the current dump has only a couple of years of life left. Therefore, other alternatives are being studied for the location of the garbage that we generate. However, the only alternative that is principally handling the local authorities is the construction of an incinerator and the principal debate that has arisen in the matter is the location of it. Nobody wants to have the incinerator near his house and when the town hall mentions a possible location, the nearby population started to complaint. Numerous manifestations have taken place in the last months to protest against it.
However, the majority of the population doesn’t complain for the environmental consequences that the incinerator would have if definitely it is constructed, they complaint due to the fact that they do not want to have it near their houses. Despite all of it, some local ecological associations are proposing new alternatives to the construction of the incinerator and are trying to warn the society about the bad effects that it could bring. Nevertheless, the local authorities do not hear any alternative and speak about the incinerator as the only solution to the problem. In addition, the society does not seem to be sensitive with the environmental problems that the construction of the incinerator could bring. All this, shows that in Gipuzkoa we have to develop our environmental sensitivity.

Hello!!!
Browsing on the net I have found the “zero waste” web side from New Zealand http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/, in there we can find a lot of interesting information about what zero waste is, also what we can do about it…Moreover, they publish a monthly magazine and in the December’s one where we can find diverse information about “Government and Climate Change”, what kind of measures must take the Government and how are this changes going to affect to the citizens).

On the other hand also it talks about Zero Waste, Climate Change, and Sustainability, focusing on the environmental benefits of the recycling.
Climate Change, Sustainability, and Waste
In May this year, a major (WRAP) report released in the UK reported on the options being considered for the disposal of UK wastes. Based on careful Life Cycle Analysis, the report concluded that wastes should be reduced, reused and recycled, rather than be incinerated or land-filled. What has this to do with Climate Change? – you ask.

The results are clear and positive. Burning and burying our wastes results in large releases of carbon dioxide and methane into the ‘commons’ of our atmosphere, thus promoting an increasing rate of Climate Change; re-using resources is more efficient, and results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions (GHG’s). Re-using the aluminium in drink cans is a great example: recycling avoids the mining of four tonnes of bauxite and overburden for each tonne of new aluminium, and after re-manufacturing the cans, the overall outcome is an energy saving of 70-90%. Re-use of gold is even more special, as it has been calculated that the manufacture of just one wedding band results in the production of more than 20 tonnes of waste ore and overburden. Re-use and recycling are simply fantastic!
http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/assets/ZWUPDATEDecember06.pdf

A transport company can earn as much as 5-6 thousand euro if it manages to get rid of waste in Poland! No wonder that there are many people eager to earn money in this way. For the illegal procedure one can get a penalty of 14 thousand zloty ( 3,5 thousand euro). So as you can easily calculate that although there is a risk , it is still worth it from the financial point of view. So one might say ( quoting after Mr. Tom Peckham) that the government is encouraging the illegal procedure by its low fines.

This year the the customs officials managed to stop about 200 trucks. However the real number of trucks that have entered Poland with waste-loads is difficult to estimate. The garbage comes mainly from West European countries. Because of the free flow of goods across the border , after the accession to the EU it the customs officials have little control over the content of trucks entering Poland.

Paradoxically also Polish people take part in this procedure. A few months ago a woman agreed on disposing 25 tons waste from Belgium on her property( for a very low price!)

It seems that illegal waste disposal is a highly profitable procedure, which leads to the conclusion that the government should impose bigger fines on waste smugglers and introduce better methods of control.