bemoreeco

Rico Montenegro talks about his role as chief arborist at the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and the organizations goal to benefit the planet through the planting of fruit trees.

Food Waste Recycling  - Animal By-Products & Waste Food

BBC’s Working Lunch’s Ben Shore visits an energy plant in Widnes that’s powered by waste food. Commercial director Philip Simpson explains how it works.

Follow this link the watch the report

How it works

We are all becoming increasingly aware of the need to reduce our environmental impact by finding safe alternative uses for food products that are past their sell-by dates, or deemed no longer saleable rather than simply sending them to landfill. Many blue chip organisations have committed to eliminating the landfilling of their food wastes.

In addition to the environmental considerations, the landfilling of food wastes is becoming increasingly expensive; landfill tax will is rising by £8 per tonne each year.

PDM Group provides a unique ‘one-stop shop’ collection and recycling service for all waste food products (including products in packaging and tins) with complete coverage across the UK.  The collected products go through an innovative process which separates the food material from any packaging. The food products are either then re-processed to recover valuable materials that are used in the manufacture of bio-fuels, or are used as a ‘neat’ bio-fuel for direct biomass combustion.

Bio-fuel produced from the waste food is used in PDM Group’s own power plants to generate renewable electricity, power which qualifies for ‘Renewable Obligation Certificates’ (ROCs) under the Government’s Renewable Energy legislation.

The liquid fat recovered from the food waste is used as a feedstock for the production of biodiesel or as a renewable energy fuel. The service is also able to handle food wastes from restaurants, hotels, hospitals and fast-food outlets.

Energy Generation Background

PDM Group was the first company in the world to develop a dedicated, commercial combustion process to use animal by-products as a renewable fuel source. The technology to do this involved many year’s research by PDM Group. A pilot plant was commissioned at PDM Group’s Nuneaton site in 1997.

Based on the information and expertise gathered from the pilot plant, in 2000 PDM Group opened the world’s first commercial meat and bonemeal (MBM) combustion plant at Widnes, Cheshire. Today, PDM Group’s bubbling fluidised bed (BFB) combined heat and power (CHP) combustion technology provides the benchmark for the disposal of meat industry residues.

Winemaker deploys miniature sheep to cut fuel costs and keep grass short.

A New Zealand winemaker believes he has struck upon the solution to reducing the carbon footprint of wine – and the answer, which may come as no great surprise, lies in sheep. Miniature sheep, that is.

There are only 300 of them in the world and they were originally bred as cute miniature pets, but Peter Yealands believes that babydoll sheep could help him to reduce the environmental footprint of his wine.

By allowing the rare breed to graze on the grass between his vines, Yealands says he can dramatically reduce the energy his wine takes to make and ultimately enable the process to be more sustainable.

Marleen Stumpel, co-director of AdVintage Wines, a London-based supplier of carbon-neutral wines, said the babydolls are an unusual approach. She said most wine makers reduce their carbon footprint by paying to offset their emissions. “There is a growing market for it, but the wine does tend to be a little bit more expensive,” she said

Courtesy of guardian.co.uk. To read full article, click here

The average fuel efficiency of the US vehicle fleet has risen by just 3 miles per gallon since the days of the Ford Model T, and has barely shifted at all since 1991.

Those are the conclusions reached by Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhoni at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor. They analysed the fuel efficiency of the entire US vehicle fleet of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses from 1923 to 2006.

They found that from 1923 to 1935 fuel efficiency hovered around 14 mpg (5.95 km/l), but then fell gradually to a nadir of only 11.9 mpg (5.08 km/l) in 1973. By 1991, however, the efficiency of the total fleet had risen by 42 per cent on 1973 levels to 16.9 mpg (7.18 km/l), a compound annual rate of 2 per cent.

Full Article at New Scientist

How to test a chair on Primrose Hill in London. Is this an eco sport or not, also where are the wipeouts.

Research published today (22 July 2009) shows that 21st century British woodlands are less distinctive than those of the early 20th century due to environmental change. Native woodland plants have re-organised over the last 70 years in response to increased soil fertility and loss of light related to increased canopy shading.

The research was carried out by a team from Bournemouth University, Natural England and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and will be published online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (FirstCite website) on 22nd July 2009.

Lead author, Sally Keith of Bournemouth University, said: ‘We have identified the loss of unique communities within British woodlands through a comprehensive large-scale study of woodland plants. The results show that we must monitor biodiversity at the landscape scale, as well as gain a better understanding of processes affecting our native flora, if we are to conserve and restore the character of the traditional British woodland.’

The researchers investigated changes in the flora of British woodlands over seven decades with the study providing evidence of a new kind of biodiversity loss, namely a loss of the unique character of individual woods which had developed over centuries in response to local conditions. They found that the woodlands are more similar to each other now, when compared with 70 years ago, even though the number of plant species in each woodland had not fallen.

Co-author Professor James Bullock from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said: ‘This study shows that increased pollution and poor countryside management has led to increasing homogenisation of biodiversity in British woodlands. These two issues must be addressed in future if we wish to restore the diverse woodland communities of the past.’

The study relied on a comparison between new field results and a historic dataset recorded over 70 years ago. In the 1930s, Professor Ronald Good cycled around Dorset and recorded the presence of plants at over 7,000 sites. The Dorset Environmental Records Centre (DERC) provided the research team with access to the historical data, and the scientists re-surveyed a subset of Professor Good’s woodland sites, visiting 86 woodlands across Dorset from late spring to early summer in 2008, recording the presence of plants as they are now. They then compared the plant records from the 1930s and the 21st century to see if and how the woodlands had changed.

The results indicated that, whilst the average number of plant species within each woodland remained the same, the difference between woodlands was significantly reduced. The researchers concluded that the woodlands that exist now are only a subset of the variety that could be seen in the 1930s. This process of increased similarity between ecological communities (groups of species in one site) is called ‘biotic homogenisation.’

Biotic homogenisation has major implications for biodiversity conservation as it is related to the loss of unique species combinations leaving an impoverished version of the past variety of nature. Other documented observations of homogenisation have been caused by the introduction of non-native species; however this study concluded that the impact of non-natives was negligible. The results demonstrate that homogenisation can occur simply through a re-organisation of native species, potentially suggesting the phenomenon may be more widespread than previously imagined.

The characteristics of the 2008 plant communities indicated that the soil was more fertile than in the 1930’s – a side-effect of the use of fertilisers in agriculture and its effect on the surrounding woodland. The composition of the plant communities also indicated that there was now less light available in the woods than in the past. This light loss is probably associated with the decline in traditional practices such as coppicing, which creates openings in the woodland as trees are harvested, leading to decreased woodland management.

Source: Bournemouth University

A huge amount of garbage has accumulated in the north Pacific due to ocean currents and wind. There are actually two distinct “piles” of this refuse, called the Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patches, and they come together on either side of the Hawaiian Islands.

Discovered by a sailor in 1997, the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or ‘trash vortex’ that floats around in oceanic gyres is now of great interest to scientists, biologists, weather forecasters and marine researchers for the information it reveals about ocean currents.

There is a soup of waste – humanity’s flotsam and debris – literally clogging the Pacific Ocean. Experts say it’s growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the USA.

Only about one-fifth of the junk comes from ship refuse, while the rest comes from land. The garbage is responsible for the deaths of about 100,000 marine animals and more than 1 million seabirds who mistake the plastic waste for food.

Our plastic waste poses a risk to our health too. What goes into the ocean goes into the food chain and eventually onto your dinner plate. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, known as ‘nurdles’ – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT.

Since 90% of the waste is plastics, the problem is that it won’t biodegrade for tens of thousands of years The United Nations Environment Program estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of north Pacific Ocean.

Other Interesting BeMoreEco Articles

• Voyage to Study plastic Island
• A water sample from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• North Sea Plastic Rubbish

The story of a man with a gun and a mission – to eliminate all instances of unseasonal vegetable consumption.

Written and directed by the brilliant Michael ‘Watercress’ Wright and starring the magnificent Daniel ‘Legume’ Lapaine with deft editing by Simon ‘Water Celery’ Wilcox and a purringly perfect soundtrack by Michael ‘Mango’ Mertens.

Produced by the kind people at Mustard in association with the equally kind people at Eat Seasonably.

The team at WaterAid want to thank everyone who Carried a Can and helped handover the 80,000 End Water poverty petitions to 10 Downing Street.

They are really keen for this to go viral and appear on the ‘most watched’ bit of YouTube to get them maxim coverage. So please watch it, comment on it, tweet about it and send to all your friends and family and encourage them to do the same!

Home energy bills will rise on average by £92 a year as Britain turns into a low-carbon economy, climate change secretary Ed Miliband admitted yesterday.

He sought to quash fears that increases would be far higher as the country comes to rely increasingly on wind, tidal, nuclear and solar power.

Some estimates put the likely increase at £230 a year for many families. But Mr Miliband told MPs that climate change policies would push up the average annual bill for domestic gas and energy by eight per cent, or £92, by 2020.

He also said bills would not increase until 2015 and that the rises were being kept down by energy efficiency improvements in homes.

“Renewables, nuclear and clean fossil fuels are the trinity of low carbon and the future of energy in Britain,” he said. “We will get 40 per cent of our electricity from low-carbon energy by 2020 and more afterwards. Our plan will strengthen our energy security, it seeks to be fair to the most vulnerable, it seizes industrial opportunity and it rises to the moral challenge of climate change.”

By 2020, the Low Carbon Transition Plan announced today aims for:

• More than 1.2 million people to be in green jobs.
• Seven million homes to have “pay-as-you-save” home insulation improvements, paid for by bill savings.
• More than 1.5 million homes to get support to produce energy through wind turbines and solar panels
• Twenty-six million households to have smart meters for more detailed electricity consumption information.
• Britain to import half the amount of gas as predicted, and for the average new car to emit 40 per cent less carbon.

Britain is committed to a 34 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020, but the plan was published amid reports that hundreds of jobs could go at a major wind turbine manufacturer.

The Tories accused the Government of stealing their ideas. “Our low-carbon revolution is still to come,” said shadow climate change secretary Greg Clark.