Urban Metabolism
It was reported that the concept of ‘urban metabolism’ has existed for decades and views large cities as living entities that consume energy, food, water, and other raw materials, and release wastes. These releases include carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas; air pollutants, sewage and other water pollutants; and even excess heat that collects in vast expanses of concrete pavement and stone buildings. Humans directly produce a significant share of this waste, but emissions from industrial, power generation and transportation systems emit the largest quantities of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. Other urban metabolisers include sewage systems, landfills, domestic pets and pests like rats, which in some cities outnumber people.
During the last five years, this body of knowledge has drawn into sharper focus the hazards of poor air quality in mega cities, not just on the large local populations but also on population centres, agricultural activities and natural ecosystems located downwind from these sprawling areas. Researchers now acknowledge that carbon dioxide and other pollutants in mega cities make them immense drivers of climate change. They impact climate on both a regional and global level because these long-lived greenhouse gases are dispersed around the world.” More than half the world’s population today lives in cities, and the world’s largest urban areas are growing rapidly. The number of mega cities — metropolitan areas with populations exceeding 10 million — has grown from just three in 1975 to about 20 today.

The Culprits
The most highly polluted mega cities are in developing countries. They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Cairo, Egypt; and Karachi, Pakistan. Some mega cities in less developed regions have recently mounted air quality management campaigns that have resulted in lower levels of pollution; they include Mexico City, Mexico; Beijing, China; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Even the cleanest mega cities like Tokyo/Osaka in Japan and New York City and Los Angeles in the United States — all in the developed world — still have serious problems.
The hot weather and frequent atmospheric inversions in southern California, for instance, foster Los Angeles’ legendary smog problem. Mexico City’s high altitude/low latitude location produces high levels of solar ultraviolet radiation that drive photochemical smog production, and the even higher surrounding mountains trap the resulting pollutants in and over the city on most days.
That causes a very serious situation for residents of Mexico City. There are very unhealthy levels of ozone and fine particle pollutants that produce large numbers of premature deaths each year. Studies show that for each increase of 10 micrograms per cubic metre of these particles, you get roughly a 10 percent increase in premature deaths, producing a decrease in average life expectancy of about 0.8 years. Hospital visits, including bronchitis and asthma cases, also rise.

Controlling urban growth key to improving global air quality
Scientists believe that controlling urban growth in the developing world is key to improving the world’s air quality. Urban pollutant levels in poor countries will remain high, with increased emissions expected as the city populations and economic activities increase. Until mega cities are rich enough to devote significant funds to reduce their emissions, two factors will invariably increase the stresses on their environment — increasing vehicular traffic and industrial growth.

California and Mexico reversing the trend
An example of attempts at reversing this trend can be seen in Southern California, which has taken successful action to modify its urban metabolism, pioneering efforts to reduce motor vehicle emissions. Mexico City — unlike most mega cities in less-developed countries — has also taken successful steps to partially address poor air quality. In the past two decades, the Mexican Government has introduced policies to improve air quality, including requiring pollution control devices like catalytic converters on newer vehicles, reducing sulphur levels in petrol and diesel fuel and relocating some large industrial emitters outside the Valley of Mexico. However, in other parts of the world for example the Mega cities in Asia and Africa urgently need to modify their urban metabolism in similar ways with a few fundamental changes such as getting rid of lead in their gasoline. In the developed world, we can institute emissions controls on diesel vehicles, which create hazardous fine particles, and we can also reduce pollution by using more rail-based mass transport or setting up specialized bus routes.”
The urban metabolism model can reveal how developed-world mega cities, such as Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles, have improved their air quality despite a rise in population. The study also assesses how developing-world mega cities are seriously grappling with the problem.

Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.
American Chemical Society (2009, August 18). How Cities Mimic Life:
Mega cities Breathe, Consume Energy, Excrete Wastes And Pollute.

Conclusions of great interest to the agricultural and animal husbandry sector were drawn from the studies. Neiker-Tecnalia was able to show that, on extensive mountain pastures, lime sand and wood ash are a viable alternative to quicklime as a liming material. In moderate doses, both products slightly correct the acidity of soils and, at the same time, produce a balanced increase in their short-term biological activity, as well as an increase in the productivity and the nutritive value of the pasture. Also, no significant changes were observed in the floral composition of the pastures one year after the application of these liming materials. When attention was turned to intensive crop rotation in more lowland pastures, it was observed that the use of cattle slurry as organic fertiliser, the use of the non-tillage (direct sowing) technique and the incorporation of legumes as winter crops enable the reduction of production costs, compared to mineral fertiliser, conventional tillage and a single grass crop and as a consequence, the economic yield of the farms is enhanced. Moreover, the application of fresh cattle slurry, especially in combination with non tillage, favours the activity and the functional diversity of edaphic microbial communities, as well as the abundance of earthworms.
Nevertheless, non tillage may give rise to the problem of compacting in fine-textured soils, from the second year of intensive rotation. Neiker-Tecnalia also carried out trials with microcosm-scale fodder species and which showed that the application of the glyphosate herbicide in doses normally employed in agriculture may affect the non-targeted edaphic organisms and, in particular, the functional diversity of rhizospheric microbial communities.
From this research, it was concluded that the biomass, the mineralizable nitrogen, the activity and functional diversity of the edaphic microbial communities, as well as the abundance of earthworms, have a fast and high sensitivity response to the changes that agricultural practices produce in the soil. This is why they are such effective tools when evaluating alternative agricultural practices when in transition to an agriculture that better respects the environment and that combines crop productivity with the protection of soil health and quality in the long-term.

Adapted from materials provided by Basque Research.

MLA Basque Research (2009, July 24). Alternative Agricultural Practices Combine
Productivity And Soil Health.

Editor’s Opinion
My opinion is that nutritional value for humans is only a very small part of the organic benefits for human kind and if as the report suggests, organically produce food is not nutritionally better, then it is not a major upset for organic producers. Organic farming methods are better for biodiversity, soil health, wild life including insects and better for you because there is no danger of contaminants entering the food chain in the form of insecticides and herbicides. In other words, if you eat an organic apple, then you are eating only an apple. if you eat a non organic apple with the same nutritional value, you don’t know exactly what you are eating. Unfortunately, reports such as this – which are extremely accurate as far as they go, are taken up by the press in headlines which suggest to the lay reader that we might as well not bother producing organic food. All the other major benefits for plane/human health remain unmentioned. Our next post (Alternative Agricultural Practices Combine Productivity And Soil Health) looks at just one aspect of this. Ed.

More on the report:
Organic food consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food, but there has to-date been no systematic review of the available published literature. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have now completed the most extensive systematic review of the available published literature on nutrient content of organic food ever conducted. The review focussed on nutritional content and did not include a review of the content of contaminants or chemical residues in foods from different agricultural production regimens.
Over 50,000 papers were searched, and a total of 162 relevant articles were identified that were published over a fifty-year period up to 29 February 2008 and compared the nutrient content of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. To ensure methodological rigour the quality of each article was assessed. To be graded as satisfactory quality, the studies had to provide information on the organic certification scheme from which the foodstuffs were derived, the cultivar of crop or breed of livestock analysed, the nutrient or other nutritionally relevant substance assessed, the laboratory analytical methods used, and the methods used for statistical analysis. 55 of the identified papers were of satisfactory quality, and analysis was conducted comparing the content in organically and conventionally produced foods of the 13 most commonly reported nutrient categories.
The researchers found organically and conventionally produced foods to be comparable in their nutrient content. For 10 out of the 13 nutrient categories analysed, there were no significant differences between production methods in nutrient content. Differences that were detected were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use (nitrogen, phosphorus), and ripeness at harvest (acidity), and it is unlikely that consuming these nutrients at the levels reported in organic foods would provide any health benefit. Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and one of the report’s authors, comments: ‘A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority. Research in this area would benefit from greater scientific rigour and a better understanding of the various factors that determine the nutrient content of foodstuffs’.

*Notes: While organic food accounts for 1–2% of total food sales worldwide, the organic food market is growing rapidly, far ahead of the rest of the food industry, in both developed and developing nations.
• World organic food sales jumped from US $23 billion in 2002] to $40 billion in 2006
• The world organic market has been growing by 20% a year since the early 1990s, with future growth estimates ranging from 10%-50% annually depending on the country.
In the European Union 3.9% of the total utilized agricultural area is used for organic production. The countries with the highest proportion of organic land are Austria (11%) and Italy (8.4), followed by Czech Republic and Greece (both 7.2%). The lowest figures are shown for Malta (0.1%), Poland (0.6%) and Ireland (0.8%)
United States: Organic food is the fastest growing sector of the American.
Organic food sales have grown by 17 to 20 percent a year for the past few years while sales of conventional food have grown at only about 2 to 3 percent a year.
* Notes from Wikepedia

Recently, scientists have warned that Restoration-based Environmental Markets may not improve ecosystem health. While policymakers across of the globe are relying on environmental restoration projects to fuel emerging market-based environmental programmes, an article in the July 31 2009 edition of Science by two noted ecologists warns that these programs still lack the scientific certainty needed to ensure that restoration projects deliver the environmental improvements being marketed.
Markets identify the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, called ecosystem services, and associate them with economic values which can be bought, sold or traded. The scientists, Dr. Margaret Palmer and Dr. Solange Filoso of the University of Maryland Centre for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, raise concerns that there is insufficient scientific understanding of the restoration process, namely, how to alter a landscape or coastal habitat to achieve the environmental benefits that are marketed. “Both locally and nationally, policymakers are considering market-based environmental restoration programs where the science does not yet conclusively show that environment health will improve once the ‘restoration’ is completed,” said Dr. Palmer. “These programs may very well make economic sense, but the jury is still out whether or not the local environment will ultimately benefit.” At present, the demand in ecosystem service markets is driven by regulations that require those who harm the environment to mitigate or provide offsets for their environmental impacts. But in the regions throughout the world, including the Chesapeake Bay, many people hope that voluntary markets will expand outside of a regulatory context and result in a net gain of ecosystem services rather than just offsets for lost ecosystem services.
Examples include markets for flood protection created by restoring floodplains or wetlands and markets for improving water quality by restoring streams or rivers.
In their paper, the scientists outline what should be done before markets expand further and state that there must be a recognition that restoration projects generally only restore a subset of the services that natural ecosystem provide, complete a limited number of projects in which direct measurements are made of the response of biophysical processes to restoration actions, and identify easily measured ecosystem features that have been shown to reflect the biophysical processes that support the desired ecosystem service.
“There is an inherent danger of marketing ecosystem services through ecological restoration without properly verifying if the restoration actions actually lead to the delivery of services,” said Dr. Filoso. “If this happens, these markets may unintentionally cause an increase in environmental degradation.”

Reference:
Restoration of Ecosystem Services for Environmental Markets. Science, July
31st 2009. Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland Centre for
Environmental Science.

Environmental Markets Association EMA
For more information on Environmental Markets please visit the web site of the Environmental Markets Association: http://www.environmentalmarkets.org/index.ww

Although corals are found in temperate and tropical waters, shallow-water reefs are formed only in a zone extending at most from 30°N to 30°S of the equator. (This zone is very important to whales because many types of plankton live there). Tropical corals do not grow at depths of over 50 m (165 ft). Temperature has less of an effect on the distribution of tropical coral, but it is generally accepted that they do not exist in waters below 18 °C.[
“Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought,” say researchers at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment in the USA.
Corals in danger?

Coral locations

Coral reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe. Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zooxanthellae. The corals provide the algae a home, and, in turn, the algae provide nourishment, forming a symbiotic relationship. But when rising temperatures stress the algae, they stop producing food, and the corals spit them out. Without their algae symbionts, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as coral bleaching.
During particularly warm years, bleaching has accounted for the deaths of large numbers of corals. In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered. In recent years however, scientists discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.
In 2006, researchers at Stanford, travelled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters with numerous corals hosting the most common heat-sensitive and heat-resistant algae symbionts. Ofu also has pools of varying temperatures that allowed the research team to test under what conditions the symbionts formed associations with corals.
In cooler lagoons, Oliver found only a handful of corals that host heat-resistant algae exclusively. But in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts, suggesting that some corals had swapped out the heat-sensitive algae for more robust types. These results, combined with regional data from other sites in the tropical Pacific, were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.
Global pattern
To see if this pattern exists on a global scale, the researchers gathered worldwide oceanographic data on a variety of environmental variables, including ocean acidity, the frequency of weather events and sea-surface temperature. They then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics and compared them to environmental data. The results revealed the same pattern: In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 84 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit (29 to 31 degrees Celsius), corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts. Most corals bleach when temperatures rise 1.8 F (1 C) above the long-term normal highs. But heat-tolerant symbionts might allow a reef to handle temperatures up to 2.6 F (1.5 C) beyond the bleaching threshold. The scientists believe that this might be enough to help get them through the end of the century, Oliver said, depending on the severity of global warming.
A 2007 report by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change concluded that the average surface temperature of the Earth is likely to increase 3.6 to 8.1 F (2 to 4.5 C) by 2100. In this scenario, the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive through the end of the century. But with the help of other adaptive mechanisms, including natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, scientists believe.
It comes down to a calculation of the rates of environmental change versus the rates of adaptation. Heat-resistant corals also turn out to be more tolerant of increases in ocean acidity, which occurs when the ocean absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—another potential threat to coral reefs. This finding suggests that corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat, and that across the tropics, corals with the ability to switch symbionts will do so to survive.
Future protection
Researchers from the Institute say that it’s hard to imagine that these corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left. Part of their job might be to figure out where the tougher ones live and protect those places.

Journal reference:
Oliver TA, Palumbi SR. Distributions of stress-resistant coral symbionts match environmental patterns at local but not regional scales. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2009; 37893 DOI: 10.3354/meps07871

This article was adapted from materials provided by Stanford University.

The Yale researchers found that forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years. Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes.
“The damages to these ecosystems are pretty serious,” said Oswald Schmitz, an ecology professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and co-author of the meta-analysis with Yale Ph.D. student Holly Jones. “But the message is that if societies choose to become sustainable, ecosystems will recover. It isn’t hopeless.”

The Yale analysis focuses on seven ecosystem types, including marine, forest, terrestrial, freshwater and brackish, and addresses recovery from major anthropogenic disturbances: agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, invasive species, logging, mining, oil spills, over fishing, power plants and trawling and from the interactions of those disturbances. Major natural disturbances, including hurricanes and cyclones, are also accounted for in the analysis. The researchers analyzed data derived from peer-reviewed studies conducted over the past century that examined the recovery of large ecosystems following the cessation of a disturbance. The studies measured 94 variables that were grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community and plant community. The researchers quantified the recovery of each of the variables in terms of the time it took for them to return to their pre-disturbance state as determined by the expert judgment of each study’s author. The Yale analysis found that 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 reported a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; and 67 reported no recovery for any variable. Schmitz said 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery. Also, 54 percent of the studies that reported no recovery likely did not run long enough to draw definitive conclusions. In addition, the analysis suggests that an ecosystem’s recovery may be independent of its degraded condition. Aquatic systems, the researchers noted, may recover more quickly because species and organisms that inhabit them turn over more rapidly than, for example, forests whose habitats take longer to regenerate after logging or clear-cutting.

They point out that a potential “pitfall” of the analysis is that the ecosystems may have already been in a disturbed state when they were originally examined. Many ecosystems across the globe that have experienced extinctions and other fundamental changes as a result of human activities, combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and pollution, are far removed from their historical, natural pristine state. Thus ecologists measured recovery on the basis of an ecosystem’s more recent condition. The study points out the need for the development of objective criteria to decide when a system has fully recovered.

The researchers said the analysis rebuts speculation that it will take centuries or millennia for degraded ecosystems to recover and justifies an increased effort to restore degraded areas for the benefit of future generations. “Restoration could become a more important tool in the management portfolio of conservation organizations that are entrusted to protect habitats on landscapes,” said Schmitz.

Jones added: “We recognize that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate nature to meet its own needs. The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems.”

Ground breaking Experiment
Scientists have known for some time that artificially created algal blooms could be used to absorb greenhouse gases, but the technique has been banned for fear of causing unforeseen side effects in fragile ecosystems. However, based on the UK team’s evidence that the process has been occurring naturally for millions of years, and on a wide scale, the UN has given the green light for a ground-breaking experiment later this month and the team will try and create a massive algal bloom by releasing several tons of iron sulphate into the sea off the coast of the South Georgia. (A UK possession).
If the experiment is successful, the technique could be used over large areas of the Southern Ocean. Scientists calculate that if the whole 20 million square miles was treated, it could remove up to three and a half Gigatons of C02, equivalent to one eighth of all global annual emissions from fossil fuels.
Could this prevent the global warming catastrophe? We’ll see, but hopes are high that indeed the threatened icebergs have given us the information needed to save ourselves from ourselves.

The term ‘Ecology’ covers a vast range of subjects and our aim is to cover those close to home which have stirred up the public interest such as global warming, electrical generation, wild life problems and successes, waste management, farming and smallholding, organic matters, household energy management and so on. But we won’t be limited by such a list and if any further ranging topics of interest raise their heads above the horizon, we will cover them.

This first issue of EcoNewsOnline will cover a small but diverse selection of highlights from research, news and surveys undertaken in 2008. We start off with some very recent and welcome news about icebergs and then move onto a problem so close to home that it affects every one of us and originates in the home itself – the £billions wasted on food every year. A report originated by WRAP – Waste and Resources Action Programme in the UK will amaze you with its statistics on household food waste that occurs in all households in all sectors of society from the young to the very old. Look at just two of their findings below:

People in the UK pay for, but do not eat, £10 billion of food every year.
It costs another £1 billion annually for local authorities to collect and send most of it to landfill.
Can you imagine the cost of all this to the consumer, the local authorities and the wider economy? Can you imagine what £10 billion looks like or what we could do with it? And that is just in one country. I have no reason to believe that it is any different in the other developed nations. Preventing this appalling waste could avoid 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted each year – the same as taking 20% of cars off the road!

As I said earlier, the figures are staggering and when you think that 70,000 children die of starvation each year throughout the world it really puts the whole thing into perspective.

The summarized WRAP report is our first article January, but we go on to cover several more bite sized pieces including ‘earthworm detectives’; managing uncertainty in the ecological balance; we look at how the actions of individuals are the key to saving biodiversity; how the EU has doubled the ecological pressure on the planet and we take a look ‘Oceans of Death’ – sounds gloomy – Microbes as the new oil, the most interesting ‘Wedge Theory’ and how that vast resource, the soil can both hinder and help us. Remember though that independently conducted scientific research doesn’t always come up with the answers that we want to hear so be prepared to be disappointed at times.

Apart from these articles of interest we also take a quick look into eco history in our Historical Perspectives section; and we even investigate ‘the rise of slime!’

Our Angle at EcoNewsOnline
Our aim is to try and re-introduce science and common sense into the incredibly complicated ‘green’ equation. Politicians of whatever colour are rarely able to do this – especially the common sense bit because of their political ideologies and hangups. In New Zealand we have just been saved (I think) from a well intentioned but misguided attempt to force us all to use low energy light bulbs with no research having been carried out into the potential human health hazards of these items. Our politicians put forward an emissions trading scheme (which overall I think is good and which we need) but in which NZ farmers would have to take into account farm animals, thus making the most carbon efficient farmers in the world the only ones to front up for this. The resulting graduated reduction in New Zealand’s agricultural output to meet the emission targets would simply have shifted production to less efficient countries so what would have reduced New Zealand’s emissions on the one hand would be worse for the world on the global scale. Thus ‘clean & green’ New Zealand would have contributed towards more global warming! Some politicians seemed unable to see that global warming isn’t just a New Zealand problem. I would have thought that the word ‘global’ might have given them a clue, but anyway, see what I mean about common sense?

EcoNewsOnline is free and will appear every two months. In future we will have a free subscription system for your convenience so that we can inform you when each issue appears.

Finally, if you want to write in with articles, information or letters, or even advertising, please do so at info@econewsonline.com.
All of us here at EcoNewsOnline really hope that you enjoy our first issue and we also hope that you will return in two month’s time. (March 09)

Keep in touch

David Cramp
Editor

This unprecedented study has been conducted into how much food is wasted by UK households, but I very much doubt that any other developed country wherever it is in the world is any different. The results are staggering. This article should appall everyone who reads it and perhaps we should all reflect on the fact that while we are arguing about how we can feed the starving millions, we should look to ourselves for the answer.

Here are just a few of the results taken from the study in the UK:

• Between us we throw away around 6.7 million tonnes of food every year.
• For every three bags of groceries that we take home from the supermarket, we throw one in the bin before opening it.
• People in the UK pay for, but do not eat, £10 billion of food every year. Pounds Sterling – not dollars!
• That’s an average of £420 per household.
• For families with children it’s more – an average of £610 a year.
• It costs another £1 billion annually for local authorities to collect and send most of it to landfill.

Can you imagine the cost of all this to the consumer, the local authorities and the wider economy? Can you imagine what £10 billion looks like or what we could do with it? And that is just in one country. As I mentioned above, I have no reason to believe that it is any different in the other developed nations.

The figures are truly horrifying and when you think that 70,000 children die of starvation each year throughout the world it really puts the whole thing into perspective.

More Examples from the study:
Every day in the UK, for example, we throw away:

• 7 million slices of bread (worth £140 million a year);
• 5.1 million whole potatoes (worth £140 million a year); and 4.4 million whole apples (worth £300 million a year).

Other staple items that don’t quite make the top 10 include:

• 660,000 whole eggs (worth £50 million a year);
• 260,000 unopened packs of cheese (worth £40 million a year); and 1 million slices of ham (worth £30 million a year).

Whole fruit and vegetables are wasted in large quantities. As well as the potatoes and apples that make the top 10, every day in the UK we throw away:

• 2.8 million tomatoes (worth £80 million a year);
• 1.6 million bananas (worth £90 million a year);
• 1.4 million mushrooms (worth £30 million a year);
• 13.2 million grapes (worth £40 million a year); and 1 million plums (worth £70 million a year).

Processed and ‘convenience’ food also gets wasted routinely – every day
in the UK we throw away:

• 1.2 million whole sausages (worth £60 million a year);
• 550,000 rashers of bacon (worth £50 million a year);
• 330,000 unopened processed meat-based meals(worth £60 million a year); and 330,000 chicken portions (worth £70 million a year).

But it’s not only staple foods that are wasted. Surprisingly we also waste treats
and luxury items, for example:

• 82,000 whole dessert cakes and gateaux every day (worth £20 million a year);
• 300,000 unopened packets of crisps (worth £20 million a year);
• 700,000 unopened packets of chocolate and sweets (worth £40 million a year); and 2,900 unopened cans or bottles of lager a day (worth just less than £10 million a year).

And every year, 20,000 tonnes, or £66 million worth, of breakfast cereals are
thrown away – a story that will be familiar to families across the country, who
rush to get to work or school and leave their breakfast unfinished.
Some of the food we throw away is still in date – at least 340,000 tonnes of it –
with long shelf-life products featuring strongly including drinks, condiments,
dried foods and confectionery.

The imperative is clear: our food habits, of which this summary is but a snapshot, are costing us and the environment dear. The energy expended by business and industry to produce, process, transport –often refrigerated – and sell the food we then waste is immense. Coupled with the energy we expend travelling to stores, transporting our purchases back home and then storing and refrigerating them, this is a story of inefficiency and wastefulness of huge proportions.

This information can be put into context if we remember that according to Lester R. Brown writing on the Earth Policy Institute web site (see http://earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update69.htm for the full article), the World Bank reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on, will lose their grip and begin to fall off.

Projections by Professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing from over 800 million to 625 million by 2025. But in early 2007 their update of these projections, taking into account the biofuel effect on world food prices, showed the number of hungry people climbing to 1.2 billion by 2025. That climb is already under way.

Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses.
This above is a short set of highlights from a comprehensive research study more details of which are available on a more comprehensive version of the report which you can download. Please click here to see the report.

Editors note:
WRAP’s 3 primary targets are:

• SENDING LESS TO LANDFILL
WRAP will stop 8 million tonnes of waste materials from the household, industrial and commercial waste streams going to landfill.

• REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS
WRAP’s programmes will save 5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.

• INCREASING ECONOMIC IMPACTS
WRAP will deliver around £1.1 billion of positive economic impacts for business, local authorities and consumers

Currently the alternative fuel favourite ethanol is king. Almost all ethanol produced in the United States is fermented from readily available sugars in corn. But Ethanol from corn has recently come under much criticism and has with some justification been accused of being responsible for rising food prices worldwide which have obviously impacted hard on third world countries. Isn’t it time therefore to be looking at other crops and also at waste products as a source of fuel – and if you have read the first article in this issue you will readily agree that there is enough waste available!
Researchers are now looking at alternate biomasses as food for microorganisms to ferment into ethanol. The most attractive are known as lignocellulosic biomass and include wood residues (including sawmill and paper mill discards), municipal paper waste, agricultural residues (including sugarcane bagasse) and dedicated energy crops (like switchgrass). The problem is, unlike corn, the sugars necessary for fermentation are trapped inside the lignocellulose. Researchers at the University of Puerto Rico have been looking at unusual ecosystems and unusual organisms to find enzymes to help extract these sugars. Govind Nadathur and his colleagues at the university comment that
“Wood falls into the ocean. It disappears. What’s eating this biomass? We found mollusks that eat the wood, with the help of bacteria in their stomachs that produce enzymes that break down the cellulose. We found something similar in termites.” They plan on using these enzymes as a key step in a closed, integrated system that would not only produce ethanol, but would also produce sugar, molasses, hibiscus flowers and biodiesel with a minimum of waste.
It all starts with sugar cane and hibiscus flowers, grown on local lands. These produce not only the obvious products such as refined sugar, molasses (which is used to make rum) and flowers, but also a large amount of waste in the form of biomass. Using the enzymes in their library, Nadathur and his colleagues could break down the biomass to sugars and ferment them to ethanol, trapping the carbon dioxide that is produced during fermentation. They then would feed the carbon dioxide to microalgae in ponds that would produce a polymer that could be refined into biodiesel or jet fuel. The spent microalgae could then be harvested and used as fertilizer for the next round of sugar cane and hibiscus, thereby closing the cycle.
“There used to be a booming sugarcane industry in Puerto Rico, but in the mid-1990s it died. It could not survive economically. By creating a closed-loop system that utilizes the waste to create additional products and feeds back upon itself, suddenly growing sugar cane becomes economically feasible again,” says Nadathur.
They are currently working with a company called Sustainable Agrobiotech of Puerto Rico to build a pilot program which they hope to have running by early 2009. Should the pilot program prove successful, there is plenty of adjacent farmland to upscale.

What other ideas are there to produce alternative biofuels?
Another promising biofuel is hydrogen. Already many car manufacturers are producing hydrogen concept cars and pilot programs using hydrogen-powered buses already are gaining acceptance in Los Angeles in the USA. As more buses come online, there will be a greater need for hydrogen. Unfortunately, current chemical manufacturing processes for hydrogen are not that efficient or use fossil fuels as a source.
However, Sergei Markov of Austin Peay State University has developed a prototype bioreactor that uses the purple bacterium Rubrivivax gelatinosus to produce enough hydrogen to power a small motor.
He says that certain purple bacteria, which usually grow in the mud of various ponds and lakes, have the ability to convert water and carbon monoxide into hydrogen gas. The problem was how to effectively supply each bacterial cell in a liquid bacterial soup with gaseous carbon monoxide.
The answer was found by attaching the bacteria to numerous tiny hollow fibres inside an artificial kidney cartridge. Water and gasses can freely diffuse through the fibres, but bacteria, due to their large size, are unable to pass through. The hydrogen gas from a small fifty millilitre “artificial kidney bioreactor” has been directly injected into fuel cells and has produced enough electricity to power small motors and lamps. The only drawback is that carbon monoxide is not readily available, but Markov says it can be easily produced from biomass using a specific thermo chemical process. Also, there are other bacteria that produce carbon monoxide.

The Holy Grail of Hydrogen Production?
One researcher and her lab, though, are investigating what could perhaps be considered the holy grail of hydrogen production: Pin Ching Maness of the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, is researching cyanobacteria that harness the power of the sun to break the bonds in water, separating the hydrogen from the oxygen thus producing what could be termed the Holy Grail of Hydrogen production – pure hydrogen from only water and sunlight, with a little bacterial help. There is a problem. One of the hydrogenase enzymes the cyanobacteria uses in this process is sensitive to O2, which makes sustained hydrogen production extremely difficult.
In some very detailed research, they found that a certain purple bacterium uses a similar hydrogenase, but one that is tolerant to O2. Maness and her colleagues have identified the genes that the purple bacterium uses to produce the tolerant hydrogenase. They have also identified the genes a particular model cyanobacterium uses to produce the sensitive hydrogenase and have knocked it out. They are currently in the process of cloning the genes for the tolerant enzyme into the model cyanobacterium. The next step is to verify that the genes have been successfully incorporated into the genome and are expressed. Over the next few years additional research will need to be done to ensure all the requirements are there for the construction of an active hydrogenase enzyme.

Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Microbiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Reference: American Society for Microbiology (2008, June 5). Are Microbes The Answer To The Energy Crisis?.

In the report, Europe 2007 – Gross Domestic Product and Ecological Footprint*, the WWF has compared the performance of EU countries in three key areas since 1971:
• Economic growth measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
• Pressure on natural resources measured by Ecological Footprint, and
• Human development measured by the UN’s Human Development Index.

“What we currently measure as development is a long way away from the EU and world’s stated aim of sustainable development,” said WWF International President Chief Emeka Anyaoku. “This is because economic decisions routinely ignore natural capital expenditure.”
“Economic indicators are essential, but without natural resource accounting, ecological deficits will go unnoticed and ignored,” he added. “It is as if we spent our money without realizing that we are liquidating the planet’s capital.”

The Ecological deficit
All but three EU Members of the European Union— Finland, Latvia and Sweden — run an ecological deficit. Though these three countries have greater ecological reserves than others, they do not necessarily manage their assets well. Finland’s pressure on environment, for example, has grown by 70% since 1975 and is now the highest among EU countries.
Germany, together with Bulgaria and Latvia, actually reduced their ecological footprint in the past three decades yet have grown in human development. Nevertheless, its footprint is two-and-a-half times its natural resources and remains more than double the world average per person. On the other hand, Greece and Spain are still expanding in both economic and consumption terms. Greece has experienced the highest growth of ecological footprint, accompanied by a limited growth in terms of human development. France parallels the general EU trend. With improved technology, its resource availability is increasing but is outpaced by growth of consumption, with the largest component being energy.
Among Eastern European countries, Hungary’s footprint — as other former centrally planned European economies — has fallen since 1991, mainly because of economic shifts resulting from the ending of the Soviet era. Back in 1995, Slovenian citizens were practising, in global terms, sustainable development, but in 2003 Slovenia’s ecological footprint per capita had more than doubled while the development level rose by less than 5%. Romania has the lowest ecological footprint in the EU-27, yet it remains an ecological debtor. “Countries are increasingly realizing the significance of ecological assets for economic competitiveness, national security and social justice,” said Tony Long.
“Development has to be redefined. Improving the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people will have to be separated from ever growing material consumption and waste.”

How is the ecological footprint defined?
The Ecological Footprint measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere in terms of the area of biologically productive land and sea required to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. The footprint of a country includes the cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre and timber it consumes and absorb the waste it emits. Biocapacity is the total supply of productive area. The difference between Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity shows whether countries are ecological creditors or debtors. The EU is home to 7.7% of the global population and 9.5% of the world’s biocapacity. The EU is also responsible for 16% of the global ecological footprint. Europe’s shares have diminished since 1971, largely as a result of increase in global population.

*Reference: World Wildlife Fund (2007, November 28). European Union Has Doubled Ecological Pressure On Planet In 30 Years.

A new study of the potential ecological impact of various management strategies found that very little can be done to make palm oil plantations more hospitable for local birds and butterflies. The findings have major implications for the booming market in biofuels and its impact on biodiversity.

Dr Lian Pin Koh of ETH Zürich looked at the number of birds and butterflies in 15 palm oil plantations in East Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. He found that palm oil plantations supported between one and 13 butterfly species, and between seven and 14 species of bird. Previous research by other ecologists found at least 85 butterfly and 103 bird species in neighbouring undisturbed
rain forest.

Management techniques — such as encouraging epiphytes, beneficial plants or
weed cover in palm oil plantations — increased species richness by only 0.4 species for butterflies and 2.2 species for birds. Preserving remaining natural forests — for example by creating forest buffer zones between plantations — made a little more impact, increasing species richness by 3.7 in the case of butterflies and 2.5 for birds.

According to Dr Koh: “Rapid expansion of oil palm agriculture onto forested lands, even logged forests, poses a significant threat to biodiversity. This study shows that to maximise biodiversity in oil palm plantations, the industry and local governments should work together to preserve as much of the remaining natural forest as possible, for example by creating forest buffer zones around
oil palm estates or protecting remaining patches of forest. Even then, the industry’s impact on biodiversity is enormous.” The study is particularly important because it comes at time when rising demand for both food and biofuels is putting mounting pressure on biodiversity. “The rapid expansion of oil palm agriculture in Southeast Asia raises serious concerns about its potential impact on the region’s biodiversity. Unless future expansion of oil palm agriculture is regulated, rising global demand is likely
to exacerbate the high rates of forest conversion in major oil palm-producing countries,” says Dr Koh.

Palm oil plantations currently cover around 13 million hectares worldwide, producing 40 million tons a year. Malaysia and Indonesia account for around 56% of this cultivated area and 80% of production. Between 1960 and 2000, global palm oil production increased 10-fold (from 2 million tons in 1960 to 24 million tons in 2000). As well as biofuel, palm oil is used in food additives, cosmetics
and industrial lubricants.

Reference:
Lian Pin Koh. Can palm oil plantations be made more hospitable for forest
butterflies and birds? Journal of Applied Ecology, 9 July 2008

Forrest soils contain the largest terrestrial reserves of carbon on the planet and this carbon is stored there in a more or less sustainable manner in the form of organic matter: microflora, soil wildlife, roots and plant debris, organic labile residue (sugars, cellulose) and more stable molecules (lignin, tannin, humines). However, these carbon stocks naturally decompose, emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases. At Cemagref, the French Centre for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Research – www.cemagref.fr in France the aim of an ongoing doctoral thesis conducted in a partnership with ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie) is to develop a simple and cost-effective tool to quantify organic carbon storage in soils. Upstream, this work come within the future European Framework Directive on soil protection with one of the priorities being to make a list of the soils at risk in Europe.

Under the auspices of the European project IRISE (Impact of Fire Repetition on the
Environment) that researcher Lauric Cécilion has developed the Near-Infrared Spectrometry Soil Carbon Measurement method and this is an important step in dealing with the possible problem of greenhouse gas emissions from the soil. Near-infrared spectroscopy has proved itself to be an essential tool in quantifying the build-up of carbon in the soils at a large scale. But whilst this new instrumentation can measure the amount of carbon in the soil, what can prevent it escaping in the form of greenhouse gasses?

There is a solution to this problem according to Kristine Nichols, a microbiologist at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the USA. A soil constituent known as glomalin provides a secure vault for the world’s soil carbon. Glomalin is a sticky substance secreted by threadlike fungal structures called hyphae that funnel nutrients and water to plant roots. It acts like little globs of chewing gum on strings or strands of plant roots and the fungal hyphae. Into this sticky “string bag” fall the sand, silt and clay particles that make up soil, along with plant debris and other carbon-containing organic matter. The sand, silt and clay stick to the glomalin, starting aggregate formation, a major
step in soil creation.

On the surface of soil aggregates, glomalin forms a lattice-like waxy coating to
keep water from flowing rapidly into the aggregate and washing away everything,
including the carbon. As the builder of the formation “bag” for soil, glomalin
is vital globally to soil building, productivity and sustainability, as well as
to carbon storage.

Nichols uses glomalin measurements to gauge which farming or rangeland practices
work best for storing carbon. Since glomalin levels can reflect how much carbon
each practice is storing, they could be used in conjunction with carbon credit
trading programs.

In studies on cropland, Nichols has found that both tilling and leaving land
idle—as is common in arid regions—lower glomalin levels by destroying living
hyphal fungal networks. The networks need live roots and do better in
undisturbed soil.

When glomalin binds with iron or other heavy metals, it can keep carbon from
decomposing for up to 100 years. Even without heavy metals, glomalin stores
carbon in the inner recesses of soil particles where only slow-acting microbes
live. This carbon in organic matter is also saved, like a slow-release
fertilizer, for later use by plants and hyphae.

Adapted from materials provided by USDA/Agricultural Research Service.

References:
a. Cemagref. www.cemagref.fr
b. USDA/Agricultural Research Service (2008, July 2). Glomalin Is Key To
Locking Up Soil Carbon.