One of the biggest reasons going green is still in people’s mind during the recession, is because going green often means saving money. In a 2008 study by Johnson Controls, 72 percent of business managers were concerned about energy efficiency in their buildings. That is an increase of 10 percent over 2007. Why? Well the best reason is that when you have a building that is energy efficient, you pay much less for wasted energy. Saving money by going green. Waste reduction is also very important to many businesses. Waste costs money, and therefore to help their business, many companies are still looking at ways to reduce waste in their buildings.

As well, with the growing recession, prices for solar panels are beginning to fall. Since many companies are trying to save on energy, they are looking at solar panels as the way to do it. Unfortunately, not enough of the companies out there are on the solar power band wagon and it looks like the solar power industry is going to suffer for the time being, until the recession is over.

Going green is always important in business. If you want to save money, going green can help your business do that. In trying economic times like these, it is more important than ever to be green. Energy efficiency tips like turning off lights, keeping fridges closed, limiting air conditioner use and more, can help a company save literally hundreds to thousands of dollars per year. Limiting waste and practicing the time honored tradition of reducing and reusing can also save a company a lot of money.

Perhaps something good can come out of this recession.

Africa and other areas of the world are expected to suffer the greatest due to global warming. This is why the richer nations of the world are contributing to helping these areas fight the very warming the richer nations helped create. Despite poorer conditions, many nations in Africa are attempting to turn to renewable energy and more environmentally friendly vehicles.

South Africa launched an electric car in 2008. Recently, Rwanda began use of their first bio-diesel bus. Following these advances, the country of Ethiopia recently announced their first electric car. The vehicles are going to be produced in the capital, Addis Ababa, at six a week for three months. After this time the factory is expected to be able to produce about 30 a week.

The Solaris Elettra, as the vehicle is being called, will cost between $12,000 and $15,000. However, many doubt the ability for many people in Africa to be able to afford the vehicles. In addition to large amounts of poverty, taxes on vehicles are extremely high in Ethiopia- going as high as 100 percent or more.

Also, many question the available infrastructure to support electric vehicles. Areas in order to recharge the electric vehicles are expected to be almost nonexistent. Some areas in Africa are able to support electric vehicles, however, they tend to be few and far between. Experts predict that an electric vehicle would only be able to make very brief trips of about 25 miles due to the charging issues.

In addition, power shortages are common, but the makers of the vehicle do not see this as a potential issue. Carlo Pironti, who is the general manager of the company producing the vehicles- Freestyle PLC, stated: “Ethiopia in [the] future will have lots of power supply. In any case, the car can be recharged by generator and by solar power.”

Ethiopia may in fact have increased amounts of energy in the future. The country is currently in the midst of building a hydro-electric dam on the Omo River.

Well, in Ontario, this was thought of not as a way to help the environment, but as a violation of public transit. Trentway Wager, which is a bus company in Ontario, sued Pickup Pal because they felt Pickup Pal was an unlicensed transport business that crossed municipal boundaries. Through the lawsuit, Trentway Wager felt that Pickup Pal would need to adhere to licensing requirements because they operated as a transport company, even though they were only essentially carpooling people.

Pickup Pal tried to fight the lawsuit, but in the end the bus company won and Pickup Pal was left with a fine of $11,336.07 for helping the environment. While Pickup Pal can still operate, it must follow the following restrictions:

• You must travel from home to work only – (Not Home to School, or Home to the Hospital or the Airport)
• You cannot cross municipal boundaries – (Live outside the city and
  drive in – sorry you cannot share the ride with your neighbour)
• You must ride with the same driver each day – (Want to mix it up go
  with one person one day and another person another day – no sorry
  cannot do that – must be same person each day)
• You must pay
  the driver no more frequently than weekly – (Neighbour drives you to
  work better not pay her right away just in case she drives you later on
  in the week)

It is amazing that while so many governments and people can be doing their best to help the environment, there are many others who are more concerned with the bottom line. RIP Pickup Pal In Ontario, you will be missed.

You wouldn’t bet your money on climate and its effect on crops, but an insurance company is attempting to do just that. Is it the brave new frontier of high-tech insurance? Only time will determine ‘weather’ (pun intended) it’s a success or a risk. The insurance company is hoping to scientifically fine-tune policies that offer protection against floods, frosts, droughts and other bouts of crop-damaging weather that are on the rise.

The company says that it has the knowhow to price policies according to the vagaries of nature. David Friedberg, the CEO of The Climate Corporation, which is issuing the insurance said –

“We are not trying to predict exactly what will happen, we are trying to create a distribution of outcomes of what might happen. It is the probabilistic distribution of things that might happen that allows us to figure out what price to charge for the insurance that we are selling.”

The technology involves deep analysis of data from state-of-the-art climate models, millions of weather measurements, and billions of soil observations. At any given time, more than 50 terabytes of live data are in its systems. On the agricultural side, farmers take out policies for specific plantings (such as a field of corn or wheat) and are paid automatically when an identified type of weather hits that is known to cause production shortfalls, such as crop-wilting heat or drought.

It’s serious number crunching even as scientists warn the world not to confuse the changing weather with climate change. But changing weather patterns have been forecasted by climate change models. That’s why companies may not declare it explicitly, but climate change represents an indirect threat to regular policies on the ground. So why not have one specially designed around weather. Property damage can be caused by the variability of weather. Wild fires sporadically cause havoc in around the world. It’s all put down to global warming.

Now, insurers such as The Climate Corporation are designing innovative tools to cover the risk posed by the increased chance that bad weather can wipe out a year’s income. “If you are a farmer, you really can’t afford to have another heat wave or another early freeze event or delayed plant period,” said Friedberg. “We can really reach in and help.”

Zoos should become the fountainheads of species conservation. Zoos around the world get 700 million footfalls a year and they are the right place to showcase the enormous diversity that we will be missing when a few species go extinct.

Mark Penning, president of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), told Reuters –

“We have a huge opportunity for education, to explain the gravity of the situation.”

Zoos have been field laboratories where many species of endangered animals have been successfully bred and released into the wild.

A WAZA review cited the example of Przewalski’s horse as a conservation success. It clearly shows that zoos were having success in conserving biodiversity and in breeding threatened creatures like this one which has been re-introduced to Mongolia. It had been last sighted in the wild in 1969.

Gerald Dick, WAZA executive director said,

“Other prominent ones are the Californian condor or the golden lion tamarin (monkey) in Brazil — these are flagships where we have successes in breeding.”

Now, it’s time to do more and be more proactive. An annual meeting in Germany is trying to chart out the future role in conservation for zoos.

“Unless we sell a message of hope, that there is something to be done, we will have even worse problems lying ahead.” Mark penning said that there’s often too much of a negative outlook when it comes to conservation. Zoos could help to change that attitude by showing that individuals can make a difference. For instance, zoos can educate visitors to do small things like buy fish whose species is still thriving and supply is abundant.

Breeding programs encouraged by the successes are also helping new species. Penning said,

“Zoos have focused on the big, hairy, charismatic species, the ones the public like to see. Now we have a major global campaign for amphibians.”

The United Nations sounded the call that the world has failed to meet the goals of reducing the rate of extinctions. Set in 2002, the plan is under review at the latest meet planned in Japan. Some nations are pushing for a halt to biodiversity losses by 2020.

Zoos could very well be at the forefront of this push.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Using plants to absorb toxicity in soil and thereby clean it up is not a new idea. It has been used with success for some years. It is cheap and obviously, environmentally very friendly. It works well in removing heavy metals such a zinc, copper, chromium and arsenic from contaminated soil. The drawback has, up to now, been the long period of time and the number of crops cycles that have to be gone through before a significant reduction in the soil contamination levels is noticed.

A solution may have been found with the discovery of a method of introducing heavy metal resistant bacteria in the plants such oilseed rape, which is used for the production of biodiesel. Scientists in Ireland have found that injecting the plants with these heavy metal resistant bacteria provides protection which enables the seeds to germinate better which produces better crop results in contaminated areas. The growth cycle is also faster which means the crops cycle time can be reduced.

The soil contaminants are absorbed by the plants and collect in their leaves and the bacteria attack and break them down into non polluting substances.

This discovery has twin benefits. Firstly it will allow crops to be grown on even highly contaminated land where nothing could be planted before. Secondly, as the bacteria have a positive impact on the plants? growth cycle, plant production can be increase which will allow more biofuel crops to be grown on the same land and thus increase the farmers? income and the availability of biodiesel.

Oilseed rape is a member of the cabbage and Brussels sprouts family which are already widely grown in Ireland. Since the farmers will not be dealing with a totally unfamiliar plant, it is expected that growing of this crop will be eagerly taken up by Irish farmers who will now be able to use previously barren land. As this process stabilizes, scientists expect it to become popular the world over. It will sure be extremely beneficial to us.

Scientists are now working on finding more strains of heavy metal resistant bacteria and introducing them to other bio fuel crops.

The result is a new gasoline blend made up of 12 percent bio-butanol.  The company has claimed bio-butanol produced by this process can cut down greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85 percent when likened to conventional gasoline. It’s been trumpeted as an ethanol alternative and Cobalt also launched a California plant with the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The process that Cobalt is using to manufacture bio-ethanol is the same fermentation procedure used by them on other nonfood biomass. It applies its own strains of bacteria to ferment the biomass and convert it to n-butanol. At this point there’s a bit of innovation that comes in.

As the sap from the beetle-killed trees is poisonous, the scientists first separate the sap from the dead pine before breaking it down. The heat given off from this ‘pretreatment’ is siphoned toward the fermentation process to further save energy.

Ken Reardon, professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Colorado State University, said -

“If Cobalt can convert beetle-killed wood, it’s likely that the company can make biofuel from almost any cellulosic feedstock.”

Colorado State University is cooperating with Cobalt to test how well gasoline mixed with the bio-butanol will perform in combustion engines.

The testing could have long term benefits not only for recycling disease laden wood but also for other kinds of waste biomass.

The Mountain pine beetle and other pine beetles have been a pestilence to forests across the U.S. and Canada, peculiarly in Colorado and British Columbia. If testing goes well, it could help turn a negative situation into a profitable and useful one.

Rick Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of Cobalt, stated –

“If we use only half of the 2.3 million acres currently affected in Colorado alone, we could produce over two billion gallons of bio-butanol–enough to blend into all the gasoline used in Colorado for six years.”

Image: Wikipedia

Using RezHub.com can ensure your vacation is sustainable and more affordable without the hassle of researching for hours. Their Green Travel Hub has provided all of the information you need about airports and hotels, because they have actually visited the hotels and made the phone calls. If you already know a thing or two about traveling in green style, post useful information for other travelers on the Green Travel Forum.

Finally there is a user-friendly directory of green hotels to narrow your searches and help you book the perfectly sustainable vacation. Currently, RezHub has ranked 1,600 hotels in over 40 countries. The scoring system ranks each hotel’s Green Amenities, and as a result, the hotel receives a designated amount of Green Branches to show their level of eco-friendly services.

If you’re unable to afford or fit one of these eco-friendly hotels into your itinerary, don’t worry because RezHub donates 20% of its profits from any trip booked on its site to environmentally friendly organizations. So even if you don’t choose a green hotel, you support the planet just by booking your vacation on the site. Traveling more eco-consciously couldn’t be any simpler.

Another green hotel search is Environmentally Friendly Hotels, which can also help you find eco-friendly lodging worldwide. This site designates up to seven green trees depending on how many green attributes the hotel has.

Even if you have to book hotels for business trips, these two sites can provide you with green hotel options within seconds. If your company has a sustainable reputation, this can be another way of reinforcing it. So the next time you schedule a vacation or business outing, let these websites do the hard work for you.

The awards, backed by environmental organizations including Global Cool, the Energy Saving Trust, Waste Watch and Waterwise, will take place in London in March, and categories include a Community Action Award, a Creativity Award and an Innovation Award.

“These awards are not for grandiose schemes but for that one person who despite all the doom and gloom decides to do what he or she can on a local personal level to do something different,” said Matthew Wright of the Energy Saving Trust.

“Things do have to change, and they’ll only change one person at a time. We all have a responsibility to do our bit when it comes to the environment, whether as individuals, government, manufacturers, or retailers. If we can start in our own homes and at a local level, we can achieve great things together. ”

Finalists in the creativity awards include the creator of Don’t Do the Dodo – a fun book and surprisingly good kids’ song aimed at encouraging children to get interested in the environment; The Nag, a smartly designed email newsletter that nags subscribers to make one green change each month and, I’m proud to say – my own green travel website, Jamble Magazine.

The innovation award highlights inventions such as Watergreen – a simple device that pumps waste bath water straight to the garden hose, and the Bicycle Power Station – a system to recharge batteries fitted inside a bicycle frame.

One winner in each category will receive a $10,000 prize to expand their project, and as well dishing out some well deserved recognition for the work of the finalists, the awards will hopefully inspire others and show that one person can make a difference.

 Socompa volcano, which spans the border between Argentina and Chile high in the Atacama Desert, is an environment as harsh as can be imagined. According to the researchers this new found site is more extreme than even the hydrothermal vents in deep oceans which are known to harbor microbial life.
 
The present ecosystem is nurtured by the discharges of water, carbon dioxide and methane from small volcanic vents and supports some complex microbes that are new to science. Antagonistic to their existence are the environmental challenges like an unfriendly extreme climate, ultraviolet radiation and a thin atmosphere at the heights.

Steve Schmidt, a member of the team that made the discovery said that the environment is not unlike that of Mars where NASA is searching for evidence of past life.

“These sites are unique little oases in the vast, barren landscape of the Atacama Desert and are supported by gases from deep within the Earth. Scientists just haven’t been looking for microorganisms at these elevations, and when we did we discovered some strange types found nowhere else on Earth.”

The discoveries could open up new thinking on the ‘conditions’ we perceive to support life. The team confirmed the discovery by extracting DNA from the soil to detect new groups of microbes. They also reported a new variety of microscopic mite which appears to be the highest elevation at which mites have ever been recorded on Earth.

The rough environment notwithstanding, it seems the conjunction of small amounts of sunlight, water, methane and carbon dioxide creates a tiny little ‘greenhouse’ for the microbes to flourish. Elizabeth Costello, a study team member says that these factors almost give a toehold to the microbes to survive in the aridness and remoteness of the Andean volcano.

The expeditions to Socompa, conducted in 2005 and 2009, were financed by grants from the National Geographic Society and the Microbial Observatory Program of the National Science Foundation.