The discovery of the new Arctic ozone hole - a time for thought

The news:
According to a ScienceDaily report from yesterday (03.10.2011), a new ozone layer hole 3 times the size of Germany has opened on the Arctic during the winter. Between 18 and 20 kilometres up, over 80 per cent of the existing ozone was destroyed. The hole was similar in size to those seen in Antarctica in the 1980s.

The implications:
The stratospheric ozone layer protects life on Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Depletion of the ozone layer allows more ultraviolet radiation to reach the surface. Increases in UV radiation are known to have harmful effects on living things (more particularly causing skin cancer, high blood pressure and general discomfort).

The triggers:
The ozone hole forms when extremely cold conditions trigger reactions that convert atmospheric chlorine from human-produced chemicals into forms that destroy ozone. The scientists found that at some altitudes, the cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter, leading to the unprecedented ozone loss. Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.

The conclusions:
I leave this to you, my readers.

How much food we throw away?

I recently read an article in the Economist claiming that about 30-50% of all food produced rots away uneaten, both in rich and poor countries. In poor countries this percentage is so high, because of post-harvest waste, due to ill treatment of mice, rats and other animals who eat the food on the farm or in the storage. There is also the problem with short existing foods that spoil during transportation.

In the rich countries, however, the situation is totally different. This staggering percent of food is lost because it is thrown away from restaurants and shops. As the article states, top of the list are bread, salads and fruits, which are foods that people are most likely to order and never eat. In America thrown food amounted for 43m tonnes in 1997 and in Britain - 4m in 2006 !

Population is growing and reading about food prices going up, while so much food is carelessly thrown away makes me angry at the spoiled habits people in countries like America and Britain have developed. Unfortunately, it will take years until these bad habits, a result of easy gains, disappear. Until them, the controversial current state of people dying of obesity in America and children dying of hunger in Africa will continue to widen the gap between the rich and the poor countries.

Read more on the topic and join in the Zero Waste Europe campaign here : www.zerowasteeurope.eu

Biofuel – the wrong shade of green

It is not a well known fact that in the last decade maize has been the most favoured plant by the farmers (rising by 1,8% a year since 1990) and that is because it is used in biofuels. The reason for the popularity of this plant and the biofuels is that most of the rich governments such as European Union, China and USA have set ambitious targets for biofules to reach 10% of the total fuel consumption by 2020 (USA’s target actually is 30% by 2030). The energy market, being much worthier than the market of food, has lured many of the farmers to abandon the wheat and start farming maize.

Well, isn’t it controversial and ridiculous? Everyday we hear about the deaths from famines, soil becoming abandoned because of overuse and food prices going up because there is not enough food for everyone, and at the same time farm land is used for the production of fuel, guided by the governments.

Governments green targets are good on paper. In practice, however, they are not well thought of and some are controversial and even dangerous.

A thing we can all greens do is NOT BUY THE “BIOFUEL” and spread the news for its damaging effect of soils and food!

(Figures are taken form the special report on the Future of Food, by the Economist)

A Disaster!

I think that every one of us watching the footages from Japan in the last few days is thinking the same thing: our planet is punishing us for our greediness!

In the last few years, floods, hurricanes, devastating earthquakes, unseen before tsunamis, forest fires and other natural disasters have become permanent in the world news. But only when a disaster like this in Japan happens and we all see the scenes of houses, cars and people of one of the most developed countries in the world swept by mother nature like toys, that we know that human life is so insignificant, short, unpredictable and dependant on our planet.

Enough said. On this link you can see pictures from Japan before and after the disaster. These are devastating must-see puctures taken from an airplane.

Sendai Airport

© Google, Digital Globe, GeoEye

Hover over the image to toggle before/afte

World Meter

I've always been fascinated with figures, because they can be a life-changer and always bring some food for thought. That's why I was struck by a website I discovered just recently: www.worldometers.info - a site for world statistics updated in real time. At first I though it is a joke, but it turns out it is a project, which involves many institutions and many people. With the help of algorithms and data from the "most reputable organizations and statistical offices in the world", the website provides "just in time" statistics in 32 languages about current world population, number of births and deaths this year, health care, education and military expenditure for the year and many others.

The reason for posting this info on my green blog is the figures in the environmental, food and energy sections of the site. We all know that hundreds of hectares of forests are cut each year, but when you see the figure 1 555 952 hectares of cut forest for THIS YEAR ONLY until now 20.02.2011 it really hits you. I was also shocked by the fact that there are more overweight and obese people in the world than undernourished, or that there are exactly 15 628 days until the end of oil. Well, enough said. Check the website or the statistics copied below for yourselves and make your own daily changes and global conclusions.

Environment
1,556,239	Forest loss this year (hectares)
829,333	Arable land lost due to soil erosion this year (hectares)
3,085,490,576	Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions this year, in tons
14,553178439	Current average temperature (Celsius)
2,048,289	Desertification this year (hectares)
19,176	Species that have gone extinct this year
1,353,185	Toxic chemicals released by industries into our air, land, and water this year (tons)
129,805,777	Kilometers Earth has traveled in space within our Solar System this year

Bureaucracy vs Trees in the European Union

The projects funded by the European Union are a major topic in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland and other newly accepted members in the European Union. All of them rely heavily on the funding for their development, and all of them compete with each other how much money they have acquired.

I have recently been involved in the development of several projects in Bulgaria for a medium sized enterprise. Fairly small projects. I will lead you into some details in the preparation process: the project itself was 45 pages long. There were about 25 additional pages in different kinds of declarations and about 70 pages in required documents with financials and translated company offers from suppliers. Total of more than 140 pages a single small project! And this project had to be accompanied by two identical copies. Total of 420 sheets of paper! The three fat folders were squeezed into a cartoon box, which weighted about 25 kilos! 25 kilos of white A4 paper and one cartoon – this is more than a tree! To my horror, when I delivered the project, in the waiting room there were thousands of even bigger projects than mine. Piles of wasted paper! Bigger projects (from towns and for the roads) weight from 250 kilos to 500 kilos! Just imagine the impact bureaucracy does on nature!

My project was rejected in the first stage for missing one stamp. So were 62% of the projects and more than 20% more will be rejected on the second stage. What will be done with the thousands of paper and energy spent in this nonsense? What will be done with all these papers which are rejected for stupid reasons?

I cannot believe that in the 21^st century, thousands of kilograms of paper is sent to the rubbish, instead of just investing in a software product that will accept projects electronically! I intend to write a letter of complaint to the European Commission, and whoever is in, please give me a shout!

The Garbage Patch

What you will see in the video below is striking! Over 7 million tons of plastic spanning an area twice the size of Texas. The so called "Garbage patch" in the North Pacific tropical gyre is an entire island of plastic garbage. In the waters in the area there are six time more plastic than plankton. Birds and fish are often deluded that plastic is food and poison themselves eating it. It is even more striking to think that all the plastic ever produced worldwide stays in the planet forever, because it takes thousands of years to decade and the recycling of plastic is negligible. Michael Moore, an ex-sailor, is researching this topic and there are many movies about it on YouTube. Alternatively, you can check his website, for more information.

As a conclusion, I just want to shout: REDUCE YOUR PLASTIC WASTE! Look what we've done to our planet!

MEAT THE TRUTH

Among all the environmental videos on the net, MEAT THE TRUTH stands out, because it is about a topic, which has been neglected for too long - the life-stock farming and their impact on the global warming. The striking figures are that this kind of farming is responsible for 18% of the green-house gases, while the transportation is the mere 13%! How is this possible? Find out in this amazing video and I hope that more people join the vegetarians club!

Organic yellow cheese

Today I picked up from the supermarket organic yellow cheese (on the pic). I never tried it before, because the price is twice as the normal cheese and I've heard rumours that it is tasteless. Well, here I have to confirm that fact. The cheese is just like rubber! No taste at all! Looking at the label, I see nothing different from a normal cheese, except that it has been made from bio cow milk. What does this mean is not explained further.

Observing these disadvantages of the organic yellow cheese - tasteless and expensive, I cannot help but wonder how these people are fighting the competition with the other cheeses and who on earth buys their product? Do they only count on this tiny percent of people, who try to eat only organic and who can really understand that IT IS organic (well, there are some signs and numbers on the packing which might mean something!?). Do organic products have any future?

Eco batteries?

Last year in Bulgaria emerged a new law for batteries' storage, which obliged all shops who sell them to have the so called "eco bins" where the customer is supposed to dispose their old batteries (picture on left). Well, I happen to know a shop where batteries are sold. The sales people there carefully collect all batteries by customers and politely explain to them what this bin is for. Everybody seems to welcome the idea and customers even bring old batteries from home and put them in the bin. BUT! There is always a BUT in Bulgaria. The eco bin is supplied by the batteries supplier, who sometimes refuses to take the full box, because for them their disposal is very expensive and they are cutting costs by simply not collecting the batteries! I am wondering who is controlling the application of the new law, and is it actually just on paper?