San Francisco is probably America’s most eco-friendly city. It currently recycles an amazing 72% of its waste and has a successful public transport system.

Now, the city hopes to increase that recycling rate to 90% with the introduction of mandatory composting.

The San Francisco Board Of Supervisors voted 9-2 to require residents and businesses to sort recyclables, general rubbish and recyclables for weekly collection. Those failing to comply with the new ordinances, which take effect in the autumn, will be hit with fines.

The Board hopes that San Francisco will dramatically cut its greenhouse gas emissions and stop using incinerators and landfill by 2020.

When food waste, plant waste and other organic matter are sent to landfill, air cannot get to the organic waste. As the waste decomposes, it forms methane, a harmful greenhouse gas, which damages the Earth’s atmosphere.

According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, methane is 72 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.

When this same waste is composted aboveground at home, oxygen helps the waste to decompose aerobically. This means no methane is produced, reducing global warming.

San Francisco sends its food waste and other compostable material daily to the Jepson-Prairie composting facility in Vacaville, CA. The facility’s output is sold as soil improvers to vineyards, retail soil bagging operations, landscapers and the erosion control industry.

San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said. “We can build on our success.”

Hopefully, San Francisco’s example will be followed in other big cities around the world.

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Shradha Merchant writes:

The Pros and Pros of Wind Turbines

When I hear people discussing the demerits of wind turbines vis-a-vis climate change, I wonder if they have lost their collective marbles! It makes my blood curdle …are they absolute & *^&^ (pardon my French) to even discuss the disadvantages of wind turbines and its negative impact on climate change?

Just to be sure and to get my facts right, I Googled the phrase – pros and cons of wind turbines – and I got 52K+ results. I began to think that perhaps the world was not crazy; maybe I was just ill informed. So I began to read up the possible disadvantages of wind turbines since I already knew its benefits.

‘Disadvantages’ of Wind Turbines

And that’s when my doubt was confirmed. People are nutz! Do you know what they have listed under the ‘disadvantages’ of wind turbines? And not just one site, quite a handful of them, right at the top of the search engine results.

I could be rolling on the floor, pealing with laughter, tears flowing from my eyes, hands clutching my belly – if it just wasn’t so sad. People believe this garbage. There are people out there who actually start doubting the eco-friendliness of wind turbines and its zero impact on climate change.

Forget Climate Change; Just See How They Spoil the View 

Yes, wind turbines are not pretty, yes, they are an eye sore, but hello! They actually help reverse the process of unnatural climate change. See, they effectively produce energy without dangerous side effects like pollution.

They don’t produce waste materials, or generate radioactive substances, or hog non-renewable sources like coal and oil to produce energy. They merely need wind – which is free and cheap!
Wind turbines are one of the few ways in which mankind can produce clean energy without harming Mother Earth – and if you gotta tolerate a view which is less than perfect, well, so be it!

And so Noisy?

Yeah, yeah they are noisy and they create a terrible hum but you know what? I’d prefer to go deaf – I won’t, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume one can go deaf if they live close to a wind turbine.

So, I prefer to tolerate the noise pollution instead of gagging to death and choking on pollutants that are created when oil (or coal or gas) is burnt to produce electricity.

I prefer the hum of harmless wind turbines instead of asthma, bronchitis, and other terrible diseases I’d probably cultivate if I were living next to a thermal power station or an oil refinery.

Wind Turbines can be Fragile and Expensive

Yes, they can be easily damaged by acts of god like a thunderstorm perhaps or fire – but let me know of one power station that is immune to that?

They might have an initially higher start up (small price to pay for climate change) which is a one-time cost.

Also, costs of electricity is slightly higher but am sure no one minds digging a little deeper in their pockets if they want a greener, cleaner climate change.

Valid Drawbacks of Wind Turbines

They aren’t really all that efficient (they can only work in ‘wind corridors’) and one wind turbine can power only 500 households. But studies have shown that if wind turbines were properly explored, they could produce 5 times more electricity than is currently needed – so hah!

Another drawback is that they might damage birds that tend to fly right into them and if you live nearby, your TV reception might be less than perfect.

So, for the sake of all couch potatoes and bird lovers, let’s dismantle wind turbines and allow climate change to proceed unchecked.

Do you agree with Shradha? Leave a comment below.

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Shradha Merchant writes:

Global Warming Culprits – Cars or Cattle?

Once a week, if all of us skipped one meal of chicken and substituted it with veggies, what difference might it make to global warming?
Tons …do you know we would all be able to save so much carbon dioxide! Just like taking half a million autos off the roads!

And what difference might such a switch to a veggie meal make to us – almost nothing. 1 meal, once / week, just one. How difficult is that?
I didn’t even know that my non-vegetarian diet was aggravating global warming by adding 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide! And I used to frown at poor smokers because they were polluting the environment. Look at me, if I become a vegetarian, I’d save 1. 5 tons of CO2!

Studies have shown that if Americans consume just one less hamburger every week, they will already start making a difference to global warming.

I recently read a report from the UN FAO (United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization) in which they stated that more greenhouse gases were emitted by cattle than by cars. Cattle, reared for meat, don’t just have a slightly larger carbon footprint, they produce a whopping 18% more CO2 than cars (FYI, all of us humans produce only 3% of this gas combined)

So when you eat meat, you encourage people to rear these cattle. The net result on global warming? Cattle produce 18% more greenhouse gases than cars, including methane that is more dangerous than carbon dioxide.

Further, land is degraded because forests need to be felled in order to make space for such cattle farms and provide fodder for them. The trees help produce oxygen and combat global warming.

Added to this vital water resources are reduced since the cattle need it for drinking and cleaning purposes.

Cattle consume much needed non-renewable resources which are used for the maintenance, upkeep, transport, selling, buying, storing, cooking, etc

As it turns out, a vegetarian diet is not only healthier for you and me, but it is also more energy efficient. In independent studies, 5 types of diets were compared and the veggie one was the least harmful for global warming.

So the question that is in everyone’s mind is – can I really make that much of a difference to global warming just by changing my diet?

Check out this out –

Your carbon footprint will be much smaller. Just the same way in which you produce lesser global warming when you drive a sedan and not an SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle)

The most dangerous greenhouse gas is methane (more than carbon dioxide). The #1 producer of methane all over the world are animals, specifically those reared for producing red meat.

If you don’t stop eating meat, you will help double meat production and consumption in just another 40 odd years. Which means you are specifically contributing towards global warming with every bite of meat you take?

And the final word is, isn’t it much easier for you and me to just stop eating meat– than to get cars off the roads, mobilize governments, form committees, penalise corporates, keep global warming watchdogs, organise international eco-summits and so on?

So from today, for the environment, to stop global warming, just stop eating meat!

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• The virtues of biochar: A new growth industry? (innovationtoronto.com)

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Methane and methane emissions are, in fact, 20x times more dangerous than CO2 – traditionally painted black by environmentalists.

Where is Methane Hidden and What IS It?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, methane and its emissions are not as commonly or as openly found as carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is found in abundance all over the planet, especially in heavily populated cities. It is a known enemy and we have now been able to combat it in many different ways.

The true green devil, methane is ‘trapped’ and is almost hidden from human sight. It works its damage as covertly as terrorists do – and is probably almost as lethal as they are.

Methane is found primarily in the sub-zero temperatures of the Tundra region. You will see large areas of the northern hemisphere half frozen and covered in slush. That is where methane lurks and wields its dangerous weapons. It is found in good measure right at the bottom of the deep blue seas.

And it could possibly be like the sea monsters of yore – only this monster is real and its danger is imminent.

Why is Methane Suddenly an Ecological Threat Now?

Methane is like a volcano that was silent and ‘dead’ all these years. Methane emissions remained covered in ice and frozen coverings. Now, the sad news is that global warming has melted away our only protection against methane and its emissions – frozen ice.
The result? Gases like methane that were, so far, lying harmlessly ‘dormant’ under layers of ice and snow, might suddenly be released in the atmosphere.

Imagine, a belch, a burp, or a fart releasing noxious smells from the innards of your being …well, this might be something akin to Mother Nature’s burp. It might not smell as bad but it sure can be dangerous.

5 Ways to Combat Methane and its Emissions

1.Use less non- renewable sources of energy and reduce your consumption of fossil fuels.

2.Use hydro-fuels instead of petro based ones.

3.Reduce global warming any which way that you can.

4.Become ‘carbon neutral’ and reduce your carbon footprint.

5.Hope that scientists can figure out a way in which they can trap the carbon particles floating around us and re-use it constructively.

Above all, don’t become complacent. The first warnings have already been issued –

Lake Nyos, almost 25 years ago, emitted or belched gases. It killed almost 2000 people in one fell sweep in the Cameroons.

A couple of years ago, Lake Monoun also burped a rather small belch and wiped off almost 40 people.

Scientists believe that methane and its emissions might even have wiped off many species of animals, flora, and fauna before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Methane and its emissions were also the villain, eons ago, when large changes in the Earth’s eco-system lead to mass scale destruction of a rich variety of species. Do you want the green devil, methane and its emissions, to strike again?

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As you’re biting into that nice, juicy king-size burger, have you ever thought how much you’re contributing to global warming?

I hadn’t. Cattle, though, are a major problem for the environment. As cows are busy munching away in their pastures, their multiple stomachs are producing methane.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for global warming. According to The Journal of Animal Science, livestock produce between 250 and 500 litres of methane every single day! At the top end of the estimate, that enough to fill 250 large bottles of Coke.

And what’s worse, there are estimated to be 1.5 billion livestock around the globe. If the average animal produces 350 litres of methane daily, then that’s 525 billion litres of methane being released into the atmosphere each day. And then there are about a billion sheep and 800 million goats.

What about pigs? There are a billion pigs, but they produce much less methane than cows.

As countries have got richer, demand for meat has increased in the last 50 years by about 500 per cent.

The livestock sector is by far the single largest use by humans of land. Grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth‘s terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land.

Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. Some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity.

There are other serious problems with livestock that contribute to global warming. The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.

Livestock farming accounts for nine percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of methane from humans’ activities, mostly from fermentation by cows and other ruminants, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide created by man’s activities, mostly from manure.

According to the UN FAO, the average American eats about 275 pounds of meat per year (more than any other country). The average Chinese eats 108 pounds per year (Earth Policy Insitute, 2005). According to a 2005 FAO study on meat consumption between 1998 – 2002, the average meat consumption per Chinese is 52 kg, compared to Americans at 125 kg, and Britain at 80 kg.   note:  there are smaller countries which (on average, per person) consume a little more meat than the US – 300 mil. people (for example: New Zealand – 4 mil. people, Denmark 5.5 mil. people, and some countries which consume around the same amount of meat. If the whole world ate meat at the American rate, only 2/5 of the world’s population (2.5 billion people) would be fed (Lester Brown).

Some countries are taking the problem seriously. For example, Germany’s environment agency has recommended that Germans should eat less meat, if they want to lower their carbon footprint and stop global warming.

Speaking at Berlin’s Grüne Woche (Green Week), Andreas Troge, president of the UBA (Germany’s environment agency) said:

“We must rethink our high meat consumption. I recommend people return to the Sunday roast and to an orientation of their eating habits around those of Mediterranean countries.”

Troge said that agriculture caused 15% of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meat production, he explained, was the most energy-intensive form of farming. Germans derive a high percentage of their calories from meat, 39% compared to the Italians’ 25%.

The US Environmental Protection Agency wanted to tax cattle, but this plan seems to have been dropped after protests from the powerful farming lobby.

So next time I’m in the supermarket, Quorn burgers are going in my basket!

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The new standards are due to take effect in 2012. They require that by 2016 most cars be able to achieve 39 miles per US gallon (47 miles per imperial gallon), up from 27.5 mpg at present. Light trucks will have to better today’s 23 mpg by 7mpg. Exhaust emissions will also have to be reduced by 30%.

President Obama called the plan “an historic turning point toward a clean-energy economy”. He said that it was the equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road within seven years, about the same as closing 194 coal-fired power stations.

An amazing 1.8 billion barrels of oil would be saved over the lifetime of the vehicles said the President. That was more oil than the US imported from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Libya and Venezuela combined last year.

Traditionally, the US auto manufacturers have fought tooth and nail to prevent fuel consumption and emissions standards. The new standards finished a long-running battle with the manufacturers. Thirteen states, led by California, had been trying to get federal approval for stricter vehicle efficiency standards. The Bush White House had refused approval. The manufacturers had then been challenging the thirteen states in court. Those cases will now be withdrawn.

The Big Three car makers are not really in a position to argue with the federal government. They are relying on government hand outs and Chrysler has already filed for bankruptcy.

Perhaps, we’re also seeing more of what Daniel Goleman describes as “Ecological Intelligence”  from the car companies. The bosses, belatedly, seem to have realized that consumers are demanding greener, more efficient products. Toyota and Honda already sell them.

Will they be up to the challenge?

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Fast forward to the 21st Century and the complex, interlinking, global nature of trade. Most of us have no idea how and where the products we consume are made.

Take my hybrid bike. I decided that I was going to reduce my carbon footprint by cycling more. The bike came from a well-known shopping site. It turned out to be made in Bangladesh and imported into the UK by a British company. I have no idea whether the aluminium frame was produced in a safe, ethical and environmentally-friendly way. Was it built in a toxic sweatshop? Was the factory polluting the local water supply?There’s no real way of knowing.

And what about the bike’s components like the gears and the wheels? They’ve probably come from China, along with all the accessories which I bought like panniers. How were they produced?

I’m attempting to be green by buying a bike, but I don’t know the full consequences of my action on the environment.

But what if I could calculate the carbon, social and biological footprints of my actions with ease? That’s what psychologist Daniel Goleman describes as Ecological Intelligence. In his new book of the same name, Goleman, the author of the bestseller Emotional Intelligence, describes how we can use the new science of industrial ecology to make informed decisions about the products that we buy.

Ecological Intelligence will be released in the UK on 28th May2009. You’ll find a detailed review in a forthcoming post.

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The populations of the wealthy nations are getting larger. According to Dr Edwards, “UK health surveys estimate fatness has increased from an average body mass index (BMI) of 26 to 27 in the last ten years. That’s equivalent to about half a stone (7 lbs) for every person”. This is worrying as anyone who has a BMI above 25 is medically considered overweight, whilst over 30 is the medical definition of obese.

Signs that the people are getting heavier are increasing. For example in the UK, ambulances and hospital beds are being strengthened as patients are becoming increasingly large. Even coffins are being made in larger sizes.

So how does this affect global warming? Firstly, over-consumption is a problem. According to Dr Edwards, food production accounts for about 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Meat, in particular, is a problem as it takes more resources to produce than plants, thereby emitting more greenhouse gases. Cows are also well known for their particular contribution to CO2 emissions. “ World demand for meat is increasing to match that of Britain and America”, says Dr Edwards.

Secondly, the fatter we are, the more likely we are to drive rather than walk or cycle for short journeys. Again this creates more greenhouse gases.

Thirdly, it takes more fuel to transport heavier people. It’s estimated that 40% of Americans are obese with 300 million worldwide. Take flying as an example. United Airlines has recently sparked controversy in the US for requiring obese people to buy two seats on busy routes.

Carrie Padian, president of the Fat Rights Coalition complained that airline seats are too small and that “ if United really cared about the comfort of their passengers, they would order planes with more space for everyone”.

But flying efficiently as possible and reducing the environmental effects are all about maximizing load factors for a given weight. The fewer passengers on a flight, the higher the CO2 emissions per passenger, contributing even more to global warming.

Most of us need to lose weight (this writer included), so perhaps the environmental impact of being overweight is another incentive to lose the inches.

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