Zero-waste grocery store: bulk foods with no packaging
Three brothers in Austin want “people all over the place to rethink how they grocery shop,” reports The Texas Tribune. Christian, Joseph and Patrick Lane — the Brothers Lane, LLC — want to make a zero-waste grocery store where all the products are sold in bulk, and none of them have packaging that ends up in landfills. “In other words, don’t forget your Tupperware or empty jam jars,” the story says. The brothers want to source all the products in their store locally, too. The business is still in the funding stages, the story says.
I think it’s a pretty cool idea. Aaron and I would probably try it out.
Dole agrees to settle with workers made sterile by pesticide
This is one of the reasons Aaron & I have an organic garden. Pesticides are nasty business.
Dole Food Co. Inc. has agreed to settle with workers who claim in a lawsuit the company’s “use of a pesticide called dibromochloropropane, or DBCP, on banana plantations during the 1970s and ’80s caused the workers to become sterile,” reports The National Law Journal. The people worked for Dole in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Honduras. The law firm working on behalf of the injured farmworkers “still has pending DBCP cases against Dow Chemical Co. and other defendants on behalf of banana workers in Guatemala and Panama,” according to the article.
5 million barrels in the Gulf
The latest scientific estimates indicate that five million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil disaster.
Nearly five million barrels of oil have gushed from BP’s well — and about 800,000 have been captured by containment efforts —since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, according to the latest data. That amount outstrips the estimated 3.3 million barrels spilled into the Bay of Campeche by the Mexican rig Ixtoc I in 1979, previously believed to be the world’s largest accidental release.
New residents pointing out environmental problems
I can personally relate to today’s story by Asher Price in the Austin American-Statesman about new residents to East Austin who are working to fix longstanding environmental problems in their areas. East Austin has traditionally been the home to many lower income black and Hispanic Austinites, but that racial and socioeconomic mixture is changing. The city is growing, people are looking for affordable housing, and there is a renewed interest in living in the center of Austin instead of in suburbs.
“You have an influx of new residents coming in who are more environmentally aware and probably know of particular city programs and incentives they can use,” said Oscar Garza, an environmental compliance specialist with the city’s Watershed Protection Department and coordinator of the city’s East Austin Environmental Initiative, an outreach program that began in the 1990s. “They put more focus on environmental awareness, and that infuses that into the neighborhood.”
I guess I count as one of the “new residents.” Aaron and I decided to move to East Austin because we could afford a nice house here, and we wanted to live within walking and biking distance of the city center with all its bars, restaurants and cultural attractions.
Photo by "doortoriver" on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/doortoriver/)
I enjoy walking my dogs around my new neighborhood, and I’ve personally been shocked by some of the environmental problems–Mostly trash all over the roads. The thing that concerns me the most is there is broken glass littering most of the streets and sidewalks around East Austin. I’m afraid the glass will cut my dogs’ paws when I’m walking them. Aaron says he frequently gets flat tires from running over broken glass. I can imagine children running or riding bikes outside, accidentally falling down and doing a face plant on broken glass.
It’s not good.
For politicians, ties to BP may be pitfall
The Austin American Statesman today reports that politicians are “slinging tar balls” at campaign opponents with ties to BP.
Politicians across the nation are learning that any association with the company can be slung like tar balls against them.
“Clearly any ties to BP are a potential liability,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “Any work done for them, any donations received, anything an opponent can seize upon.”
Capturing wasted heat, turning to power
Photo by Roger Smith on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogersmith/)
OnEarth Magazine has an interesting article about thermoelectrics, a new technology that seeks to capture wasted heat from electronics, processing facilities and other devices and turning the heat into usable energy.
Along with wind turbines and solar panels, the next clean energy frontier could take the form of an array of tiny semiconductor chips wrapped around anything from a smokestack to a computer server, turning heat into usable energy. Imagine a laptop that runs twice as long, powered in part by the heat generated by the microprocessor. Researchers envision cell phones with double the talk time and cars that go farther on a gallon of gas — all powered in part by heat that would otherwise be wasted.
Pretty cool. According to the article, if researchers can harness this technology, it could make a huge impact on the amount of electricity we use on a daily basis.
… today scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate that nearly two-thirds of the energy generated in the world is lost as heat. If we could reclaim just 3 percent of our waste on a daily basis, they say, we could offset half the nation’s electricity needs.
PolitiFact weighs in on Texas air quality debate
Photo by click on morgueFile (http://morguefile.com/creative/click)
PolitiFact Texas gives Gov. Rick Perry a grade of “half true” for statements about reductions in ozone and nitrogen oxide emissions in Texas. The site graded a statement Perry made in a press release earlier this week: “Since 2000, ‘the Texas clean air program achieved a 22 percent reduction in ozone and a 46 percent decrease in NOx emissions.’”
Read the article for a full explanation. But in a nutshell, PolitiFact says it’s true that ozone and NOx emissions decreased in Texas, but Perry’s statement only stated numbers for industrial sources of pollution although they only make up about 1/4 of total emissions–Cars and trucks are the largest source. Also, the site says it’s unclear whether the reduction in ozone and NOx in Texas can really be chalked up to the state’s actions, or whether federal government regulations should take the credit.
The other side of the story of a drilling moratorium
The New York Times today published a video about oil workers who fear what will happen to their livelihoods because of the six-month drilling moratorium. There’s always another side to the story.
Consequences of the drilling moratorium on oil workers, by The New York Times
Story of Gulf Coast family who may lose livelihood
OnEarth magazine published this video about a family whose shrimping business may be threatened by the Gulf Coast oil spill. It’s a well reported story that uses engaging central characters to personalize an important issue that will affect thousands and thousands of people. Well done storytelling. Very nice pictures, too.
Feds taking over oil cleanup idea generation
Monica Hatcher of the Houston Chronicle writes today that BP is doing better in the past few days at collecting more of the oil that’s still spilling into the gulf. That’s good news, but this little note towards the bottom of Hatcher’s story has my hackles up.
The federal government has said it is forming a technology assessment program to examine the best proposals, after learning BP had evaluated only a handful of thousands of ideas submitted to its hot line.
Houston-based Thrustmaster of Texas said it’s had trouble finding an ear for its proposal to provide improved surface skimming technology.
…
Bekker said Thrustmaster engineers had designed a skimming system using a tanker capable of gulping 450,000 barrels of oily water mixture per day.
So far, response crews using 135 skimming vessels have collected just shy of 370,000 barrels of oily liquids since the cleanup operations began more than a month ago. Weather has been the biggest obstacle, because skimming requires mild seas.
Why would BP ask for help from anyone and everyone, and then ignore the advice and tips that came in?
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