Letting nature take care of itself: Instead of paying a private company to haul away elephant dung every day, caretakers at the Ramat Gan Safari outside of Tel Aviv have found that those 7 kg of dung, per elephant, per day, can save the safari water, and fertilize the plants.
With 12 elephants at the safari, the compost pile has been growing. According to Ha’aretz, Safari staff are using the compost to seal the irrigation basin around young trees, enabling the water to permeate the roots, while slowing down its evaporation.
“Until about a year ago we used to pay a company to collect the dung with a tractor,” said zoologist Amelia Terkel. “But then we thought, why pay for removing it if we could use it ourselves?”
Built from plastic bottles the de Rothschild heir sails his boat to show plastic island and marine pollution.
David de Rothschild is no ordinary person; and certainly no ordinary adventurer. And his next adventure is something probably only the very rich could dream to do:
The son of Britain’s Evelyn de Rothschild of the famous Rothschild banking family, and a known adventurer and environmentalist, David has already accomplished a number of feats in his 31 years, including crossing both the Arctic icecap and entire continent of Antarctica, including reaching both geographical poles.
Founder of Adventure Ecology (site no longer operating Oc. 2022), his love for planet earth and concern for its environment as resulted in his launching of what appears to be his most harrowing feat of adventure to date. And that feat entails sailing a homemade craft made almost entirely of discarded plastic bottles, tied together by web mesh.
Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and made up of waste plastic and other material – and said to be almost twice the size of the American state of Texas.
His voyage, a journey of nearly 11,000 nautical miles, will begin off the State of California, continue until reaching the “island” now floating in an area known as the Great Pacific Gyre (southwest of Hawaii) and finally ending in Sydney Australia.
The improbable voyage, on a craft made up of the same type of flotsam that the “Plastic Island” is said to be made of, is to make people aware that our oceans, the giver of much of our planet’s food and oxygen sources, are in danger to being turned into nothing but floating garbage dumps; and as a result will make life on earth even more threatened.
The journey, which was to have begun in March, 2009, was delayed until mid-summer, which could make de Rothschild’s trip even more perilous due to the occurrence of typhoons and other serve storms which are more prevalent during the summer and autumn months.
The 60 ft catamaran craft, made out of 12,000 plastic bottles and other recycled plastic material woven into self-reinforcing polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a very strong webbing material, will be his home and that of his crew during the voyage, which he says will take about three months.
“The only worry I have (concerning the voyage) is that I get sea-sick in a bath tub. But when one is as committed as I am to do such a thing, it will be done” he says.
The craft that he and the small crew of scientists and ecologists will sail on has been named Kon-Tiki, after the primitive raft that Norwegian adventurer and writer Thor Hayerdahl used to cross the Pacific Ocean in 1947.
The main difference now is that the gigantic plastic island they are sailing to was much smaller then – if it existed at all.
While David de Rothschild globe-trots the earth to find ways to save the planet, the international banking empire his family represents have been making some moves into the United Arab Emirates, and were recently hosted by HH Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid, Ruler of Dubai and UAE Prime Minister.
The Rothschild banking consortium has entered into agreements with the Dubai government to establish financial and banking interests in the UAE. The interest of the Rothschild banking in the establishing themselves in the Dubai International Financial Canter (DIFC) indicates their interest in assisting Dubai and other UAE states to become a leading financial center in the Middle East.
It is hoped that Rothschild bankers, with David de Rothschild’s influence, will invest in projects dealing with environmental sustainability, such as Masdar, which is being developed as one of the fist truly ecologically friendly residential and commercial projects in the world.
What is currently transpiring in the Persian Gulf region, from an environmental standpoint, especially regarding The World artificial island development project, might well be David de Rothschild’s next environmental undertaking, after his Kon-Tiki sailing adventure to “plastic island.”
Around two weeks ago, the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided not to support a bill that would encourage bike riding as transportation. The bill would have mandated the inclusion of bike trails in urban plans, allow bikes to be taken on intercity public transportation (like trains and buses), and pave the way for specially designated parking areas for bikes. It would also provide incentives for employers and employees to make cycling a primary form of transportation to work.
Sounds good, right? The Israel Bicycle Association and Tel Aviv Rollers thought so too. Which is why they decided to protest the lack of government support for urban cycling in Tel Aviv last week.
They also decided to show the government exactly what it was missing by not promoting urban cycling – a nation full of attractive, physically fit specimens. Because the protest was clothing optional. (Check out how far the naked cyclists took their protest in the clip above.)
With so much concern over global warming and the future of our planet, the idea of eco tourism is becoming more of an “in thing” to do.
Whether it be something really adventurous, like the treks to the north and south poles by David de Rothschild (as well as his planned voyage in a boat made from old plastic bottles to the “islands” of discarded plastic wastes in the Pacific Ocean) or to see the effects of climate change and global warming on the Amazon rain forests, and other similar venues, eco-tourism is definitely something many people are getting involved in.
With all this in mind, is there merit to people embarking on eco-tourism trips to locations in the Middle East? You bet there is; and there are plenty of locations to go to as well.
To add to these vegetarian possibilites, Jana and Ilan Gur, owners of the Al Hashulchan (“On the Table”) food magazine, recently introduced the Sheni Tzimchoni (Vegetarian Monday) initiative. Dozens of Israel’s best restaurants have signed on to introduce special vegetarian menus every Monday throughout July and August.
The Israel company StePac L.A.has come out with a special plastic packaging material, that they say will not only keep your produce looking and fresh for up to 10 times longer, but is also biodegradable.
The material, known as X-Tend-branded modified atmosphere/modified humidity packaging “creates favorable inside-the-bag atmospheric conditions for fruits and vegetables while proprietary engineering of Xtend polymers ensure correct balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide,” according to Don Stidham, president of the San Diego based company subsidiary, in the USA.
(A view of flood water in an olive grove in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, last October. The filthy water killed about 30 olive trees. Photo from Ma’an News).
In Israel for the first time last week, Hollywood stars Liev Schrieber and Naomi Watts (and their two cute kids) planted a pistachio tree (and other trees) in the Galilee with the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Though we loved their appearances in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “King Kong”, we think that tree planting certificates and soil on their hands suit Schrieber and Watts just as well.
The couple’s itinerary was planned by the JNF and included swimming in the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), visiting the biblical zoo in Jerusalem, seeing important Christian and Jewish holy sites, taking advantage of Tel Aviv’s beaches. Not to mention meeting with President Shimon Peres.
Algae biofuel is now being developed as a source of energy for the future, but really algae has been fueling society for a long time. When looking at the components of coal, oil, and natural gas that power our world today, they are all originally comprised of organic materials such as algae. As we currently aim to shift away from fossil fuels because of their non-renewable nature and significant contribution to global warming, we may be going back to using one of fossil fuels’ original organic components.
In an interview Dr. Michael Kagan, a long time environmental researcher and founder of the algae development company Algaenesis, I was introduced to the beneficial uses of algae that make it vital to human and animal life and how Algaenesis has developed a new system of growing it.
The beauty of algae is that it does not have to be grown in fresh water. In fresh, brackish, or salt water Algae grows by photosynthesizes producing a range of products including oils that can be refined into fuel, powerful antioxidants and vitamins, Omega 3 and Omega 6, and there’s even one species that grows octane fuel. Algae should be more integrated into human and animal diets because it has tremendous health properties, and if more accessible, it could feed animals and provide more food in poor areas of the world.
Dr. Kagan explained that researchers have dreamed of algae being widely used to feed the world for 40 to 50 years, but it is difficult to grow, especially inexpensively and in large quantity. Scientists have tried to grow algae in raceway shaped ponds and in vertical tanks called bioreactors, but both systems have experienced setbacks.
You heard about being a vegawarian here, which in case you forgot, means “you are ‘aware’ that eating animals contributes more towards global warming than eating plants. So, maybe, sometimes, you will choose the vegetarian option instead of the meat option.”
The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog has just published another scheme for cutting down meat without cutting it out, “vegetarianism as a sometimes thing.” Writer Ian Ayres posted a reader letter suggesting that a group of friends get together and agree to always have one vegetarian eater among them. In other words, collective vegetarians:
Carbon offsetting your flight is one way to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the air. But experts in the transportation industry know that it’s necessary to start from the ground up — by making planes, trains and automobiles more environmentally friendly as part of their engineering. Green Prophet’s Tal Ater was just at the Paris Air Show reporting on just this, and new advances in green aviation news.
Now, taking on a major partnership in the European Union’s flagship project – the $1.6 billion Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative together with large European partners, Israel’s aviation giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is helping to make skies greener. The company is the only non-EU partner in the massive research and development project.
Although in planning for a couple of years, just six months ago the Israeli company started working on its tasks. Led by Dassault, a prominent European aerospace company, IAI is also greening the skies along with Airbus and Eurocopter.
“We are dealing with reducing the amount of hazardous manufacturing waste, recycling, reducing weight – which will reduce carbon emissions – and extending the life [of the aircraft], which reduces need for recycling,” says Arnold Nathan, the director of IAI’s R&D Engineering Division.
German industrial giant Siemens is now involved in talks to purchase the Israeli Solel Solar Energy Ltd., according to an article published in Globes, Israel’s leading business paper.
Solel, a global leader in building solar thermal fields, was partially invested in by a UK energy company, Ecofin about 18 months ago. But it now appears that Seimens has become very interested in the Israeli company, due to its technology that converts sunshine into useful thermal energy, and subsequently into electricity. It is considered one of the most promising Israeli solar energy innovators, up there with other companies on investors’ watchlists like BrightSource, ZenithSolar, Aora, and Di.S.P. (the technology of Prof. Avi Kribus).
With the aviation industry reeling from increasing fuel costs, dipping profits and those pesky upcoming environmental regulations, airlines are scrambling to become more efficient, cut costs and increase fuel efficiency.
Japan Airlines did their part to shed excess weight on their flights by shortening their blankets by a centimeter, and Northwest Airlines did it by removing all the spoons from their planes.
Airbus A380
But true change must come from innovation and new thinking by aircraft manufacturers. This week, I visited the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, to see firsthand what direction the industry is taking. The general sentiment of the show was summarized by Airbus in 10 foot letters on the side of their new Airbus A380 – “Greener. Cleaner. Quieter. Smarter.”
The A380’s bar (image by jjay69)
The new Airbus A380 is the largest passenger aircraft in the world, and Airbus boasts that it is the first aircraft ever to achieve a fuel efficiency below 3 liters per passenger over 100 kilometers (a boast which loses some meaning if you take into consideration that all current airlines fly A380 configurations that cater to fewer passengers per flight and are rarely fully booked).
The A380 also uses a new wing design and lighter composite materials to improve its performance. Airbus also claims a 50% smaller noise footprint than the 747-400 while carrying 40% more passengers.
Impressive claims. But as I look up at the A380 flying overhead in slow graceful circles, all of those energy saving statistics melt away and all I can think of is the full-sized, fully stocked bar in the plane’s upper deck.
The Bluecopter
Not to be outdone by Airbus, Eurocopter are showing their own idea for a greener future. Their new concept helicopter, codenamed Bluecopter, has a “high-compression engine” that promises to reduce fuel consumption, CO2, NO and NO2 emissions by 30-40%… That is if they can get it off the ground.
It seems that calling it a helicopter is a bit of a stretch, as the bluecopter is currently nothing more than an off the shelf Mercedes-Benz V6 turbodiesel engine with a helicopter shaped box around it painted in blue and green. In fact, it is currently so heavy, it couldn’t get off the ground even if you gave up on the fancy extras such as passengers or a pilot.
Not that any of those facts stood in the way of Eurocopter generating a lot of green-buzz around this innovation.
Another recurring theme in the show was increased use of composite materials such as carbon fibers to make aircraft lighter. One notable example was the 4-seater Simba. With a hull built entirely from carbon fibers, Simba weighs less than 500 kg (I’ve ridden motorcycles heavier than that), but can still reach a cruising speed of 220 km/h, and pulled off impressive stunts in the sky above our heads.
500 kg of innovation
After spending a few days looking at the latest and greatest being developed by some of the biggest companies on the planet, it is clear that the current direction is focused on optimizing, refining and improving as opposed to revolutionizing.
But in an industry where it can take over a decade to bring a product to market (The A380 took 13 years to develop), is it fair to expect a revolution right now? Or will we have to wait another decade before seeing a true leap in technology? I’d like to believe that current market forces will accelerate the current progress and bring a revolution out of necessity.
But will this be enough to save the industry? 2009 marked the 100th year of the Paris Air Show, and it was quite a somber one, with fewer Champagne bottles uncorking to celebrate big deals, fewer new models and not enough innovation.
Looking at the big airlines, it is easy to draw parallels between the state of the aviation industry, and the stagnation in the American car industry. Perhaps what we need here is an outsider with a fresh point of view to shake the boat… to borrow an idea from Todd Dagres – Perhaps what the aviation industry needs is a Steve Jobs.
Like a Kid In a Toy Store
All cynicism and skepticism aside, the Paris Air Salon is the ultimate place for the kid-at-heart to check out the latest toys in action.
Where else in the world can you see a Eurofighter Typhoon pull off crazy stunts, walk a few meters under the shadow of two huge space rockets to flirt with an F-15 pilot, then turn your head back to the roar of a 50 year old Lockheed Super Constellation taxiing 5 meters from you, its giant wing over your head.
Even a grumpy treehugger like me can’t help but melt and squeal with glee as a F/A-18 Super Hornet prepares for takeoff next to me, the hot air from its jets blasts me in the face like a thousand splendid suns… Burn all the fuel you want buddy, right now I’m an 8 year old with the shiniest toy.
Plastic bags are evil. They are not biodegradable, pollute our landfills, pollute our waterways, convince fish and ducks that they’re food… it’s pretty well established that they’re just bad news. While activists encourage consumers to try using fewer bags, or sometimes try to ban the use of plastic bags entirely, the truth is that these pleas often fall on deaf ears.
Which is where – thankfully – designers step in. Because where environmental activists fail, hip design often succeeds.
Waste Lb, the collaboration of designers Waleed Jad and Stephanie Dadour, is a response to the pervasive use of plastic shopping bags in Lebanon. Waste Lb reclaims flex, the material used to create billboards, in order to make reusable shopping bags such as the ones above and below. (Abu Yoyo, a designer based in Tel Aviv, also appropriates billboard materials in order to make bags.)
By using flex, Waste Lb encourages conservation in two ways: they encourage consumers to switch to reusable bags while simultaneously using material that would otherwise be discarded into a landfill. According to Dadour, “we know we’re not here to change the world or to educate people, but we thought we could sensitize people to reduce their use of plastic bags by promoting a product that can be reused.”
“We became the Earth’s infection a long and uncertain time ago”: James Lovelock is perhaps the world’s best-known independent scientist; he has published a new book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.
Lovelock has served humanity and the planet well by inventing a device (the ECD – Electron Capture Detector), which detected the amount of CFC’s in the atmosphere, but he is better known as the founder of the Gaia Principle. In a nutshell, this is the structure in which to see the planet and all that is on and of it, as a living whole, instead of separate parts.
In Lovelock’s own words: “To Golding, Gaia, the goddess who brought order out of chaos, was the appropriate title for a hypothesis about an Earth system that regulated its climate and chemistry so as to sustain habitability.” [Writer William Golding gave Lovelock’s theory, developed in 1965, its name]
The author of 5 books about Gaia, Lovelock, as he approaches the sage-like age of 90, has written his most direct and challenging book yet, subtitled ‘a final warning.’
As the author prepares to take up Richard Branson’s offer of a place upon a Virgin Galactic flight in space, he is at his simplest and most direct in this book; highly critical of European green politics and environmentalism, and offering what he believes are the only solutions for partial human survival through the onslaught of climate change.
With so much concern over global warming and the future of our planet, the idea of eco tourism is becoming more of an “in thing” to do.
With the aviation industry reeling from increasing fuel costs, dipping profits and those pesky upcoming environmental regulations, airlines are scrambling to become more efficient, cut costs and increase fuel efficiency.
