The amount of water used to produce food and goods imported to developed countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world, a report says.

The report, focusing on the UK, says two-thirds of the water used to make UK imports is used outside its borders. The Engineering the Future alliance of professional engineering bodies says this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.

It says countries such as the UK must help poorer nations curb water use.

“We must take account of how our water footprint is impacting on the rest of the world,” said Professor Roger Falconer, director of the Hydro-Environmental Research Centre at Cardiff University and a member of the report’s steering committee. ”If we are to prevent the ‘perfect storm’, urgent action is necessary.” The term perfect storm was used last year by the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, to describe future shortages of energy, food and water.

Forecasts suggest that when the world’s population soars beyond 8billion in 20 years time, the global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%, with the need for fresh water rising by 30%.

But developing countries are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West, the report says.

“The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on areas that are already short of water,” said Professor Peter Guthrie, head of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University, who chaired the steering group.

Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints (74 litres) of water – the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes that make the pint of beer.

A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres. Using this methodology, UK consumers see only about 3% of the water usage they are responsible for.

The average UK consumer uses about 150 litres per day, the size of a large bath.

Ten times as much is embedded in the British-made goods bought by the average UK consumer; but that represents only about one-third of the total water embedded in all the average consumer’s food and goods, with the remainder coming from imports.

The UK is not unique in this – the same pattern is seen in most developed countries.

Polystyrene makes comeback in US Congress building after Republicans reverse green initiatives brought in by Democrats.

A bit like the Republican party, they are white, seemingly indestructible and bad for the environment. But after an absence of four years, foam plastic coffee cups have made a comeback in the basement coffee shop of the United States Congress building after Republicans began reversing a series of in-house green initiatives undertaken byDemocrats.

The about-turn was announced by a press aide to John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, who tweeted on Monday morning: “The new majority – plasticware is back”.

When the Democrats held the house, the former speaker Nancy Pelosi put the cafeterias at the centre of a plan to hugely reduce the carbon footprint of Congress.

The ancient power plant in Washington DC a few blocks from the Capitol building, which provides heating and cooling for Congress and the supreme court, was converted from coal to natural gas. Compact fluorescent lighting and energy-efficient vending machines were introduced.

In the cafeterias, polystyrene packaging was replaced with trays and utensils made of biodegradable corn starch. Four separate stations were installed for recycling and sorting. A healthier menu was also introduced in 2008, offering cage-free eggs and antibiotic-free beef.

To read the full text go to:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/28/republicans-foam-coffee-cup-environmentally-bad

A study of the Resources for the Future  institute from a few years ago (2009, more exactly) revealed the impact that obesity has on a man’s carbon footprint. It showed that even a 10 percent increase in the rate of overweight and obesity among the population affected the miles per gallon by 2.5%, in the bad direction. This, in turn, created a 30 cent increase in gasoline prices.

“Our simulation results show that had the prevalence of overweight and obesity stayed at the level in 1981 (about 20 percentage points lower than that in 2005), the average MPG of new vehicles demanded in 2005 would have been about 4.6 percent higher, everything else being equal. The improved fuel efficiency implies total gasoline savings of about 138 million barrels and reduction in CO2 emissions of 58 million tons over the lifetime of these vehicles,” said the study led by Shanjun Li, Yanyan Liu, and Junjie Zhang.

“Extra-large Americans get up and go to work like anyone else and they need vehicles to get them there and back. Is the auto industry paying attention?” In that story, interviewed carmakers deny that they target obese people per se. Instead, they indeed pay attention to what the customer wants. “We’re finding that people say, ‘We want more space,’” said Sage Marie, Manager of Honda Product Planning, for AOL Autos.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has published its annual list of the top 12 greenest electric cars of the year, but with a 12th-place tie, the list includes 13 vehicles.

With the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and Nissan Leaf electric car now being delivered in the U.S., experts would have expected that one of them would occupy the first place, but they were wrong, because Leaf earned a second place while Volt ranked 12th with the Mazda 2.  Honda Civic GX, a model produced on a limited scale that runs on compressed natural gas, has been ranked first, becoming the greenest car of 2011.

As the scientists said, the development of this technology may reduce the cost of using  to the same price as using conventional energy sources.  The laboratory will use what is known as “artificial leaf” technology. It is inspired by the way leaves use sunlight to generate electricity.This technique will make possible the separation of water into oxygen and hydrogen. Large quantities of hydrogen can be produced in a clean and sustainable manner.

Conventional technologies are not so efficient because they require huge amounts of energy to extract only small amounts of hydrogen from water. The researchers want to test in the lab if cheap substances like titanium dioxide and rust can efficiently capture solar energy to split water. Currently, such extraction technologies are available, but the team wants to find cheaper ways.

“We can do this reaction right now. It’s no problem. We can use platinum, or we can use very expensive semi-conductor materials. The challenge is to devise a technology which is cheap, and is robust,” said professor James Barber, a leading expert in this field.

A plant that will eat up waste pop soda and beer and will output ethanol good for use  in fuel tanks will be set up by the end of February in Atlantic Canada.

The $500,000 pilot plant is part of a project led by New Brunswick Community College’s bioenergy and bioproducts applied research and technology facility in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, located near the Maine border.

The project will use Milco Industries’ waste pop and beer for a trial. The company usually drops those in landfills and pays between $100,000 and $200,000 for disposal. With the ethanol plant installed, they will produce between 250,000 to 500,000 gallons of ethanol yearly… only from recycled waste!

If everything goes as scheduled, Milco Industries will even acquire a larger-scale ethanol plant for their own internal use. The test one will be moved somewhere else, to see what else the thing could “eat” to generate energy.

“What sort of changes can we make to this initial pilot plant that we’re going to put up, to make it so it can operate economically at a small scale,” Kevin Shiell, scientific director for New Brunswick Community College asked. “This may be too small, but maybe a million liter plant we can actually get it so that it is feasible.”

Ethanol is cleaner than fossil fuels because it burns cleaner and because, if made from renewable resources such as waste organic products, the net CO2 emission is zero. If successful, this kind of plant should be taken as an example by waste recycling companies and landfill owners to reduce the formation of methane and other greenhouse gases. Instead, the energy could be used to provide useful power.

Wait until you have a machine full of clothes before you wash a load. Don’t wash a load of clothes just because you want to wear the same pair of pants the next day! When washing your clothes be sure to use the economy mode and this will save you both water and electricity! This goes for dishwashers, too. Load the dishwasher but don’t overload it.

Once your clothes are washed consider drying them on a clothesline either outdoors or indoors if it is too wet. This will save electricity and your laundry will smell fresh.

This may be the way of the future for fuel.

Researchers at the University of Illinois claim that the Agave plant (used in making tequila) could be a great source of biofuel.

According to some articles published in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy, two Agave species greatly exceeded the yields of other biofuel feedstocks such as sorghum, corn, soybean and wheat.

“We need bioenergy crops that have a low risk of unintended land use change. Biomass from Agave can be harvested as a co-product of tequila production without additional land demands,” said Sarah Davis, a bioenergy analyst.

In different locations from Mexico and Africa there are a few abandoned Agave plantations (that had been used to support the natural fiber market) that could be reclaimed as bioenergy croplands.

“More research on Agave species is warranted to determine the tolerance ranges of the highest yielding varieties that would be most viable for bioenergy production in semi-arid regions of the world,” she added.

As the scientists said, Agace is the perfect source of biofuel, having the possibility to be cultivated in Australia, Mexico and Africa.

Read more: http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2011/02/04/agave-plant-biofuel/#ixzz1DK81oARH

Eight years ago, President George W. Bush proposed a $1.2 billion program to help develop fuel-cell vehicles and hydrogen storage systems. Now, in 2011, the U.S. still has no hydrogen fuel cell cars in commercial production.

At the State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama stated that his goal is to make the United States the first country with one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

According to Michael Omotoso, director of global powertrain forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates in Troy, Mich., the limited market for short-range compact cars and the high cost of batteries could be real obstacles to reaching Obama’s goal.

The first vehicles planned to be on the road will be the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. General Motors wants to expand its production to 120,000 Volt units by 2012. So far, a total of 19 Leafs and 326 Volts have been sold in the U.S.

As the Energy Information Administration claims, automakers will sell about 281,000 light trucks and electric vehicles from 2011 through 2015.