Waste products are turning out to be a goldmine for researchers at the City University of Hong Kong, with their newly developed biorefinery that utilises enzymes secreted by fungi to transform coffee grounds and food waste to essential ingredients for the manufacture of various everyday products. Additionally, Airbus recently announced a partnership with Tsinghua University in China to transform used cooking oil to aviation biofuel. Read more

In Waste Management World (30 August 2012):

A new ‘biorefinery’ intended to transform biowaste into key building blocks for the manufacture of renewable plastics, laundry detergents and scores of other everyday products has been successfully tested using waste from Starbucks in Hong Kong.

A report on the project – launched in cooperation with the Starbucks restaurant chain (NASDAQ: SBUX), which was seeking a use for spent coffee grounds and stale bakery goods – was made the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

“Our new process addresses the food waste problem by turning Starbucks’ trash into treasure – detergent ingredients and bio-plastics that can be incorporated into other useful products,” explained Carol S. K. Lin, Ph.D., who led the research team at the City University of Hong Kong.

The idea took shape during a meeting last summer between representatives of the nonprofit organisation called The Climate Group and Lin at her laboratory at the City University of Hong Kong.

The Climate Group reportedly asked Lin about applying her transformative technology, called a biorefinery, to the wastes of one of its members – Starbucks Hong Kong. To help jump-start the research, Starbucks donated a portion of the proceeds from each purchase of its “Care for Our Planet Cookies” gift set.

A new kind of biorefinery

According to Lin her team already had experience in developing the technology needed to do it – a so-called biorefinery, which can convert plant-based materials into a range of ingredients for biofuels and other products.

“We are developing a new kind of biorefinery, a food biorefinery, and this concept could become very important in the future, as the world strives for greater sustainability,” added Lin.

“Using corn and other food crops for bio-based fuels and other products may not be sustainable in the long-run. Concerns exist that this approach may increase food prices and contribute to food shortages in some areas of the world. Using waste food as the raw material in a biorefinery certainly would be an attractive alternative,” she continued.

Lin went on to describe the food biorefinery process, which involves blending the baked goods with a mixture of fungi that excrete enzymes to break down carbohydrates in the food into simple sugars. The blend then goes into a fermenter where bacteria convert the sugars into succinic acid.

Succinic acid topped a U.S. Department of Energy list of 12 key materials that could be produced from sugars and that could be used to make high-value products – everything from laundry detergents to plastics to medicines.

Added benefits

In addition to providing a sustainable source of succinic acid, the new technology could have numerous environmental benefits, said Lin.

For example, Hong Kong produces nearly 5000 tonnes of used grounds every year. Currently, this waste is incinerated, composted or disposed of in landfills. Lin’s process could potentially convert these piles of foul-smelling waste into useful products.

Additionally, Lin claimed that the carbon dioxide that is produced is reused during the biorefining process, and that because succinic acid and its products (such as bio-plastics) are made using bakery waste as a renewable feedstock, they are sustainable alternatives to products made using petroleum.

The method isn’t just for bakery waste – Lin said she has also successfully transformed food wastes from her university’s cafeteria and other mixed food wastes into useful substances with the technology.

According to Lin the process could become commercially viable on a much larger scale with additional funding from investors.

“In the meantime, our next step is to use funding we have from the Innovation and Technology Commission from the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to scale up the process,” she said. “Other funding has been applied to test this idea in a pilot-scale plant in Germany.”

The scientists acknowledged support from the Innovation and Technology Commission in Hong Kong, as well as a grant from the City University of Hong Kong.

Source:  www.waste-management-world.com

In Waste Management World (30 August 2012):

Airbus Partnership to Develop Biofuels from Waste Cooking Oil in China

Toulouse, France based aircraft manufacturer, Airbus – a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS.PA) – has teamed up with Tsinghua University in China to complete a sustainability analysis for converting a number of feedstocks, including waste cooking oil, into aviation fuel.

According to the aircraft manufacturer the project will evaluate how best to support the development of a value chain to speed up the commercialisation of aviation bio-fuels.

The company added that the value chain aims to produce and to promote the use of aviation biofuel in China, the world’s fastest growing aviation market.

In phase one, the partnership said that it is assessing suitable feedstocks that comply with ecological, economic and social sustainability criteria. The sustainability analysis is managed by Airbus and involves close collaboration with Tsinghua and leading European institutions.

In phase two the partners will narrow down the most promising alternative fuel solutions. The first results are expected to be analysed in the second half of this year.

The partners’ stated goal is to select a number of feedstocks including used cooking oil (which would otherwise be waste) and also algae. By the beginning of 2013, the full sustainability analysis should have been completed.

Following this the partners said that they will look at scaling up the alternative fuel production process to achieve sustainable quantities of aviation fuel for commercial use.

“The commercialisation of alternative fuels is one of the essential ingredients in our quest to achieving ambitious environmental targets in aviation,” explained Frederic Eychenne, Airbus New Energies programme manager.

“The project will help us improve the understanding of the nature of aviation biofuels commercialisation in China, identify the opportunities and challenges, and evaluate the possibility of social, economic, market and technology change and its cost, obstacles and challenges,” added Project manager, professor Zhang Xiliang, director of the Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy at Tsinghua University.

The partnership agreement is one of the initiatives to develop a complete sustainable aviation biofuel production capability in China, using only sustainable resources, and is part of the Airbus goal to have in place a value chain in every continent by 2012.

Airbus said that thus far it has value chains in Latin America, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and with the Chinese value chain, Asia.

Source: www.waste-management-world.com

This adage has been taken to heart by the Asian Development Bank in its launch of a multi-million dollar rural water project in Sri Lanka, which made it a requirement to place women in key positions. Women have been recognised to play key roles in dealing with environmental challenges – from water management in Sri Lanka to forestry management in Indonesia and rural land management in China. Read more

By Amantha Perera for AlertNet (2 August 2012):

In 2006, when the Asian Development Bank (ADB)  decided to launch a multi-million dollar rural water project in eastern and north central regions of Sri Lanka, there was one overriding requirement – women would be placed in key positions.

As a result, experts say, the $263 million program, aimed at providing drinking water to over 900,000 people by 2011, has been a particular success.

In the village of Talpothta, in the rural north-central Polonnaruwa District, the village women’s association is now central to the proper functioning of the new water supply plant provided under the ADB programme. Its members visit the over 200 users, read meters and more importantly advise beneficiaries on water usage when drought sets in.

“We know how much is needed. Women do most of the household work like cooking (and) washing clothes. We ask our members to limit use when we have problems,” said Sheila Herath, an association member.

Kusum Athukorala, one of the country’s leading experts on water management, agrees that women are key to adapting effective measures to deal with water challenges and changing climate patterns.

“Women are the foot soldiers of climate change adaptation,” said Athukorala who heads the Network of Women Water Professionals, Sri Lanka (NetWwater) and the Women for Water Partnership.

NetWwater’s efforts to create awareness among rural women on climate change, adaptation and water management have won support from Brandix, one of the island’s largest garment. That allows Athukorala to now travel the country, educating women on water management.

“One sixth of our water supply is from rural programmes managed by community-based organizations. If we don’t recognize the impact of over half of the population, these programmes will never succeed,” she said.

INDONESIA, CHINA AND FORESTS

In other Asian countries women also are playing crucial roles at the grassroots level in preserving the environment and making sure human-inflicted damage remains controllable.  Avi Mahaningtyas, an Indonesian expert on forest management and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) told AlertNet that it was rural women who knew intimately the forest’s value to their lives.

“They know it by heart and by birth,” said Mahaningtyas, who heads the Environmental and Economic Governance Cluster of the Kemitraan-Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia, a national body that works on good governance.

The same sentiment is true in rural China, says Xiaobei Wang, a China gender specialist with Landesa Rural Development Institute, an international organisation that works on poverty and land rights. Wang told AlertNet that as men increasingly migrated to cities looking for jobs, it was women, left behind in the villages, who took care of the land and the forests.

“In China most of men from areas near forests have left as migrant workers, making women the major labour force. About 60 percent of
those working in forests and farm land are women. If their rights are not protected and enforced, there will be lots of issues in reducing poverty in forest areas and ensuring the sustainable management of forests,” she said.

Indonesia’s Mahaningtyas said that if a forest is to be preserved, like any other natural resource, it needs to carry a value. “A forest with a value will not easily be cut down. And it is the people who work within it who will know intimately that value.”

However, despite their importance, women are still being largely left out of the decision making, according to a new report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). The report – The Challenges of Securing Women’s Tenure and Leadership for Forest Management: The Asian Experience – found that gender discrimination is still rampant.

Arvind Khare, RRI’s senior director of country and regional programmes, said that women’s roles should not only be recognized but should also be enforced. He took the case of land rights in rural China, where women often find themselves losing land, due to cultural and social norms, despite laws that are gender neutral on paper.

“How can we look at climate adaptation and food security when those who do most of the work at ground level have no say?” he asked.

Indonesia’s Mahaningtyas feels that the continuing lack of recognition of the crucial role women play could be due to lack of scientific studies. “Gender documentation is quite low and we are still to quantify the impact of the role.”

Sri Lanka’s grassroots worker Athukorala sees a much more practical reason: lack of women in decision making positions.

“They are the foot soldiers, but how many female generals do we have in our countries fighting climate change?” she asked.

Amantha Perera is a freelance writer based in Sri Lanka. He can be followed via Twitter on @AmanthaP

Source: www.trust.org

Modern human activities have wreaked havoc upon our natural environment, changing the way the climate behaves and degrading the quality of land and sea, contributing to a lower quality of life for us and our future generations. Yet, the pervading attitude is one of apathy and deliberate ignorance – akin to the proverbial frog boiling in a slowly heating pot of water. However, sports is now seen as an excellent avenue for changing attitudes – by adopting sustainable technologies in sporting venues and as an outreach mechanism to spread the message of conservation and sustainability. Read more

By Leigh Steinberg for Forbes (31 August 2012):

How Sports Can Lead The Way In Combating Climate Change

If we don’t want to be the first generation in American history to hand down a degraded quality of life to our children and grandchildren, urgent action needs to take place to roll back the effects of climate change. As polar ice caps melt, oceans are rising around the world which wreaks havoc with weather patterns and threatens low lying areas. The ice packs on mountain chains around the world are melting and clean water supply is threatened. Tornadoes, hurricanes and other harmful dramatic weather systems are increasing. The ozone layer is dissolving with unprecedented greenhouse gases.

Politicians can be dismissive of the threat, but the science is real. The earth is one eco-system and pollution from China travels to Southern California. Our species has shown a remarkable capacity to ignore physical reality and embrace demonstrably false facts. Galileo was sentenced to a lifetime of house arrest for asserting that the sun rather than the earth was the center of the universe. People were put to death for the heresy of suggesting that the earth might be round instead of flat. Today’s attitudes echo the old story of the frog who is dropped in boiling water and jumps right out, but when put in tepid water which gradually heats up unnoticed, he boils to death.

Sports can play a leading role in changing attitudes. We have been working on a plan called the Sporting Green Alliance to take sustainable technologies in wind, solar, water, resurfacing and recycling and incorporate them in stadia, arenas and practice fields at the professional, collegiate and high school levels. If golf courses are included, this represents a substantial amount of real estate. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. It is possible to actually have these venues serve as producers that can sell energy back to the grid. These facilities can also act as educational platforms so that the hundreds of millions of fans who attend games can see a solar panel or waterless urinal in operation and think about how to integrate them into their own homes and businesses. The more demand that exists for these energy saving technologies, the more that American industry can retool and provide products that the world wants to buy. If America starts to dominate the sustainable energy field it will force China to compete and respond.

Sports can be a vibrant source of content supply, which will help stimulate attitudinal change. Imagine Saturday morning cartoon shows or comic books with sports super heroes fighting for the environment. Owners of teams could establish local nature preserves to teach children the value of conservation. This green orientation could stimulate green energy companies to compete for naming rights and signage.

Warren Moon and I were employed as spokesman in sports themed public service announcements for the Sierra Club. Some of my clients participated in Laurie David’s v million person virtual environmental March on Washington. I gave an address several years ago in Lausanne, Switzerland to the United Nations Convocation on Sports and the Environment. Many of our yearly Superbowl Parties have been environmentally themed. In Scottsdale, then Governor Janet Napitalano of Arizona released an endangered hawk into the wild to kick of the party. We are planning on using a new energy system for the party in New Orleans next year which has the capability of powering the event by converting trash into energy.

There have been promising developments in combining environment and sports. The National Football League has an especially active head of their environmental program, Jack Groh, who has worked zealously to get the League to carbon neutrality. Martin Tull heads the Green Sports Alliance and has been creative and determined in pushing the agenda. That organization is holding a convention in Seattle September 5th-7th that can be invaluable for anyone who wants to get involved.

Certain issues seem so overwhelming and insolvable that apathy and powerlessness is the natural reaction. But my father used to say “you cannot depend on THEY or THEM to tackle major issues or you may wait forever. The THEY is you son, and the THEY is me”. It’s time for sports to help lead the way.

Source: www.forbes.com