Bi-Weekly Ezine Reporting LOHAS* Industry Trends
Earth Week, 2009 / Vol. 5 Issue 7
Editor Alexandra Friedman
In This Issue
· ECO-DESIGN and GREEN BUILDING
· RENEWABLE ENERGY and THE ENVIRONMENT
· ORGANICS, NATURALS, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
· SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS & INVESTING
· INTEGRATIVE and ALTERNATIVE HEALTHCARE
ECO-DESIGN and GREEN BUILDING
Bike Rack Competition in Toronto: Which Do You Like?
OCAD, the Ontario College of Art and Design, sits in what is becoming Toronto’s “Art Corridor.” So it seems only appropriate to have arty bike racks in front of the building, and thus the school is holding a competition to design a special one for the entrance to the area. They have narrowed it down to ten, some of which are interesting and some of which are pretty derivative of David Byrne’s and some of the others in the New York Design Competition. The ten finalists will advance to the next stage, where they build models and get reviewed by a jury and community members. See them all at OCAD. Source: treehugger.com
Solar Cooker Heats Up $75K Climate Change Contest
The Kyoto Box won the FT Climate Change Challenge, a global competition with a $75,000 purse aimed at finding the best innovations to address climate change. The inventor, Kenya-based entrepreneur Jon Bøhmer, will use the prize to fund large-scale trials of the solar cooker in 10 countries. More than 300 entries were submitted to the contest. A combination of public votes and assessments from a panel of business leaders and climate change experts chose the winner. The Financial Times, HP and Forum for the Future teamed up to create the contest.
The solar cooker, a contraption that costs five euros (US$6.57) to build, consists of two boxes that rely on the greenhouse gas effect. One box rests within the other while an acrylic cover lets in and traps the sun’s heat. The inner box is painted black while the outer box has silver foil to concentrate heat. Users can stuff newspaper or straw between the two boxes for insulation. The Kyoto Box holds the potential to help an estimated three billion people who use firewood to cook, while improving the health of millions of children who lack access to clean drinking water and suffer from smoke inhalation. Bøhmer, the owner of design firm Kyoto Energy, can replicate the solar cooker with corrugated plastic for the same cost for a longer-lasting cooker. He’ll conduct trials with 10,000 cookers in 10 countries, including India, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. He hopes to use the data from the trials to apply for carbon credits, which could produce an annual profit of up to 30 euros (US$39.47) per stove. He’d use the excess funds to launch other solar products, such as a plastic bag that heats and cleans water, a smokeless cooker to burn biomass and a solar-power torch. Source: greenbiz.com
RENEWABLE ENERGY and THE ENVIRONMENT
Study: Endangered Elephants Are Main Seed Dispersers of Congo’s Forest
Shy and reclusive, the forest elephants of Congo, Central Africa are being pushed to the brink of extinction by the loss of habitat and illegal poaching for the ivory and bushmeat trades. What may not be apparent is the fact that if the forest elephants disappear – the forests might vanish as well. A new study of seed dispersal has found – that forest elephants may be responsible for spreading and planting more seeds in the Congo than any other species or genus. Along with his team, Dr. Stephen Blake of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that forest elephants, consumed more than 96 species of plant seeds and can carry them as far as 35 miles from the point of origin. The study did not take into account seeds smaller than a centimeter, even though seeds of this size were estimated to number in the hundreds and thousands in the dung piles studied.
Blake and his team studied no less than 855 dung piles and used GPS collars to track the elephants. The rate at which seeds are passed through the digestive system depends on the size of the seeds – ranging from 24 hours for small seeds and 72 hours for larger ones. The team found that the elephants moved anywhere from 24 kilometres before passing small seeds and 57 kilometers for larger-sized seeds, concluding that “long-distance movements are not rare events for forest elephants, but occur on a daily basis.” The study concluded that forest elephants surpassed all other species – including birds and primates – in their ability to disperse plant seeds. This means that without forest elephants – who are currently facing unprecedented threats to their survival – the tropical forests will not be the same. Source: care2.com
Seattle’s King County to Generate Energy From Landfill Gas
King County, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and Bio Energy-Washington are joining forces to turn the Seattle’s garbage into energy. The project will use the methane gas generated from decomposing garbage buried at the county’s Cedar Hills Regional Landfill in Maple Valley, about 20 miles southeast of Seattle. Methane produced by the landfill will be collected, processed, and piped to Puget Sound Energy’s natural gas-fired power plants. The power PSE produces from Cedar Hills’ methane, which is equivalent to the output of a 35-megawatt gas-fired power plant, will put the Cedar Hills project among the five largest landfill-gas energy project in the nation. There are more than 100 landfill-gas power projects today in the United States. A connecting line that runs between the landfill and the adjacent Northwest Pipeline will transport the methane gas to PSE natural gas-fired power plants. PSE will use the methane, the primary component of commercial-grade natural gas, to generate an estimated 287,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually. Bio Energy-Washington is building and operating the gas-to-energy facility at Cedar Hills, which includes the quarter-mile pipeline for shipping the processed landfill gas to Northwest Pipeline and on to PSE’s natural gas-fired power plants. The company estimates that it will process and deliver at least 4.5 million cubic feet of methane to PSE daily from the county landfill. Deliveries are expected to average about 5.5 million cubic feet per day over 20 years and start by the end of April of this year. Source: renewableenergyworld.com
ORGANICS, NATURALS, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Site Connects Consumers and Farmers
Stone-Buhr flour says it’s on to a new marketing plan driven by increased demand for locally produced products. The 100-year-old company based in San Francisco recently launched FindTheFarmer.com, a site that allows consumers to use the lot code on their flour package to find the farmer that grew the wheat used to make it. Stone-Buhr, which stopped using commodity flour in 2007, now buys all of its flour from Columbia Plateau Producers (CPP), a group of Food Alliance-certified family farmers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho that makes Stone-Buhr’s Shepherd’s Grain flour. CPP sells its wheat for the actual cost of its product, plus a small profit for the farmers. Currently, it costs slightly more than $3 more per bushel compared to commodity wheat. In stores around the West though, the price of Stone-Buhr flour runs average compared to that of its competitors. Other companies have already taken similar marketing tactics, including Icebreaker, an New Zealand apparel maker with its North American headquarters in Portland. Icebreaker puts a “Baacode” on all merino wool garments and invites customers to go to a Web site to trace their garments from the farm through each stage of the supply chain process. About 44,000 customers have looked into how their garment was produced since the program launched in 2008, according to the company. Source: sustainableindustries.com
Read Full Article…
Survey Indicates Acceptance of Frozen Foods in Recession
New consumer research indicates shoppers are falling back on frozen food to keep bellies full through the recession, according to the Food and Drink Federation – and that, in turn, can stimulate new product development geared to pressing needs. Frozen food in the UK has typically had a low cost image, which has affected its popularity in boom time, when premium brands are popular. However the economic downturn looks to be persuading consumers to change their minds. A survey conducted by Insight Track for the FDF’s Frozen Food Group found that 49 per cent of people “believe that frozen food will help them through the credit crunch”. Moreover, 75 percent said frozen food “is better than it used to be”, and 73 per cent recognized a range of premium products. The difference in price between frozen and chilled foods is hard to quantify due to the different ranges and value lines on offer. But a frozen ready meal, for instance, could come in as much as 40 percent cheaper than its chilled counterpart. Beyond cost, 70 percent said consumers understand that frozen food helps minimize waste, as it can be stored for longer than fresh food, according to the researchers; having a freezer-full of supplies means they need to go to the shops less often than if they were only buying ambient or chilled food. Not only can less visits to the shops mean savings on car fuel, but it can also help curb impulse spending. Source: foodnavigator.com
SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS & INVESTING
Green Bank Act of 2009 Introduced in US House
U.S. Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) recently introduced the Green Bank Act of 2009. If passed, the legislation would create the Green Bank as an independent, tax-exempt, wholly owned corporation of the United States. The Bank’s mandate would be to provide a range of financing support to qualified renewable energy and energy efficiency projects within the territorial United States. The Green Bank Act of 2009 would provide the Green Bank with an initial capitalization of US $10 billion through the issuance of Green Bonds by the U.S. Department of Treasury, with a maximum authorized limit of $50 billion in Green Bonds outstanding at any one time. RenewableEnergyWorld.com first reported on the idea of a federal clean energy bank earlier this month when Solarsa’s Scott Jorgensen published an open letter to President Obama highlighting the concept. Click here to read that letter. Source: renewableenergyworld.com
Stimulus Spending Boosts Japan’s Train Manufacturers
With Japan’s economy plunging at a faster rate than Europe or the U.S., thousands of jobs lost, and failing politicians lapsing from one crisis to the next, it’s been a miserable few months for Japan Inc. Yet amid mounting grim headlines, one deal stands out. On Feb. 13 the British government signaled that a consortium led by Tokyo-based Hitachi (HIT) had won preferred bidder status for a $10 billion contract to build and maintain rolling stock for train lines running along Britain’s east and west coasts. For Hitachi, a sprawling conglomerate that makes everything from flat-panel TVs to nuclear plants, the British contract could not come at a more important time. Hitachi expects to lose $7 billion in the financial year that ends later this month, marking it as one of Japan’s worst-performing large companies.
This year, despite the huge loss for the group, railway-related sales at the company are forecast to jump a healthy 17%, to $1.5 billion. The British deal, if finalized in October, should see Hitachi and its partners John Laing and Barclays Private Equity supply up to 1,400 train cars. The consortium will also service the trains over a 20-year period. Perhaps more important, analysts say the deal could be a sign that Hitachi and other Japanese companies can win more new business in the rail industry at a time when governments fighting the global recession are using stimulus spending to invest in infrastructure projects. Even as Japan’s major export markets of autos and electronics slump, rail could provide a welcome growth opportunity. There should be plenty of opportunities to bid for more contracts. In the U.S., for example, the Obama Administration’s $789 billion stimulus plan will provide an impetus for rail spending with $18.1 billion earmarked for transit and railways. In Europe, the European Union is contributing $630 million to member nations to spend on rail links as part of its stimulus efforts. In Britain, Hitachi’s bid won praise because its trains, which are constructed from an aluminum shell, will be 17% lighter than the ones they replace even though they are longer. That helps them to be quieter, emit less carbon, and accelerate more quickly. Source: businessweek.com
INTEGRATIVE and ALTERNATIVE HEALTHCARE
Food Supplements Proving Recession-Proof
The ongoing slide of global capitalism is decimating industries, but the food supplement industry is not one of them as fraught consumers turn to its potential low-cost, anti-medical, wellness promise. The surge in food supplements sales is highlighting the fact that nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals have not always been easy bedfellows. They have been made to share the same blanket at times, and this has blurred the basic premise that drugs are usually designed to treat diseases and cost more, while food supplements are cheaper and suited to disease prevention. The economic grind has contributed to this particular blanket being thrown off, and food supplements are revealing themselves to be more than capable of surviving the economic chill.
In the US, market analyst, IRI, notes food supplement sales were up eight percent in the period ended December, 2008, over the same time last year. Similar trends are being reported elsewhere from China to Europe, South Korea, South Africa and Australia. US vitamin retailer, Vitamine Shoppe, notes 20 per cent of customers in the past six months are first-time food supplements buyers of the likes of omega-3s, multivitamins, herbal extracts, probiotics and glucosamine and chondroitin. US natural foods merchandiser, Whole Foods, reported its first-ever negative quarter recently, but noted food supplements were the star performer in its nationwide chain of stores. With fewer shekels in the coffers of household budgets around the world, food supplements are increasing in appeal as fear-ridden consumers look for ways and means to dodge the potential budget-busting hell of the mainstream medical system. The resulting damage to the industry has been vast so to find droves of new consumers turning to them is heartening and validating. It backs up what many industry experts have been saying since this recession really kicked in last year – that food supplements offer a health solution that becomes more compelling in hard economic times. Source: nutraingredients.com
Read Full Article…
Licorice May Block Effectiveness Of Drug Widely Used By Transplant Patients
Chemists in Taiwan are reporting that an ingredient in licorice – widely used in various foods and herbal medicines – appears to block the absorption of cyclosporine, a drug used by transplant patients to prevent organ rejection. This drug interaction could potentially result in transplant rejection, causing illness and even death among patients worldwide who take cyclosporine and licorice together, the researchers caution. The study is the first report of this potential drug interaction, the scientists say. Their findings will be presented at the American Chemical Society’s 237th National Meeting. The researchers say they do not know exactly how much licorice it takes to have a toxic effect in humans. Since licorice-based products vary widely in their content of its main active ingredient, a substance called glycyrrhizin, it is recommended that patients taking cyclosporine avoid licorice altogether.
Thousands of patients also take cyclosporine for rheumatoid arthritis, certain skin conditions, and other diseases. Researchers have known for years that certain medications, foods, and herbs can reduce levels of cyclosporine in the body and should be avoided when taking that immunosuppressant drug. These include St. John’s wort, quercetin (an ingredient found in onions and other plants that’s also a dietary supplement), onions, ginger, and ginkgo. Other studies show that some substances, such as grapefruit juice, can actually boost cyclosporine levels. In the new study, researchers fed cyclosporine to laboratory rats with and without various doses of pure glycyrrhizin and natural licorice extract. Much to the scientists’ surprise, levels of cyclosporine dropped in the animals fed licorice or glycyrrhizin. Licorice is a popular herb that has been used in food and medicines for thousands of years. Its active ingredient, glycyrrhizin, is 50 times sweeter than sugar, leading to herb’s popular use in candy, herbal teas, and other foods. Some alternative health care providers use licorice root to treat a wide range of illnesses, including the common cold, stomach ulcers, and liver disease. Source: sciencedaily.com
Read Full Article…
The Wild Geese movie full Watchers move
