Solar trees

Here’s an innovative way to light up our streets and save money doing it. These solar trees, tested for four weeks in October in Vienna, Austria, provided enough light during the night-time even when the sun did not show for as much as four days in a row. Even in the gloom of our U.S. winters, there are a lot of cities that get enough sunlight to keep these lights charged.

Without having to install expensive underground wiring they save in installation costs as well as remaining portable enough to move around to where they would be needed most and they are immune to blackouts.

Of course, saving money only comes in the long run. But with the level of city expansion the U.S. goes through every year there is an abundance of opportunites to use this type of light instead of the more costly traditional street lighting. If only bureaucratic red tape could be cut to allow a new technology.

Designed by Ross Lovegrove, the lights have 10 solar panels arrayed at the top of tree-like branches, which charge built-in batteries. The batteries then power LEDs for illumination. Compared to conventional streetlights, they emit much less light pollution, because LEDs generate a very directed light. The trees also incorporate light detectors! So the lights automatically turn on at sunset and off at sunrise. Now that is smart use of technology.

Using this type of technology, cities could put LED light systems on city buildings as well as at bus stops, airport terminals, etc to cut down on carbon emissions and slash local electrical bills.

Street lighting consumed 10 percent of all the electricity used in Europe in 2006 or 2,000 billion KWh, and resulted in carbon emissions of 2,900 million ton.

The use of more energy-efficient lighting in the Austrian city of Graz, with a population of almost 300,000 saved the city 524,000 KWh of electricity and 67,200 euros [US $96,800] in 2005.

Honey making a medical comeback

Everyone who did not know honey is an antibiotic, raise your hand or go ‘huh’ or something like that. I am as surprised as I’m sure a lot of people are to learn this.

Ancient Egyptians, creative and curious individuals that they were, used to dress wounds with honey. Whether they thought it was natures glue or understood how it works remains a mystery. Why they started using this in the first place as a band-aid is unknown.

Derma Sciences Inc., a New Jersey company that makes medicated and other advanced wound care products, began selling the first honey-based dressing this fall after it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Their product is called Medihoney, what else, and is made from a seaweed-based material that is saturated with manuka honey.

Manuka honey, to be specific, is collected from the flower of the wild tea tree bush (leptospermum scoparium).

Evidently, the rest of the world has known about its healing, antiseptic properties for quite some time. Australians and New Zealanders have been using it to treat their patients for decades.

Since ancient times honey has been used as a natural medicine in many cultures. The antibacterial properties of honey however have only been discovered a century ago.

Why does it seem the U.S. is always last to learn of these things? I think it is because Americans are too egotistical about their medical professional to think that something natural could work just as well if not better than whatever medical science forces on us. And of course advertisers play a very large hand in this.

Honey in fact inhibits a broad spectrum of bacteria. Some reports even show an anti-fungal activity in honey. Some honeys will work better than others though. The Honey Research Unit at the Waikato University in New Zealand is constantly researching honey as a therapeutic agent.

“The reason that Medihoney is so exciting is that antibiotics are becoming ineffective at fighting pathogens," said Derma Sciences CEO Ed Quilty. This is what happens when our bodies are constantly filled with unnatural chemical agents. The body simply reacts better to natural treatments.

Another big advantage, he said, is that the dressings' germ-fighting and fluid-absorbing effects last up to a week, making them convenient for patients being cared for at outpatient clinics or by visiting nurses. They also reduce inflammation and can eliminate the foul odors of infected wounds.

Regular honey can have mild medicinal benefits. A study published Dec. 3 showed it helps to calm children's coughs so they can sleep. But manuka honey is far more potent, research shows.

Medihoney dressing can also prevent the dangerous drug-resistant staph infection known as MRSA from infecting open wounds.

Manuka honey can kill the toughest bacteria even when diluted 10 times and it is recommended especially for people with weak immune systems.

This is used as a barrier to keep infections out, it won’t work if the infection is already in the blood.

Some U.S. hospitals and wound care clinics are already using Medihoney dressings to treat patients with stubborn, infected wounds from injuries or surgical incisions and nonhealing pressure ulcers on diabetics' feet, which too often lead to amputations.

David Crosby, a retired insurance claims examiner from Hanover, Massachusetts, began using Medihoney two months ago on a 2 1/2-year-old burn on his leg after high-tech treatments did not help. The burn's size has shrunk by half and it continues to heal.

At a military clinic for Iraqi children, Medihoney was used on patients with severe burns from cooking fuels, open fires and explosions. Iraqi families soon preferred the honey over other treatments because it was natural and because the honey dressings don't need to be changed as often as traditional ones. The children also healed more quickly and with fewer complications.

This is yet another example of how nature has what we need to survive if we would only continue to look for it. Just because medicine is modern doesn’t mean it is better.

We need to look more closely at what we can do to preserve what nature is left on this Earth as a means of helping ourselves in the long run.

Is Biofuel a reasonable answer?

Ethanol works. It has been used on farms to power tractors and other farm equipment for many generations. But jumping on the bandwagon for the opportunity to tell big oil where to stuff it is a luxury we cannot afford.

Higher food prices.
Corn for ethanol brings a higher price for the farmer than corn for food and so from an economical standpoint it makes sense to sell more corn to ethanol producers than to food producers.

Diverting corn from making food to making ethanol will translate to higher food prices for all of us, whether we individually use ethanol or not. The federal government has begun paying out subsidies for corn-for-ethanol and now we are going to be stuck with it.

The increase in the number of acres to produce this corn will mean the loss of acreage for other food crops because it doesn’t pay as well as corn.

One of the dangers of maintaining a mono-cultural is that if anything comes along that adversely affects that crop then we will lose everything. And now that we are going to have two industries depending on one crop the results will be devastating.

Just to keep this pursuit of ethanol going, farmers will need to grow more corn to attempt to meet the demand for ethanol production while at the same time maintaining the demand for food production.

Food prices have already jumped a startling 75 percent since 2005. This is a direct result of ethanol subsidies, which have dramatically driven up the price of corn and other grains. Another, more long term, effect is that rising demand for meat in China and India, will push up demand for more feed grain. The combined strain on the farmer to produce higher yields to feed animals, people and cars is going to create a market collapse.

The farmers, right now, are ecstatic over the rising prospect of increasing their income. The rest of us, especially those on fixed incomes, will inevitably be forced to further stretch their already strained food budget.

And what will happen when the point is reached, and it will, when we have to choose between feeding our cars, our animals or feeding ourselves?

None of these concerns has addressed the damage that increased corn production will have on the environment.

More fertilizer production.
Corn is what is known as a heavy feeder. It requires a lot of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, much more than almost any other food crop and it doesn’t absorb as much as other crops so the fertilizer has a higher runoff rate. Currently, the nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This fertilizer runs off into the water table, on towards the Mississippi River and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico where it contributes to a growing “dead zone”. This dead zone is a 7,900-square-mile patch that depletes oxygen and is suffocating fish, crab and shrimp. Fishermen have to sail further out to sea to get a decent catch and this leads to higher fuel bills which, as always, comes down to higher consumer prices.

More pesticide production.
Another environmental factor to consider is the increased production of pesticides and their effects on the animal kingdom, including humans. The U.S. has come a long way toward finding alternatives to the traditionally used more toxic chemical pesticide. But foreign countries are not as regulated with nearly as much zeal.

More and more, our food crop is coming from the rest of the world. China is the largest producer of apples, with nearly 41 percent. With the recent recall of toys made in China due to the use of tainted chemicals it does not take much imagination to realize that China has a lot of chemicals to use up and they are willing to use them regardless of how the U.S. protests their use.

Higher subsidies for farmers.
The increase in subsidies to farmers to produce more corn costs the American taxpayer $9.4 billion in 2005. That figure is double what it was in 2004 which almost doubled the previous year which almost doubled 2002. Farm subsidy formulas are a complicated matter and the numbers and reasons are overwhelming. But the bottom line is we will end up paying more in future years, and the trend backs this up. These figures are just for the production of corn.
http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn corn sub…cost the…

Once this kind of money begins flowing through the hands of politicians, it is going to be very problematic in halting, or at least slowing down, the demand for ethanol production. Lobbyists get paid big bucks to make sure that flow does not stop, whether it benefits the country or not. These subsidies need to be redirected towards a more environmentally sound answer to the use of petroleum.

Bottom line.
All of this gobbling up of extra land and extra money, and all of this extra production of chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides results in producing a gallon of ethanol that requires more energy than the ethanol saves as a replacement for gasoline.

California responds to the EPA

(Follow-up to posting Dec 20, 2007 entitled “Come back Mr. Johnson”.)

On December 19, 2007 the EPA told California, and twelve other states, they could not enact their own legislation to combat greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs. The EPA said in doing so, that states have no business setting emission standards.

California has always had stricter standards for automobile emissions and the EPA has not limited their ability to enforce these laws until now.

Since that decision, four other states have decided to join California in its effort to take a lead role in cleaning up the air in their states.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson is apparently acting alone in this matter and does not have any legal footing to back his decision. But illegality has never slowed down George W Bush and his cronies.

"There's absolutely no justification for the administrator's action," Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wednesday. "It's illegal. It's unconscionable and a gross dereliction of duty."

The federal government is moving forward with a national solution and dismissed California's arguments that it faced unique threats from climate change. I cannot agree that California faces ‘unique’ threats from climate change because this climate threat is affecting the entire world.

There is no plausible reason why any state cannot enact its own standards separate and distinct from what the federal government wants unless the automobile industry is pressuring the federal government to halt it. A secondary layer of legislation against air pollution only ensures we clean up our air in a more timely fashion then waiting for the federal government.

The half-assed, ineffective energy legislation signed by President Bush last month will raise fuel economy standards nationwide to an average of 35 mpg by 2020. This is playing too closely to automobile manufacturer and oil industry desires to be of any use toward cleaning up our air. Also it allows foreign automakers to increase their far more fuel efficient cars to be sold here. On the plus side, this poor attempt at emissions control will help generate more interest in solar and hydrogen powered vehicles.

Instead of fighting the states, the federal EPA should work with them to see if the states’ plans are better for the nation than what the EPA can come up with.

Mr. Johnson is turning this into a power play and trying to place himself as the top dog. This kind of childish behavior is unwarranted given the fact that at least 20 states have come forward demanding strict controls on our automobile emissions levels.

The 2004 California law is tougher than the new national standard. It requires the auto industry to cut emissions by one-third in new vehicles by 2016 or reach an average of 36.8 mpg. Which, in my opinion, is still not enough.

The twelve other states that have adopted the California emissions standards are — Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

The governors of Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Utah have said they plan to adopt them and Iowa is considering adoption.

Mr. Johnson, I think the states have spoken loudly and in a clear enough manner that leaves no room for misinterpretation that demands you step up and make these standards tougher.

California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement, "(EPA officials) are ignoring the will of millions of people who want their government to take action in the fight against global warming, that's why, at the very first legal opportunity, we're suing to reverse the U.S. EPA's wrong decision."

"Today, there is simply no environmental issue more compelling, or extraordinary, than the increasing threat of climate change," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement. "Greenhouse gas emission standards for cars are a logical and necessary step to effectively combat global warming."

Automakers argue that they would have to be forced to reduce their selection of vehicles and raise prices in the states that adopted California's standards. Does anyone really need the so called selection of vehicles that comes out of Detroit? These cars all pretty much look alike and they are all built on the same basic frame anyway so what would we be giving up? As far as higher prices go, this argument simply does not stand up. Prices will already go higher to meet the federal governments lame standards so to say they will go higher because of California’s standards is simply wrong. It has already been shown that consumers are willing to pay higher prices for better mileage and lower emissions. Therefore the automakers arguments are flawed and manufactured to make themselves appear to be victims. Grow up Detroit and get with the program.

The EPA is attempting to kill a legal, viable policy tailored to help California deal with projected consequences of global climate change. Rising seas could erode our nation’s coastline and top its levees, while warming temperatures are expected to reduce mountain snowpacks, leading to a potential water crisis. But Detroit places its profit margin worries above the collective nation’s need to combat the more important, very real threat created by the products it markets to us. Forgive me, but it is very hard to find any sympathy for U.S. automakers. They have had many years and many missed opportunities to be more competitive with foreign automakers to keep our loyalty. Now they are crying when it comes time to face the music.

Eco Burials, the latest ‘Green’ thing

The latest eco-friendly trend, that can be your last environmentally friendly act before leaving this world, has been labeled green burial.

This new burial process shuns the traditional burial ritual which environmentalist believe is exacting a huge toll on the environment. Embalming injects corpses with formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, that releases blood-borne pathogens into the sewer systems and eventually the water table. The green burial process uses no embalming fluid. Lacquer and varnish on caskets contain petrochemicals and the concrete vaults that encase each burial plot block rainwater from returning to the water table. The green burial method places the body in a bio-degradable pod made of cardboard or newspaper or specially certified wood. Traditional cemeteries also eat up a lot of land: if we extrapolate from the average size of a coffin and the number of annual deaths, burial plots alone gobble up a lot of real estate. The green burial method allows your body to become natures’ compost.

Though green burials have been reversing the traditional burial rituals in the United Kingdom and other European countries for several years, the ritual is just beginning to attract attention in the United States.

Ancient civilizations chose to bury their dead in shrouds or wooden boxes, without first infusing bodies with chemicals. And some cemeteries have forbidden the use of formaldehyde, concrete, metal or any other material not completely biodegradable. Some traditional cemeteries have special sections set aside for green burials.

In these new age burial grounds, graves are marked only with a plant or a stone natural to the area. The grave sites’ GPS location is given to loved ones so the site can always be located.

Advocates argue that a green approach to burial is environmentally friendly, spiritually uplifting and often less costly than the conventional American way of laying people to rest.

Currently, the mortuary industry in the U.S. is dominated by three international corporations which controls every aspect of death care from transportation to cemetery lawn maintenance. The average funeral today runs around $7,000 and costs keep rising.

The Redwood Funeral Society, of Sonoma California, has been advocating the use of biodegradable caskets and an end to the practice of embalming since 1992. Although the society had found one independent funeral director whose services were reasonable, Karen Leonard, RFS founder, has been encouraging people to avoid morticians altogether by caring for their own dead, a movement which Jeri Lyons' Natural Deathcare Project has done much to foster. Families saved money in the process, but even then, they had to use standard facilities for cremation or burial. With this latest trend, families can save money and feel good about doing even more for the earth.

The current practice of embalming the body is believed to have begun in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians embalmed for religious reasons, believing it necessary to have a body to enter the afterlife. During the American Civil War, embalming was done to preserve the bodies of troops so that they could be shipped back to their families for burial. Today we embalm our dead for preservation and restoration to a more pleasing appearance.

Caskets have been in use since before 695 AD when the Celts used flat stones that were held together in the shape of a box. In about 1066 Kings and noblemen across the world were buried in luxurious, bejeweled caskets. The Vikings of about 900 AD had perhaps the most unique take on caskets that history has to offer. They turned ships and boats into large caskets upon which they would set fire and then set sail to burn at sea.

Today's caskets continue to be made mostly of steel, but, with the rise in popularity of cremation, caskets made of combustible wood are also very popular. Today's caskets still follow the traditional rectangular design and are still designed to be as airtight as possible. (Since their beginning, a chief aim of caskets has been to preserve a body for as long as possible. Scientists have recently discovered, however, that bodies in airtight caskets tend to decompose more quickly than those in more open caskets.) But variations on the traditional look are also becoming more common. Caskets have been known to come in some very offbeat shapes and designs. Some caskets have been shaped to look like large gym bags, guitars, and even dumpster bins. Others caskets have been painted with tropical scenes, sunsets and sea shells.

The practice of ‘viewing’ the body before burial is a practice designed to help mourners accept that death has really occurred and is the only reason we still embalm the body.

We honor our departed with gravestones marking their birth and death dates and are considered an important part of the grieving process.

Up until now the only other option to burial has been the cremation of the body.

According to the Cremation Association of North America, almost twenty percent of people who choose a cremation do so thinking that it is a more sustainable choice, but cremations use an exorbitant amount of fossil fuel and sends potentially toxic mercury and other chemicals into the air from the burning of dental fillings. The EPA estimates that crematoriums emit about 320 pounds of mercury each year, admittedly a tiny share of the tons of the chemical pumped into the atmosphere by other industrial sources, but nonetheless, every amount that doesn’t go into the air is better for all of us.

Eco burials actually benefit the environment, preserving land from other development and acting as a wildlife preserve. The area is legally protected by legislation from any future development, ensuring the sustainability of the land in perpetuity.

Eco Coffins Ltd of England offers the original Ecopod, a peapod-shaped biodegradable casket made of paper and hardened with minerals, sort of like papier-mâché, which was developed in Britain. (Correction: Eco Coffins Ltd makes the EcoCoffin not the Ecopod. Please see correction below). The pod can be plain cardboard that you can have painted or stained or decaled any way you want. Or, if you are so inspired, you can paint it yourself.

Green cemeteries, hosting natural burials, have sprouted up in California, Florida, New York, South Carolina and Texas.

A South Carolina-based company created a memorial park, the Ramsey Creek Preserve, where your decomposing body returns its nutrients as food for flora and fauna. Relatives and friends can walk among the trees on a forest walk to pay their respects.

The majority of eco-friendly burial products come from overseas although there are a few domestic makers. Options range from natural-fiber shrouds to fair-trade bamboo caskets lined with unbleached cotton and caskets with custom paint jobs and urns with the insignia of a favorite sports team. There are also more traditional-looking handcrafted coffins made of wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Biodegradable containers cost from around $100 for a basic cardboard box up to more than $3,000 for a handcrafted, hand-painted model.

“It’s hard to tell if it’s a fad or if it’s here to stay,” said Bob Fells, of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association. “We are certainly positioning ourselves that if this is what the community wants, we are ready to serve them.”

The Green Burial Council is working on certification programs to verify the commitment and quality of providers who say they are going natural.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure this concept doesn’t get ’green-washed’ down the drain,” said Joe Sehee, the council’s founder and executive director.

As a side note to environmentalist who are far enough out on the fringe, some people want their body rendered like any other dead animal. The body is crushed or boiled to separate the fat from the bone. The fat can then be used to make animal feed, wax, glue, etc.

In my opinion, this is going a tad bit too far but it could become an option as the next ‘green’ thing.


(Correction Jan 3, 2008)
Cynthia Beal, of Natural Burial Company, was kind enough to submit a comment to this post and pointed out a few corrections that I would like to relay.

Here is her comment in its entirety:

Thanks for the post - it's great to see that folks are learning about this natural option before it's "too late."

One correction - the Ecopod is sold in the USA by the Natural Burial Company and doesn't have anything to do with EcoCoffins UK. They are completely separate businesses.

The Ecopod is handsculpted from recycled newspapers and covered in handmade paper. Its design is inspired by an Egyptian sarcophagus and a maple seed, and it was created by a former UK midwife and organic farmer, Hazel Selina.

In addition to the paper and wood coffins, an intermediate choice is a coffin of woven fiber. Woven fiber coffins biodegrade more quickly than wood (less quickly than the paper, of course) and, what's even better, they keep the arts of basketry alive.

These woven coffins are currently imported because we Americans have lost the arts of strong-basket making. Hopefully, strong consumer demand for a more "natural end" will help artisans in the US step up and begin to create woven coffins so that the imports won't be as necessary. We use them now because they're "tried and tested" but we hope this can stimulate a whole new trend in artisan burial arts.

I've written a book called "Be a Tree, the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest." A free online condensation is available at http://www.beatree.com since the paper version won't be out for awhile and the publisher is kind enough to let me make it available to the public. "Be a Tree" talks a lot about the natural burial movement, home funerals, green cemeteries, and what action steps people need to take to get something more natural happening in their area.

Thanks again for making the Ecopod source correction - the Natural Burial Company is my company, and the business is my way of funding the education necessary to bring awareness of these new possibilities to all of us.
in trees,

Cynthia

I apologize for the inaccuracy and hope this correction alleviates any confusion I might have generated.

You bring up a wonderful point concerning the ‘Arts in basketry’, very interesting. Basket weaving is a true art form as any basket collector would attest. And what a fitting use of art as a way in which to celebrate the life of a loved one.

Thank you, Cynthia for taking the time to make this correction.