Insects: the future of food? Would you find it easier to eat insects and arachnids if you knew you already do?

Insects: the future of food?

Fraser Lewry eats a cricket. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Back in 1885, the same year that the first issue Good Housekeeping appeared and the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York, British entomologist Vincent M Holt published a pamphlet entitled Why Not Eat Insects?. Alongside a recipe for wood-lice sauce (excellent with fish, apparently) and some example menus (curried cockchafers, anyone?), Holt spends much time agonising over the Western abhorrence for meals made from our scuttling insect cousins.
"Is it not a wonder", he asked, "that people do not look around them for the many gastronomic treasures lying neglected at their feet? Prejudice, prejudice, thy strength is enormous!" As Victorian kitchen classics go, this flimsy tract might not be viewed with the same affection as more famous works by Isabella Beeton or Agnes Marshall, but it's quite possible that Holt's time has at last arrived.

The UN appears to think so. Their Food and Agriculture Organisation is exploring the possibilities of insects providing a greater share of global food needs, and the statistics appear to suggest that a future of crunchy critter consumption isn't beyond the realms of possibility.
With the planet's population heading ever more rapidly towards the seven billion mark (we'll get there in October) and an ever-less-economical reliance on meat, farmed insects might just provide an answer. They produce much more meat per kilogram of feed than the more usual farmed animals do, and more of their body mass is edible.
What's more, they produce a fraction of the greenhouse gasses pumped out by cattle and are rich in minerals, vitamins and proteins. Just four locusts provide as much calcium as a glass of milk, while mopani worms, gram-for-gram, contain more protein than beef.
Insects are already eaten in four-fifths of nations, from the grasshopper tacos popular in Mexico to China, where almost anything goes. I once pointed at a piece of delicious, dripping honeycomb on display at a restaurant in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, and was somewhat surprised to be served a plateful of baby bees.
Elsewhere, western tourists are approaching the idea of insect and arachnid cuisine with more open minds. The consumption of a delicious Cambodian deep-fried tarantula was once the preserve of macho food tourists like Anthony Bourdain. Then the experience was added to the gap-year checklist alongside full moon parties in Koh Phangan and bungee jumps in Queenstown. The signs are that the "edible insect movement" is finally being treated much more seriously with chefs getting in on the act. Even the New Yorker, that bible of urban sophistication, recently devoted 6,500 words to the subject.
But insects taste terrible, right? Well, perhaps not. In his introduction to Man Eating Bugs‚ The Art and Science of Easting Insects author Peter Menzel writes that a toasted witchetty grub tastes like "a tender cheese omelette rolled in a smoky philo-dough shell" and that Ugandan termites are akin to "roasted peanut skins, only juicier".
Suspicious that Mr Menzel has a book-selling agenda that renders him incapable of saying bad things about such morsels, I make my way to the Natural History Museum in London's swinging Kensington, where an event is being held. It's called "Edible insects: food for the future? A tasting event with a difference", and a trio of experts are lined up to inform the uninformed.
There's the NHM's resident insect identifier Stuart Hine, Meredith Alexander, a "hunger expert" for the charity ActionAid, and Daniel Creedon, head chef at Archipelego, on whose menu chilli and garlic locusts nestle comfortably alongside chocolate-covered scorpions.
The first thing we discover is that we're already eating insects. And yes, that "we" includes you. That delicious bar of chocolate you've saved for later? In all probability it contains 60 or more insect fragments (a type of contamination known in the trade as "insect filth"). That sweetcorn? The average tin is home to a couple of sizeable larvae chunks. And frozen broccoli? You really, really don't want to know.
The knowledge that we're already seasoned insect eaters, albeit unwittingly, makes the food that follows easier to swallow for the assembled diners. The waxworm larvae have a very subtle sweetness, while the fried crickets leave a pleasantly nutty aftertaste. Toasted weaver ants taste of very little‚ not even toast, and the chocolate ant wafers are delicious but taste almost entirely of chocolate.
My favourite treat is an off-menu item, a scorpion dipped in chocolate and processing a gentle alcoholic kick. The worst? No-one seems keen on the silkworm pupae. South Koreans buy these like crisps at convenience stores, but they don't go down well here. "Like rancid fish sauce", says Creedon.
In-between courses it's Q&A time. Which wine works best with insects? The answer, apparently, is "beer". How many locusts would one need to eat for breakfast to replace two eggs? "About 74", says Hine, tongue firmly in cheek. Is the recent tourist predilection for spiders endangering the tarantula population? Can one eat insects or arachnids live? Are insects sentient beings capable of sensing cruelty? Hine suggests not, but a vegan in the audience argues that while insects might not be able to philosophise, you could say the same of most humans, obsessed as they are with the X-Factor and EastEnders. Yeah! In your face, science!
As the evening draws to a close, one gentleman rises from his seat, sheepishly makes his way forward, and offers the evening's host a small bowl containing a single silkworm pupa. It looks for all the world like some kind of demented courtship gesture. Reluctantly, she pops it in her mouth, and instinctively makes the kind of sour, scrunched face only worn by those with a desperate, sudden need for a glass of water and a toothbrush. At this very moment, assuming bugs haven't entirely consumed him, Vincent M Holt is probably spinning furiously in his grave.

 

Scotland Makes World's First urban Green Space Map!

Finding a place to hike or picnic in Scotland's cities just got easier with the introduction of what is thought to be the world's first comprehensive, interactive online map ofurban green space -- 429 square miles in all.

The interactive map, prepared by the charitable organization Greenspace Scotlandwith government support, allows anyone with access to a computer to search for green space using place names or postcodes, or just by scrolling around, the BBCreported today, noting the environmental as well as recreational benefits:

The tool may also help councils develop planning and environmental policy. Those who produced the map said it would provide a baseline for future updates, allowing them to track changes in the amount and type of green space in Scotland's towns and cities.

Unique Environmental Initiative to Conserve Mountain Resources

An adventure based sports and tourism event to encourage conservation of mountain and natural resources will be held in Africa next month.

The two- day Mt Kenya Extreme Sport Challenge 2011 has attracted participants from all over the world to sensitize on climate change and save Mount Kenya- Africa’s second highest and most spectacular mountain ranges.

The event was officially launched last Friday by Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of State Provincial Administration and Internal Security Francis Kimemia urged for a balance between development and environment conservation.  He decried rampant cutting of the countries for firewood and said urgent measures should be taken to conserve mountain and forest resources.

 "The event is a unique opportunity for everyone to be involved in sports tourism. Mt Kenya Extreme Sports Challenge is not only an opportunity to help conserve the environment, especially when the world is feeling the dire effects of climate change, Kimemia said.

Organized by Mt Kenya Extreme School of Adventure and Leadership (KESAL), the event running from October 20–22, 2011 targets over a thousand participants. According to KESAL Director John Mwangi, the occasion, blending fun and fitness, will raise awareness on the need to conserve the countries several heritage sites. He said forests are carbon seeds, which have to be jealously conserved to reduce environmental degradation.

Speaking at the launch, Kenya Civil Aviation Authority    (KCAA) Director Hillary Kioko said urged reduction of carbon emissions would help third world countries   gain from carbon credits. Administration Police Commandant Kinuthia Mbugua said environment issues are threats to security and hailed the event, which he said promote environmental education.

Some disciplines to be contested individually and in groups   include Extreme Adventure, Sky Marathon, Rock Climbing and jungle Race. Proceeds will be used to construct at least 1000 energy saving jikos for the community, buy seeds and seedlings of indigenous trees, which will act as carbon sinks and educate the community about the need for conservation of Mt Kenya ecosystem.

Senior Warden at Mount Kenya National Park Captain Robert K. Obrien says they are ready to host the event targeting 15 teams of four participants each and is open to persons of 18 years and above  “We assure that we will provide security and serene environment for participants during this important event', he said.

The event is organized alongside Athletics Kenya, Brand Kenya, Postbank, Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Forestry Service, National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Generation-Kenya/209286159120510

Carbon tax rebate may be logical if it can level the playing field

Emissions are released from a factory chimney at an industrial park. Photograph: Reuters

Ministers should abolish a carbon tax that was only announced in April, the head of the manufacturers' association told the Financial Times on Monday. Yet the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) are already busying themselves with the preparation of a package of measures to support energy-intensive industries affected by the tax, such as steel, aluminium, chemicals and paper. Details are due in the autumn, but its objectives are already clear: to reduce the impact of the carbon tax, which was introduced to make polluters pay for a greater proportion of the pollution they create.

Given that the tax's express purposes is to make polluters pay, it might seem odd to then reduce its impact on energy-intensive industries, which are alone responsible for 45% of total UK business and public sector emissions. But there could be logic in this counter-intuitive approach, as there is a case for governments to provide temporary, short-term support to help polluting industries evolve and succeed in the carbon and resource constrained world that we now inhabit.

If the package is actually designed to support the transformation of energy intensive industries, so they can become part of the solution toclimate change and the other environmental challenges, that would be a tremendously good thing. The government could do this by providing greater financial support to cover the upfront costs of installing the greenest and lowest-carbon production methods, working to research and deploy cleaner technologies with industry, and promoting tougher regulations in Europe and internationally.

Instead, there is a risk that the energy-intensive industries package does none of this, and that it merely becomes a crude tax rebate for the very worst polluters. It would be yet another subsidy, complementing the staggering windfall that energy-intensive industries received under theEU emissions trading scheme. If this comes to pass, it would be a missed opportunity. For it would do nothing to support the adoption of sustainable, low-carbon production methods and the retooling of industries, and by reinforcing the status quo, it would actually harm our international competitiveness in the future.

This scenario would be the result of a successful and concerted lobbying campaign. We are often told by those captured by extractive and energy-intensive industries that the polluter pays principal is too painful and that jobs will be lost or sectors will move overseas. But protecting industries from future competitive pressures, such as carbon intensity and resource efficiency, will make sectors less internationally competitive in the future, not more. And being wedded to sectors where we lack a clear comparative advantage, while simultaneously stymieing needed structural change, is hardly likely to improve economic performance.

The case for increasing the pressure for change becomes stronger if you look at where growth is going to come from in the future. The UK steel sector, for example, now employs just 2% of the number currently employed in the low-carbon and environmental goods and services (LCEGS) sector (18,900 v 910,000). And while the UK as a whole remains the seventh largest economy in the world, for production we are now ranked only 18th for steel, 23rd for aluminium, and 29th for cement. This follows a long-term downward trend.

In complete contrast and despite its relative immaturity, we now have the sixth largest LCEGS sector in the world and this is growing at over 4% a year – well above growth in the rest of the economy. In each LCEGS area the UK has a global share of between 3.2-3.8% and in carbon finance we have a global share of 11.7%. These are going to be increasingly important areas for us to earn our way in an increasingly competitive global economy. The future lies in the new green economy, not the old polluting one.

The other argument deployed against progress is that there are no alternatives. This is patently false. In high-carbon industries there are many credible alternatives emerging. For example, concrete can already be produced that actually captures and stores CO2 in the built environment. There are also low-carbon steelmaking processes being developed, such as alkaline electrolysis, that with the right support could be commercialised and deployed successfully.

The challenge is not finding low-carbon alternatives with a lower environmental impact – plenty exist and many more will be developed. The real challenge is creating a route to market for these technologies and this will never happen if incumbents are not encouraged, supported and ultimately forced to evolve, or are allowed to continually block progress. This is why policy makers must act to level the playing field through appropriate carbon pricing and regulation, while creating time-limited windows where the government and industry can work together to develop solutions.

The environmental challenges we face mean that we cannot continue to pursue two different strategies simultaneously: support for greener, low-carbon technologies, while continuing with business as usual in polluting sectors. We can't conveniently have it both ways and the sooner we realise this and act on it, the sooner a cleaner and safer future will arrive.

Mamba Village Karen Barbecue + KWS Lion

Green Generation Kenya: Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

Green Generation Kenya: Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener.

Related

• DealBook: In a Twist, Google Reviews Zagat, and Decides to Bite (September 8, 2011)

• DealBook: New-Form Press Release, in Blog, Tweet and Haiku (September 8, 2011)

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Google says the cooling system at its Hamina, Finland, site uses seawater and is energy efficient.

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Urs Hoelzle, a Google senior vice president, said context mattered in energy statistics.

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Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant.

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

Google says that people conduct over a billion searches a day and numerous other downloads and queries. But when it calculates that average energy consumption on the level of a typical user the amount is small, about 180 watt-hours a month, or the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. The overall electricity figure includes all Google operations worldwide, like the energy required to run its campuses and office parks, Mr. Hoelzle added. Data centers, however, account for most of it.

For years, Google maintained a wall of silence worthy of a government security agency on how much electricity the company used — a silence that experts speculated was used to cloak how quickly it was outstripping the competition in the scale and efficiency of its data centers.

The electricity figures are no longer seen as a key to decoding the company’s operations, Mr. Hoelzle said.

Unlike many data-driven companies, Google designs and builds most of its data centers from scratch, down to the servers using energy-saving chips and software.

Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, applauded Google for releasing the figures but cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising because every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google.

“When we hit the Google search button,” Mr. Horowitz said, “it’s not for free.”

Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, with most of that attributable to carbon fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. In part because of special arrangements the company has made to buy electricity from wind farms, Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels in 2010, and estimates that figure will reach 30 percent in 2011.

Google also released an estimate that an average search uses 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, a figure that may be difficult to understand intuitively. But when multiplied by Google’s estimate of more than a billion searches a day, the figure yields a somewhat surprising result: about 12.5 million watts of Google’s 260-million-watt total can be accounted for by searches, the company’s bread-and-butter service.

The rest is used by Google’s other services, including YouTube, whose power consumption the company also depicted as very small.

The announcement is likely to spur further competition in an industry where every company is already striving to appear “greener” than the next, said Dennis Symanski, a senior data center project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. At professional conferences on the topic, Mr. Symanski said, “they’re all clamoring to get on the podium to claim that they have the most efficient data center.”

DuPont Offers Compensation for Dead Trees

The chemical manufacturer DuPont has set up a process through which people can make monetary claims for trees that have been damaged or killed by its product Imprelis, a new-generation herbicide that was used by commercial applicators on lawns across the country this spring for the first time.

At first Imprelis was thought to be more environmentally friendly than Roundup and other weedkillers, particularly because of its low toxicity to mammals. It was only sold to lawn care professionals, and they welcomed it as a way to green the image of lawn care.

While it may not harm mammals, Imprelis has been deadly to trees. After it was first applied on golf courses and home lawns, largely around the Midwest and in the East, trees, mostly Norway spruce and white pine, began to turn brown, and many died. Some experts believe that hundreds of thousands of trees may have died or been seriously damaged because of the herbicide applications. Only the states of New York and California never approved the chemical for use.

The company pulled the product off the market in early August, and a few days later the Environmental Protection Agency banned sales of it.

DuPont has set up a program for paying homeowners and lawn care professionals for the removal of dead and dying evergreen trees and for replacements. The claims can be made through landscapers who applied the chemical, although homeowners can call DuPont directly at (866) 796-4783. (Details on the claims process are available at a company Web site.)

Some deciduous trees have also been affected, including willows and poplars. “We have noticed some injury to deciduous trees,” said Kate Childress, a spokesperson for DuPont. “But they are resilient and may come back in the spring.”

DuPont says it will also pay for tree care after the new trees are replanted, and then provide a warranty covering those new trees and future impacts on other trees.

Ms. Childress said the company had no estimate of the numbers of trees killed or damaged.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the company for damages, and some big old trees that were killed could cost as much as $25,000 each to replace. One attorney involved in the lawsuits suggests that the damages could top $1 billion.

Questions about what happens to Imprelis in the soil and trees persist. DuPont says homeowners can burn the wood from their dead trees for heat or take it to a dump. But if the trees are chipped, they warn that they should not be composted or used for mulch because the chemical does not break down when composted and remains active for a long time. Once the trees are chipped, though, it seems that they could wind up anywhere.

As for planting new trees, DuPont officials say that if Imprelis was applied before June 1, it is safe to plant a new tree at that location after Oct. 1. If the herbicide was applied between June 1 and June 30, a tree should be planted after Nov. 1, they say, so that the active ingredient, aminocyclopyrachlor, has time to break down. They also warn that when a tree is replanted at the site of the old tree, new soil should be used to fill in the hole.

However, Dan Sullivan, managing editor of Biocycle Magazine, which covers the composting and recycling industry and has written several articles about this class of herbicide, said that at least one researcher had found that aminopyrachlor has a half-life of 200 days. “This stuff is persistent, that’s one of the things they tout,” he said. “They say you can plant after 120 days — I have to question that.”

A new fight to save Africa’s elephants

We’ve always thought of it as paradise: a handmade house, fashioned from driftwood and boulders on the banks of Kenya’s Athi River, where fish eagles soar on the thermals and hippos cavort in the shallows.

But returning there last week, we found our friends deeply troubled. They’d just come across a dead elephant on their land, a poisoned arrow embedded in its hide. Determined to deny the poachers their prize, they removed the tusks and hid them before alerting the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Traditionally Kenya has been regarded as one of the good guys in the war against poaching, which threatened to wipe out the African elephant in the 1980s. It led the movement that produced a global ban on ivory trading in 1989 and periodically organises spectacular bonfires of tusks that are confiscated from poachers or from elephants that die naturally.

So why is poaching one of the three subjects all Kenyans are talking about (along with the famine and political corruption)? Why has the number of elephants being killed illegally quadrupled in two years? Last month a thousand tusks were found on the island of Zanzibar, concealed in a container of anchovies.

Poaching never stopped but it has taken off again with a vengeance since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species agreed in 2008 to a second “one-off” sale of stockpiled ivory, arguing that this would deter poaching by satisfying the demand for ivory. The opposite has happened. It sent the disastrous message that ivory is available and legal.

Most goes to China where a rapidly growing middle class, craves ivory trinkets. In Kenya we constantly encountered road building projects, each overseen by a Chinese engineer with clipboard and hard hat. China is investing in huge infrastructure projects all over East Africa, in return for timber and mineral rights. KWS is overstretched and there are suggestions that the authorities are turning a blind eye to some ivory smuggling. The thousands of Chinese settling in the region provide a ready supply of middlemen.

Then there is the preponderance of young African men with no visible means of support beyond their guns. The illegal trade is also funding Islamic extremism. (Many poachers are Somalis.) Even without them, in an economy where the tusks of a bull elephant are worth 15 times more than the annual salary of a subsistence farmer, the temptations are obvious.

Yet Africa without this charismatic pachyderm is unimaginable. They are the flagship for Kenyan wildlife tourism, which employs 160,000 and is worth $1bn a year to the economy. No elephants. No tourists.

There is hope. DNA technology will soon enable an investigator to link a piece of illegal ivory with the animal it came from. Recent experience has illustrated definitively that a complete ivory trade ban is essential. (Shamefully, Britain supported the last stockpile sale proposal in 2010.)

Many Chinese believe ivory, like teeth, can be extracted without killing the elephant. The bloody truth might cure their yen for it. Also African governments could be obliging the Chinese to crack down on ivory sales and invest in conservation in Africa in return for trade deals.

Finally, the profits from wildlife tourism must be better shared with local people, to give them an incentive for keeping game alive. That is the model that has been successfully implemented at privately-owned Lewa Downs, where Wills popped the question to Kate. That’s where we ate breakfast while a family group of a dozen elephants cheerfully dismantled a dead tree fewer than 30 yards away. For an hour we watched and snapped away as the matriarch gently chided the turbulent toddlers and two young bulls played tag. Magical. Though their numbers at Lewa have actually increased, elephants are naturally migratory and cannot be contained in fenced parks. That’s why Ian Craig, owner of Lewa, and others are turning their attention to working with local communities to protect these massive herbivores throughout their natural rangelands.

Global outrage halted the “ivory wars” of the 20th century. Can it be mobilised again to stop the latest butchery?

Post titleSuperb parrot or wind farms: which is the threatened species?

The beautiful bright green superb parrot is the symbol of Boorowa.

Big bird-shaped signs welcome you when you arrive at the small town, an hour and a half from Canberra.

But anti-wind farm groups say that the already threatened species will be in even more trouble if a plan to build 90 wind turbines in the area goes ahead.

Pat Thompson has been breeding the super parrot for decades, and is part of the Boorowa District Landscape Guardians Association which is campaigning against the proposed wind farm.

"We don't know exactly, but where the proposed wind farms will be is in superb parrot habitat, which is extremely vulnerable," he said.

"The disturbance factor because of the turbines and the noise we don't know, but I don't think we can afford to take the risk."

Wind farms respond

Richard Mackie is the general manager of Windlab, the company which is planning to build the 90 turbines.

He says little impact on native species, including the superb parrot, is expected if the wind farm goes ahead.

"We've just got to the stage of completing the reports on the environmental issues potentially at the wind farm site and they extensively review both flora and fauna, including the superb parrot," he says.

"There will be very minimal habitat that is actually cleared.

"And it's mostly low-lying areas that they (the superb parrots) like, so it's areas around waterways, and the turbines are up on the tops of hills of course so they're well away from those areas."

He says its wind farms that are facing threats as government policies clamp down on their development.

The Victorian Government last week changed the state's planning laws to allow home owners to veto wind turbines within two kilometres of their homes, and Mr Mackie says that it would be disappointing if the NSW Government follows suit.

"It's a little hard to predict what the Government's going to do," he said.

"What we do know is that the NSW Government has tightened up their regulations around wind farms.

"It would be a shame if the NSW Government did go down the Victorian route because that's a rather arbitrary set-back limit (the two-kilometre zone).

"When it comes down to it, if you put a set-back that's too conservative, it's potentially income from a neighbour that's been lost." 

Blue Whales Spotted off King Harbor

A pod of blue whales—including a mother and her calf—was spotted Monday in the Santa Monica Bay about a mile from the mouth of King Harbor, City News Service reported.

The news helicopter from television station ABC7 caught the whales on camera, and the station aired the video during one of its morning news shows.

Recently, a Long Beach-based whale-watching boat spotted about a dozen blue whales feeding in Southern California waters.

Blue whales are a protected species, and experts believe there are more than 10,000 worldwide. Their numbers dwindled in the early 20th century, but in 1966, governments across the globe banned the hunting of the largest mammal in the world.

Blue whales can grow to about 90 feet long and live for as long as 80 years. They feed on krill and plankton from the ocean by filtering it through a mouthful of stiff fibers called baleen.

Finally- NoteBooks and Renewable Energy

Global electronics Manufacturer, Samsung is set to launch the World's first solar powered laptop in the Kenyan market.

The 10.1 inch netbook is expected to complement Samsung's bid to expand its Africa market to match that of China over the next five years.

With a solar panel outside the laptop case and below the keyboard, the Manufacturer’s netbook the NC 215 laptop model is definitely switched on for Africa, A Continent known for uneven electric power supply, the introduction of the new model, which is now viewed as a boost to the ICT sector for those people who find it hard accessing power supply, especially majority of Kenyans residing in upcountry in areas where there is no electricity supply.

All that one needs to do is to direct the laptop towards any form of light, and the mini laptop battery recharges automatically.

“There are a lot of people without electricity and power outages like 12 hours a day and we put a research team to see how we can be able to address peoples computing needs, in line with the global computer growth so the people came up with the solar powered netbook that can be charged by light not necessarily the sun but any form of light.”Robert Ngeru, Samsung Managing Director in Kenya said.

The official launch of the new model is set to take place 4^th of September in Nairobi.

"Plant Bottle- Is it really a step to Sustainability?"

If you're wondering how environmentalists feel about Coca-Cola Co.'s PlantBottle -- PET and HDPE containers made in-part from bio-based raw materials ... well, let's say it's not completely positive.
The Earth Resource Foundation sent a news release today after some of them received an invitation to an Earth Day event to launch Coke's Dasani-brand bottled water in a PET PlantBottle.
The release, titled "No Glee from Environmentalists for Coca-Cola 'PlantBottle'," takes the company to task. Much of the critcism could apply to any bottled water manufacturer, but a few of the points are specific to the PlantBottle material:

We Regret that despite your green leaf logo, your "plant bottle" is still just a PET plastic bottle and is not biodegradable or compostable on land or at sea.We Regret that Coca-Cola will not be collecting and recycling their own PET "plant bottles," and that only approximately 20.9% percent of PET bottles are "recycled" (mostly into lower grade material that is not used in bottles again) in America. The remainder, at over 20 billion bottles, last forever in our landfills or in our environment, including our oceans. We also regret that Coca-Cola failed to achieve it's own pledge of using at least 10% recycled content in PET bottles and has just announced the shut down of it's PET recycling joint venture in South Carolina.
We Regret that Coca-Cola is substituting its chemical-laden petroleum plastic bottle with a chemical-laden petroleum and plant plastic bottle.
We Regret that estrogenic compounds in your PET "plant bottle" may leach into the water and impair human health and reproduction.

The release is in the form of a petition, and is signed by a number of leaders of California-based environmental groups.
While the petition does not link to Plastics News, we are the source of the information about Coke's recycling plant in South Carolina. For that story, check out this news story (which was updated today), as well as this interview with Coke's Scott Vitters.

Endangered hawksbill turtles make a surprise appearance

Scientists find a population of endangered hawksbill turtles unexpectedly making a go of it in mangrove estuaries.

Scientists have made the surprise discovery that a population of critically endangered hawksbill turtles, thought to have been wiped out in the eastern Pacific from Mexico to Peru, has survived by occupying a novel habitat — mangrove estuaries — rather than coral reefs where they have been slaughtered for their exquisite shells.

The finding is particularly significant because it suggests a potentially unique evolutionary trajectory, said Alexander Gaos, lead author of a report being released Thursday in the online scientific journal Biology Letters.

"We now know there are about 500 adult female hawksbill turtles in at least four inland mangrove saltwater forests in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador," Gaos said in an interview. "They are among the last remaining strongholds for this species. If these estuaries are destroyed by development of aquaculture and housing, the hawksbill turtle will disappear with them … that's more hawksbill turtles than anyone thought were left, but still very few."

Scientists are collaborating with coastal villages in the vicinity of the mangroves to "create community-based conservation programs," said Bryan Wallace, director of science and strategy for Conservation International's marine flagship species program. "All egg clutches are being relocated to hatcheries," he said.

Until now, Eretmochelys imbricata was believed to prefer open coasts and coral reefs in the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific regions. As recently as 2007, hawksbill turtles were considered nearly wiped out, based on research and scarce sightings.

To map the movements of the eastern Pacific's remnant turtle population, a team of scientists attached satellite transmitters to the backs of 12 adult females. Gaos said 83% of those turtles remained settled in the mangrove forests, contrary to the long-held notion that hawksbills are coral reef dwellers.

"These particular hawksbills spend the majority of their lives nesting and foraging in the mangroves," said Gaos, executive director of the nonprofit Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative."We still do not know why they adapted to this habitat, but we believe it may be due to a lack of coral reefs in the region."

Although adaptation has become a central concern of climate scientists because of global warming, there is no apparent connection between the habitat change and climate shifts, Gaos said.

"It is possible that global climate change could, at some point in the future, drive marine turtles into estuaries such as these," he said. "However, at this point, we do not believe that what we are seeing is a pattern that occurred over the past 20 to 30 years."

The findings support the results of a survey released last year showing that the largest known rookeries of the turtle, categorized as "critically endangered" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, are in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The earliest reports of the hawksbill turtle date to diaries of 18th century pirates and missionaries who chronicled the growth of "tortoiseshell" industries in northwest Mexico.

Weighing about 100 pounds, with shells about 3 feet in diameter, hawksbill turtles have been killed by the millions for their shells, used to fashion folk art, eyeglasses, cigarette lighters and jewelry. Scientists believe the species is within several years of extinction. There is no accepted estimate of its worldwide population. It has been on the U.S. list of endangered species since 1975.

"We now have a new set of habitats to search for the species and fine-tune recovery efforts," Gaos said. "There's more hope now than ever for this rare and imperiled creature."