Exemplary Sustainable Forestation Project Launched in Colombia

The forestry project was one of the first to be registered by the UN "Clean Development Mechanism" programme (CDM) for environmentally compatible developments. From 2012, Faber-Castell is expected to become the world's first private corporation authorized to deal in CO2 certificates from managed forests. In the north of Colombia, in the El Magdalena region where the land has been spoiled by excessive animal husbandry, 67 farmers are currently planting and looking after 1561 hectares of woodland as a source of timber for Faber-Castell. They provided part of their land that had previously been used mainly for grazing cattle; they now get an assured monthly income in return for taking care of the trees. The species planted is Gmelina arborea, commonly known as "Melina," a quick-growing deciduous tree that originally came from Asia and is particularly suitable for making pencils. The trunks attain a girth of 20 to 25 cm after seven years; after felling the farmers receive 30% of the proceeds from the timber. It is planned to extend the area of woodland to 3000 hectares (30 sq.km) by 2014. The Faber-Castell forestry project is part of a large-scale restructuring programme in the municipalities along the Rio Magdalena that have been seriously affected by overgrazing and soil erosion. A unique reforestation project, as confirmed by Jean-Guenole Cornet, a forest and climate expert at the Office Nationale des Forets (ONF), a French state-owned concern whose international subsidiary ONFI has been attempting since 2001 to halt the progressive deforestation in Colombia. "The municipalities along the Rio Magdalena were looking for a way out of the traditionally predominant cattle raising and its associated soil erosion, that regularly leads to flooding and crop failures," he said. "In all probability, Faber-Castell will be the first private company in the world that will shortly receive a certificate from the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) for its CDM project." The certification will entitle it to deal in emission certificates, as foreseen by the Kyoto protocol to reduce world-wide emissions of carbon dioxide. Those are currently estimated by experts to be 33.5 thousand million tons of CO2 annually, which if continued in the long term will lead to global warming of at least 6 degrees Celsius – with disastrous consequences for the Earth. The climate conference in Durban that ended (9 December) is debating the necessary measures by industrialized and developing countries to protect the climate, but also the role of industry in reducing emissions. Faber-Castell has long exhibited a positive balance sheet in that respect. In the early 1980s, the world's largest manufacturer of wood-cased pencils took steps to assure a supply of environmentally compatible timber and initiated the reforestation of 10,000 hectares of pine forest in the state of Minas Gerais in the south-east of Brazil. The company-owned woodland and associated sawmill created some 500 jobs in a region that had previously also been largely given over to cattle grazing. The forests have been granted the FM (forest management) seal of quality by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC); they absorb many times the amount of carbon dioxide that the company generates in all its 14 production sites world-wide. At the same time, the woods are home to numerous plant and animal species, some of them threatened with extinction. For Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, the eighth generation of his family to head the company, the new forestation project in Colombia is exemplary not just from an ecological point of view. "I am very pleased that we can offer the farmers long-term prospects and create jobs in a region marked by severe unemployment," he says. Besides producing high-quality products, Faber-Castell has a long tradition of social and ecological responsibility. A successful strategy, as it turns out: in the last fiscal year (2010/11), it achieved a group turnover of 540 million euros, 19% more than the previous year.

Melvin Wylie

Mumbai Slums Need Clean Water & the Government Does Not Care

In the slums of Mumbai, the taps have been installed by the municipality but in spite of promises from prominent politicians they continue to run dry. Tired of waiting for the authorities to respond to their numerous petitions and requests, 500 slum dwellers took to the street to protest for their right to water. The government plans to upgrade the slums have remained on paper, and basic amenities like water, health and sanitation are almost non-existent in slum neighborhoods. The people have grown weary of living in these deteriorating conditions and have decided to agitate to claim what is rightfully theirs. The agitation of slum dwellers has been video-documented by Amol Lalzare, a Video Volunteers Community Correspondent who himself is a resident of one of the largest slums in the city. Mr. Lalzare is among a new generation slum dwellers who are documenting with video the struggles of their neighbors as they attempt to organize themselves and rise against the discrimination. Another of Mr. Lalzare's videos, "Mumbai Slums Go to Waste," captures the anger and desperation of his friends and neighbors as they watch their surroundings flood with sewage, damaging the health of the residents. It has been 10 years since the drain was damaged but the municipality has not yet acted on the petitions and complaints. "It seems that the government thinks we are animals and are not fit to be treated as human beings," says Mr. Lalzare. Mr. Lalzare works for Video Volunteers, an international community media organization that has trained over 200 disadvantaged people in India to find a livelihood as video reporters. His videos are distributed by the organization's Feature Service called IndiaUnheard. His videos were screened before 500 people at an international gathering of water and sanitation experts put on by Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSCC), bringing the much-needed voice of affected communities into the discussion. Says Jessica Mayberry, founder of Video Volunteers, "Amol is an amazing young man who used to work as a rickshaw driver but now has found a livelihood as the voice of his community. People like Amol are the future of media." To watch Mr. Lalzare's other videos, visit his profile at Video Volunteers' IndiaUnheard website at http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/author/amol/. About Video Volunteers Video Volunteers identifies, trains and empowers grassroots media producers who create change in and for voiceless communities in the developing world. The organization's work has been recognized by the Knight News Challenge, Echoing Green, TED, Waldzell, the King of Belgium, UNESCO, YouTube, and others who have helped Video Volunteers elevate the voices of these rural communities. For further information on Video Volunteers please visit www.videovolunteers.org or follow us @twitter/video volunteers or fan us on Facebook/Video Volunteers.

Melvin Wylie

28th Episode of GreenNews4U

Landfill Biodegradation In this segment I'll be talking about Landfill Biodegradation. Biodegradation is the chemical breakdown of materials by bacteria or other biological means. This is done aerobically with oxygen, or anaerobically without oxygen. Now there is a lot more that goes into this process. It's obvious that something needs to be done to address these issues and the old landfills are just not cutting it. For example… do you realize that the waste collected from NY specifically Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island is collected by DOS and delivered to private waste transfer stations in the City where it is transferred to 20-ton long haul transport trucks and then transported to landfills in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. Oftentimes you will find these smelly trucks on the highways. Believe me, you will know them if you have ever been behind one! New York City and its surrounding boroughs also generates 12,000 tons of garbage each day. So we can talk and learn more about the benefits of Landfill Biodegradation my special guest is Morton Barlaz, he a Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at North Carolina State University. He has spent years as a research scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Laboratory for Groundwater Research. He is currently one of 11 faculty members in the Water Resources and Environmental Engineering area of the Civil Engineering Department. Professor Barlaz research includes three major areas: Biological, Chemical, and Physical Processes in Landfills, Integrated Solid Waste Management and Geoenvironmental Engineering. To find out more information on Professor Barlaz please go here

Melvin Wylie

Cutting Edge Drilling Rig Arrives in the Gulf of Mexico

Shell and Noble Corporation announce the Gulf of Mexico arrival of the Noble Bully I, a state-of-the-art offshore drilling rig that is designed to raise the bar in terms of safety and performance. The Noble Bully I is the first of two Bully rigs, jointly designed by Shell and Noble, and can be equipped to drill in up to 10,000-feet of water. The Bully rigs also feature a compact box-type drilling tower, known as a Multi-purpose Tower, instead of a conventional derrick. As the name indicates, a Multi-purpose Tower is designed to maximize productivity and safety, yet it allows for a significantly smaller vessel when compared to other deep water drill ships of similar capacity. The ships also feature an attention to energy efficiency, use less fuel and are shorter and lighter than comparable drill ships. The Noble Bully I and Noble Bully II, are dynamically positioned drill ships and can, therefore, be positioned at a favorable angle toward wind, waves, and currents, and feature ice-class hulls. Shell and Noble have increased the automated technology on the Bully rigs, increasing personnel safety on board. The Noble Bully I has now arrived in the Gulf of Mexico from Singapore and will complete commissioning and acceptance testing this month before beginning operations. The Noble Bully I will first drill in Shell's Mars B, "Olympus," development while the Noble Bully II drill ship is expected to begin operations early next year in Brazil.

Melvin Wylie

Environmental Standards for Farm-Raised Seafood Often Fall Short

A new report released today by the University of Victoria ranks eco-labels intended to distinguish seafood produced with less damage to the environment. It is the first study to evaluate how eco-labels for farmed marine fish compare to unlabeled options in the marketplace. "How Green is Your Eco-label?" is designed to help seafood buyers sort through competing sustainability claims and better identify those labels that result in farming methods with less damage to the ocean. Key findings include:

• "Organic" labels lead the pack, although a few fall noticeably short;
• Many eco-labels are not much better than conventional farmed seafood options when it comes to protecting the ocean environment;
• Scale is a big challenge for eco-labels: For the most part, eco-labels are awarded based on an individual farm's environmental footprint. However, the cumulative environmental effects of many farms can quickly overwhelm the benefits of reductions in impacts by a single farm or small group of certified farms.

"Our research shows that most eco-labels for farmed marine fish offer no more than a 10 percent improvement over the status quo," said John Volpe, Ph.D., a marine ecologist at the University of Victoria and lead author of the report. "With the exception of a few outstanding examples, one-third of the eco-labels evaluated for these fish utilize standards at the same level or below what we consider to be conventional or average practice in the industry." Supported by the Pew Environment Group, the study, which was reviewed by several independent experts, uses a well-established quantitative methodology derived from the 2010 Global Aquaculture Performance Index (www.gapi.ca) to determine numerical scores of environmental performance for 20 different eco-labels for farmed marine finfish, such as salmon, cod, turbot, and grouper. These scores were used to rank performance among the various eco-labels. The assessment did not look at eco-labels for freshwater farmed fish, such as tilapia or catfish. The authors used 10 environmental factors to assess the eco-labels, including antibiotic use, the ecological effect of farmed fish that escape from pens, sustainability of the fish that serve as feed, parasiticide use, and industrial energy needed in aquaculture production. "Eco-labels can help fish farmers produce and consumers select environmentally preferable seafood, but only if the labels are based on meaningful standards that are enforced," said Chris Mann, director of Pew's Aquaculture Standards Project. "Seafood buyers at the retail or wholesale level should demand that evidence of sustainability be demonstrated, not merely asserted." The report concludes that government policies and regulations, as well as effective eco-labels, are necessary to limit the environmental impacts of production.

Melvin Wylie

The Evolution of Microfinance

 Zadisha Inc. is the new leader in Micro (P2P) Finance. Find out more information about this company here  

Melvin Wylie

27th Episode of GreenNews4U

Problems and Solutions with E-waste In this edition I will be talking about e-waste in other words electronic recycling. Electronic recycling is in its infancy stages. So many components are being used to extend the life (battery life) of electronic products that it becomes a challenge on the recycling end. It seems there are very few laws on e-waste that the black market is thriving and in the process eco systems and human lives are being destroyed. Just watch the documentary GHANA: DIGITAL DUMPING GROUND. It's so easy to focus on the negatives on e-waste so let's begin to focus on âchangeâ and the positive things taking place to correct this problem. To do this my special guest is Steve Skurnac who is the North American President with Sims Recycling Solutions.

Melvin Wylie