Acacia trees, excellent for Africa’s depleted soil and helpful in counteracting climate change, may be the trees of the future for Africa. A very unique tree, it may help Africa in many other ways as well.
My earlier blog about greenhouse gas emissions from composting generated a lot of good discussion so I am writing to respond.
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In an innovative effort to save landfill space and reduce the zoo’s ecological footprint, the organic waste is used as fertilizer, and also to “decorate the zoo grounds.” In addition to the “big producers” - elephants, rhinos, and giraffes - other herbivores are [...]
This movement has been gaining steam–especially with the recent [...]
By Lester R. Brown
Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year.
As I note in my latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion have been extracted so far, with another trillion barrels to go. By themselves, however, these numbers miss a central point. As security analyst Michael Klare notes, the first trillion barrels was easy oil, “oil that’s found on shore or near to shore; oil close to the surface and concentrated in large reservoirs; oil produced in friendly, safe, and welcoming places.” The other half, Klare notes, is tough oil, “oil that’s buried far offshore or deep underground; oil scattered in small, hard-to-find reservoirs; oil that must be obtained from unfriendly, politically dangerous, or hazardous places.”
This prospect of peaking oil production has direct consequences for world food security, as modern agriculture depends heavily on the use of fossil fuels. Most tractors use gasoline or diesel fuel. Irrigation pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer production is also energy-intensive. Natural gas is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in nitrogen fertilizers. The mining, manufacture, and international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil.
[These little cucumber sprouts were seeds just a week ago!]
If you have a lot of yard space, you can build yourself a full-sized compost bin. Vermicomposting, compost bins where worms do the work breaking down the organic matter, are great for folks with a less space, but you homeowners can benefit from a worm bin, too! Worm castings are super-nutritious, and worm bins yeild good compost relatively quickly. The bins are easy to make yourself, and you can even divert some waste from the landfill while you’re at it! Bonus points if you rescue discarded plastic tubs, rather than buying new ones. Check out this awesome step-by-step video on getting your worm bin together:
No garden would be complete without its own natural recycling system, a compost pile. Without a way of dealing with compost, weeds and scraps are waste. But why create more trash when you can turn your garden and kitchen waste into valuable soil-building fertilizer?One of the first steps to starting an organic garden should be to begin a compost pile. Composting will break down organic matter into nutrient-rich material that builds soil and nourishes plants. And just like anyone can garden, no matter their situation, there are composting possibilities for everyone! Read on to learn how to close the loop and start composting…
My daughter and I are guests in a state-of-the-art green home, and I have just finished plunging a clogged toilet on her behalf. I feel queasy. Though I only have to do this a couple of times a year, I feel mildly traumatized. Sure, it’s nasty, but the part that bothers me most is the toilet itself.
The way I see it, flush toilets are a relic of the past. They consume precious drinking water and produce a disproportionate volume of toxic, bio-hazardous waste. Even low-flush toilets are hybrid Hummers, a field improvement on a fundamentally bad idea.
Aesthetically speaking, does anyone dispute that flush toilets are just plain gross? Hey, other than clogging, splash-back, overflows, streaking, and sound amplification, what’s not to like?
As it turns out, the problems posed by “modern sanitation” are immense, but completely unnecessary.
Having discussed one way to be compassionate in your home by safely catching a fly, I feel compelled to be of even more assistance in helping you to be a kind, friendly presence outside of your own abode as well. So now that you are well practiced in the fine art of catching and caring for critters of all makes and models, I hope you are ready, willing, able, and eager to go out and practice some more random acts of kindness.
And as someone who loves gardening, from the toil of clearing a plot and weeding the rows to the belly-filling delight come harvest time, I thought I would share some tips on how you can be a compassionate, caring, careful gardener.
This is particularly important, too, since even small family gardens can become places of profound natural tragedy, places of mass murder and intensive pollution, places of blood, sweat, and tears. Ironically, gardens can often be the least “green” when the plants in them are shining with the deepest, richest shades of green.
And the main reason for these instances of terror and destruction and death? One word: VARMINTS.
Yessir, critters, pests, thieves…call them what you will. They come in many forms, and they seem to come at every moment, nibbling and draining and infesting and infecting and basically ruining everything that you plan to enjoy. Yes’m, the varmints launch a perpetual (seemingly organized and strategic) assault on your goodly little garden…and so appropriate countermeasures surely seem justified.
But, alas, most of these countermeasures employed on any scale are far from careful, far from compassionate, and extremely far from sustainable or natural or eco-friendly. Just go into any garden center or hardware store and look at the panoply of pesticides, sitting there as an ingredient in a witches’ brew with other chemical fertilizers and enhancers. You may start to feel dizzy even before opening one and inhaling the fumes!
So, then, how can you make your garden green in the healthiest, most sustainable and ecologically friendly ways? How can you be a careful gardener and a small-scale steward on your own little plot? How can you save lives even as you nourish your and your family’s (and maybe even your whole neighborhood’s!) lives? Here are just a few ways you can garden green to get a green garden.
Call me crazy, call me crude, but I have to say that there is nothing quite like the smell of cow manure.
That scent is so rich, so savory, so earthy, so pungently sweet that just one whiff seems to bury you in an olfactory pleasure dome. And if you keep basking in the aroma, you may well feel driven to grab a pitchfork, plop a straw hat on your head, stick a blade of grass in your mouth, and head on out to the fields. This is especially true on those oh-so-humid mornings in the peak of summer, when the air is so moist and dense that you almost have to put on scuba gear. But any old day is a great day for cow poop.
I confess that I am no connoisseur of creaturely caca, but I would bet that none can compare with the quality of a cow’s. Horse manure comes close, but it pushes pungency at the expense of sweetness, plus it is not very good for fertilizer. The feces of fowls is not even in the same league; it is far too acrid, not to mention slimy and sticky and all around offensive. Elephant excrement is similarly versatile (for example, it makes a great alternative source for paper), yet so far it lacks the time-tested dependability and widespread availability of cow dung; pachyderm poo is thus still an exotic delicacy rather than a common staple. (I cannot speak to its odoriferous character, alas.) And nobody would sing paeans to dog and cat poop. Look at how tenderly people carry those telltale plastic bags when walking their dogs–usually with one arm extended as the dog pulls the leash and the other arm, hand, and pinching fingers extended as far away as possible with the bag bobbing in the air. When it comes to the felines, we have managed to train them to go potty in specified places, cover it with “fresh scent” granules, and graciously shake off anything sticking to their paws. I suppose “domestication,” in part, means proper toilet training…or “house training,” as it is called. And as for “humanure”…I am not even going there.
You know that times are changing when farmers look to manure as a valuable commodity. Pretty soon, manure from a herd may be more profitable than the beef itself. Manufactured fertilizers has tripled in price in the last year, driving farmers to look for alternatives. This is certainly an indicator of a shifting economy.
Fertilizers are a very energy intensive product. Nitrogen fertilizers are commonly made from petroleum or natural gas. The potash and phosphates in the fertilizers are derived from mining, which also requires a lot of energy. Finally, the finished product needs to be transported and we know all about high gas prices.
China and India have increasingly been depending on fertilizer, causing a spike in demand. The price of fertilizer has climbed to $750 a ton.
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