And for those whose throats never run dry too often, that should give you the more reason to enjoy a drink at dinner or drop by your local joint and order a round or two, to celebrate a triumph for the environment - seeing more and more corporates even in the beer manufacturing industry adopt an agenda to reduce their carbon footprint.

So when East African Breweries or EABL, manufacturers of the world famous Tusker beer, and recently, Senator beer, announced the formation of a fully fledged Green Team to score eco-points for their newly launched Green Goals project, it marked a significant milestone.

Senator is mentioned here because it is (wrongly) associated with Barack Obama and it was the pint of choice in Kisumu, a lakeside town near Kogelo village, which should be famous by now à la Obama, during frenzied celebrations after news trickled in that the Illinois senator with Kenyan roots had clinched the Democratic Party nomination over Hillary Clinton.

Mention an “Obama” at any pub anywhere in East Africa and you will be served a Senator. But EABL insists its brand, targeting low income earners in a region known for its lethal, cheap home made brews, has nothing to do with Obama-mania.

Dubbed Green Goals, this manufacturer has made a bold commitment to adhere to strict environmental goals that will be measurable, and this gives it a big green kudos for pioneering this environmental concept in beer manufacturing and processing in this part of the world.

The project will involve reduction of energy usage at the EABL brewing facilities, work to prevent pollution, minimize the environmental impact of all products and operations and cooperation with other industry players and the public to achieve high standards of environmental care.

EABL’s media spokesperson, Ken Kariuki, said: “Environmental degradation has serious repercussion for the economy and society. EABL has recognized the need to address this by adopting more integrated systems of environmental and energy management.”

“We can no longer ignore that protecting the earth has become the most important legacy that we can leave for the future generations. It is not only an excellent thing to do, it also makes good business sense. Recycling and energy management not only reduces our carbon footprint, it also reduces operating costs.”

The Tusker manufacturer has commissioned a US$ 4.2 million (Kshs 250 million) effluent treatment plant at their brewery that has capacity to clean all the wastewater from the factory to up to 97% purity before release to the city’s sewerage system.

EABL already has an elaborate energy saving agenda besides sponsoring a tree planting campaign in the suburbs of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. This should be enough to get another Tusker beer, for the environmental cause.

However, the fundamental questions (gulp) pose us to think: Can this “green drinking” feel see the rise of “green bars” across the globe? Can you be satisfied that your revelry may actually be good for the environment because your beer was made in an energy-efficient brewery, and packaged in a light-weight bottle that reduces transportation fuel requirements? Is the world bracing for an abundant supply of “carbon neutral beer”?

Image credit: Erik Kristensen at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

In a joint effort, the country’s paper manufacturer, Middle East Paper Company (MEPCO) and Tetra Pak Arabia will, exchange expertise and experiences in the recycling field and MEPCO’s role will be to collect, sort and do the actual recycling work. Beverage carton recycling will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites.

The partnership will address the issue of recycling thousands of cartons that get discarded by households and other establishments across Saudi Arabia on a daily basis, the first of its kind in the Middle East region.

The collaborators hope that apart from making a mark on the environment, they will be opening the recycled products, largely post consumer food and beverage cartons, to a wider international market, and follows successful trials conducted to demonstrate the recycling ability of Tetra Pak cartons by MEPCO.

“We strive to be an eco-friendly company committed to the principles of conservation and sustainability. We look forward to recycling the cartons and raising consumer awareness about environmental issues,” said MEPCO chief executive, Abdullah Al-Moammar.

“Although it’s a great challenge and costs too much to separate the plastic from the paper during the recycling process, we (are in it) to help the protect the environment. We didn’t look at it as beneficial agreement.”

Jeddah based MEPCO is Saudi Arabia’s and Middle East’s largest paper and board manufacturer using recycled raw materials. MEPCO is also a leading supplier of liners and fluting, offering the full range, both in virgin and recycled fibre. The company is a major supplier to the corrugated industry for high-end packaging purposes. MEPCO produces nearly 110,000 tons of paper every year and, also collects and recycles more than 150,000 tons of waste paper.

But this arrangement may prove to be a social challenge for the paper manufacturer in a country that lacks social awareness of the importance of the recycling process and they will need people to be educated on how to isolate the different types of wastes before throwing them into trash cans.

Tetra Pak Arabia has recently upped its game in recycling and environmental sustainability. Just in March this year, the company appointed Mohammed Angawi as its environment manager with responsibilities that include driving Tetra Pak Arabia’s post-consumer beverage carton recycling initiative across Saudi Arabia and the Gulf in partnership with local paper mills, waste management companies, municipalities, NGOs and government authorities.

The core product of Tetra Pak’s packaging is wood fibre that comes from sustainable managed forests, a renewable resource. The Jeddah factory of Tetra Pak Arabia is ISO 14001 certified and the entire factory waste is recycled regularly. Globally, the company recycles 21 billion cartons annually.

With these combined conservationist attributes from the two collaborators, they are hoping to create an oasis for environmental sustainability and set the pace for a greener Middle East.

Image Credit: André Gustavo at Flickr under Creative Commons license

Though I was not 100% reassured by what I found, there are at least some safety regulations in place for arts and craft supplies, and fusible web does meet those standards. So let’s move on to my next challenge: assess the environmental impact.

The environmental impact of many products is pretty evident. Oil is a non-renewable resource and it creates toxins when you burn it, so I think it’s a no-brainer to bubble in “No” on the sustainability question in the answer booklet. Bottled water exchanges an efficient public delivery system for an inefficient private one and creates a massive pile of barely recyclable containers.

Fusible web, though, isn’t as immediately apparent to me. Obviously, any product that is manufactured (unless it’s Cradle to Cradle certified, Autumn reminded me) uses up resources and thus isn’t as environmentally benign as going without or re-using something that was already made. But beyond the issues posed by using any manufactured product, is there anything else going on with fusible web that is praiseworthy or less so?

Unlike what I found when I looked for safety information, I only found one online resource concentrated on environmental impact of using art and craft supplies. Pollution Prevention for Arts Education by the Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center, jointly operated by the Nebraska Business Development Center (NBDC) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), contains tips and information on non-toxic and least toxic supplies and disposal issues. There are no federal laws yet requiring that arts and craft supplies, or anything else, be assessed for their environmental impact throughout the product’s lifecycle, so there’s no uniform standard. Unless the product has some kind of eco certification label on it, manufacturers probably aren’t addressing the issue, and even if it’s labeled you don’t necessarily know what that label means without additional research.So I set out to answer four basic questions on my own:

• What is it?
• How is it made? (What are the ingredients, process, and waste products?)
• What happens when you throw it away?
• Is there anything better we could use?

Though what I found is specific to fusible web, answering these four questions about any product should be a good start in understanding whether a product is green or not so much.

What is it?

First stop, the manufacturer’s websites. The Steam A Seam website yields no clues. The Stitch Witchery website offers this: “Stitch Witchery is a polyamide fusible web that permanently bonds two layers of fabric together.” Polyamides, says Wikipedia, can occur naturally but are also produced artificially. Polyamides are a type of plastic, and more specifically they are what’s known as a semi-crystalline plastic. One of the main synthetic polyamides is nylon, which leads me to believe that fusible web is fairly related to nylon. I found several other articles in various places that describe nylon as the trade name for polyamides, so I’m going to proceed under the assumption that I can evaluate fusible web by evaluating nylon.

How is it made?

If I were going to make fusible web, what would I buy? (Aside from a factory.) What process would I use to make it? What waste would be generated? I’ve always seen people saying that synthetic fabrics are less environmentally friendly than natural ones, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

The Chemical Heritage Foundation, “dedicated to preserving and promoting the progress of science,” has an educational website called “Spinning the Elements: Wallace Carothers and the Nylon Legacy.” It says this about the manufacturing process:

… adipic acid is mixed with hexamethylene diamine at room temperature… The nylon salt is then purified. This nylon salt is a crystalline solid. When the time to make nylon comes, one just has to heat the nylon salt to over 285 ^oC, and it reacts to become nylon polymer.

Back to Wikipedia. Adipic acid was historically made from fats, but now it’s made from cyclohexane. Cyclohexane “cannot easily be obtained from natural resources such as coal” and must be manufactured from benzene or petroleum using other chemicals. The International Chemical Safety Card for cyclohexane is really scary as far as health effects and risk of explosion, but the Australian fact sheet on cyclohexane seems to indicate that environmentally it’s not that bad. Hexamethylene diamine is “highly toxic and can cause serious injuries.” It’s made from adiponitrile. If follow adiponitrile back in the process, you’re looking at a petrochemical origin.

Anyone else having a sinking feeling?

After I did all of that Wikipedia-ing, I did a little more digging to see if I got it right. How “Green” is Your Gear? The Environmental Impact of Nylon by Geoffrey Skinner, written in the Spring of 2000, discusses an article in the National Outdoor Leadership School’s newsletter The Leader from 1999 and a 1998 article in the respected journal Science. Skinner reports that the manufacture of nylon, from petroleum products, involves the release of pollutant nitrous oxide. A method for reducing the nitrous oxide emissions had been developed, but at the time of his article it was more expensive and not in wide use.

UK website GreenChoices describes nitrous oxide as “a greenhouse gas 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide” and notes that nylon manufacture uses a lot of energy. A 1991 paper in Science estimated that manufacture of nylon may account for 10% of the increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide, which contributes to destruction of ozone.

Is this a rigorous scientific review on my part? No. Is it enough for me to get the gist? Yes.

What happens when you throw it away?

Nylon doesn’t biodegrade, and we know that’s bad. Nylon carpet has some possibilities for recycling, but I didn’t find any other examples of nylon recycling and it gives off toxic fumes when incinerated. Ugh. Granted, fusible web, like many arts and craft supplies, is made to be used up and not tossed out.

Is there anything better we could use?

I got rid of all my son’s plastic toys, bottles, and dishes this past weekend, because I had finally decided that it was worth my peace of mind to replace them with wood, glass, and cloth (preferably thrifted or handmade). I guess the question for each crafter, like each parent, is when a product is bad enough that you’re willing to give it up. Fusible web and nylon are made from petrochemicals and create toxic byproducts, which doesn’t count as sustainable in anyone’s book.

Applique was not born with the invention of fusibles, and people somehow made clothes before fusible interfacing was available. How much is the convenience of fusibles worth?

In my post about the Amish and green quilting, I mentioned that quilters often point to the t-shirt quilt as a great example of recycling. However, the dominant method for stabilizing t-shirts so they can be easily pieced into a quilt is to back them with fusible web. (It’s like in Autumn’s post about making a bag out of playing cards, when she observed that a major component of that “recycled” craft project was duct tape and laminate.) Not all knits are fused before they’re sewn, or my cotton tank tops would be awfully stiff, so I imagine that there would be a way to make these quilts without fusibles. It would just make the sewing (a lot) more difficult.

I have a t-shirt quilt in waiting upstairs, and I have already purchased the fusible web for it, so I’m going to make it. Throwing the stuff away won’t un-do the damage caused by its manufacture. But I’m going to think long and hard about whether it’s worth making another one.

1. Energy Prices

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.

2. Fertilizer Demand in China and India

China and India have increasingly been depending on fertilizer, causing a spike in demand. The price of fertilizer has climbed to $750 a ton.

3. Bans on U.S. Beef

In December, 2003 the U.S. beef export market saw a steep decline. Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Korea comprise over 90% of the beef export market in the U.S., with all countries significantly reducing beef imports in 2004. Japan was the single largest importer of beef and their ban on U.S. beef continues. This is driving cattle farmers to find other valuable uses for their cows, such as fertilizer.

A decreased reliance on manufactured fertilizers and a return to more traditional farming techniques could have its benefits. Algal blooms caused by chemical fertilizers, like the one in the Mississippi delta can harm fish populations. Fertilizers frequently find their way into ground water, thus contaminating drinking water supplies.

The farming industry has been undergoing significant changes from the rise in biofuels, leases for wind farms, and recent scares over food safety. Now some farmers are returning to more traditional methods, such as the use of manure. It makes me wonder, what is next?

Related Posts on Agriculture:

Cows Aren’t Legos: Sassy Insights From an Organic Dairy Farmer
Composting en Masse Helping Fight the Green Fight
Bye Bye Fertilizer, Let Your Waste Work for You 

Until recently, I thought I did a pretty nice job of doing my part for the environment when it came to my home: using eco-friendly cleaning supplies, buying CFL’s, setting the timer to regulate heat and air, but the more I read, the more I find that I can do. There are also a ton of companies emerging that are trying to make an impact while reducing their footprint.

Below are a few of my favorite online destinations for cool products and information for the home and home office.

1. The Lazy Environmentalist, Josh Dorfman’s company, Vivavi, is a one stop shop for decorating a stylishly modern and eco savvy home. For a more traditional and equally stylish look, check out Brooklyn Farm Table’s reclaimed tables.
2. For the home office, check out the Zody by Haworth. This ergonomically designed chair boasts cradle to cradle certification and is made of recycled materials down to the nylon on the seats. Haworth even purchases wind credits to power the manufacturing of the product. While sourcing materials is one of the biggest challenges that they face according to the company’s Sr Design for Environment Engineer, Mark Bonnema, they are getting partners onboard and are creating a sustainable chain reaction. The company itself is pursuing some impressive sustainability objectives: sustainable products and design, energy management, green transportation, zero waste and emissions, green building and site management and social responsibility.
3. If Vivavi and Haworth are out of your price range, less expensive options for your home and home office are sites like Freecycle or Craigslist. Scour these for hidden gems rather than buying new. You’ll not only save money, but you’ll save these items from hitting a landfill somewhere near you.
4. A guilty pleasure of mine is See Jane Work. They have a very stylish eco-friendly line of products to help event the most hopeless writer, um, person get organized. Papergeist is another great line to look into; they use old record album covers and “post, post consumer” paper to fill their eco-chic notebooks.
5. To learn more about environmentally sensitive ways to renovate or build your home from floors up, visit Straw, Sticks and Bricks. They offer great information in their “Learn” section and have great products from flooring to tiles and countertops. Several paint companies, like Benjamin Moore’s Aura line and Sherwin Williams, are offering low or zero VOC options to consumers.

While I don’t think that we can purchase our way out of Global Warming, I do believe that we vote with our wallets, and personally, I am going to support companies and products that are making changes, especially when I can reap the health benefits (like fewer toxins) at home.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that some people are looking for meat alternatives, and I’m not talking about Tofurkey. I’m talking about real meat, but minus the animal.

PETA, the folks who brought you ultra-soft vegetarian porn and plenty of responsible living tips, is offering 1 million dollars to “the first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices” (contest details here)

That’s right, it’s lab-grown meat that never met its maker - namely, an animal.

Though no one has yet claimed the prize, I can already see controversy on the issue. Would you eat test-tube meat? If someone snuck you a lab-steak, would you know the difference? Would producers be required to label the product or would it go incognito like GMOs? And what about GMO lab-meat?

EcoGeek also opens a whole new door of possibilities. What does whale taste like, and is it OK to eat it if no whales were harmed in the making of your meal? How about an endangered tiger-steak or hippo pot roast? Would you sample lab-grown humming bird hearts? They might be tasty.

The issue at hand is our definition of “meat” and concepts of food. Given the recent controversy and publicity within our meat mass-production industry, it’s no surprise that people are starting to ask if there’s a better way. But where do we draw the line between the food we grow and the food we create?

I must admit my own trepidation on the concept. Though I’ll try anything once, the idea of my chicken breast slowly forming in a petri dish isn’t exactly appetizing. On the same token, I also believe it’s important to avoid essentialist ideas of “purity” and “essence” that I see so frequently in debates about food, animals, and the mythical Mother Nature. Is there some quality of protein and fat that changes when grown in different environments? Is it the molecular makeup or strategy of growth that’s important in food? After all, a lab is much cleaner than a chicken and I doubt a lab-meat product would hit supermarkets unless the quality of the meat was comparable to animal-based products. When we slaughter an animal, we don’t eat all of its parts, and sometimes we’d rather not know where the extra bits end up.

By removing the resources to breed, feed, raise, and slaughter an animal - simultaneously removing questions of environmental impact and humane treatment - we could dramatically streamline a growing international industry. Maybe we could even make meat taste better with some creative “growth techniques”.

Since this is just a contest and no one has successfully managed in vitro meat yet, I’ll be content to sit back and watch the show. I’m hoping for some real fireworks on this one! But at the end of the day it will be consumers who decide, and I sincerely hope people will take a moment to read the facts before hitting their local grocery. If, by chance, this turns out to be a better and tasty technology, it would be a shame to shun it on nostalgic ideas of a along-gone farmland and its inhabitants lined up for slaughter.

Image courtesy of MyTeeSpot.com

America has a shoe problem.

2,286,472,000 shoes were purchased in the U.S. in 2005 according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association. There were 297,821,175 Americans alive at the end of 2005. That’s 7.67 shoes per person. Now I realize that I am a man and therefore do not understand the true glory of shoes, but this seems a little absurd. Think of all the different materials that go into making shoes and their packaging. Think of all the different places that those materials come from. Then think of where the shoes are made and how far they travel. In 2005, only 1.4% of consumed shoes were manufactured in America. 84.2% of American bought shoes that were made in China.

Just take a gander at this trend throughout the past few decades.

Graph: The American Apparel & Footwear Association

And that’s not the half of it. Read this National Geographic Green Guide article to learn the true horrors behind the shoe industry.

Not only do your shoes affect your footprint, they significantly alter your carbon footprint as well. Oh my!

But many shoe brands are working to become more eco-friendly. Simple now uses sustainable materials such as organic cotton, water based glue, recycled car tires, and recycled plastic bottles when making their shoes.

Timberland is also making great strides to green their company along with the entire shoe industry. In addition to using organic and recycled materials in some of their shoes they also pay workers to complete 40 hours of community service each year. Also, all there shoe boxes now carry a “nutrition label” that tell the environmental impact of each shoe. The labels may not say where each of the materials came from our other important matters pertaining to each pair’s impact, but the intentions are still admirable. Chief executive of Timberland, Jeffry B. Swartz hopes that other brands will adopt similar labels so that customers will compare eco-impact when shopping for shoes.

Huzzah to those who are trying to establish a firm footing in the fight for sustainability, but for the most part the movement to green the shoe industry is still lacking sole.

Maybe what the shoe biz needs is a little help from the hip-hop world. After all, RUN DMC did wonders for Adidas and The Pack’s song “Vans” boosted the sales of the already successful skateshoe brand.

I’m strutting down the street in my eco-friendly kicks

I don’t like toxic runoff cause it makes the fishies sick.

What do you think?

No?

Fine. I’ll stick to blogging.

Stay tuned for the next installment — Green Footing Part Deux: Local Shoe Subdue (on Ecolocalizer)

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

ECO2 Plastics

Why I Wanted to Sob

In getting info for this article I found out what ECO2 CEO Rod Rougelot calls “recycling’s dirty little secret.” During the process of recycling plastic, tons of water is wasted during cleaning. This water is not your ordinary run-of-the-watermill water, however. A variety of harmful acids and detergents are added to the water to clean the contaminants, glue, and labels off the plastic. Deflocculants are then added to pull the solids out of the wastewater. Finally, (and this is a very general explanation of the process) the wastewater is treated to balance the pH level of the water. This is done through the use of more chemicals. End result: one, sanitized plastic ready to be recycled; two, a cocktail of harmful, detergents, chemicals, acids, bases, deflocculants, and contaminants headed down the drain and back into our fresh water supply (approximately 40 million gallons per year to be–approximately–exact). When I verbalized my feelings of being hoodwinked, Rougelot quickly pointed out that, although a dirty, wasteful process, it is still better than creating plastic from scratch. Thanks for the verbal tissue Rod. Goodbye, for now, tears!

ECO2 to the Rescue!

After years in the recycling biz, building about a half-dozen water-based recycling plants, ECO2 founder Gary DeLaurentiis thought there had to be a better way. After all, recycling is for the good of the planet, so there had to be a “green” way to do a “green” thing (while saving and earning some “green” in the meantime). That’s when DeLaurentiis, along with Honeywell, co-invented a patent which uses a biodegradable organic solvent made of sugar beets and corn (in conjunction with liquid CO2) to decontaminate the recycled plastic. In the entire process (get ready to boogaloo), no water or harmful chemicals are used, and the liquid CO2 is distilled and used over and over again, as is the solvent. Now that’s the type of environmental impact that I always imagined recycling to have. And, make no mistake, without having to use immense amounts of water, chemicals and whatever else, ECO2 saves a good amount of money in the process, thus making it a solid business model able to compete in the world wide market.

With one plant in the San Francisco area, and more in the works, ECO2 is leading a recycling revolution. Rougelot believes this should “change plastic recycling all over the world.” I am inclined to agree. Let’s hope he’s right.

With a passionate DeLaurentiis and his hardworking supporting cast pushing ECO2 into the mainstream—there’s no reason to believe otherwise…so keep dancing!

A Dose of Irony

More and more people all over the world are drinking bottled water because of the real and imagined threats of tap water. Yet, the process of creating the plastic for the water bottles, along with the old (read: current, or non-ECO2) way of recycling are two of the leading contributors that make our drinking water less drinkable…

sip on that.

John Sedgwick is the Co-founder and Vice President of Solaicx, a company that manufactures silicon ingots and wafers for solar electric (PV) panels. They are then supplied to solar panel manufacturers across the globe.

Solaicx began production at their new manufacturing plant in Portland, Oregon at the end of 2007. While current capacity of the plant is 40 MW, production will increase to 180 MW in the future.

CleanTechnica: What kinds of general trends have you seen in the solar industry as a whole?

John Sedgwick: The general objective of the entire industry is to reduce costs. What we see in markets across the world is, as you lower the levelized costs of solar electricity down to the levelized cost of traditional electricity, the markets just go vertical. When you look over time, the industry is doing dramatically well at reducing costs.That’s even when you take into account some significant challenges, things like polysilicon shortages and other shortages that have popped up as a direct result of a market that has been growing at 35%, 40%, and 50% a year have caused shortages that have increased some costs in the chain. Yet, because of manufacturing efficiencies, conversion efficiencies, and economies of scale, the industry has been able to hold the line on any cost increases and has done pretty well at reducing costs.

CT: How do you envision the solar industry ten or twenty years from now? Do you have a concept of where you see things going?

JS: I have a very biased opinion. I see nothing stopping this market from continuing to grow at 30%-50% per year for the foreseeable future. We have not even scratched the surface of the total electricity market. We are not even a .001% perhaps of the total market, so the upside market is enormous. It is not intended to replace all forms of electricity, but there are innumerable applications where it is an ideal fit.

I was involved early on in my career with cellular phones. I remember in the early days of cellular phones, the market was extremely small. As the industry reduced costs and increased efficiency, it got to a point where the entire industry exploded. Now everybody has one.

I see the exact parallel happening with photovoltaics. We are an embryonic industry that is working on getting our costs and efficiencies improved and once we reach that point, it is just going to zoom.

CT: Do you have a sense of when this tipping point will be reached?

JS: I actually think we’re approaching it right now. There are still some things like bureaucratic challenges and other issues we need to get through, but I think we are at a point now where the market is growing on its own now. It’s going to maintain the same growth rates that it was exhibiting in the past when it was an extremely small industry.

CT: I’m sure a lot of it will vary by location, the price of electricity and the different power sources that are available. Solar energy is catching on much more in certain areas.

JS: Not only the government incentives, but the government’s attitude towards solar, too-encouraging it as opposed to building regulatory blocks-will have a big impact on how fast it gets to the large scale.