Can't say enough about cans

All hail the mighty can

U.S. Can Manufacturers Institute is celebrating the birthday of the can this year – really.

They get a little weird about it, but they seem sincere.

“The history of the can is literally a history of western civilization,” their Web site proclaims.

There is a lot of money involved, Americans use 130 billion cans a year creating an $8 billion industry, according to the institute.

But then they fly away again.

“Because we have come to rely so much on the convenience and easy familiarity of canned products, almost imperceptibly present in every part of life, we are the 'tin can civilization.' ”

Really.

The history is interesting. 1796 Napoleon’s troops were starving so he started a contest, according to the Web site. A Parisian tried for 15 years before preserving food by partially cooking it and sealing it in bottles with cork stoppers using much the same technique as today’s home preservers. He won the prize in 1810.

The same year, an Englishman won a patent for preserving food in a variety of containers, including iron coated with tin to avoid rust and corrosion, according to the Web site.

Is that a clone in your mouth?

Both sides of the debate over selling meat or milk from animals with clones in their bloodlines is are in a tizzy.

Seems the Food Standards Agency in Britain has confirmed meat from a bull that originated as an embryo of a cloned cow got into the food chain a year ago. That would be against the law because it should have been labeled a "novel food" to be sold legally, reports meatprocess.com
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority have no problem with cloned meat.

Also, the FSA has traced an offspring from the same family line to a dairy but hasn't confirmed its milk is going into the food supply. Let's see, if the dairy is feeding and caring for this cow, where do you think the milk is likely going?

Do you care if that happens around here? How would you know?

It's so stimulating!

It's almost time to do your duty to pump up the economy while greening your home.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs is quite excited about the approaching reservation period for the cash-for-clunkers home appliance program. Check it out, a special Web page that is ever-growing.

She's positively breathless about the opportunity, as evidenced by the countdown clock on the page.

Really, the motivation behind the drive is probably pure, but can't they find better writers to promote a $23 million program? How snappy is "Energy Efficient Appliance Rebate Program," the federal program or "Texas Trade Up Appliance Rebate Program," here in our part of the world?

The idea is to spend federal stimulus money on rebates to consumers who replace their aging, but functioning, dishwasher, water heater, central air, clothes washer, refrigerator, etc with new, energy efficient models that are ENERGY STAR® or CEE qualified?

The comptroller's office is still working out the details, but they'll start taking reservations April 5, at a time to be announced and the buying begins April 16 for a limited time. Don't jump the gun in your enthusiasm or you'll lose out on your rebate. There will be a recycling aspect that is less than clear, but I'm sure it will be more so soon. It will include a $75 bonus rebate for recycling your clunker.

The comptroller's office is so sure this will have buyers buzzing, it's establishing a waiting list for when the rebates are all reserved.

They're really stimulated.

Now spend - after April 16.

Random local greeness

The city's Environmental Advisory Committee met today, and as they kind of rambled through the meeting, several tidbits emerged that locals might be interested in.

First, the official business of the committee involved voting to discuss at their next meeting the names of people they want to recommend to city commissioners to fill some spots possibly soon going vacant because of lack of attendance at meetings. They also voted to begin writing a strategic plan to guide their work over the next year.

One topic that drew emotional comment was participation in community events as promoters.

"I don't think we're in any position to do events," said committee Chairwoman Kim Vincent. "There's this many of us (motioning to the few in attendance) the Web site was hard enough to pull together and we have no money."

Committee member Jacob Breeden chimed in, "I think we should avoid like the plague having any money."

Now to the tidbits: Earthfest will be April 17 at Wildcat Bluff (it attracts thousands for educational fun), hits to the committee's new Web site totalled 2,124 since Jan. 5, Travis Middle School has a "Green Team" of students and there will be a house made of bales of compressed trash at Mariposa ecoVillage.

Is that random enough?

Another seed sprouts

Linda Lloyd, project manager at Mariposa ecoVillage on the west edge of Amarillo, was happy to be in the cold wind today. Predictions of snow had her worried, but the weather stayed dry so it was time to get busy.

Workers were pouring concrete from a mast high above what will become her house in the development meant to show off sustainable living. For example, her abode will be totally powered by solar panels and will have no water well.

"I won't be paying Xcel (Energy) anything," she said.

The water will come from harvesting rain.

The home is dug into a 12-foot cliff facing south to collect the warmth of the sun during winter months. The walls will have six inches of concrete lined on both sides with two and a half inches of foam.

The living area is about 800 square feet, topped with 300 square feet of office/studio space.

This is the first home at Mariposa. The hospitality center is up, made of compressed dirt blocks. And work to plaster it and complete the pressed earth floors will begin soon.

"I'm on specialist at that," Lloyd said.

Another first happened within the past few days as Mariposa started taking reservations for single-family home lots. There are 17 on offer. They measure about one acre and go for from $20,000 to $25,000.

A giant sucking sound

Apologies to Ross Perot, but his phrase may be a perfect match for the kiri tree.

The kiri grows up to 30 feet its first year, according to several sources beyond the company promoting it. What helps make that happen are massive leaves (some say up to three feet across). And here's the eco thing - those leaves let it suck in more carbon dioxide than any tree should be allowed to.

A Sacramento, Calif., based company, Eco2 Forests, is promoting the tree as an earth saver. Collie Christensen is the head of the company, after having been involved early on with Cellular One, a barter trading market and a variety of land development deals, so maybe he's good at the Pied Piper thing.

Here's what the tree looks like when just planted before it turns into a carbon-killing machine.

The "Global Forestry Plan" of Eco2 Forests is to plant 3.3 million trees in Malakula, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. That could earn the company $120 million in carbon credits, according to its own figures.

See, I think Christensen must just like fun words. Malakula and Vanuatu? And how's this, the companies research and development takes place in Jimboomba, Queensland. And the tree is also more properly called the paulownia or the sapphire princess tree. Then there's the "ecoimagineer" job title amongst the CEO and CFO titles of Eco2.

But who knows, it might just be crazy enough to work - for somebody's pocket book anyway. I don't know about the carbon. The wood, ready for harvest in seven years, is highly rated and goes for more than oak plus the carbon credits help.

The company touts the tree as sustainable because it can grow back from the stump, once harvested, about 10 times. Of course it sucks a lot of water too, but that's a different argument as is the fact the National Park Service lumps the kiri in with "alien plant invaders" because it spreads like a bad e-mail joke.

And the company has a good pr team because it's all over any Google search of a related term

Relax, somebody has to make some green out of green.

How will carbon screw up your life?

Don't worry, the feds are on the case.

Yeah, it kind of makes sense investors would like to know if too much methane is going to break them, but now federal regulators will be watching to make sure they know.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gave publicly traded companies “interpretive guidance” on Wednesday, telling the businesses they will have to disclose to investors how climate change might affect their bottom line. I don't know how much pain and suffering comes if you're a violator, but it sounds bad.

But investors don’t have enough to worry about, oh, like losing all their money because of greedy, arrogant risk takers or borderline criminals. Now they need the enforcers to look out for cow farts raising ocean levels and flooding the condo they invested in or whether the coal-fired utility they have shares in will get big-time fines for pumping out too much carbon.

The guidance is the first economy-wide climate risk disclosure requirement in the world, according to a group of environmentalists like green-minded investors at Ceres and the Environmental Defense Fund.

“The lack of specific guidance until now has resulted in weak and inconsistent climate-related disclosure by public companies” they said in a news release.

“Today’s vote is a clarion call about the vast risks and opportunities climate change poses for US companies and the urgency for integrating them into investment decision making,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of 80 institutional investors with $8 trillion in collective assets. “The business risks of climate change cannot be ignored. With this guidance investors can make more sound decisions based on better information – and businesses will have a level-playing field with clear standards and expectations for disclosure.”

Feel better?

The circle of life or something

This is a new one on me - "upcycle."

An Oregon winery, COWHORN, is promoting not only its early releases, but recycle, upcycle, whatever programs. It's sent its first shipment of 1,000 used wine bottles to be "upcycled" into "heirloom goblets, pitchers, tumblers, vases and votives," according to a news release.

Don't ask me why they spell their name in all caps, but they do.

COWHORN is also partnering with Ashland Food Co-op to covert used corks into compostable wine packs.

On top of that, literally, "At COWHORN, even the soft metal bottle cap covering the cork gets a new life through Rogue Recycling."

And then there's talk of nature flowing in cycles, etc. But the Biodynamic winery seems to be trying. And the end products look pretty nice.

The only rub is they tout their wines as pleasing the James Beard Foundation and people in the Oregon eco-culinary scene.

"Among the new estate’s early accolades is a 90-point rating from Wine Spectator for its 2007 Viognier, now sold out. In their annual round up of most memorable wines, the San Francisco Chronicle featured COWHORN’s 2007 Marsanne Roussanne, also sold out, as one of the year’s top 20 'unexpected pleasures.'”

Please note, two sold outs mean we'll never know how good they might be. Frustrating.

Cap and trade is so passé

There’s a push on to cut those nasty Wall Street people out of climate control in the U.S. It’s called cap and dividend as in there are still permits for businesses to belch global warming gasses, but the income generated through sales of the permits mostly go back to the public. They wouldn't be traded in the Chicago marketplace specially established for that and patterned after the Mercantile Exchange there.

Every energy conference I’ve been to has provoked questions about how to curb financial speculators in the market for carbon credits. You know, those people who like to make money for nothing. (I wish I hadn’t said that because the MTV song is in my head now, probably for hours.)

Continuing. The supporters of the proposal say while energy prices will go up under any cap system, especially as the permits shrink, allowing fewer emissions. The key is consumers under the dividend version get – dividends. They would amount to about 75 percent of the income the government gets for the permits. The rest of the green would go to environmental research.

The bad news is both the passed House version of climate legislation and the proposed Senate version are cap and trade. The good news is the new proposal would limit a business’ ability to use offsets, like planting trees in Sri Lanka, to make their emission quota. And then there's that limited trading of greenhouse gas permits.

The cap and dividend proposal has a Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as a co-sponsor, so maybe it would have some momentum since Republicans who support cap and trade are an endangered or extinct species. However, even if the Senate passes a dividend plan, they would have to negotiate with those House people who make those Wall Street people look like school kids.

And now, the local bits

Linda Loper, who's kind of the honcho on the ground at Mariposa EcoVillage, reports the cold weather has put a crimp in some of the work out there west of town.

After Tuesday's Environmental Advisory Committee meeting, she said work on plastering was on hold until things warmed up a little. The welcome center, however, is weathered in, so work can begin soon on the earthen floor. That will be a lot of packing of dirt from the site to make it hard, smooth and shiny.

And building No. 2 will begin to take shape soon. Linda said her house will be going up. It will be built with insulated cement slabs on a site carved into a hillside.

While the welcome center's compressed earth walls were interesting, her home should be fun as well. It will be completely off the electric grid, and 'look ma,' no well. The water will come only from rainfall capture. Now I can see that in Austin or somewhere, but here in the Great American Desert, as early maps labeled our stomping grounds.

She seems to know what she's talking about, so we'll see.

Back to the Green Committee, they will take the new Web site to city commissioners Tuesday to get their blessing and suggestions. Live launch is planned for Jan. 19.

Lights Out – The clock is ticking

The second annual “Sylvania Socket Survey” is full of surprises.

Okay, it says 74 percent of participants have switched to energy-saving light bulbs in the past year. That may be true, but there are more than 74 percent of shoppers at stores I frequent buying standard bulbs or the stores are foolishly filling shelves with the outdated bulbs.

That was surprise one. But No. 2? Almost 75 percent of respondents didn’t know that incandescent bulbs are headed for a phase-out beginning Jan. 1, 2012.

Count me and everybody I know in that group. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true. A press release about the survey says the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for the transition to start with traditional 100-watt bulbs and continue from there.

At the bottom of the release is the explanation that the survey involved only 300 adults. That makes some of the findings make a little more sense, but I wonder if some of the them are really true. How does compact fluorescent lights get into “71 percent of homes in America” but rank second to traditional bulbs in terms of use? Are the CFLs not turned on or do people only use them in a few lamps, using the usual bulbs in all the others?

I don’t get it.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the results.

66 percent of respondents said they are likely to purchase a compact fluorescent light (CFL), halogen or light-emitting diode (LED) bulb in the future.
Halogens are used in 40 percent of homes.
12 percent are using LED lighting.
52 percent said price is a key consideration in purchasing; the responses reflect a 12 percent spike compared to 2008.
Just 13 percent said they plan to buy extra 100-watt bulbs before the phase-out.
16 percent say they will shift to lower wattage incandescent light bulbs.
91 percent said they consider energy consumption per bulb to be an important factor.

I don’t get it.

But then there's the recycling. CFLs have mercury in them, so don't throw them in the Dumpster, experts say. And you might want to use a drop cloth when changing bulbs because you don't want to have to sweep up a toxic mess.

But wait, there's more!

The phase-out will happen over two years, and by 2014, maybe there will be more choices, but the main option now is CFLs. Just be careful you get the right kind. There is a special kind if you have a dimmer switch, and you have to get the right temperature bulb, for some reason measured on the Kelvin (not my idea) scale, to get the type of light you want from yellowish to blueish. The Energy Star folks have a good illustration, but this seems a little complicated.

Nevertheless, the idea is to save energy, and that's a good thing says Andrew deLaski, director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project in U.S. News & World Report.

"It's hugely important," he says. "A 60 to 70 percent reduction in light bulb energy use will save as much energy annually as that used by all the homes in Texas last year."

I guess disrupting my life is worth that.

Adopt an invertebrate this week

Those WildEarth Guardians can’t be still. They’re in the midst of celebrating their BioBlitz and biodiversity in general.

Think of this, eight weeks of suing somebody almost every business day to mark the International Year of Biodiverstity. Sounds like fun.

The efforts are to commemorate the 36-year anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. The group is saluting the act’s impact on preserving biodiversity. So there will be 36 lawsuits or legal petitions to protect something new under the act.

They are so zany and lawyer friendly I can’t believe it.

This week, is E.O. Wilson Week for the campaign. He commented, “Attention is turning (at last) to invertebrates and microorganisms, which are what I call ‘the little things that run the Earth’ and to their immense diversity."

Dr. Wilson sounds like he's no slouch in his field, so I’ll take his word that this is a good thing. He’s won two Pulitzers and is a professor emeritus and honorary curator in entomology at Harvard, according to the Guardians.

In honor of the doc’s "life-work, all species in this week’s BioBlitz line-up are invertebrates," the Guardians said in a news release. So what will we try to protect in honor of the week? The Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly, the narrow-footed diving beetle, the unsilvered fitilarry (butterfly), the Brian head mountainsnail and the Arapahoe snowfly.

I really do get it. What is good about building a ski resort in the last remaining habitat of some creature that is nearing extinction? But the Guardians might want to consider a broader outreach. Preaching via “BioBlitz” theme weeks, next week is Prairie Week, can you say lesser prairie chicken?, seems like yelling on the highest mountaintop. Who’s going to hear you except the other crazed hikers?

How much for a shower?

A recent report says solving water supply issues globally may look similar to solving electricity demands – cut demand.

The report from McKinsey & Co. calls the current situation a water gap since about 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean water. It says the answer is economics or charging more for water to make people use less.

Enhancing the ability of farmers to grow more "crop per drop" is also thrown out as a viable approach.

That’s a roughly similar approach to the calls for increased efficiency to reduce power usage before trying to produce more sustainable energy as an answer to carbon emissions.

While the report is a little geeky, it poses some interesting questions and posits some solutions that sound like they'd work. Of course, it talks mostly about developing countries where large portions of the population might not be so touchy about being forced to conserve.

So how much would you pay for a shower?

Playing in the dirt

Workers took advantange of today's mild weather to start topping off the first building at Mariposa ecoVillage, a sustainable development planned for west Amarillo.

Work is going slowly, but it's going, on the 625-acre site owned by Bushland-based businesswoman, environmentalist and philanthropist Mary Emeny. Mary was out with the volunteers as they applied roofing material.

The plan is to get the hospitality/marketing center sealed up from the elements before serious winter hits. Next week, the stucco goes onto the outside of the walls built from dirt compressed into giant Lincoln logs.

Once the doorways and windows are sealed, work can begin on the interior.

I'll get some photos posted here next week as they apply the stucco, also made from soil at the site of former caliche pits. The actual construction of homes and businesses from alternative materials will only cover about 300 acres scarred by the pits. The untouched land will remain untouched.

Work was to begin this week on another building, but developer Linda Lloyd said she has to apply for a waiver from the city because she thinks it's a waste to build roads first and then wear them out during building construction.

Not so smart?

Those Aggies are spoiling all the fun for water efficiency companies that promote "smart irrigation."

Texas AgriLife Extension researchers tested the controllers that are supposed to give your landscape just what it needs and found them lacking.

"The six devices tested, all currently on the market, applied from about one-third to two-and-a-half times more water that was recommended, said Charles Swanson, AtriLife Extension associate.

Some smart controllers use weather information to adjust the amount of water applied, but some of the manufacturers are tapping into weather info from local airports or weather stations to calculate evaporation and transpiriation (kind of the rate of plant sweating). But calculations based on that info tends to be inaccurate, the Aggies said.

Other controllers that have their own sensors were more accurate and saved water compared to most manual applications. Some cities like Frisco down by Dallas require smart controllers so the Aggies raised the red flag to point out they need to be tested for Texas conditions and to recommend which kinds are best.

"Two of the manufacturers have contacted us on what they can do to make their controller better, Swanson said. "The others - we're still waiting on a response."

These are not the same controllers the city of Amarillo is recommending for its "Every Drop Counts" program. The city is promoting sensors that only measure if it rains or air temperatures are at or below freezing to shut off irrigation systems.

Check out the full report.

All over but the crying

The Solar Decathalon is history now.

There's a fine Web site to check out if you haven't been following this event closely.

There's a lot of sweat and fancy thinking spent on these projects, and the contestants take it very seriously.

I won't spoil the finish for you, but there's a lot of nice work on the part of 20 university teams from Europe and North America. It was all played out on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

LED lights strategically placed in the base of the house and deck help the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's solar-powered house illuminate at night during the Lighting Design contest at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.,(Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon)

Blood On My Hands

To kill or not to kill - the choice is at hand.

It's chilly out there now, but the coming freezes in the next few days have started the internal debate about the outside plants. Which ones to save and how to do it are the questions that keep popping up unbidden.

I've been known to go to ridiculous lengths like using a tarp made for a semi truck load of hay, but I'm not sure I'm up to it this season. Everything has slowed its growth to a crawl except the wild tomatoes, but there are a few flowers to take inside and they need to be in their inside clothes to look acceptable. That means repotting them.

This is a tough time of year, but it's probably time to be tough. One thing to be sort of thankful for, I didn't have time to get a fall garden in, so no lettuce, spinach or radishes to protect.

I just don't know if I'm ready to kiss goodbye my enormous hibiscus or basil tree. Arrgghh.

Maybe the weather guessers are wrong again and the 15 bedsheets I covered plants with a couple of weeks ago should come out a few more times. They kind of make it look like the yard is haunted with a scattering of ghosts.

The transition from brown to green is too hard. But you know, the more I make room for inside, the less carbon that will be floating around in there. Maybe we could have a greenhouse-gas-free Christmas. Very eco-friendly.

A Big Hug From Mother Nature

Speakers at Texas Tech's energy forum in Amarillo today addressed many topics, but digging deep for heating and cooling were a focus.

In a case study, a middle school in Frisco adopted a geothermal heat pump system that will save it $1.7 million over 20 years compared to a central gas boiler and air-cooled chiller, said Don Penn, consulting engineer with Image Engineering Group in Grapevine.

It all comes from filling classrooms with air blown across pipes that go up to 400 feet into the earth. Water under low pressure in the pipes becomes the same temperature the soil is, around 60 to 70 degrees, makes a u-turn and goes back to the surface to units that heat or cool school rooms, depending on the season.

There is a temperature control unit for each room so giant heating or cooling units aren't cranked up because the band wants to practice after hours, forcing the heating or cooling of many rooms that are empty.

"Each room is its own atmosphere," Penn said.

The life of the well field should be quite long, given the low pressure inside heavy-duty pipes.

"You'll be tearing the building down, and the well field will still be there," Penn said.

So the deal is about saving money, and then there's the carbon that is never released into the atmosphere because there's no coal or natural gas involved.

I know he's a salesman, and there weren't any naysayers invited, so my jury is still out on the viability of the technique. However, representatives of Lubbock Christian University who are using it on their campus vigorously vouched for it.

The power of sludge

Interesting. Sewage into ethanol.

It's that dream come true - turning waste into something valuable. There has been a lot of talk about, and work toward, harnessing methane produced at landfills, manure pits and wastewater at slaughter houses, but now an e-mail has arrived touting the use of the solids in municipal wastewater to create energy.

Applied Cleantech and Qteros are announcing their “breakthrough Q Microbe technology” to turn a substance produced from municipal wastewater solids into cellulosic ethanol. That might disappoint researchers who have been focused on cellulosic feedstocks like waste wood chips, switch grass and stuff like sorghum that can grows like it's on steroids.

If you’ve ever wondered what to do with your city’s sewage sludge, this is apparently it.
The companies claim a yield of 120-135 gallons of ethanol for every ton of Recyllose, the feedstock they create from sludge.

There is, however, a problem of scale. The companies say a wastewater plant that handles the sewage of about 2 million people can supply a “smaller-scale” ethanol plant. So don’t be looking for any of this alchemy in the Panhandle, or a lot of places that don’t have a concentration of at least 2 million people.

Meanwhile, if people insist on ethanol as the best next-generation fuel to act as a bridge to some dreamed about solution to oil addiction, don’t stop growing that corn and grain sorghum.

Big House On The Prairie

Sure, she looks a little rustic, but the first building at Mariposa ecoVillage is coming along.

The last I saw her, there were a few long blocks of compressed earth stacked on a low cement wall. She looked like a giant lincoln log project just getting started. She didn't have much vavoom, although there was some promise.

But this morning I checked and was impressed. The walls are complete with openings for windows and doors. The roof is on and you can see how the ceiling will have a gentle upward curve to it. The structure now looks like something. She's even a little imposing in her sturdiness out on the hill northwest of town.

The walls are still draped with what's left of black plastic sheets meant to slow down the curing of the compressed dirt blocks. But the wind this morning, and apparently before that, was taking a toll on the covering.

After a walk around, it was time to go inside. Wow, there's a big pile of dirt inside on the floor. Wait, what floor? There was only rough, bare ground. Then I remembered. Linda Lloyd, the project manager, told me even the floor would be earthen. A highly packed and polished layer of dirt, mined on site, just like the dirt for the walls. But first there are pipes to lay that will carry water heated by the sun, giving off gentle warmth from inside the "floor."

The thick, solid walls will insulate the inside of the visitors' center for the planned ecologically sound community, so people with inquiring minds this winter can feel comfortable taking in the promise of Mariposa. The idea is for the 18-inch thick walls to keep the temperature between 62 degrees in the winter and 72 degrees in the summer.

I'll give it a couple more weeks and go out to take some photos to post here for a proper sneak peek. She's still not quite ready for primetime, but she's shaping up.