http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-4om/Grossman.html

Orion Magazine:
      July/August 2004

High-Tech Wasteland
      It's the Information Age P So Why DonUt We Know How To Discard A
Laptop Safely

Elizabeth Grossman

THE SCENARIO IS FAMILIAR. The day arrives when the computer that was going
to be your personal bridge to the twenty-first century has become a
dinosaur. The salesperson who touted that machine's efficiency now
explains in tones of pity and derision just how far from the cutting edge
of technology you are. The only solution is a new computer. And so, in
early 2001, when it became clear that my old laptop could not handle most
websites and could not be upgraded, it had to go. I tried to find someone
who wanted a Macintosh 5300c, but no one was interested in a computer that
couldn't surf the web without crashing.

Thanks to our appetite for gadgets, convenience, and innovation (and the
current system of world commerce that makes them relatively affordable),
Americans now own some two billion pieces of consumer electronics. For
over two decades, rapid technological advances have doubled the computing
capacity of semiconductor chips almost every eighteen months, bringing us
faster computers, smaller cell phones, more efficient machinery and
appliances, and an increasing demand for new products. With some five
million to seven million tons of this stuff becoming obsolete in the U.S.
each year, high-tech electronics are now the fastest growing part of the
municipal waste stream. For the most part we have been so bedazzled by
figuring out how to use the new PC, PDA, TV, DVD player, or cell phone,
that until recently we haven't given this waste much thought.

FROM MY DESK IN PORTLAND, the tap of a few keys on my laptop sends a
message to Hong Kong, retrieves articles filed in Brussels, displays
pictures of my nieces in New York, and plays the song of a wood stork
recorded in Florida. Traveling with my laptop and cell phone, I have
access to a whole world of information and personal communication -- a
world that, as electricity grids, phone towers, and wireless networks
proliferate, exists with diminishing regard for geography. This universe
of instant information, conversation, and entertainment is so powerful and
absorbing -- and its currency so physically ephemeral -- that it's hard to
remember that the technology that makes it possible has anything to do
with the natural world.

But this digital wizardry relies on a complex array of materials --
metals, elements, plastics, and chemical compounds. Each tidy piece of
equipment has a story that begins in mines, refineries, factories, rivers,
and aquifers, and ends on pallets and in dumpsters, smelters, and
landfills all around the world.

Where the garbage goes, where a plume of smoke travels, where waste flows
and settles when it is washed downstream, how human communities, wildlife,
and the landscape respond to the waste -- these are costs that are
traditionally left off the industrial balance sheet, and which industry is
now just beginning to figure into the cost of doing business. As Jim
Puckett, director of Basel Action Network (BAN), a nonprofit environmental
advocacy group that tracks the global travels of hazardous waste, has
said, "Humans have this funny idea that when you get rid of something,
it's gone." The high-tech industry is no exception.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than two
million tons of high-tech electronics are dumped in U.S. landfills each
year, and only about 10 percent of discarded personal computers are
recycled. The EPA expects at least 200 million televisions to be discarded
between 2003 and 2010, 250 million computers to become obsolete in the
next five years, and 65,000 tons of used and broken cell phones to
accumulate by 2005. And these numbers are for the U.S. alone.

What makes this waste so problematic is that compared to the items we're
used to recycling, high-tech electronics are a particularly complex kind
of trash. Soda cans, bottles, and newspapers are made of one or no more
than a few materials. High-tech electronics contain dozens of tightly
packed substances, which complicates separation and recycling. Many of the
substances are harmful to human and environmental health.

The cathode ray tubes (CRTs) in computer and television monitors contain
lead, a well-documented neurotoxin, as do printed circuit boards. Mercury,
another neurotoxin, is used to light flat-panel display screens. Some
batteries and circuit boards contain cadmium, a recognized carcinogen.
Polyvinyl chloride, a plastic used to insulate wires, generates dioxins
and furans -- both persistent organic pollutants -- when burned.
Brominated flame retardants, some of which have been documented to disrupt
thyroid hormone function and act as neurotoxins in animals, are used in
plastics that house electronics. Some of these flame retardants have been
found in the breast milk of women across the U.S., and in marine mammals
around the globe. Copper, beryllium, barium, zinc, chromium, silver, and
nickel are among the other toxic and hazardous substances used in
high-tech electronics. These materials do not pose hazards while the
equipment is intact, but when it is trashed they become a huge problem.

Illustration omitted:
      Photograph | Bisson Bernard/CORBIS SYGMA
	 Scientists are just beginning to quantify precisely how the toxic
ingredients of high-tech electronics may be leaching into the environment
via landfills, unregulated dumping, and crude recycling that can involve
open burning of plastics and other materials. But it's clear from studies
undertaken around the world that these substances are present in
groundwater, accumulating in the marine food web, and traveling as
airborne particles. A 2001 EPA report estimated that discarded
electronics, or e-waste, account for approximately 70 percent of the heavy
metals and 40 percent of the lead now found in U.S. landfills.

SO WHERE DOES THE E-WASTE GO? Where should it go? Despite electronics'
toxic contents, the U.S. -- unlike a half-dozen or more other countries --
has no national legislation regulating e-waste disposal and no national
system for electronics recycling. The EPA considers discarded electronics
hazardous waste. But unless your state or local government bans specific
electronic components (such as CRTs) or the materials they contain -- and
unless you're dumping over 220 pounds of e-waste a month (a federal
violation) -- it's perfectly legal to toss it with the rest of your trash.
Curbside recycling bins are given the once-over before being pitched into
the truck, but no one picks through your trash on its way to the dump.
Consumer education and conscience are often the only safeguards against
putting small quantities of hazardous waste into the bin.

If I'd dumped my old laptop in the trash, it would have been eventually
trucked out to a landfill in eastern Oregon. If I took an old Macintosh
out of my closet today and shipped it to the manufacturer's designated
recycler, it would end up in a shredder in California. But first it would
be dismantled, assuming the equipment cannot be reused or refurbished as
is. The recycler separates certain components -- batteries, CRTs, mercury
elements, and some plastics -- for special handling and hazardous
materials recovery. The remainder, including circuit boards, is shredded,
and later melted and smelted to extract the valuable metals, primarily
copper and gold, for resale and reuse.

However, the way electronics are designed makes their disassembly and
materials recycling cumbersome and expensive. This is especially true of
older, obsolete equipment now making its way into the waste stream. So
despite laws intended to prevent the export of hazardous waste, there's a
good chance that had I deposited my computer in a used electronics
collection facility, it might have been loaded onto a ship bound for
China, following what Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network calls "the
economic path of least resistance."

A woman squats over an open flame in a backyard workshop. In the pan she
holds over the fire, a plastic and metal circuit board begins to melt into
a smoky, noxious stew. With bare hands she plucks out the chips. Another
woman wields a hammer and cracks the back of an old monitor to remove the
copper yoke. The lead-laden glass is tossed onto a riverside pile. Nearby,
a man wearing no protective clothing sluices a pan of acid over a pile of
computer chips, releasing a puff of steam. When the chemical vapor clears,
a small fleck of gold will emerge. Another worker crouches over a pile of
broken ink cartridges, brushing the carbon black out by hand. A child
stands on a pile of smashed electronics, eating an apple. At night, thick
black dioxin-laden smoke rises from a mountain of burning wires, whose
plastic insulation melts to expose the valuable copper within.

These images of Guiyu, a southern Chinese city, are from a film called
Exporting Harm, produced by BAN and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a
group that's been watchdogging the computer industry for more than twenty
years. Released in 2002, the film shows the city filled with enormous
mounds of trashed electronics piled in open heaps: computer parts of all
sorts, monitors, keyboards, wires, printers, cartridges, fax machines, and
circuit boards -- all imported from throughout the developed world for
inexpensive, labor-intensive recycling. The city's water has been rendered
undrinkable, the soil poisoned, and its river polluted with heavy
concentrations of dioxins, as well as lead, barium, chromium, and other
heavy metals.

Jim Puckett calls this e-waste the "effluent of the affluent." According
to Exporting Harm's estimates for early 2002, some 50 to 80 percent of the
electronics collected for recycling in the western half of the United
States were being exported for cheap dismantling overseas, predominantly
in China and Southeast Asia. The film's footage, which includes pictures
of equipment I.D. tags reading "Property of the City of Los Angeles" and
"State of California Medical Facility," startled officials from states
around the country.

No one wants to see their state's name on equipment handled by workers who
might earn two dollars a day toiling under hazardous conditions, or to
risk the liabilities of improper toxic-waste disposal. Consequently, the
past few years have seen a flurry of state e-waste regulation bills. In
2003 alone, more than fifty bills were introduced in more than two dozen
states. Meanwhile, in the absence of national legislation, a group of
electronics manufacturers, government agencies, and nongovernmental
organizations is negotiating the National Product Stewardship Initiative,
which would create a nationwide policy for dealing with used and obsolete
electronics.

For now, a patchwork of different programs addresses e-waste. Some states
have banned CRTs from landfills. Others will bar specific hazardous
substances from products sold in the state. Some have initiated recycling
programs -- both ongoing and one-day collection events. Others have
created task forces to recommend further action. Meanwhile, electronics
manufacturers are carrying on with existing voluntary take-back schemes
and developing new ones.

Under California's recently passed electronics recycling bill, collections
will begin with a fee based on screen size. Iowa began its electronics
recycling program with one-day collection events that charged five dollars
per item. Over 275 Massachusetts cities and towns now collect electronics
for recycling -- many at curbside. And community websites often announce
upcoming collection events. But that nifty new PC or PDA does not yet come
with end-of-life instructions.

Large-scale purchasers -- corporations, governments, schools, hospitals --
are now returning most used equipment to manufacturers. But none of the
take-back programs up and running has the capacity to capture the vast
amount of e-waste generated by households and small businesses, over 90
percent of which is currently not recycled.

Electronic waste -- indeed, all trash and recycling in the U.S. -- is
regulated and financed by local governments and taxpayers. But e-waste is
expensive to handle and piling up fast. According to research by a
coalition of U.S. nonprofit groups, the cost of collecting and processing
this waste from 2006 to 2015 -- not counting cleanup of contamination from
improperly managed e-waste -- will exceed ten billion dollars.

Because of these costs, consumer groups, environmental advocates, and
local governments have begun to question a basic assumption about handling
the waste. "All the parts of a product's lifecycle that involve making
money, being profitable, are considered the realm of the private sector,"
says Sego Jackson, solid-waste planner for Snohomish County, Washington.
"But as soon as that product has lost its value, it crosses some magic
line where it becomes the government's responsibility. Clearly we need a
different kind of system."

In the U.S., that need has spawned the Computer Take Back Campaign, an
effort to further involve manufacturers in the recycling of electronics.
Launched in 2001 by a coalition of nonprofits that includes the GrassRoots
Recycling Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the campaign is
helping communities craft legislation to control the hazards of e-waste,
and is working with manufacturers and retailers on collection events. "Our
biggest allies in this campaign are local governments," says David Wood,
executive director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network.

High-tech electronics are resource-intensive to produce, lose value
quickly, and are expensive to dispose of -- a "dysfunctional" cycle,
according to Sego Jackson. He has his own test for what would be
functional: "It should be as easy to recycle a computer as it is to buy
one." But reaching that goal will require "a fundamental paradigm shift,"
says Jim Puckett. At the heart of this shift is the idea that
end-of-product-life costs and responsibilities -- traditionally borne by
consumers, taxpayers, government, and the environment -- should be
shouldered by the manufacturer.

This concept, known as Extended Producer Responsibility, is new to
Americans but in use across Europe, where it will soon be applied to
electronics. The European Union recently passed legislation requiring
electronics manufacturers to take back and facilitate the recycling of
used products, in a system financed by "advanced recovery" fees attached
to the price of new equipment. If revenues from the fees fail to cover the
recycling costs, producers have to absorb the difference. The system
provides an incentive to design products for easier, cheaper recycling. A
companion piece of legislation will require manufacturers to eliminate
some hazardous substances from new equipment.

Because Europe is a significant market for consumer electronics, U.S.
companies, including Dell, HP, and IBM, will be making products to meet EU
requirements. And given the industry's global manufacturing and
distribution efficiencies, those products will be sold worldwide.

To meet the EU regulations, engineers are rushing to find alternatives to
lead solder now used in computers, and to eliminate certain flame
retardants. And as companies fall under growing pressure to conserve
resources and reduce toxics, they are moving away from piecemeal
elimination of undesirables and toward redesign. Mercury, for example, is
highly toxic and expensive to dispose of. As HP environmental product
steward Nathan Moin explains, the company could rework the current design
of flat panel display screens to make it easier to remove the mercury lamp
now used. But it will be more efficient to design a new lighting device
that eliminates mercury altogether. This is an example of what architect
William McDonough, coauthor of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make
Things, describes as going beyond the "less bad approach" of reducing and
eliminating individual toxics, to addressing the problem holistically.

Illustration omitted:
	 Photograph | Manfred Vollmer/CORBIS

IMAGINE WHAT IT would be like if upgrading software meant not having to
buy a whole new computer, but simply snapping in a new processor. Or if
printers and other accessories were universally compatible. Imagine if the
price of a new laptop or mobile phone covered the cost of a convenient
system to collect old equipment for reuse or recycling. Imagine if that
price guaranteed a living wage in safe conditions to those engaged in
every step of electronics disassembly, materials recovery, and
manufacturing. Imagine if there were no such thing as garbage.

The high-tech industry is one of the first that is being pushed to
internalize its costs, a move that will have fundamental implications for
other industries as well. These changes will not mean that the economy or
high-tech innovation will come to a screeching halt. There will still be
commerce, education, entertainment, electronic love letters, and wireless
calls to far-flung friends and family, but it won't be business as usual.

Meanwhile, my old printer, laptop, cell phone, and Zip drive are still in
the closet, even though I now know where they should go. As for my old
Macintosh 5300C, I believe it ended its useful life in an apartment on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood where I once recycled an old
TV by taking it down to the street, where it was immediately carted off by
a passer-by who said, "Hey, can I have that?"

To learn more: The Basel Action Network, 206/652-5555, www.ban.org;
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 408/287-6707, www.svtc.org.


ELIZABETH GROSSMAN is the author of Watershed: The Undamming of America
and Adventuring Along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Her next book, about the
environmental impacts of the high technology industry and its products,
will be published in 2005 by Island Press. She lives near the Willamette
River in Portland, Oregon.

This article has been abridged for the web.

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http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_HoltzKay.html

No Such Thing!

by Jane Holtz Kay
Illustrations by Andy Singer

Consumption must be the sincerest form of patriotism. What else could
account for our leaders' push to buy our way out of the Afghanian badlands
by consuming U.S. goods? How else, more significantly, to explain the
environmentalists' push to purchase the "next best thing:" so-called clean
cars? Is it the sight of our president, mall-bound and thrusting benefits
into oil industry laps, that makes even the Green community want to fuel
up?

The very notion of the "clean car" has been turning Greens to pale grays
for quite a while, of course. Consider, for instance, a recent mailing
from Environmental Defense that landed at my door, "Finding the Way that
Works." These advocates delighted in finding a new
environmentally-friendly automobile. Ahhh, yes, a car that is good for the
environment. "As much fun as a basket of kittens," purred one hebephrenic
eco-enthusiast in the pamphlet, the proud owner of a gas-electric hybrid
Toyota Prius.

One of several fossil fuel-lite vehicles emerging as the latest panacea
for all that ails us, the Prius' eco-hip engine is intended to compensate
for everything from car-dependency and carcinogens, to habitat loss and
road deaths. And more. "Some may equate conservation with dreary sacrifice
but new technologies can yield energy savings with no decrease in
enjoyment," continued the article.

But it wasn't just the environmentalist's kittenish ecstasy over 55-miles
per gallon. "It's fast," she gushed, about her rebirth on wheels (said
basket of kittens presumably strapped into the back seat of the vehicle
lest they join the 121 Americans a day killed in car accidents, not to
mention their road-kill brethren).

To be sure, the notion of driving guilt-free through scenic Appalachia
highways or Yosemite park is attractive. The pleasure principle of consume
without guilt, is a message that goes down easily in what Worldwatch calls
our "all you can eat society." Nor is it easy to say Enough, (as the
Center for the New American Dream calls their magazine), in a world where
"enough" is never quite sufficient.

Pleasure passes over the edge into frivolity these days when concern for
renewable energy - from conservation to wind turbines - heightens as our
labor to cut oil from hostile Middle East nations or lessen nuclear power
from vulnerable plants proceeds. Environmentalists offered prizes of clean
cars at the last Earth Day celebration, and promises of a pollutant-free
fantasy world, but they have yet to make any realistic assessment of the
total impact of the automobile.

For openers, even with the perfect emission-free engine, thirty percent of
the car's lifetime resource and energy consumption occurs in production -
before it ever even sees a strip mall dealer lot - to complete the maze of
bodywork, bumpers, handles, seats, windshield wipers and the rest.

At the least, this deep-breathing for electric-hybrids is on the paler
shade of green. At the worst, it parallels the ecstasy we see when Bush
"reduces" drilling in the Gulf of Mexico or "only" takes itsy-bitsy swipes
at clearcutting and road-building in first-growth forests.

Granted, it's not easy getting around without an automobile in a
car-dependent society, especially with a car-committed government spending
its 53 billion transportation dollars on auto-age enhancement. Beyond the
government's post 9/11 bailout to the airlines ($15 billion), some $35
billion will go to highways and $12 billion more to airlplanes while
Amtrak struggles for its existence as a free-market enterprise.

So here we are with Greens bowing to this bias, adding to the 16,000,000
new cars we buy a year, joining the fleet of 200,000,000 vehicles already
on the road contributing 33% of our CO2 emissions until we s-l-o-w-l-y,
expensively, eternally it sometimes seems, wait to change the fleet.

Why do so many environmentalists seem content to change the tailpipe
rather than challenge the system? It is fine for Detroit to applaud its
profit maker, but it is California dreaming to think of a truly clean car
as a possibility. On a planet under siege, could any miracle machine stop
sprawl with its farm loss and wetland takeover, its road kill and
ecological desecration?

How could "clean" cars free the Americans now immobilized by
auto-dependency spending eight billion hours a year stuck in traffic; help
the 55 million school age children on bike or foot threatened by racing
roadsters; aid the dependent elderly unable to drive, or the 9 percent of
our households - the poor, women and minorities--who can't afford a car??
What would a dream machine do for the quality of life of the overworked
American needing a ton of steel and wheel to buy a quart of milk?

It's no surprise, of course, when makers of electric or hybrid vehicles
like the Honda Insight drape themselves in faux green, advertising their
merchandise as "just what you and the planet have been waiting for." Or
"The new car for a new world," as Prius puts it. And my personal favorite
ad, one with appropriate irony, "Careful you may run out of planet."

En route to something better, it is undeniably commendable to replace or
reform the internal combustion engine. The Sierra Club and other groups
have spent years fighting to put a mere study of CAFE standards toward
getting better mileage on SUVs and other gas guzzlers. By fighting this
super-scale SUV, "the Joe Camel of the auto industry," they hoped to
squeeze automakers into changing the product that earns $10,000-20,000 in
profits per car. But is the SUV the only villain? And don't we divert
energies from real restructuring by proclaiming our...uh..."personal
virtue" when we get better mileage?

Just last June (2001), a coven of conscientious environmentalists held an
anti-SUV rally at an auto sales company car lot in the Boston area where I
live. The site, in this transit-friendly town, was barely accessible
without a car. Come, but find wheels first, was the implied injunction.
("What Would Jesus Drive?" asked one of their members in a later article.
A donkey, I presume).

An organizer of the event, whom I chided, e-mailed me that I should "have
faith and remember the French Revolution. First SUV's, then mini-vans,
then station wagons, full medium, compact, sub-compact, motorcycles, motor
scooters, lawnmowers and then finally we can get back to tumbrels," he
wrote. From an organizer's perspective, he continued, "we start with where
the people are who are willing to protest. There is energy now against the
suburban tanks."

Maybe so, but is compliance so far from complacency? Why not direct this
energy to securing alternate transportation? To advocating good land use
planning? To centering around walkable cities? To driving less or not at
all? To recalling that every mile you drive is like throwing a pound of
CO2 into the overheated atmosphere. To augmenting opportunities for biking
and walking. Granted this work goes on but far less visibly and
theatrically than the arguing over whether there is such a thing as a
"respectably-sized" vehicle, which deflects from the real work to end the
Auto Age.

Altering the chemistry of the vehicle that causes one-third of our CO2
emissions is fine. But how about acknowledging that another third of this
energy consumption is spent in highway-bred building of 953,000 homes a
year - largely at the end of a road - filling 60,000 acres of wetland, and
taking one million acres of farmland out of production every year. Why
adopt the car guys' detour? Why not challenge the chief polluter of our
lives and landscapes? Clean consciences may put coins in some psychic (or
Detroit-based) bank, but they don't clean the environment.

Jane Holtz Kay (jholtzkay@...) is architecture/planning critic of The
Nation and author of Asphalt Nation and Lost Boston

Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take
It Back
by Jane Holtz Kay

Lost Boston
by Jane Holtz Kay

Copyright 2001 Orion Society.

***   NOTICE:  In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only.   ***

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-03/s_26364.asp

Diesel whiz says he can clean up coal

Tuesday, August 03, 2004
By Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press

GILBERTON, Pa. - Cars running on coal? It could happen in this country -
some day.

John Rich Jr., whose family has worked the anthracite coal seams of
eastern Pennsylvania for a century, plans to turn a $100 million grant
from the U.S. Department of Energy into the nation's first commercial
plant converting waste coal, or culm, into low-emissions diesel fuel.

Updating a technology first developed by German scientists in the 1920s,
the $612 million plant would produce 5,000 barrels of diesel a day,
eliminate hundreds of unsightly culm banks, and provide jobs in a region
that sorely needs them. If it succeeds, plants could spring up in West
Virginia, Illinois, and Kentucky.

As Rich escorts a visitor around his coal yards in Gilberton - his Jeep
shaking and shuddering over rough roads that wind their way around the
culm banks - the 51-year-old entrepreneur preaches the gospel of clean
coal.

Environmentalists ridicule the phrase as an oxymoron, but President Bush
has promoted clean coal technology as an alternative to foreign oil.

"We are so acclimated to OPEC influencing the price at the pump, and we
just accept it," said Rich, referring to the international cartel that
supplies more than a third of the world's oil. "It doesn't have to be that
way."

Rich, whose underwriter is working with 10 to 15 banks to provide the
funding for the plant, hopes construction will start in spring of 2005.
But he concedes that the date is a moving target; past predictions have
fallen flat.

While it would be a first in the United States, coal-to-diesel technology
has been used for decades in other parts of the world.

During World War II, coal gasification and liquefaction produced more than
50 percent of the liquid fuel used by the German military. A worldwide oil
embargo on South Africa's apartheid regime forced that nation to derive
much of its transportation fuel from coal.

The 1970s energy crisis sparked interest in coal-to-diesel plants in the
United States, but none got beyond the proposal stage. Cheap gasoline made
coal-to-diesel economically indefensible in the 1990s. But now, with oil
prices stuck at near-record highs, the idea is beginning to gain traction.

Another company, Rentech Inc., is mulling the feasibility of a
coal-to-diesel plant in Wyoming, while Penn State scientists are working
to turn coal into fuel for fighter jets.

Harold H. Schobert, director of The Energy Institute at Penn State
University, said Rich's coal-to-diesel plant is "eminently feasible" -
both technically and economically.

"The traditional argument is that a synthetic fuel produced from coal or
other resources is always somewhat more expensive than a liquid fuel we
would make from petroleum. That argument is true until you begin to look
at the impact (of foreign oil) on the net American economy," taking into
account military spending to defend foreign oil interests, Schobert said.

Rich's company, Waste Management & Processors Inc., is sitting on more
than 100 million tons of waste coal - enough to keep a coal-to-diesel
plant running for decades.

The process involves feeding waste coal into a gasifier, where it is mixed
with oxygen and water and heated to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit to produce
synthetic gas, or syngas. The syngas undergoes another chemical reaction
to become paraffin wax. The wax is then refined into diesel.

There is a ready market for diesel. Most heavy trucks run on diesel fuel,
as does heavy equipment and watercraft.

Rich said he sees coal-to-diesel not only as a moneymaking opportunity,
but also as a chance to eliminate the blight that anthracite coal mining
left behind. But some environmental groups said Rich's idea would do more
harm than good.

Mike Ewall, an environmental activist from Philadelphia, said it would be
far better to plant beach grass on the culm piles than to use up the coal.
He said a plant would produce tons of slag and soot and liberate mercury
and other toxins now safely trapped inside the coal.

"Obviously the waste coal piles are damaging, but rushing to (process
them) and pretend that's a solution is not the best thing either," said
Ewall, who set up a Web site that criticizes Rich's project.

But Rich said a coal-to-diesel plant is far cleaner than traditional
coal-burning power plants, and liquid fuel produced from coal is
cleaner-burning than regular diesel.

"It's better to leave all this stuff here? And keep importing foreign oil
and empowering terrorists? Yeah, right," Rich said. "We can clean this
stuff up."


Source: Associated Press

Copyright © 2004 Environmental News Network Inc.

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes
only.  **

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24879

ENVIRONMENT-ITALY:
Recycling Is an Art

Francesca Colombo*

ROME, Jul 30 (Tierramérica) - A kitchen counter and cabinets made from 70
kilos of newspaper, a plastic overcoat, and a lamp made from paper are
some examples of Italian eco-designs, which combine environmental
protection and sustainable economics.

''Green design'' is an aggregate of ''innovative strategies, methods and
instruments for preventing and reducing negative environmental impacts in
all phases of making a product,'' without ignoring aesthetics, architect
Lucia Pietrosi, professor of industrial design at Rome's La Sapienza
University, told Tierramérica.

In 2002, Italy threw out 29.8 million tonnes of plastic, according to the
Italian Environmental Protection Agency.

It may be only a drop in the bucket, but 900 tonnes were salvaged to make
things like furniture and clothing items: 10 plastic bottles were used to
make a chair, 45 plastic cups were used in making a bench, and 31 bottles
were turned into a Christmas tree.

Cardboard, aluminium and steel are also being recovered for use in
manufacturing a wide range of products.

Eco-innovation exploits renewable resources, separating out the components
of a waste item and eliminating dangerous substances, explain the
designers.

With the component materials, artists are inspired to experiment and to
create. One example is the exhibit ''Beyond the Boxes: designing with
paper and cardboard'', held each year at the Ludovico University's school
of architecture in the Italian capital.

The main attractions of the exhibit were the Recall chair, made with 70
percent recycled aluminium and cardboard (by Marco Capellini, of the
Remade company), the Medusa dress, made of paper (by architect Caterina
Crepax), a table-desk made of corrugated cardboard and able to support 80
kilos, and ''Lucky'', the cardboard toy horse for children (by Ilaria
Vitanostra).

''In Italy we drink a lot of coffee and the espresso-maker is made with
recycled aluminium. However, nobody knows that,'' but doing so saves 85
percent of the great quantity of energy needed to produce new aluminium,
architect Capellini told Tierramérica.

He founded MATREC, the first Italian database on eco-design and recycling,
available free of charge on the Internet.

Just a few years ago, Italians tended to disdain products made from
recycled materials, but today 90 percent of consumers polled say they are
willing to purchase merchandise from some 3,000 firms that produce
recycled goods.

However, some retailers complain that eco-design products are not yet as
well received as traditional items.

Nevertheless, there are more and more Italian-made products bearing the
''Ecolabel'', a European certification for environmentally friendly items.

The European Parliament this year adopted regulations that require, at
least until 2008, the re-utilisation of 60 percent of paper and glass
waste, 50 percent of steel and aluminium, 22.5 percent of plastic and 15
percent of lumber, in order to cut down on the environmental impacts of
garbage and packaging.

The notion of eco-friendly design and construction did not catch on in
Italy until the 1990s, even though it had been part of the public debate
in northern Europe since the 1960s. An August 2003 decree establishes that
30 percent of the goods acquired by Italy's public administration must
come from recycled raw materials.

The current trend for companies like Merloni, a leader in kitchen and
laundry appliances in the European Union, is to highlight the
functionality of the products, and the fact that their negative
environmental and social impacts are reduced.

Merloni, which in 2003 produced some 13 million appliances, recycles the
raw materials involved, not to make more appliances, but rather to
manufacture such things as bicycles and home furnishings.

''We respect the EU rules and we have an oversight committee that monitors
style and construction in terms of energy saving, because we work under
the concept of respect for the environment,'' Merloni spokeswoman Chiara
Pascarella told Tierramérica.

The eco-designers face the challenge of using more imagination perhaps
than their colleagues working with non-recycled materials. Some of their
products don't turn out to be very attractive: mixing several types of
plastic, for example, does not always produce homogenous results.

''Eco-design is not only working with recycled materials. It also means
producing sustainable appliances, ones that don't hurt the environment,
are easy to put together and take apart, and which save energy,''
Capellini said.

The Indarte company produces items -- at low cost and in small batches --
such as watches made from bicycle lights, lamps made from glass jars and
even an aluminium broom built to last 20 years.

''We are not in this out of ecological awareness, but rather for the lack
of capital for other proposals. True eco-design is valued for the amount
of energy saved and materials used, with nothing wasted, creating
indestructible objects that do not go out of style,'' Indarte owner Marco
Gilioli, in the city of Turin, told Tierramérica.

''Consumers make their purchases based on three factors: beauty, quality
and price. If we add respect for the environment, it is one more positive
point when it comes time to buy,'' says Giuseppe Lotty, an architect with
the experimental furniture design centre at the University of Florence.


(* Francesca Colombo is a Tierramérica contributor. Originally published
Jul. 24 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with
the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United
Nations Environment Programme.)

(END/2004)

Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes
only.  **

--
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-05/s_26372.asp

Building the 'world's most environmentally
responsible high-rise office building'

Thursday, August 05, 2004
By GreenBiz.com

NEW YORK - Bank of America and The Durst
Organization have broken ground on the
construction of the Bank of America Tower at One
Bryant Park, a 945-foot-tall crystalline
skyscraper that will rise in Midtown Manhattan.
Located on the west side of Sixth Avenue, between
42nd and 43rd streets, the high-rise office tower
is scheduled to open in 2008.

Bank of America Tower will serve as the
headquarters for Bank of America's operations in
New York City, and house its global corporate and
investment banking, wealth and investment
management, and consumer and commercial banking
businesses. The bank will occupy roughly half of
the 2.1 million square foot structure. The unique
size of the building's footprint will enable Bank
of America to operate six major trading floors
there, ranging in size from 43,000 to 99,000
square feet.

"The magnificent new Bank of America Tower is the
latest chapter in the revitalization of Bryant
Park and will strengthen New York City's position
as the financial capital of the world," said
Mayor Bloomberg. "This bold and dynamic project
will create nearly 7,000 construction jobs, and
over the next 25 years, 3,000 new jobs that will
generate more than $1 billion in tax revenue for
the City. Our 5-borough economic development
strategy is making the City more livable and
business-friendly so that businesses locate here,
and the creation of this new 52-story building
shows that it is working. I would like to thank
Bank of America and the Durst Organization for
their commitment to this important project and to
New York City."

Environmentally Conscious Architecture

Upon completion, Bank of America Tower will be
the world's most environmentally responsible
high-rise office building and the first to strive
for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership
in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum
designation. The project incorporates innovative,
high-performance technologies to use dramatically
less energy, consume less potable water, and
provide a healthy and productive indoor
environment that prioritizes natural light and
fresh air.

"By providing an opportunity for one of the
world's foremost financial service institutions
to increase its commitment to New York, the Bank
of America Tower at One Bryant Park already is
making an important contribution to New York and
demonstrates to the world the vitality of our
city," said Douglas Durst, co-president of The
Durst Organization. "We look forward to a long,
mutually satisfying relationship and to creating
not just a spectacular visual experience, but
also the most environmentally responsible
building possible."

Located on the largest development site in
Midtown Manhattan, the Bank of America Tower will
house the 1.1-million-square-foot headquarters
for the New York operations of Bank of America
and the 50,000-square-foot restored and
reconstructed Henry Miller Theater, as well as 1
million square feet of office space for other
tenants. The $1 billion project - co-developed by
Bank of America and The Durst Organization - will
rise adjacent to The Durst Organization's
flagship tower, the Condé Nast Building at Four
Times Square. Bank of America has committed to a
20-year lease for its space.

The Design

Designed by Cook+Fox Architects, LLP of New York,
the glass, steel, and aluminum skyscraper is
inspired by the building's unique site within its
immediate location and its broader urban context.
The faceted crystal design of the tower features
unique sculptural surfaces with crisp folds and
precise vertical lines that are animated by the
movement of the sun and the moon. The
transparency of the building, with its
floor-to-ceiling windows, provides evocative
views both from and through the space. From the
building's base, which accommodates the
surrounding complex pedestrian and transit
circulation, to the overall massing, continuing
up to the tip of the spire, the design responds
to the built environment of Midtown Manhattan.

"The transparent faceted surfaces of the building
function as a permeable membrane for shifting
qualities of perception and light," says Richard
Cook, partner at Cook+Fox Architects. "Embodied
within this clear glass skin is something organic
in nature, something which echoes not only the
kinetic movement and energy from the streets
below but also the dynamic and crystalline
structure of forms encountered in the natural
world."

The design for the Bank of America Tower is
inspired by the building's unique site within its
immediate location and its broader urban context.
The exterior wall of the tower will be a clear
glass curtain-wall to complement the building's
faceted crystal design. The building's form is
sculpted to provide a south-facing surface to
address its prominent relationship to Bryant Park
and permit views into and out of the structure.

'Green' Considerations

With an emphasis on sustainability, water
efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and
energy and atmosphere, the Bank of America Tower
will be constructed largely of recycled and
recyclable building materials. It will feature a
wide range of sophisticated environmental
technologies, from filtered under-floor
displacement air ventilation to advanced
double-wall technology and translucent insulating
glass in floor-to-ceiling windows that permit
maximum daylight and optimum views. It also will
include a state-of-the-art onsite 4.6-megawatt
cogeneration plant, providing a clean, efficient
power source for the building's energy
requirements.

The Bank of America Tower will save millions of
gallons of water annually through such innovative
devices such as a gray-water system to capture
and reuse all rain and wastewater, while planted
roofs will reduce the urban heat island effect.
Taking advantage of heat energy from the
cogeneration plant, a thermal storage system will
produce ice in the evenings, which will reduce
the building's peak demand loads on the city's
electrical grid. Daylight dimming and LED lights
will reduce electric usage while carbon dioxide
monitors automatically introduce more fresh air
when necessary. By fundamentally changing the way
buildings are conceived, Bank of America Tower
will lead the change in the way high-rise
buildings are built.

Reconstructed Henry Miller's Theater

At the direction of Bank of America and The Durst
Organization, Cook+Fox Architects will restore
and reconstruct the historic Henry Miller's
Theater, with the goal of creating a
state-of-the-art Broadway playhouse that captures
the intimacy and proportions of the original 1918
Allen, Ingalls & Hoffman Theater. The
Georgian-style landmark façade will be preserved
and restored, the oval reception room, doors and
decorative plasterwork, including the iconic urns
marking the 43rd Street entrance, will be
salvaged and incorporated into the new design.

The seating will be increased to 1,000, the
majority of which will have a prime location at
orchestra level. A sophisticated acoustics system
will be integrated, as well as a larger orchestra
pit and a fully functional fly-tower and scenic
loading facilities. Other new amenities will
include improved public circulation, box office
and concessions areas, with a spacious lobby bar
at the orchestra level, a bar and café at the
ground level, a restaurant on the upper mezzanine
and a significant increase in women's restrooms.

The new theater also will be fully
handicapped-accessible with 20 wheelchair-viewing
positions. In addition, the theater will have an
auxiliary exhibition space: an adjacent
through-block pedestrian passageway that provides
views into the theater and includes a special
documentary style multimedia presentation
exploring the life and times of the historical
Henry Miller playhouse.

Public Amenities

With approximately three times the public
circulation space required by an as-of-right
high-rise office building, the Bank of America
Tower will accommodate and contribute to the
surrounding pedestrian and transit circulation.
Public amenities will include widened sidewalks,
public street furniture and an urban garden room
located at 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue, which
serves as an inviting extension of Bryant Park.

The design also incorporates a new glass-enclosed
subway entrance with wider stairs and an elevator
at 42nd Street on the southeast corner of Sixth
Avenue. An underground pedestrian walkway on the
north side of 42nd Street will link the B, D, and
F subway lines to the Times Square station and a
new mid-block subway entrance on 42nd Street will
connect to the below-grade walkway, in addition
to a special through-block passageway featuring a
"Broadway Wall of Fame" with interactive
information kiosks.


Source: By GreenBiz.com

Copyright © 2004 Environmental News Network Inc.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material is distributed,
without profit, for research and educational
purposes only.   **

http://action.nwf.org/campaign/ab1652/w6i8edb4ri3me5

Take Action!
Support Solar Power in California!

More than 150,000 homes are built each year in California putting additional
strains on the state's growing energy and air pollution problems. Each home and
building constructed without solar power is a tremendous missed opportunity
given California's year-round sunshine.

Instead of building more fossil fuel power plants, California should make solar
power a standard feature-just like we do with double-paned windows and
insulation. Installing solar during construction dramatically reduces its cost.
Creating a large market for solar will drive costs down even further. Owners
would save money on their monthly electric bills, hundreds of pounds of air
pollution would be cut, and California's energy grid would become more stable.

To get us to 50 percent of all new homes, as supported by Governor
Schwarzenegger, Environment California is sponsoring legislation to create a
floor, or minimum standard, for commercial developers to begin phasing in solar
power on new homes.

PCL would like to salute Bernadette del Chiaro of Environment California, Jan
McFarland of the California Solar Energy Industries Association, and Senator
Kevin Murray for their hard work in developing an historic solar homes proposal.
Also, Governor Schwarzenegger deserves enormous thanks for giving this cause a
decisive boost through his campaign promise to promote solar energy on newly
built homes. The above background information was developed by Environment
California.

  * * *

http://action.nwf.org/campaign/ab1652/explanation

What's At Stake!
Support Solar Power in California!

PCL would like to salute Bernadette del Chiaro of Environment California, Jan
McFarland of the California Solar Energy Industries Association, and Senator
Kevin Murray for their hard work in developing an historic solar homes proposal.
Also, Governor Schwarzenegger deserves enormous thanks for giving this cause a
decisive boost through his campaign promise to promote solar energy on newly
built homes. The following background information was developed by Environment
California:

Making Solar Power A Reality

From the massive solar display shading the Staples Center parking lot in
downtown Los Angeles to the small system on a neighbor's roof, solar power is
steadily emerging as a way for people to cut down on their electric bills,
generate reliable power, and do something good for the environment. There are
several indications of this progress:

The price of solar photovoltaics (PV) has declined 85 percent in the past 30
years due in large part to the increase in demand.[1]

Major, well-known companies, such as Sharp Electronics and GE are among the
leading manufacturers of today's solar PV systems. Sharp, the largest in the
world, will have the capacity to manufacture around 300 megawatts of solar in
2004-this is enough to power approximately 150,000 homes with a typical
two-kilowatt system.
Since the California energy crisis of 2001, the demand for solar power has
increased ten fold.[2] The bulk of this demand comes from the retrofit market,
i.e. already built homes or businesses that install a solar power system.
Despite this steady progress, however, one could argue that California is
wasting one of its most abundant resources: the sun, while missing out on a
common-sense opportunity to make solar a mainstream technology. This missed
opportunity is in our failure to build with solar.

According to the California Building Industry Association, more than 150,000
homes are built in California each year.[3] Over the next 10 years, more than
one million new homes will be built throughout the state, with the greatest
growth happening in outlying areas that will require new infrastructure such as
power plants and transmission lines as well as shopping centers, big-box stores,
auto dealerships, etc. With only a few exceptions such as developments in Orange
County, Palo Alto, and Sacramento, less than one percent of California's homes
and businesses are constructed with solar power.[4]

Building With Solar: The Common Sense Approach

Building with solar power makes a lot of sense. To begin with, it saves money.
It is a lot cheaper-some estimate 25-33 percent cheaper-to install a solar
system before rather than after a building or home has been wired and
constructed. In addition, some solar systems actually look and act just like
roofing material, saving money there as well.

Secondly, building with solar allows the architect to design the building
appropriately. By taking such simple steps as orienting the home or building in
the right direction and landscaping to shade the home but not the solar system,
designers, if they know ahead of time, can help maximize the solar PV system's
energy output.

Finally, given all the problems associated with the building of new fossil fuel
power plants and the transmission and distribution lines needed to transport the
energy great distances to electrify our homes and communities, it makes a lot
more economic and environmental sense to begin to build a small-scale
distributed energy system with clean, renewable technologies such as solar PV.

At least 30 percent of California's global warming pollution comes from power
plants, like this one in Huntington Beach. Scientists fear global warming will
bring more extreme weather, drought and disease to California. Photo:
ClipArt.com

Solar Power: An Antidote to Air Pollution

Air pollution is already a serious problem in California. It triggers hundreds
of thousands of asthma attacks each year and adds millions of tons of
global-warming gases to the air.

  At least 95 percent of Californians live in areas where the air is not safe to
breathe, according to the EPA.

More than 50,000 Californians are hospitalized every year because of air
pollution-related illness.
Los Angeles and Fresno now vie for the dubious distinction of having the worst
air quality in the nation.

While cars and trucks are to blame for the lion's share of this pollution,
fossil fuel power plants burning natural gas are a significant source of
pollution as well.

Natural gas power plants are behind 12 percent of California's smog-forming
pollution and up to 16 percent [5] of global warming pollution.[6] Power plants
are often required to produce more air pollution during California's smoggiest
days magnifying their impact on air quality.

Statewide, California gets 56 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels
including coal and natural gas.[7]

In the coming years, this problem could worsen. Between 2004 and 2014,
California's energy demands will increase 20 percent, in part because one
million new homes will be built. The California Energy Commission estimates that
California will require 500-1,000 MW of new energy capacity each year to meet
these needs.[8] For comparison, a typical power plant ranges in size from 50-300
MW. Eager to meet this need, energy companies have approved plans to build 30
fossil-fuel power plants in the next few years. Building these plants would dump
millions of tons of additional pollution into our air.

How to Get There: Standardizing Solar Power

California can begin building with solar by establishing it as a standard
feature of new homes and businesses. By establishing a minimum solar standard
for new homes and businesses, California can begin building more with solar
power, benefiting in the state's environment, energy system and economy. Read
more about Environment California's Solar Homes Bill.

Notes
[1] US. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, "Renewable
Energy 2000: Issues and Trends", Feb. 2001.

[2] According to the California Energy Commission, a little over 900 PV systems
were installed from 1998-2000 whereas more than 11,000 systems were installed
from 2001 to mid-2003.

[3] California Construction Review, Construction Industry Research Board, March
2003,

[4] According to industry leaders, up to 1,000 new homes were built with solar
PV in 2003, a significant increase to previous years.

[5] California Air Resources Board, "2003 Estimated Annual Average Emissions"

[6] CEC, "Inventory of California Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-1999"
(600-02-001F & 600-02-001F-ES) November 2002

[7] CEC, "California Gross System Power for 2002"

[8] CEC, "Electricity Outlook Report 2002-2012"


Copyright 2004 The Planning and Conservation League All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **


--
   Ashwani
      Vasishth         vasishth@...
                    http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth
          http://groups.yahoo.com/group/envecolnews/
              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airqual/
             http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustplan

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-11/s_25994.asp

Wednesday, August 11, 2004
From the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

EarthTalk: Where can I find Earth-friendly building materials?

Where do I find sources of Earth-friendly building supplies and materials?
      - Rich Duriff, San Francisco, California

More contractors and property owners have chosen to work with environmentally
friendly building supplies over the last decade than ever before.

But even though big box building supply stores like Home Depot are beefing up
their environmentally friendly inventories, green building specialty stores are
where you'll find the widest selection of nontoxic and ecologically-sound
products, everything from cabinetry to flooring to paints, solvents, and
insulation. Additionally, staff at these stores can give much needed advice and
can also provide referrals to contractors well versed in relevant techniques and
technologies.

"Our definition of quality requires us to look at what happens over the entire
life of a product," said Lisa DiMartino of Seattle's Environmental Home Center,
which sells nontoxic paints, natural carpets, sustainable wood products,
energy-efficient insulation, and organic cleaning supplies. The store's
procurement staff examines products from a wide range of perspectives before
putting in any orders, according to DiMartino.

Environmental Construction Outfitters in New York City's Bronx borough is a
green building supplies retail store that prides itself on its ongoing research
into state-of-the-art sustainable building solutions.

"We specialize in consulting with architects, designers, developers, and
end-users and finding them the best products for their specific needs," said
company founder Paul Novack. The store offers environmentally friendly lighting,
roofing, bedding, water filters, and many other green products.

Not in Seattle or the Bronx? Many retailers have expanded far beyond their
regions by going online. The Northwest Builders Network runs an Internet-based
"Environmental Store" that sells construction-related books, software, and
calculators as well as energy efficient lighting, recycled plastic benches,
tables, and yard accessories. They also carry nontoxic paints, oils, stains, and
many other building and design products.

Likewise, the Building for Health Materials Center, which bills itself as
"one-stop shopping for healthy and environmentally sound building materials and
home comforts," stocks and ships everything from landscaping elements to
building supplies to interior décor. Other green retailers with a strong online
presence include Phoenix Organics, Environmental Building Supplies, and Living
Green.

Related Links

Environmental Home Center <http://www.environmentalhomecenter.com>
Environmental Construction Outfitters <http://www.environproducts.com>
Northwest Builders Network <http://www.nwbuildnet.com>
Building for Health Materials Center <http://www.buildingforhealth.com>
Phoenix Organics <http://www.phoenixorganics.com>
Environmental Building Supplies <http://www.ecohaus.com>
Living Green <http://www.livingreen.com>


Source: E/The Environmental Magazine

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

--
   Ashwani
      Vasishth         vasishth@...
                    http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth
          http://groups.yahoo.com/group/envecolnews/
              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airqual/
             http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustplan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3536156.stm

Thursday, 12 August, 2004, 11:49 GMT 12:49 UK

Sun and hydrogen 'to fuel future'
      Capturing sunlight to make enough hydrogen fuel to power cars and buildings
has been brought a step closer by a British research company.

By Jo Twist
BBC News Online science and technology staff

Illustration Omitted:
      Turning sunlight into hydrogen could be the future

Hydrogen Solar says it has managed to convert more than 8% of sunlight directly
into hydrogen with fuel cell technology it has specially developed.

For an energy source to be commercially viable, it must reach an efficiency of
10%, which is an industry standard.

Hydrogen power, a renewable energy, has the potential to replace fossil fuels.

"Over the last couple of years we have doubled efficiency.

"We are not yet in the hydrogen economy, but it has the potential to take over
when the oil economy becomes untenable," Dr David Auty, chief executive of
Hydrogen Solar told BBC News Online.

Nano hand

Depending on how it is produced, hydrogen fuel is a clean, green source of power
that can be easily stored.

Its potential has been recognised for well over 100 years, but it requires
energy to extract hydrogen from water, or any other source.

The Tandem Cell technology developed by Hydrogen Solar uses two photocatalytic
cells in series which are coated with a nano-crystalline - extremely thin -
metal oxide film.

Having a nanoscale coating makes the surface area far greater and means that
hydrogen can be produced efficiently without the need for polluting fossil
fuels.

The cells capture the full spectrum of ultraviolet light - the Sun's rays - and,
via the novel coating, the electrons are captured and carried away on
conductors.

This electrical current is then used to separate the hydrogen from water which
is stored for use.

The key to the process has been the advances in novel coatings brought about by
recent developments in nanotechnology.

Illustration Omitted:
      A car could run for 11,000 miles on hydrogen

The size of the molecules in the coating is 15 to 20 nanometres (a nanometre
being a billionth of a metre).

When they are stacked in layers, the property of the substance changes to
produce large surface areas.

"It turns out these devices work because we are using nanocrystalline layers. It
is the move to nanotechnology which has brought this technology forward,"
explained Dr Auty.

He added: "If we look five years ahead and we have a few square miles of
hydrogen farm in a desert, we think we could produce hydrogen that is
competitive with coal and oil."

Once production costs have been scaled down, large hydrogen cell farms could
produce hydrogen, untaxed, at $1.80 to $3 a kilo.

That is equivalent to a third of the price of the same amount of power produced
from untaxed gasoline, he thinks.

There has been huge amount of work in fuel cells for buses, cars, houses, and
other buildings.

But Dr Auty envisages the car industry making the best use of the technology in
modified combustion engines.

"Using a 10% cell, we say that a seven-metre squared array will power a Mercedes
A class car for 11,000 miles a year [in LA sunlight conditions] without going to
power station," said Dr Auty.

Motor future

Hydrogen power has also be produced from hydrocarbons, like oil and gas, but
these have downsides in their byproducts.

Pollution-free hydrogen cell technology is predicted to be the next wave in
emissions-control after the hybrid electric motor, currently used in the
automotive industry.

Research into hydrogen power has been pumped with funding in the US in
particular.

In 2003, President George Bush announced an $1.7bn investment to turn the US
into the world leaders of hydrogen-powered automobiles.

With increasing concern about the instability of the oil market, the development
of a commercially viable alternative energy source has attracted interest.

"The potential lack of oil is the reason we are doing this," Dr Auty said.

"There are huge amounts of carbon released through coal and other hydrocarbons."

Last year, General Motors (GM) said it planned to be the first to sell a million
fuel cell vehicles in the next decade.

Other automotive giants have also championed hydrogen fuel.

DaimlerChrysler, Ford and GM have spent about $2bn on fuel cell cars, trucks and
buses. The first products came out last year, and many UK cities have deployed
hydrogen buses.

Ford's Chairman William Clay Ford Jr went so far as predicting fuel cells would
end the reign of the internal combustion engine.

But there have been a number of technical and financial stumbling blocks -
including taxation - which have prevented its large scale adoption, and Dr Auty
thinks there need to be more political will to push the technology forward.

"There is a chicken and egg issue here," he said.

"Who is going to build a car before they have filling stations, and who is going
to build stations before we have the cars.

"It has to be strategically thought out and driven by government. There is a
political will in US, but I think the UK is a bit behind the pace."

"The key about all of this is that all predictions about crude oil are pretty
much going to be in our lifetimes," said Dr Auty.

"But if you talk about infrastructure change, these things don't happen
overnight."


HOW TANDEM CELLS PRODUCE HYDROGEN POWER

1 Ultraviolet sunlight passes through glass skin of cell
2 Light is captured in glass coated with nano-crystalline film
3 Nano-coating properties enable the glass to conduct electricity, which is used
to separate the water into oxygen and hydrogen
4 Hydrogen gas is stored for later use as a power source

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3536156.stm

Published: 2004/08/12 11:49:32 GMT

© BBC MMIV

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1283588,00.html

Pollutants Cause Huge Rise In Brain Diseases
      Scientists alarmed as number of cases triples in 20 years

Juliette Jowit, environment editor
Sunday August 15, 2004
The Observer

The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's
and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years,
scientists have discovered.
The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled
in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents,
domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal
Public Health.

In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions
in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000.

'This has really scared me,' said Professor Colin Pritchard of Bournemouth
University, one of the report's authors. 'These are nasty diseases: people are
getting more of them and they are starting earlier. We have to look at the
environment and ask ourselves what we are doing.'

The report, which Pritchard wrote with colleagues at Southampton University,
covered the incidence of brain diseases in the UK, US, Japan, Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain in 1979-1997. The researchers then
compared death rates for the first three years of the study period with the last
three, and discovered that dementias - mainly Alzheimer's, but including other
forms of senility - more than trebled for men and rose nearly 90 per cent among
women in England and Wales. All the other countries were also affected.

For other ailments, such as Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, the group
found there had been a rise of about 50 per cent in cases for both men and women
in every country except Japan. The increases in neurological deaths mirror rises
in cancer rates in the West.

The team stresses that its figures take account of the fact that people are
living longer and it has also made allowances for the fact that diagnoses of
such ailments have improved. It is comparing death rates, not numbers of cases,
it says.

As to the cause of this disturbing rise, Pritchard said genetic causes could be
ruled out because any changes to DNA would take hundreds of years to take
effect. 'It must be the environment,' he said.

The causes were most likely to be chemicals, from car pollution to pesticides on
crops and industrial chemicals used in almost every aspect of modern life, from
processed food to packaging, from electrical goods to sofa covers, Pritchard
said.

Food is also a major concern because it provides the most obvious explanation
for the exclusion of Japan from many of these trends. Only when Japanese people
move to the other countries do their disease rates increase.

'There's no one single cause ... and most of the time we have no studies on all
the multiple interactions of the combinations on the environment. I can only say
there have been these major changes [in deaths]: it is suggested it's multiple
pollution.'

Pritchard's paper has been published amid growing fears about the chemical
build-up in the environment. A number of studies have pointed to serious
problems. TBT is being banned from marine paints after it was blamed for
masculinising female molluscs, causing a dramatic decline in numbers. A US
report linked neurological disorders to pesticides. And testing by WWF (formerly
the World Wildlife Fund) found non-natural substances such as flame retardants
in every person who took part.

WWF has named chemical pollution as one of the two great environmental threats
to the world, alongside global warming, and is particularly worried about
'persistent and accumulative' industrial chemicals and endocrine - hormone
distorting - substances linked to changes in gender and behaviour among animals
and even children.

'We've started seeing changes in fertility rates, the immune system,
neurological changes [and] impacts on behaviour,' said Matthew Wilkinson, the
charity's toxics programme leader.

Pesticides and pharmaceutical chemicals must now undergo rigorous testing before
they can be used. But there are an estimated 80,000 industrial chemicals and the
'vast majority' do not need safety regulation or testing, said Wilkinson.

However, the chemical industry strongly rejects what it claims are often
unproven fears. Just because chemicals are present does not mean they are at
dangerous levels.

But critics are not reassured. 'It is true that just because we find a chemical
does not mean it is dangerous,' said Wilkinson. 'But it is equally true that for
the vast majority of chemicals we have so little safety data that the regulatory
authorities have no idea what a safe level is.'

The Royal Society of Chemistry also said quantities of pesticides were
declining. 'Improvements in analytical chemistry mean that lower and lower
levels of pesticides can be detected,' said Brian Emsley, the society's
spokesman. '[But] because you can detect something doesn't necessarily mean it
is dangerous.'

Special reports
Medicine and health </medicine/0,11381,618095,00.html>

Useful links
British Medical Association <http://www.bma.org.uk>
Department of Health <http://www.doh.gov.uk/>
General Medical Council <http://www.gmc-uk.org/>
Health on the Net Foundation <http://www.hon.ch/>
Institute of Cancer Research <http://www.icr.ac.uk/>
Medical Research Council <http://www.mrc.ac.uk/>
NHS Direct <http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/index.asp>
World Health Organisation <http://www.who.int/>


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3559542.stm

Monday, 16 August, 2004, 16:45 GMT 17:45 UK

Hungry world 'must eat less meat'
      World water supplies will not be enough for our descendants to enjoy the
sort of diet the West eats now, experts say.

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Livestock needs a lot of water

The World Water Week in Stockholm will be told the growth in demand for meat and
dairy products is unsustainable.

Animals need much more water than grain to produce the same amount of food, and
ending malnutrition and feeding even more mouths will take still more water.

WATER AND FOOD
A kilogram of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic metres of water
A kilo of lamb from a sheep fed on grass needs 10 cubic metres
A kilo of cereals needs from 0.4 to 3 cubic metres

Scientists say the world will have to change its consumption patterns to have
any realistic hope of feeding itself.

Losing the race

The World Water Week conference is held annually in the Swedish capital, and is
organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute, Siwi. This year's runs
from 15 to 21 August.

Siwi says: "With about 840 million people undernourished or lacking a secure
food supply today, and another two billion or more people... by 2025, feeding
the world's growing population - and finding the water to grow the food -
continues to be a basic and sizeable challenge."

A paper to be delivered during the conference, entitled Water: More Nutrition
Per Drop, says: "For several decades, the increase in food production has
outpaced population growth. Now much of the world is simply running out of water
for more production... "

The World Health Organisation calls malnutrition "the silent emergency", and
says it is a factor in at least half the 10.4 million child deaths which occur
every year.

Grain goes far to feed the world

Anders Berntell, Siwi's executive director, told BBC News Online: "The basic
problem is that food is the main global consumer of water, with irrigation
taking 70% or more of all the water we use, apart from huge volumes of
rainwater.

"The bottom line is that we've got to do something to reduce the amount of water
we devote to growing food today.

Upturn in demand

"Animals fed on grain, and also those which rely on grazing, need far more water
than grain crops.

"But in the developed world, and in parts of some developing countries,
consumers are demanding more meat.

"Of course people should have healthier diets and a higher intake of nutrients:
we don't want to stop that.

Slow to dawn

"But it's going to be almost impossible to feed future generations the kind of
diet we have now in western Europe and North America.

Meat is a treat for the rich

"Most of us don't appreciate, either politically or personally, the challenge of
finding enough water to grow enough food, though in some countries it's a
problem of everyday living.

"I think the world's future water supply is a problem that's an entire order of
magnitude greater than we've begun to realise."

Mr Berntell said the rich would be able to buy their way out of trouble by
importing "virtual water" - the water needed to grow the food they bought from
abroad.

He said: "The transport of virtual water is huge. Australians were astonished to
find that although their country is short of water, they're net exporters of
water in the form of meat."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3559542.stm

Published: 2004/08/16 16:45:26 GMT

© BBC MMIV

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-17-09.asp#anchor8

Americans Invited to Help Clean Up the World

NEW YORK, New York, August 17, 2004 (ENS) - Clean Up the World and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are encouraging Americans to clean their
own small part of the environment for 2004 Clean Up the World Weekend, September
17 to 19.

Clean Up the World mobilizes over 30 million volunteers from more than 100
countries annually to clean up, fix up and conserve their local environment.

Communities throughout the United States are encouraged to hold activities to
raise awareness of how rubbish in the environment affects waterways, seas and
oceans.

Participation in Clean Up the World 2004 is expected to increase in states
across the country this year over last.

Clean Ups will take place along the shores of San Francisco Bay where volunteers
will remove marine debris from the marsh, beach and picnic areas of China Camp
State Beach. The area crossed by 22 miles of scenic trails within 1,640 acres of
parkland.

The Potomac River in Maryland is the wildest river running through a
metropolitan area anywhere in the world and supplies fresh drinking water to
more than 80 percent of residents in Washington, DC. Over 600 volunteers will
collect waste and debris from several locations along the river.

In the Cove Palisades State Park, Oregon, more than 150 volunteers will take
part in the Lake Billy Chinook Day Clean Up event. Volunteers will focus on
problems such as erosion, aquatic weeds and dump sites formed at the canyon
confluence of the Metolius, Deschutes, and Crooked Rivers.

Under the motto 'Bag it with Beckers!', volunteers in Portland, Oregon, are
coordinating cleanups to remove debris along the Henry Hagg Lake shorelines. The
lake, located in Scoggins Park, is inhabited by rainbow trout, small mouth bass,
brown bullhead, and yellow perch.

PA Cleanways Westmoreland County in Greensborough, Pennsylvania is organizing
Clean Up events to combat littering and illegal dumping. The Clean Ups will
focus on items that are difficult to dispose of such as yard waste, tires,
batteries, appliances, paper, Christmas trees, and household hazardous waste.

Graduate students in the Department of Biological Sciences at Old Dominion
University, Norfolk, Virginia, work to conserve the Birdsong Memorial Wetland
throughout the year by removing rubbish and undertaking vegetation management
activities.

"It is important that everyone, from the East to West coast, helps reduce the
impact of waste on the environment and the surrounding seas and oceans," said
Ian Kiernan, an Australian who is founding chairman of Clean Up the World.

Clean Up the World members become part of a UNEP endorsed global network of
people and organizations concerned about the environment and receive information
and materials to assist with the promotion and implementation of environmental
activities.

For more information about any of these activities or to register as a member
visit: www.cleanuptheworld.org or contact world@....

* * *

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

--
-
Ashwani
    Vasishth@...
       http://www.rcf-usc.edu/~vasishth

[The Report itself, Costing Green, can be directly accessed at:
    http://www.dladamson.com/images/pdf_files/costinggreen.pdf]

  * * *

http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news_detail.cfm?NewsID=27053

Environmental Building News

Report Offers New Data on the Cost of Building Green

NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2004 - A new report by Lisa Fay Matthiessen and Peter Morris
of Davis Langdon Adamson (DLA) offers compelling evidence that if there is any
premium associated with building green, it is far less significant than a range
of other factors that affect building cost. The paper, "Costing Green: A
Comprehensive Cost Database and Budgeting Methodology," draws on DLA's extensive
database of cost information for both LEED and non-LEED projects to compare
their costs while normalizing for building type, location, and other factors.
DLA, a member of Davis Langdon Seah International, specializes in cost
estimating and cost management in construction, with offices in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, and New York.

DLA maintains a database of the projects it has worked on, including information
on the construction and design parameters of each of the projects. The database
also tracks the LEED points being pursued, and those that are achieved, by the
projects. Based on this data, the paper goes point-by-point through the LEED for
New Construction version 2.1 Rating System and provides a cursory analysis of
the cost implications of pursuing each point. The authors then put this analysis
in the context of a broad set of cost factors:

    * Demographic location
    * Bidding climate and culture
    * Local/regional design standards, including codes and initiatives
    * Intent and values of the project
    * Climate
    * Timing of implementation
    * Size of building
    * Point synergies

Matthiessen and Morris also provide a macro-level analysis of the cost of green
projects. Focusing on libraries, academic classrooms, and laboratories, they
compare the cost per square foot of 45 LEED-seeking projects with 93 that are
not pursuing LEED certification. They found "no statistically significant
difference between the LEED population and the non-LEED population." This
finding held up within each building type as well as across the whole range of
projects. Interestingly, the graphs in the report appear to indicate that cost
is largely indifferent to the level of LEED certification being pursued, whether
certified, silver, or gold-platinum (the latter two being combined into one
group for the study). The authors even took the step of creating LEED scorecards
for the non-LEED buildings in their study, to see how they might have scored if
they sought certification. They found that this control group of projects would
typically have achieved between 15 and 25 points-shy of the 26 points needed for
a LEED rating.

The authors also briefly explore other ways of determining whether it costs more
to build green. They found that of the LEED-seeking projects they analyzed, over
half were built within a budget set without regard to any green goals. Of those
that did receive added funds towards green features, those funds were usually
for specific, high-cost items such as photovoltaic systems. Matthiessen and
Morris conclude that other factors affect cost so much that any possible green
premium is, in effect, lost in the "noise" in relation to average cost per
square foot.

http://www.dladamson.com/images/pdf_files/costinggreen.pdf


--
   Ashwani
      Vasishth         vasishth@...
                    http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth
          http://groups.yahoo.com/group/envecolnews/
              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airqual/
             http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustplan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/3575994.stm

Wednesday, 18 August, 2004, 11:26 GMT 12:26 UK

India population 'to be biggest'

Illustration Omitted:
      By 2050 there will be 1.63bn Indians, the study shows

India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2050,
while some countries will shrink by nearly 40%, according to new research.

The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) says the next half century will see wild
swings in population sizes.

It predicts that the number of people on Earth will reach 9.3bn by 2050,
compared to 6.3bn today.

Britain's population is likely to overtake that of France, while the US will
grow by nearly 50%, it says.

The Washington-based PRB says the general trend will be for Western developed
nations to decline slightly in numbers - the US being the major exception -
while developing states continue to expand rapidly.

  PREDICTED POPULATIONS, 2050
1 India, 1,628m (2)
2 China, 1,437m (1)
3 United States, 420m (3)
4 Indonesia, 308m (4)
5 Nigeria, 307m (9)
Source: PRB (2004 position in brackets)

The organisation says that at present "nearly 99% of all population increase
takes place in poor countries".

India is expected to grow from 1.08bn to 1.63bn people, overtaking China, which
is forecast to reach 1.44bn from 1.3bn currently.

The US will remain the third biggest nation, according to the report, growing to
420m from 294m people.

Britain is expected to grow only slightly, to 65m, from 59.5m, while many of its
European neighbours decline.

In Eastern Europe the decline will be marked, if current trends continue.

Bulgaria could lose 38% of its 7.8m inhabitants, with Russia declining by 17% -
some 25m people.

Anomalies affect prediction

The projections are based on infant mortality rates, life expectancy, fertility
rates and age structure, as well as factors like contraception and Aids rates.

What the study cannot predict is how migration between nations may affect
population growth.

Carl Haub, the chairman of population information at the PRB, admits it is not
possible to know exactly how the world will grow. "So many demographic anomalies
exist that the future is uncertain," he said.

Most recent population studies agree, however, that humanity will grow rapidly,
at least in the near future, and that the planet's resources will be
increasingly stretched.

The UN published a recent study, whose "medium-case" scenario was that the world
would reach 9bn by 2300 - 250 years later than PRB predict.

Its most extreme prediction was that, if current fertility rates continued,
there would be 134 trillion of us by 2300 - though it admitted this is possible
only in theory.

In March the US Census Bureau said world growth was actually slowing, and that
Aids meant Africa's population might actually begin to decline.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/3575994.stm

Published: 2004/08/18 11:26:12 GMT

© BBC MMIV

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

--
   Ashwani
      Vasishth         vasishth@...
                    http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth
          http://groups.yahoo.com/group/envecolnews/
              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airqual/
             http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustplan

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-18-05.asp

U.S. Population Predicted to Boom by 2050

WASHINGTON, DC, August 18, 2004 (ENS) - With 294 million people, the United
States is now the world's third most populous country after China and India.
According to a new forecast from the Population Reference Bureau, the U.S.
population will increase by 45 percent over the next 45 years, the only
industrialized nation projected to experience a major population increase.

The total world population will likely reach 9.3 billion by mid-century, up from
the 6.3 billion people on Earth today.

Illustration Omitted:
      Times Square, New York City (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

The nonprofit Population Reference Bureau based in Washington, issued its annual
datasheet on Monday, showing that by 2025, the U.S. population will increase to
349.4 million people, and by 2050 that number will be up to nearly 420 million.

This population increase, made up of a combination of an increasing birth rate
and increasing immigration, will result in a population density of 79 people per
square mile by 2050, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) predicts.

This will put pressure on all U.S. natural resources - water, agricultural land,
fuel, timber, fisheries - and living space.

According to the PRB forecast, which is based recent census or official national
and United Nations data, all regions of the world except Europe will continue to
grow. Developing countries in Africa and Asia will account for about 90 percent
of the increase in world population projected by 2050, while the populations of
most developed countries will decrease.

Illustration Omitted:
      New houses under construction in Longmont, Colorado (Photo by Warren Gretz
courtesy NREL)

By 2050, industrialized countries as a group are projected to increase their
population by four percent. By contrast, the population of developing countries
is expected to expand by 55 percent.

For example, Western European populations will shrink, while Western Asian
nations are expected to gain about 186 million people by 2050, says Carl Haub,
who heads the Population Reference Bureau.

"The demographic contrasts between Japan and Nigeria, two countries with roughly
equal population sizes today, illustrate the differing challenges faced by rich
and poor countries," said Haub.

Whereever the population is increasing, there will be an increase in demand for
water. A University of New Hampshire study has found that population growth and
economic development, in tandem with global climate change, will impact the
availability of fresh water over the first quarter of this century.

The research reveals that climate change accounts for 20 percent of the
impending increase in water scarcity, whereas population change and economic
development account for the remaining 80 percent.

Illustration Omitted:
      This week's drought map from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Drought
Monitor shows nearly half the country is experience drought conditions. (Map
courtesy USDA)

The current emphasis on global climate change, say the study's authors, has
obscured the critical "human issue" and its effect on water scarcity.

Published in the July 14 issue of the journal "Science," the four UNH authors
conclude that nearly two billion people currently suffer from severe water
scarcity, a far higher estimate than from previous assessments. According to
current United Nations estimates, 1.1 billion people do not have sufficient safe
water.

An additional one billion are expected to face water scarcity by the year 2025
due to increasing population and global climate change, says lead author Charles
Vorosmarty, research associate professor in UNH's Institute for the Study of
Earth, Oceans, and Space.

Vorosmarty says that, while the scientific community has increased its resources
devoted to the study of global climate change, the "human issue" has received
far less attention. He says it will be necessary to consider how climate change
and climate extremes interact with surface and groundwater, as well as how
humans respond and adapt to water stress. These adaptations will involve costly
investment in infrastructure like sewage treatment plants, reservoirs and
irrigation.

"In light of this research," says co-author Richard Lammers, UNH research
scientist, "one of my concerns is that this combination of climate and
population change could drive various regions into water related conflict."

"We're really not prepared for global climate change if we don't pay attention
to population growth," said Lammers. "It makes sense to study and get ready for
both."


Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

--
-
Ashwani
    Vasishth@...
       http://www.rcf-usc.edu/~vasishth

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996301

Leukaemia risk for kids living near petrol stops

12:33 19 August 04
NewScientist.com news service

Children who live next to a petrol station are four times more likely to develop
acute leukaemia than other children in the same area, suggests new research.

The small study, carried out at four sites in France, looked at 280 children
with leukaemia and a control group of 285 children, all younger than 15 years.
The children's mothers were given a questionnaire relating to their lifestyle.

The researchers found that children living next door to a petrol station or
automotive garage had a quadrupled risk of leukaemia. And the risk of developing
acute non-lymphoblastic leukaemia was seven times greater compared with children
who lived in the same area, but not next to a petrol station.

"I was very surprised that living near a petrol station had such a high risk,"
says Jacqueline Clavel from the National Institute of Health and Medical
Research in Villejuif, France, who led the study.

"The longer the child had lived in the vicinity of the petrol station, the
higher their relative risk was. Prenatal exposure also raised the relative
risk."

Rubber factory

Clavel suspects benzene in petrol caused the rise in cancer risk, although she
says further studies need to be done.

"The link between benzene and leukaemia has been shown for workers in a rubber
factory, but the benzene levels are very high in that instance. Exposure to
benzene is much lower for children near a petrol station, so it was surprising,"
she told New Scientist.

Richard McNally, from Cancer Research UK's paediatric and familial cancer
research group, says that while the findings are interesting, they should be
treated with caution. "The study examined a relatively small number of leukaemia
cases, and the fact that it was based on interviews leaves it open to influences
such as inaccuracy in the recollections of the mothers interviewed," he says.

Although it is the most common childhood cancer in the western world, acute
leukaemia is rare, with four new cases per 100,000 children each year. The
majority of cases occur in two-year-old infants, but more than 80 per cent of
children make a full recovery.

Journal reference: Occupational and Environmental Medicine (vol 61, p 773)

Weblinks

National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), France
     
http://www.inserm.fr/servcom/servcom.nsf/(Web+Startup+Page)?ReadForm&english

Cancer Research UK
      http://science.cancerresearchuk.org/

Occupational and Environmental Medicine
      http://oem.bmjjournals.com/


Gaia Vince

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

  * * *

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-19/s_26608.asp

Fuel stations may pose child cancer risk, says study

Thursday, August 19, 2004
By Reuters

LONDON - Living near a fuel station may quadruple the risk of acute leukemia in
children, research published on Thursday showed.

French scientists who carried out a study of more than 500 infants found that a
child whose home was near a fuel station or vehicle-repair garage was four times
as likely to develop leukemia as a child whose home was further away.

And the longer a child had lived nearby, the higher the risk of leukemia seemed
to be, showed the research, published in the Occupational and Environmental
Medicine journal.

The prevalence of childhood leukemia is four in every 100,000 children, but it
is the most common type of childhood cancer in developed countries, say the
researchers.

Few clear risk factors have been identified for the childhood variant, but
exposure to benzene in the workplace has been identified as a possible factor in
leukemia in adults, the authors say.

The risk appeared to be even greater for acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, which
was seven times more common among children living close to a fuel station or
commercial garage, the research showed.

Source: Reuters

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

>Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:20:44 +0200
>From: Jacky Foo <foo@...>
>Subject: [ET-ANN] Biotechnology: Possibilities, Risks, Ethics, and Society
>To: ET-ANN@...
>Reply-to: Jacky Foo <foo@...>
>
>INVITATION
>(please forward this to your friends)
>
>In cooperation with the Division of Engineering Sciences of the Royal
>Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), I am pleased to invite
>you to join the e-dicussion on "Biotechnology: Possibilities, Risks,
>Ethics, and Society". (http://segate.sunet.se/archives/et-venus.html )
>
>The topics for discussion are
>T1) Genetics to change nutritional composition - the golden rice
>T2) GMO and risk assessment
>T3) The use of DNA as evidence in criminal cases
>T4) Vision of future biotech applications
>
>Four abstracts of lectures presented at the 3rd Science Generation
>Symposium will serve as opening statements and to welcome your comments
>as well as your concerns on biotechnology and its possibilities, risk,
>ethics and society. Please send your contributions to:
>et-venus@...
>
>This e-discussion will also enable participants who maybe unable present
>their questions and comments at the 3rd Science Generation Symposium
>(Aug 24, Stockholm) to do it at this e-discussion.
>
>Please find these abstracts and discussion messages at
>http://segate.sunet.se/archives/et-venus.html
>
>
>To join this e-discussion, goto
>http://segate.sunet.se/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=et-venus&A=1
>Or
>email listserv@... and use the subscription command:
>SUB ET-VENUS yourfirstname yourlastname, country code
>E.g.
>sub et-venus Mathias Uhlen, SE
>
>Regards
>Jacky E.L. Foo, Chairman,
>IOBB (Intl Org for Biotechnology and Bioengineering)
>http://www.iobbnet.org
>http://www.iobbnet.org/drupal
>http://wiki.iobbnet.org
>Secretariat (Email): et-w7@...

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/news/sbnews.cfm?ID=4202

07/22/2004
SustainableBusiness.com News

SustainableBusiness.com Announces This Year's SB20: The World's Top Sustainable
Stocks

New York, July 21, 2004 - SustainableBusiness.com announces the 2004 SB20 list -
The World's Top Sustainable Stocks. The list is presented in the The Progressive
Investor newsletter, published by SustainableBusiness.com, which tracks this
emerging marketplace.

To choose the 20 companies that make up the list, SustainableBusiness.com asked
five leading social/ environmental investment analysts to recommend companies
that stand out as the world leaders in terms of both sustainability and
financial strength.

"Our goal is to create a list that showcases the top public companies leading
the way to a sustainable society," says Rona Fried, Ph.D.,
SustainableBusiness.com CEO and Editor of The Progressive Investor.

Novozymes, Herman Miller, Swiss Re and Electrolux and Triodos Bank represent
sustainable business at its best. Sustainability is wrapped around each of their
business models. Each company is acutely aware of the ecological crisis and its
role in ameliorating it. What sets them further apart though is that they each
take a public stand for sustainability in their respective industries and are
helping their industry as a whole make the transition.

Many of the companies are leading their respective industry toward sustainable
practices: Henkel in chemicals; Chiquita in bananas; Philips and Canon in
electronics; STMicroelectronics in semiconductors; Green Mountain Coffee in
coffee.

United Natural and Whole Foods have business models with a sustainable mission -
to integrate natural/ organic products into society. Both companies have been
outperforming the stock market for years and stand out as the biggest
sustainable stock success stories thus far.

Vestas (the world's largest wind company) is the only alternative energy company
on the list this year, because it is the one company in this emerging sector
that is profitable. Ballard and Fuel Cell Energy were on the list for the past
two years and will hopefully be back next year when their financial position
makes more sense for investors.

Jack Robinson of Winslow explains, "From a macro-perspective, all the drivers
are in place for the renewable energy industry to experience excellent long term
sustainable growth of over 20% a year. I see this industry as where natural/
organic foods was 12 years ago. The challenge now is to pick the winning
companies. Right now that's very tricky."

Some people invest in Baldor, East Japan Rail, JM, or even Electrolux, Canon and
Philips as ways to safely get exposure to clean energy in their portfolio.
Baldor makes energy efficient motors affordable. East Japan Railway, the world's
largest passenger railroad, incorporates a wide range of sustainable business
practices from green procurement and efficient engines, to experimenting with
wind and solar energy to run its trains. Electrolux, Canon and Philips use life
cycle analysis to design the most efficient products in their respective
markets. JM, a Swedish real estate and construction company, extensively uses
green building practices which by their nature are energy efficient and resource
conserving.

Conclusive research shows that companies that outperform on the environment
outperform financially. Too often, the "green" business sector remains a mystery
to many of today's investment information sources. Creating the SB20 and the The
Progressive Investor to follow the companies and news on an on-going basis
showcases and rewards companies that are well positioned as investments.

The SB 20 List for 2004 - Alphabetical Order

Baldor (BEZ)
Canon (CAJ)
Chiquita (CQB)**
East Japan Railway (9020)
Electrolux (ELUXB)**
Green Mtn Coffee (GMCR)**
Henkel (HNKG.BE )**
Herman Miller (MLHR)**
JM (JM.ST)**
Novozymes (NZYMb.CO)**
Philips (PHG)
ST Micro (STM)**
Svenska Cellulosa AB (SCAa.ST)
Swiss Re (RUKN:SWX)**
Timberland (TBL)**
Triodos (TBL)
United Natural (UNFI)**
Vestas (VEST.CO)**
Wainwright Bank (WAIN)**
Whole Foods Market (WFMI)**

** Denotes companies on the list in both 2003 and 2004.

The SB20 judges:

Terry Foecke: Managing Director, Investment Research, Materials Productivity LLC
Patrick McVeigh: VP Investment Research, Lowell, Blake & Associates
Carsten Henningsen, Co-Founder & Principal, Portfolio 21 mutual fund
Jack Robinson: Managing Director, Winslow Management Company, Green Growth Fund
Matt Patsky: Managing Director, Winslow Management Company, Green Growth Fund

The Progressive Investor is a monthly newsletter that guides people toward
sustainable investments. Each issue includes a conversation among world-class
sustainable investment analysts for their insights and opinions on viable
investments in companies leading the way to a clean economy: renewable energy,
organic and healthy lifestyle companies and more. Published by
SustainableBusiness.com, the most visited, trusted source on sustainable
business on the Web.

Website: http://www.progressiveinvestor.com
Email: rona@...

Copyright © 2004. Sustainable Business.com.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://sustainablebusiness.com/features/feature_template.cfm?ID=1127

Green Design & Building Update

If you are remodeling this summer or fall, you're not alone. It's big business -
Americans spent $173 billion on remodeling in 2002.

There are many resources to help you remodel green:

If you live in the Seattle area, you can participate in Green Home Remodel
classes at Community Centers there. If you live elsewhere you can still access
the Washington's Sustainable Building Program web guides - detailed booklets on
specific projects such as Kitchen, Bath and Laundry and Roofing. Watch for
future publications on Paints & Finishes, Landscape Materials and Hiring a
Professional.  http://www.seattle.gov/sustainablebuilding/greenhome.htm

If you're building a house, you might want to take advantage of
http://naturalhomeplans.com - you'll also find them featured in Natural Home
Magazine <http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/>.

To donate or incorporated used building materials, do a search for building
materials exchanges, which are located on the Web and around the US. Habitat for
Humanity runs ReStores <http://www.habitat.org/env/> around the country.

To find "green" contractors who are trained to build and/or design projects that
are energy, water, and resource-efficient, as well as employ methods that ensure
proper indoor ventilation, see if there is a "Master Builder" near you,
certified by the Energy and Environmental Building Association
<http://www.EEBA.org> or the National Association of the Remodeling Industry
<http://www.nari.com>. Green architects can be found at
http://www.greenbuilder.com/.  For more green building resources, consult our
Resource Directory
<http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/resource_directory/index.cfm>.

Green Building News

In July, the City of Vancouver announced the adoption of green building
standards  LEED for British Columbia (LEED-BC) for all new civic buildings
greater than 500 square meters. New public buildings must achieve the Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. The City also
mandated specific energy points in the LEED Rating System to ensure a 30% energy
reduction in all new civic buildings.

LEED-BC, licensed to Canada by the U.S. by the U.S. Green Building Council
(USGBC), is a performance based tool that rates different elements of building
design and construction to ensure better environmental performance. LEED-BC has
been tailored to meet the needs of the British Columbia market and will be
administered by the Canada Green Building Council (CGBC).

Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC CEO & Founding Chairman, commended Vancouver as the first
city to raise the bar to the level of LEED Gold. "We look forward to more cities
following their leadership," he said.

LEED Gold is an ambitious standard which only two buildings in Canada have
qualified for to date. Both of these buildings are in British Columbia. With the
adoption of this standard, the City plans to save taxpayers millions of dollars
in long-term operating costs.

The announcement also serves as a catalyst to promote greening of the 2010
Winter Olympics, which will be held in the City of Vancouver.

---

Bill McDonough is profiled as one of Fast Company Magazine's "Master of Design"
in he cover story of the June 2004 issue.  The issue includes profiles of "20
visionary men and women who are using design to create not just new products,
but new ways of working, leading, and seeing." William McDonough leads the group
of four designers identified as "Impact Players."

McDonough's cradle-to-cradle product design protocol is making its way into many
products. The Fast Company article
<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/83/mod_mcdonough.html> features Shaw's
"Walk in the Garden" carpet tiles made using the protocol.

Earlier this year, Shaw announced it would stop using PVC carpet backing by year
end. An article in the July issue of Metropolis Magazine
<http://beta.interiordesign.net/id_article/CA428150/id?section=News> highlights
both the significance of the move, and the market factors behind it. Shaw's
EcoWorx cradle-to-cradle carpet tile backing has seen steadily taking more
market share than its PVC-backed products, as designers and specifiers
increasingly look for high-quality, environmentally favorable alternatives to
vinyl.

An article in the current issue of Metropolis features the environmental
achievements of Steelcase's new Think office chair
<http://www.steelcase.com/servlet/OurCompanyServlet?ACTION=4&SEC_ID=6&SUB_ID=8&M\
IN_ID=24&CONTENT_ID=642&NAME=news&NAME2=product>, also designed using
McDonough's protocol. The company describes it as "a smart, simple and
environmentally sustainable seating product."

To design the chair, Steelcase asked a network of recyclers what they would
realistically recycle from a chair. They said they would take as many materials
as they could in five minutes using a common hand tool. Think is 99% recyclable
and can be disassembled in 5 minutes. The midpriced ($600-$1,200) contract chair
is made of 40% recycled material and conforms to MBDC's Cradle to Cradle Design
Protocol for material health.  Steelcase is also debuting the "Steelcase
Environmental Partnership," a combination take-back and brokerage program that
coordinates suppliers, charities and recyclers in the US and Europe to reuse and
recycle Steelcase products.

View a video clip on Think's environmental achievements: (look for the "Meet the
Environmentalists" clip in the Think Environment section).

MechoShade, the leading producer of window shade products, showed off its new
McDonough protocol product, EcoVeil, at the NeoCon trade show. EcoVeil is a
healthy and fully recyclable alternative to standard PVC-polyester shade cloth
materials. Made entirely from a new "technical nutrient" material, with a
Thermoplastic Olefin (TPO) -based yarn called EarthTex, it can be recycled into
new shade cloth or other EarthTex based products after use, in a
cradle-to-cradle cycle.

---

In early July, US Senators Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
introduced the High Performance Green Buildings Act of 2004. This legislation
would provide $35 million over five years for the development and construction
of environmentally responsible federal buildings and schools.

Jeffords, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee said, "Green buildings are an environmental investment in our future.
This legislation promotes buildings that incorporate energy efficiency, waste
reduction and other efficient design features.  Green buildings improve the
health of their occupants, protect our natural resources, and in the long-run
can save our nation billions of dollars in energy and other costs. It's time for
the federal government to catch up to the private sector and work together to
reap the many benefits of high-performance buildings."

According to the U.S. Green Building Council there are 118 certified green
buildings across the United States with 1,395 in the pipeline. The legislation:

-  expands green building research;
-  provides for public outreach and assistance to states;
-  creates an incentive for making investments in federal green building
purchases and practices;
-  provides $10 million in grants to state and local education agencies;
-  requires the Comptroller General to identify and incorporate long-term
savings that can accrue from the use of life-cycle costing in building
construction into the federal budget process;
- creates an Office of High-Performance Green Buildings at the General Services
Administration (GSA) to promote public outreach, research and development.

Jeffords and Lautenberg drafted the legislation based on the findings of two
recent reports: "Building Momentum: National Trends and Prospects for
High-Performance Green Buildings," prepared by the U.S. Green Building Council;
and "The Federal Commitment to Green Building:  Experiences and Expectations,"
prepared in 2003 by the President's Office of the Federal Environmental
Executive.

Co-sponsors of the legislation are Senators Tom Carper (D-DE), Hillary Clinton
(D-NY), Tom Harkin (D-IO), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Harry Reid (D--NV) and Ron
Wyden (D-OR).

Buildings in the U.S. account for: 36% of total energy use; 65% of electricity
consumption; 30% of greenhouse gas emissions; 30% of raw materials use; 30% of
waste output (136 million tons annually) and 12% of potable water consumption.

++++

This story was printed from www.sustainablebusiness.com Copyright © 2004.
Sustainable Business.com.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **


--
   Ashwani
      Vasishth         vasishth@...
                    http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth
          http://groups.yahoo.com/group/envecolnews/
              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airqual/
             http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustplan

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-24-09.asp#anchor6

Clemson's Homegrown Corn Plastic

CLEMSON, South Carolina, August 24, 2004 (ENS) - Tetramer Technologies, LLC is
adding corn to plastic containers - and cars, airplanes and golf clubs. The
Clemson University spinoff company has just received a $100,000 small business
research grant from the National Science Foundation to demonstrate the
commercial feasibility of plastics partially derived from renewable sources like
corn.

The award follows two previous grants, demonstrating that the National Science
Foundation is really interested in vegetable based plastics.

Most plastics, varnishes and packaging foams are made from chemicals derived
from petroleum. But now stiffer environmental regulations and consumer
conscience are driving the search for materials that are recyclable, renewable
and less polluting.

Polylactic acid is a byproduct of corn. It currently is used in some pill
coatings and sutures because it easily dissolves - a property not desirable in
drink containers, boat coatings and packaging.

Clemson University professor Dennis Smith and his research group have found a
new way to replace up to 50 percent of the chemicals that make regular plastics
with polylactic acid. The end product is a plastic that has both the
environmental friendliness of the corn-based product and the durability of
regular plastics.

Potentially, this new material could reduce by five billion pounds per year the
amount of single use, nonbiodegradable plastics that are discarded. The new
manufacturing process also could cut air pollutants from plants that produce
plastics.

But corn based plastics are not really new. In May 2003, Wild Oats Markets
became the first grocery stores in North America to switch from conventional
plastics to corn based polylactic acid plastics for packaging.

IPER, a 22 store chain in Italy, first launched a Cargill Dow corn based plastic
packaging product in 2002 to bring new attention to its fresh foods. All 22 IPER
markets now sell a broad range of produce, fresh pasta and salads in the corn
plastic packaging.

And in Belgium, the supermarket Bio-Planet began offering foods packaged in the
Cargill Dow product earlier this month.

But Clemson wants to develop a homegrown South Carolina corn based plastic
product. "By finding commercial applications for Clemson research, Tetramer is
fueling South Carolina's knowledge based economy," said Earl Wagener, CEO of
Tetramer. "We're creating jobs that will help keep the top researchers coming
out of the university."

Wagener, a 1967 Clemson graduate in physical organic chemistry, returned to
South Carolina to head the company. Wagener has 36 years of new product
commercialization and venture capital experience at Stepan Co. and The ChemQuest
Group Inc. and Dow Chemical.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-24/s_26656.asp

Scientists say risk of water wars is rising

Tuesday, August 24, 2004
By Patrick McLoughlin, Reuters

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The risk of wars being fought over water is rising because
of explosive global population growth and widespread complacency, scientists
said recently.

"We have had oil wars," said Professor William Mitsch. "That's happened in our
lifetime. Water wars are possible."

Scientists at the World Water Week conference, which began on Sunday in
Stockholm, said ignorance and complacency were widespread in wealthier
countries.

"I don't know what will shake these regions out of complacency other than the
fact there will be droughts, pestilence, and wars that break out over water
rights," said Mitsch, professor of natural resources at Ohio State University.
Mitsch said potential flashpoints included the Middle East.

"Continuing on our present path will mean more conflict," a report by
International Water Management Institute said.

With the world's population growing at exponential rates, there is extreme
pressure on water supplies to provide drinking water and food, scientists said.

"In 2025, we will have another 2 billion people to feed, and 95 percent of these
will be in urban areas," said Professor Jan Lundqvist of Stockholm International
Water Institute.

The answer was sustained investment in infrastructure. An estimated $80 billion
was invested each year in the water sector, but this needed to at least double,
said Professor Frank Rijsberman, the water institute's director general.

Dr. David Molden, co-author of the water institute's report, said, "I think if I
look at the numbers I can't immediately see a way out over the next few years. I
think we will reach a real crisis."


Source: Reuters

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-24-09.asp#anchor4

New York State to Recycle Millions of Waste Tires

ALBANY, New York, August 24, 2004 (ENS) - The state of New York has completed a
comprehensive plan that will result in the cleanup of 95 waste tire stockpiles,
Governor George Pataki said Monday.

As part of the plan, the Departments of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and
Transportation (DOT) will partner on the initiative to recycle scrap tires for
use on state highway projects. The plan will help eliminate as many as 29
million tires located in tire dumps across the state.

"Scrap tire piles create potential health and safety hazards that threaten the
well-being of our communities and natural environment," Governor Pataki said.
"This comprehensive plan is a major step forward in the State's efforts to
eliminate potentially dangerous waste tire piles from our communities and
protect our air and water for our children and generations to come."

Contractors will soon begin work to remove eight million tires at the Mohawk
Tire facility in Waterford. More than 2.5 million discarded tires were removed
from the site in 2000 and 2001 through a contract issued by the DEC, but the
tires remaining at the site continue to pose a threat to the surrounding
community and businesses.

Mohawk Tire's proximity to the Hudson River continues to be of concern to state
and local officials. The tire abatement project at Mohawk Tire will require that
the remaining eight million tires be removed from the property within three
years.

The Waste Tire Management and Recycling Act of 2003 requires the DEC to prepare
and implement a comprehensive plan designed to abate all noncompliant waste tire
stockpiles in New York state by September 10. The DEC expects to begin stockpile
cleanups this fall.

Funding for this program is provided through a $2.50 fee added to each new tire
purchased. The fee is deposited into a Waste Tire Management and Recycling Fund
to be used for the cleanup of waste tire stockpiles and to develop markets for
newly generated waste tires.

From September 2003 through May 2004, DEC inspectors visited 162 locations and
documented 95 noncompliant waste tire stockpiles. There are an estimated 29
million waste tires in these stockpile sites.

The five largest noncompliant waste tire stockpiles represent approximately 85
percent of all stockpiled tires. In addition to the Mohawk facility, these sites
include the Fortino Site in West Monroe; Hornburg Tire in the Village of
Sinclairville; New York Tire in Smithtown; and Cycletech in the City of Hudson.
The state is currently developing and accepting bids to initiate mitigation
activities at these sites.

The discarded tires must be used in a beneficial manner to the greatest extent
possible. Unwanted waste tires have been used in the past in steel production,
as crumb rubber for rubberized surfaces, and as tire shreds for use in civil
engineering applications including road construction and landfill construction.

Shredded tires will be used on DOT projects as embankment filler to help reduce
the amount of gravel necessary for many highway projects. Tire shreds are
lightweight, compact, and drain better than conventional gravel material used on
highway embankments.

Shreds are placed in layers one-foot thick, compacted up to a total thickness of
10 feet, and covered on the sides and top with soil and pavement. The shreds are
first wrapped on all sides with a material known as geotextile, a type of very
tough cloth, to prevent the soil cover from infiltrating the tire shred layer.

The first DOT project that will utilize the shreds will be a bridge elimination
project on Interstate 87 in Clinton County, expected to begin this month. This
project will replace the bridge with a large embankment, utilizing 10,220 metric
tons of tire shred, the equivalent of one million scrap tires. Subsequent
projects could use as many as 25 million tires.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-25/s_26697.asp

Greenpeace protests Ford's plans to destroy Norwegian-built electric cars

Wednesday, August 25, 2004
By Doug Mellgren, Associated Press

OSLO, Norway - Greenpeace activists scaled the walls of Ford carmaker's
Norwegian headquarters Tuesday to protest plans to destroy hundreds of
pollution-free cars.

In late-2002, Ford Motor Co. pulled out of the Norwegian company Think Nordic,
which builds electric cars, and announced it would stop selling electric
vehicles in the United States.

The 14 activists climbed onto the roof of the building and hung its walls with
banners reading "Ford: Don't Crush Think" to protest plans to destroy up to 400
used Think cars in the United States and Britain.

The action follows a similar protest Monday in San Francisco, California,
Greenpeace said.

Ford had leased the Norwegian-built cars to customers for up to three years, as
a test fleet in the United States, said Niel Golightly, Ford's vice president
for communications in Europe. He said by telephone that it was never the
intention for them to be used longer, because Ford only had permission from U.S.
federal authorities to test them in the United States for three years.

"We don't understand them proceeding with plans to destroy them when there are
waiting lists of people interested in buying them," said Greenpeace protest
leader Truls Gulowsen. He said the activists were demanding a meeting with
senior Ford executives.

Greenpeace suspects Ford of wanting to eliminate competition to its traditional
vehicles powered by fossil fuels, Gulowsen said.

However, Golightly said the carmaker, based in Dearborn, Michigan, is actively
seeking to find other technologies for cleaner-running cars and trucks,
including hydrogen fuel cells and the gas-electric hybrid vehicles. He said Ford
and most of the industry has concluded that battery-powered vehicles are not the
answer.

Golightly said a number of small companies had offered to buy the vehicles but
that Ford concluded the cost of shipping them to Europe, converting the vehicles
to national standards, and refurbishing them would be too high.

One of the companies, Oslo-based El-Bil Norge, had made such an offer, which
company spokesman Hans Kvistle said Ford did not even appear to have considered.
The company builds battery vehicles and sells used ones.

The Think Nordic company was taken over by Kamkorp Microelectronics in 2002.
About 1,000 of the vehicles have been built.


Source: Associated Press

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0826/p13s01-stgn.html?s=mesen

August 26, 2004 edition

Soon, spider-silk togs and mussel glue?

By John K. Borchardt | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Illustration Omitted:
      WEB OF VALUE: Spider silk is strong and waterproof - qualities scientists
are trying to replicate in thread.
STEFFEN SCHMIDT/KEYSTONE/AP

They're spun thousands of times a second. They're so sinewy and commonplace,
they hardly get noticed. And yet for decades, spider webs have stumped
researchers.

No one has been able to create anything nearly as lightweight and flexible (not
to mention waterproof) that is also many times as strong as steel. And visions
of using spider's silk to make rip-proof clothing, from children's garments to
military uniforms, have remained just that: visions.

But researchers are now closing in on understanding how spiders make silk, which
may give them the key to creating a synthetic version. Spider's silk is one
example of how advances in biotechnology and synthetic chemistry are fueling
rapid growth in animal-based products. Nature is teaching scientists how to
produce everything from better laundry detergent to rustproof paint.

In time, "biofactories" will create large quantities of cells and tissues to
produce useful animal-based ingredients, predicts Murray Moo-Young, a chemical
engineer at Canada's University of Waterloo.

Spiders are high on the research agenda because they produce several useful
things, including one of the strongest materials in the world.

"If you've ever sort of pushed aside a spider web, you've noted that it pulls
before it breaks," says Paula Hammond, a chemical engineering professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Spider silk goes through this sort of
stretching before it breaks, and in doing so, it absorbs a lot of energy. This
energy-absorbing process is what makes the material so tough."

Spiders spin silk by secreting a fluid, fibrous protein similar to keratin, the
same protein found in hair and horns. This protein hardens as it oozes, a
process that scientists are only now beginning to understand. So far, they have
been unable to produce fibers with the same strength.

But researchers at Tufts University near Boston have discovered how spiders and
silkworms produce such strong fibers. Surprisingly, "the entire process is
controlled by the amount of water," says David Kaplan, a biomedical engineer at
Tufts.

By using the right balance of water, spiders and silkworms control the
silkmaking process by preventing proteins from solidifying too quickly. Dr.
Kaplan copied the process in the lab, giving scientists a new approach to making
artificial silk and spawning hopes of an array of new products from body armor
to clothing and superstrong rope.

Scientists are also turning to spiders in the hope of producing an ideal
pesticide - one that can target and kill specific crop-destroying insects, while
posing no threat to other insects, humans, or animals, says Glenn King, a
researcher at the University of Connecticut. About the size of a small crab,
Australia's funnel-web spider produces a venom made up of more than 100
compounds. Several of those compounds kill only specific insects, Dr. King says.

"By isolating these compounds from the spider venom and putting them in a common
virus that affects only insects, the virus can deliver the toxin to a specific
pest," he says. The result could be an environmentally safe pesticide - if
scientists can figure out how to make the compounds in a chemical lab.

Cottonmouth detergent?

Another kind of venom - from snakes - may one day help out on laundry day.
Chemist Devin Iimoto of California's Whittier College and his students have
discovered that an enzyme extracted from the venom of the Florida cottonmouth
(water moccasin) removes bloodstains from clothing.

Laundry detergents already incorporate enzymes made by bacteria. But using an
enzyme produced by a larger animal is something new. The snake enzyme attacks
bloodstains, breaking the attachments between the dried blood and cloth fibers.

Research is in its early stages and no companies are known to put snake-venom
enzymes into detergents.

Other animals also are providing leads to new, more effective products. For
example, mussels stick to objects such as rocks, cement pilings, and one
another. Up close, it is easy to see the dozens of tiny filaments that stretch
from their bodies and attach them to home turf. A mussel also has an organ
called a "foot" that it extends, attaching each filament to a stationary object
with a tiny dab of glue.

The foot repeats the process until it is secure enough to resist the pull of
tides, currents, and predators. Purdue University researchers have discovered
that the formation of mussel adhesive requires iron, a metal never before found
in bioadhesives.

Most of these glues are based on proteins. When iron is added, the gelatin-like
material hardens, says Purdue chemist Jonathan Wilker. Iron appears unique; the
hardening does not occur in the presence of other metals that can be processed
by plant and animal cells. This discovery could lead to improved adhesives,
rustproof coatings, and antifouling paints to defeat barnacles.

Production a problem

Of course, making a product in the lab is far different from producing it on the
factory floor. For example, before companies begin making detergents that remove
blood by using snake enzymes, they have to get the venom. Snakes breed poorly in
captivity and catching poisonous snakes in the wild to "milk" them for venom is
difficult and dangerous. So scientists are developing laboratory cultures of
cells that produce snake venom.

Spider silk will probably have to go the synthetic route. "You can't farm
spiders the way you farm silkworms," Dr. Hammond says. "Spiders are very
cannibalistic. If you put two spiders together in a cage or any kind of
enclosure, eventually one spider will eat the other."

To create a synthetic fiber, Hammond's team starts with polyurethane, a common
plastic used to make packaging and fabrics. So far, her team has made fiber
that's both soft and stretchy. They are investigating the use of ultrasmall
particles to make the fiber stronger.

Other researchers are trying to take a shortcut with biotechnology. A small
start-up company in Quebec, Nexia Biotechnologies, is adding a silk-producing
gene to New Zealand miniature goats. These animals produce from 2 to 15 grams of
spider silk per liter of milk, vastly more than what a spider makes.

Nexia is raising two herds in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and St. Telesphore, Quebec.
Eventually, the company wants to produce as much as five tons of spider silk a
year.

Animal products of yore

* Wool: Central Asians began raising sheep for food and clothing about 10,000
years ago. In about 4000 BC, Mediterranean societies pioneered the spinning of
wool into yarn.

* Leather: The tanning of hides dates to prehistoric times. Egyptian leather
artifacts more than 3,000 years old have been found.

* Silk: China kept sole possession of silkmaking for more than 3,000 years; the
technology spread after AD 550, when Byzantine Emperor Justinian I sent monks to
China to smuggle out silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds.

* Parchment: In the 2nd century BC, paper made of skins was first used (instead
of Egyptian-controlled papyrus) at Pergamum in Asia Minor to build the library
of King Eumenes II.

* Whale oil: Basques began whaling in the 10th century, cooking down the blubber
to make oil for lamps.


Sources: World Book; Encyclopedia Americana

Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-26/s_26725.asp

Focus on hydrogen economy has things backwards

Thursday, August 26, 2004
An op/ed by Dr. David Suzuki

As summer slides towards fall, fuel-cell manufacturers and automakers are out on
the streets of major cities around the world, showing off million-dollar
prototypes of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

The cars are technological marvels. They're cool. They're futuristic. And
they're virtually useless - for now.

As much as "gee whiz" stories abound about new hydrogen fuel-cell technologies,
one can't help but wonder if we aren't getting a tad ahead of ourselves. While
it's great to have these vehicles to show off, it would be much better if we had
a way to produce hydrogen in sufficient quantities cleanly. Or had a way to
store the stuff. Or an infrastructure to move it around. Or any number of a host
of other major hurdles we need to jump before we are able to reach the vaunted
goal of a "hydrogen economy."

It would indeed be an incredible achievement. The problem with today's "carbon"
economy is that it depends almost entirely on fossil fuels for energy. These
fuels, such as oil, coal, and natural gas, are nonrenewable resources. There's a
finite amount of them on the planet, and the most easily reached oil and gas
reserves have already been exploited. It's getting more difficult and expensive
to find remaining reserves.

In addition, burning these fuels (as well as extracting and transporting them)
releases greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere. We all know
the results: air pollution and climate change to name just two.

Hydrogen, on the other hand, is the most plentiful element in the universe. It's
capable of producing more energy per unit than any other fuel. And releasing
that energy from hydrogen creates zero pollution. No nasty smog-forming
chemicals. No heat-trapping gases. It's almost too good to be true.

Unfortunately, right now it is. The technical hurdles necessary to push
fuel-cell vehicles into mass-production are daunting. Even more important, if
these challenges were met tomorrow, there is currently no way to produce massive
quantities of hydrogen cleanly.

Hydrogen has to be removed from water through electrolysis or from natural gas
through reformation. Both methods currently require substantial amounts of
fossil-fuel energy, which releases pollution and causes climate change. In
short, the benefits of a hydrogen economy will be lost if we have to use fossil
fuels to produce the stuff.

For a hydrogen economy to function as we want, it will require a massive
transformation of our current energy system to become more efficient and to
focus on renewable sources like wind, solar, micro-hydro, geothermal, and tidal
power.

Only when we have large quantities of clean electricity available will it make
sense to start producing hydrogen for vehicles. This shift to renewable energy
will take decades, giving researchers plenty of time to overcome hydrogen
fuel-cell hurdles. In the meantime, our air will get cleaner and our climate
will start to stabilize.

So why aren't we doing it? Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, the technology for this
transformation exists today. It is not a technical problem but a political one.
Two researchers from Princeton University point this out in a recent edition of
Science, arguing, "Humanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the
first half of this century simply by scaling up what we already know how to do."

In other words, we can shift to a clean economy before we perfect hydrogen fuel
cells. In fact, taking major steps to a clean economy now are a necessary
condition to having a hydrogen economy in the future. So let's just do it.
Delaying action will only make the challenge more difficult.

As a recent Science editorial points out, "Postponing action on emission
reduction is like refusing to take medication for a developing infection. It
guarantees that greater costs will have to be paid later."

A hydrogen economy may well be our future, but right now we need to focus on the
present. The technology to start the shift to a clean economy exists right now.
There's nothing futuristic about it.


Source: David Suzuki Foundation

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/?flash=yes

U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Building Technologies Program

Research That Works!

DOE's Building Technologies Program works to improve the energy efficiency of
our nation's buildings through innovative new technologies and better building
practices.

Research activities <http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/tech/index.html>
advance the next generation of energy-efficient components, equipment, and
materials, plus a whole-building approach that optimizes building performance
and savings.

Regulatory activities
<http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/program_areas/codes.html> improve building
codes, appliance and equipment standards, and guidelines for efficient energy
use.

Energy-efficient buildings use less energy and cost less to operate, saving
money for homeowners and businesses alike. They also help the environment and
our nation, improving our energy security as well as the everyday lives of
Americans.

Energy Solutions for Your Building
… Homes
… Multifamily
… Office
… Retail
… Health Care
… Lodging
… School
… University
… Government
… High Performance

A Comprehensive Guide for Creating More Efficient, Affordable Buildings
… Plan & Finance
… Design, Construct & Renovate
… Choose Building Components
… Operate & Maintain
… Software Tools

[The report itself, CORRIM: Life-Cycle Environmental Performance of Renewable
Building Materials, can be directly accessed at:
    http://www.corrim.org/reports/corrim_june_2004.pdf]

  * * *

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-31-09.asp#anchor6

Lowering the Environmental Costs of Home Building

SEATTLE, Washington, August 31, 2004 (ENS) - Most of the energy that goes into
building U.S. homes is consumed - not by the power tools, welding and trucking
during construction - but during the manufacture of the building materials,
according to a new study by the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial
Materials <http://www.corrim.org/>.

The consortium is a research group started by 15 universities and research
institutes. Their report considers the energy required to produce building
materials, construct, maintain and demolish a house on a time period of 75
years.

A 2,100 square foot house designed for the cold Minneapolis climate was used to
compare wood frame with steel frame construction while a 2,200 square foot house
was designed for the hot and humid Atlanta climate was used to compare wood
frame with concrete frame construction.

The designs in both cases were typical of homes in those regions.

In this case researchers determined that the construction of the hypothetical
Minneapolis steel frame home used 17 percent more energy than the matching wood
frame home.

Constructing the study's hypothetical Atlanta concrete frame home used 16
percent more energy than a matching wood frame house.

The energy tallied for the study included not just electricity but also such
things as diesel and fuel oil to extract and haul materials, natural gas to
generate steam in lumber mills and electricity for steel mills.

"Everything kind of flows from energy consumption," said coauthor Bruce Lippke,
a University of Washington professor of forest resources. "If you are using
energy, you are polluting water, polluting air and kicking out carbon dioxide
emissions."

The carbon emissions associated with energy use represented one of the more
important environmental impacts, the report says.

The researchers considered the impact of the carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous
oxide emissions generated during the life cycles of the homes to determine the
global warming potential of different construction materials.

They estimate the global warming potential of the steel frame home to be 26
percent higher than the wood frame, and the concrete frame home was 31 percent
higher than the comparable wood frame.


Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.ppic.org/main/commentary.asp?i=507

Commentary
Green Grow The State's Voters; It's Not About Money: Eco-Protection Ranks Ahead
Of Economic Growth As An Issue

By Mark Baldassare, research director, Public Policy Institute of California
This opinion article appeared in the Sacramento Bee on August 1, 2004

Californians are increasingly concerned about smog and higher gasoline costs,
and they look to the state to promote cleaner air and greater fuel efficiency.
Seems like a perfect opportunity for our cigar-smoking, Hummer-driving new
governor to show bold leadership. Moreover, if he can deliver on issues so near
and dear to the hearts and minds of state residents, he may be able to further
establish his credentials as a governor who bridges the partisan divide.

For many reasons, environmental politics is of great significance to
Californians today. They rank air pollution as a big problem in their region,
and most believe that smog has become a serious threat to their own personal
health and that of their families. A majority also report that global warming is
a reality that requires immediate policy action. How serious are state residents
about these issues? They now rank environmental protection over economic growth.

With most Californians expecting the recent rise in gasoline prices to be
permanent, many are calling for environmental actions that serve multiple
purposes - cleaning dirty air, improving fuel efficiency and developing
alternative energy sources. And despite their reputation for being stingy at the
ballot box, Californians today appear willing to pay higher sticker prices for
their cars and to increase their taxes for pro-environmental purposes.

A quick scan of the political landscape might inform the governor about how
important environmental issues are to the electorate - particularly outside of
his GOP base. In our latest Statewide Survey of the Public Policy Institute of
California, nearly four in 10 voters say that the environmental positions of the
candidates in this fall's statewide contests will be "very important" in
deciding how they will vote.

Unfortunately for Republican candidates on the ballot, most voters have
concluded that the Democratic party, rather than the GOP, holds positions that
are closest to their own views on environmental issues. Besides an overwhelming
majority of Democrats (86%), a majority of independents (55%) and one in five
Republicans (21%) express this sentiment.

The widely held belief that the federal government is not doing enough in the
environmental arena also has important implications for the fall election.
Californians are increasingly disappointed in the overall performance of
President George W. Bush, specifically with his environmental record to date:
Disapproval of the president on this issue increased from 44 percent in June
2002 to 53 percent in July 2004. And while six in 10 Republicans support the
president today on environmental issues, eight in 10 Democrats and six in 10
independent voters do not.

Given these dismal ratings, it's not surprising that Democrat John Kerry is
widely favored over President Bush when voters are asked whom they trust on
environmental issues (56% to 30%), helping Kerry gain a double-digit lead in the
presidential race (49% to 38%). But a lack of confidence in the GOP on
environmental issues also appears to have trickled down to other statewide
races. Democrat Barbara Boxer is chosen over Republican Bill Jones on
environmental issues (54% to 28%), helping Boxer achieve a 15-point lead in the
U.S. Senate race in California (52% to 37%).

Why must Schwarzenegger avoid being labeled as out of touch with the state's
voters on environmental issues? Keep in mind that six in 10 voters in California
are Democrats or independents. Thus, a GOP governor's approval ratings on issues
of importance to voters outside of his party - such as environmental protection
- are crucial to political survival. The good news for Schwarzenegger is that
Democrats and independents are in a "wait and see" mode. While 39 percent of
state residents say they approve of his handling of environmental issues, and 27
percent disapprove, about one in three have not yet made up their minds.

This reluctance to prejudge the GOP governor reflects the fact that
Schwarzenegger enjoys high overall approval from Democrats (49%) and
independents (56%) in addition to Republicans (84%). Moreover, Schwarzenegger
has reached out across party lines in making environmental appointments and
setting policy goals and has made a number of early proposals that seem to
resonate with the public's demands for a more activist state role.

Surprisingly, two in three Californians favor the governor's call for higher
vehicle license fees for new cars to pay for state programs to put cleaner
engines in dirty diesel buses and trucks. The majority of voters like the
governor's futuristic idea of having California leading the way in the
development of hydrogen fuel cell technology through the construction of a
"hydrogen highway," with 200 fueling stations by 2010.

They support the goal of having a solid share of new homes in California at
least partially run on solar power starting in 2006. The governor's idea that
states in the Western United States increase their energy efficiency by 20
percent by 2020 is also highly popular, in light of the fact that many
Californians prefer energy conservation over offshore oil drilling.

Not only are the governor's ideas popular, but the public is also enthusiastic
about the clean air and fuel efficiency proposals by the state's Democratic
Legislature. More than eight in 10 Californians support state legislation that
requires all automakers to reduce greenhouse gases for new cars sold in the
state. Two in three residents support a proposal to allow solo hybrid vehicles
to use carpool lanes as a way of promoting fuel-efficient automobiles. And nine
in 10 Californians want a law that requires all trucks that deliver goods in
California to meet federal air pollution standards.

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger destined to be the environmental governor? The voters
hope so. After all, most Californians think that their state government, rather
than the federal government, will best reflect their own environmental
aspirations. But the answer will ultimately depend on the governor's willingness
to follow through on his ambitious initiatives, and his ability to work with the
Democratic Legislature on their own plans.

Apparently, it is in the environmental arena that the GOP governor and the
Democratic Legislature are most likely to find common ground, because there are
compelling political reasons for and public pressures on the parties to work
together toward a green California.


Related Resources

Publications

PPIC Statewide Survey: Special Survey on Californians and the Environment, July
2004 <http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=539>

PPIC Statewide Survey: Special Survey on Californians and the Environment,
November 2003 <http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/S_1103MBS.pdf>

PPIC Statewide Survey: Special Survey on Californians and the Environment, July
2003 <http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/S_703MBS.pdf>


All Contents © Public Policy Institute of California 2003, 2004

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-08-31-inner-city_x.htm

More companies tap location, location, location of inner cities
By Del Jones, USA TODAY

BALTIMORE - Think the inner city is riddled with crime and uneducated labor and
is a ghost town for business?

Illustration Omitted:
      A sign marks the location of the CookTek factory in Chicago.
By Anne Ryan, USA TODAY

Consider 180s, a company that seems properly named for going in the opposite
direction to the herd. It set up headquarters in the inner harbor of Baltimore,
which might be known as a touristy area but which also has a 20% poverty rate
and a 50% high school dropout rate. 180s sells accessories, primarily for
athletes, such as gloves with a valve that skiers blow into to keep their hands
warm. 180s is enjoying heat of its own: Revenue is up 14,000% the past six years
to $47 million.

Then there's CookTek. Its pizza-oven factory is so close to Chicago's
Cabrini-Green housing project that CEO Robert Wolters says he could hit a golf
ball 350 yards from the rooftop into some of the nation's most infamous squalor.
CookTek's revenue surged 2,400% the past six years to more than $10 million in
2003. "Look for the poorest section of town. That's where our factory is," says
Wolters, 37. "Five years ago, it was awful: prostitutes, drug dealers, people
living under bridges. Not a place you'd want to be after dark."

The success of CookTek and 180s is not despite their location in the poorer
sections of their cities - it's largely because of it. And they are no fluke.
When the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) set out to persuade
companies to consider the inner city, it was surprised to find at least 7,000
had already made the discovery and moved in to take advantage.

Illustration Omitted:
      Robert Wolters, CEO of CookTek. By Anne Ryan, USA TODAY

The ICIC, a non-profit established by Harvard professor Michael Porter,
identified 800 ZIP codes in the 100 largest cities where unemployment and
poverty were at least 50% higher than in the surrounding area. In those
distressed neighborhoods were 364 companies that grew an average 866% in the
five years ending in 2002, to average $17 million in annual revenue.

So much for the inner city's image as a business badlands.

Porter is a leading business guru and author of Competitive Strategy, a textbook
used in virtually every business school in the world. He has advised nations
including India and Ecuador on gaining a competitive foothold against advanced
economies. He is credited for helping make Spain's Basque region prosperous.

After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, he concluded that cities face economic
challenges similar to those of poor nations, with one important exception:
"Inner cities are sitting in the center of the most prosperous parts of the
world," he says.

Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and
Metropolitan Policy, agrees, calling Porter's inner-city work revolutionary:
"The only issue is not whether but how much the inner city will compete."

Many advantages

Moving in from the suburbs can offer a company many advantages. Inner cities
often are underserved by businesses and offer much more consumer buying power
per square mile. They are closer to airports and major highways. They are a
source of loyal and motivated workers who in many cases are not used to getting
paid a fair wage.

But that's not to say companies such as 180s go to the inner city in search of a
cheap workforce. The 9-year-old company's success is built on selling
high-margin products such as $19.99 lightweight ear warmers that compete against
$4 earmuffs. But even with those margins, CEO Brian Le Gette says there is no
way 180s could manufacture in the USA and compete, so he outsources production
to China.


What is an inner-city company?

… An independent, for-profit corporation or partnership.
… Headquartered in or have 51% or more of its physical operations in
economically distressed urban areas (50% higher unemployment rate and 50% higher
poverty rate than surrounding area).
… Have 10 or more employees.
… Have a five-year operating sales history that includes sales of at least
$200,000 in 1998 and at least $1 million in 2002.


Still, Le Gette says 180s shows how inner-city firms can help their communities.
The 93 jobs at headquarters are almost exclusively for the college educated. Le
Gette says 180s attracts more creative workers than it could if based in the
suburbs, and those workers are more likely to put their egos aside for the good
of the company and the neighborhood.

Some employees, including promotions manager Eliza Graham, say they would be
working elsewhere if it weren't for the company's philanthropic efforts,
including the mentoring of 30 at-risk Baltimore high school students. Graham
tells how fulfilled she felt when a student told her of his plan to sell drugs
and she was able to get him to consider the consequences. None of the 30
students that 180s has taken under its wing has dropped out.

Inner-city companies also make urban areas more diverse as middle-class
newcomers move in. Nearly half of workers at the 364 fastest-growing companies
live in low-income pockets, ICIC says.

Thirty-nine of the 93 employees at 180s live inside Baltimore's city limits.
That includes CEO Le Gette, who lives in a condo next door to his office, "68
seconds" from his desk, "30 seconds when it's raining," and recently arrived to
work in sandals. When posing for photographs, he says he smiles no more than the
Mona Lisa.

Possible leg up

It's unknown how many jobs at inner-city companies go to the poor, but 32% of
their employees are minority vs. 11% nationwide, says the ICIC. Maria Garza,
originally from Mexico, makes $10.75 an hour in her fourth year at CookTek,
leading a team that manufactures state-of-the-art commercial ovens for Domino's
and Pizza Hut franchisees and others. She never got past $8 an hour during 11
years of making mattresses at another factory. Before CookTek, Garza says, she
would have had to commute an hour to the suburbs or O'Hare airport to earn more.

Inner-city companies disproportionately offer health care, retirement benefits,
life insurance, homeownership incentives and education and training. In other
words, inner-city companies can offer the leg up that public schools have so far
failed at, Porter says.

"Education is the key long term," Porter says. "But it may be a chicken and egg
thing." Establishing a job base might pave the way for better schools, he says.

Inner-city employees with children often commute from the suburbs because
inner-city schools are so poor. Vance Bishop has found a solution for his
5-year-old daughter, Cassidy, who starts kindergarten this fall. The Bishops
live in downtown Salt Lake City, two blocks from his inner-city job as an
account executive for Ikano, an Internet service provider that has grown 9,400%
in six years. Ikano's headquarters are in a Census tract with 36% poverty.

Bishop and his wife, Nicole, considered private school but then discovered
Washington Elementary in the shadows of the Utah Capitol building and where
principal Joanne Price says the majority of the students are from a nearby
homeless shelter.

Washington Elementary wanted to keep the campus diverse, which meant keeping
middle-class students from fleeing. It offers some classrooms where parents are
required to volunteer three hours a week. That means each teacher is always
assisted by three or four adults, which satisfied Bishop's concerns. And he's
happy that his daughter will play soccer with children from Africa, Latin
America and French Polynesia.

Competitive advantages

Some inner-city companies are serious about improving their employees'
educations, too. To get hired at On-Target Supplies and Logistics of Dallas, the
156 employees had to promise to pursue, at company expense, training or
education that will lead to promotion or a better job elsewhere. Not following
through means getting fired, which happens to at least one employee every
quarter, says CEO Albert Black, who grew up in the public housing of Frazier
Courts in south Dallas. He says he won't invest in employees who don't invest in
themselves.

Few companies flee the suburbs just to be altruistic. Inner-city competitive
advantages include:

*Underserved markets. This is something Magic Johnson discovered with his chain
of movie theaters and other businesses. The inner-city spending power per square
mile is $25 million vs. $3 million in the suburbs, ICIC says. Grocery stores in
inner Boston and New York sell 40% more per square foot than suburban stores in
the region, Porter says.

*Location and logistics. Inner cities are often near airports and the interstate
highway system. Ikano CEO Henry Smith leased business park space in 1995 in the
Salt Lake City suburb of Murray, but it was a 90-minute drive to the airport. He
bought out his lease to move downtown in 1997, slicing the airport trip to 10
minutes. "We have clients and investors going in and out all the time, and
meetings can last until 30 minutes before the flight departs," Smith says.

"The buzz of being in the city adds to the culture," says CookTek's Wolters, who
adds that his only regret is not buying the Chicago land. He expects his rent
will only climb.

*Eager employees. "The inner-city workforce has been maligned, but it is loyal
and motivated, with higher retention rates than in the suburbs," Porter says.

The CookTek factory employs 25, mostly Hispanic women, many of whom have only a
five-minute bus ride to work. A few days of training at a cost of about $1,000
per employee is needed for light assembly.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to being downtown. Crime has been brought
under control in most cities to the point that the problem is one only of
perception, Katz says. Still, Wolters says, crime was a consideration when
CookTek moved next to Cabrini-Green. The suburbs would be safer, he says, but
women are encouraged to walk with partners, and the company has not had to hire
additional security guards. "We had some cars broken into, but there has been no
personal injury," he says.

When CEOs were asked what the biggest disadvantage was to being in the inner
cities, the answer was almost unanimous: limited parking. Wolters also worries
that the supply of quality workers is finite and outsourcing may become an
option if his factory grows to several hundred.

"People who live in the city have more interests: the arts, sports," Le Gette
says. "I counted 42 restaurants within two blocks. In the suburbs, fast food
dulls creativity."

Wolters agrees. "A mundane facility in an industrial park surrounded by
cornfields is rather boring."


Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-08-31-inner-city_x.htm

© Copyright 2004 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **

2004 EPA REGION 9 BROWNFIELDS FUNDING WORKSHOPS

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9 Brownfields Team is
hosting a series of free workshops to assist communities interested in applying
for brownfields assessment, cleanup, or revolving loan fund grants
<http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/fsfc.nsf/58cc78776e5e186b8825641b006a9bd8/ccd09a108a\
d0583b8825641f000f478c!OpenDocument>.  The grants provide funding to assist
communities that plan to return contaminated (or potentially contaminated)
properties back to productive reuse.  The workshops will focus on helping
participants to understand the basic elements of the grant programs, the process
for submitting grant proposals, and the required proposal elements. For
additional info: ca.center@...

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-22-01.asp

World Breathes Easier, It's Car-Free Day

LONDON, UK, September 22, 2004 (ENS) - Drivers across Europe left their cars at
home today and headed to work by tube, bicycle or on foot. The ninth annual Car
Free Day in Europe is proving to be popular, with 1,146 cities participating and
235 additional cities supporting the campaign.

Illustration Omitted:
    Angela Bischoff of the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada
spreads the word about Car Free Day. (Photo by Margo Gesser courtesy Ecology
Action Centre)

This year, the initiative has spread far beyond Europe. City residents in Japan
and Argentina, Taiwan and Canada are leaving their cars behind today and using
another method of transportation.

In England, the Car Free Day is being supported by a number of local
authorities, who are closing roads and putting on street parties.

"It is great to see local initiatives taking place across the city to mark Car
Free day," said London Euro-MP Jean Lambert. "But one Car Free day is not
enough."

Lambert, Green Party MEP for the capital and a Walthamstow resident, made her
comments at a Car Free Festival in Leyton on Saturday which was organized by
Waltham Forest Borough Council as the borough's contribution to the initiative.

"Across Europe people are rediscovering their towns and cities, their neighbors
and their heritage - and reducing congestion, pollution and accidents - thanks
to the In Town Without My Car! initiative," she said.

Her desire for an extension of Car-Free Day has lots of support. In fact, the
day has turned into European Mobility Week.

The week started last Thursday when the Environment Directorate of the European
Commission hosted a conference in Brussels on Smart Moves for Sustainable
Mobility.

Experts and decision makers from all over the world gathered to try to answer
difficult questions and tackle the real problems of mobility in cities.

Illustration Omitted:
    In Chrudim, Czech Republic cyclists left their cars parked. (Photo courtesy
European Mobility Week)

This year, public transport, cycling, and living streets/greenways were selected
as common themes for the whole of Europe.

Safe streets for children is another focus of attention. Children are vulnerable
road users. Each year 2,163 young people under the age of 17 are killed in
traffic. Most accidents happen on the way to and from school.

At the local level, each local authority that takes part organizes its own "In
town, without my car!" event and involves as many citizens as possible as well
as other local players such as shopkeepers, companies, associations and schools.
The goal is to facilitate widespread debate on the necessity for changes in
behavior in relation to mobility and in particular the use of the private car.

Friends of the Earth welcomed Car Free Day, saying that reducing traffic in
urban areas brings real benefits, allowing communities to experience calmer,
safer environments for pedestrians, cyclists and commuters.

Friends of the Earth welcomed European Car Free Day but said more must be done
to reduce traffic, and cut pollution and noise during the rest of the year.

Tony Bosworth, Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner, said, "We hope that
as many motorists as possible will support European Car Free Day and discover
alternatives to the car that can be used throughout the year. But the government
and local authorities must also do more by investing in public transport and
facilities for cyclists and pedestrians. Using the car less must become more
than just an annual event."

The Dutch Presidency of the EU is making an effort to raise the profile of
sustainable transport as an issue to be resolved without delay. In his
presentation Monday to the European Parliament Committee on the Environment,
Public Health and Food Safety, Pieter van Geel, state secretary for housing,
spatial planning and the environment said, "Mobility is vital to today's society
but road traffic is a source of environmental concern."

"The problems it causes, like air pollution, noise nuisance and greenhouse gas
emissions, are difficult to solve and harm both human health and the
environment. For that reason, I think it is essential to get the subject back
onto the European agenda. It is already on the agenda for a policy debate at
next month's Environment Council," said van Geel.


Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

**   NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.   **