Month: April 2008

Ontario Banning ‘Cosmetic’ Pesticides

- Adam Clare

People in Ontario will have nicer grass to roll around in next year – except on golf courses and farmer’s fields. No, I have no idea how using pesticides on a golf courses aren’t classified as a cosmetic use, although golf course might still be subject to the law (I don’t know yet). The main thrust of the legislation is to ban the sale of consumer pesticides, municipal bans could be circumvented by buying the pesticides and using them anyway. Now that loophole will be closed.

The provincewide ban is aimed at replacing a patchwork of local pesticide bylaws, but Ontario farmers will be exempt. There’s no word yet if the province also plans to exempt golf courses from the ban.

The Conservatives and New Democrats said Monday they would likely support the legislation, but they first want to make sure the ban will actually help the environment and isn’t just a public relations move by the Liberal government.

“I think our inclination is to probably support it, but at the same time we want to hear from the folks who are experts in this area, and whether they think it’s all politics or whether there is going to be some meaningful benefit to the environment,” said Opposition Leader Bob Runciman.

Compute a Little More Green

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

I tend to use computers daily and I like the environment, so I like to be as green as possible while on the ol’ computer machine. PC World has five tips for greener computing.

There’s also global shutdown day.

5. FIND A NEW HOME FOR YOUR OLD TECH
So you’re getting ready to upgrade to a new computer, but you’ve discovered that you have no room in the closet for the old one because it’s already filled with a decade’s worth of obsolete technology. What to do? One solution is to recycle your old gadgets by bringing them somewhere where they’ll be disposed of properly. You can find a list of services in your area by checking out Earth 911’s Web site, which tells you where to dispose of everything from batteries to toner cartridges to the 386 you’ve had knocking around since the first George Bush was in office.

Canada to Label Bisphenol A dangerous

- Adam Clare

Bisphenol A is chemical that is used to make plastic containers like Nalgene water bottles. Health Canada has been looking into the chemical for some time now and will announce today that Bispehnol A is considered dangerous in Canada. Some stores have banned products that use the chemical, with San Fransico providing some legislation against the chemical.

It is believed that bisphenol A can leach out of food and beverage containers when they are exposed to high heat or highly acidic foods.

Studies show that it mimics the hormone estrogen in the bloodstream, and is linked to health problems including breast cancer and infertility.

If bisphenol A is indeed declared dangerous, it could be up to a year or more before the health minister is able to issue regulations controlling its use.

Previous reports claimed the announcement would come as early as last Wednesday. That prompted several Canadian retailers to pull products containing bisphenol A from their shelves.

Tesco Labels Food with Carbon Footprint

- Adam Clare

In Feburary the New Yorker looked into the complexity of carbon footprint labeling of food, and the article spent a lot of time looking at Tesco’s efforts. The most important point from that article (I think) is that it sometimes makes environmental sense to eat food shipped from other parts of the world. Eating locally is not always the best thing to do.

For British consumers eating environmentally will be easier now. Tesco is about to test their carbon labelling program. One of Tesco’s goals in doing this is to create an industry standard.

The retailer will put carbon-count labels on varieties of orange juice, potatoes, energy-efficient light bulbs and washing detergent, stating the quantity in grammes of CO2 equivalent put into the atmosphere by their manufacture and distribution.

Chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said: “We will give the carbon content of the product and the category average.” The labels should eventually allow shoppers to compare carbon costs in the same way they can now compare salt and calorie content.

The UK’s biggest supermarket first announced its intention to put carbon counts on up to 70,000 products some 15 months ago. It has since been working with the Carbon Trust to find an accurate method of labelling. “It has not been simple, but we are there,” said Leahy yesterday. Tesco will unveil the details of the scheme shortly, and the chief executive said he hoped the labels “will end up being a standard”.

Use Solar Power During the Night

- Adam Clare

Storing energy in batteries is expensive, not the best thing to the environment, and inefficient when used on a large scale. The inability to store solar energy over the long-term has been a problem for hte adoption of solar power generation. That is, until now. THe New York Times is reporting on some companies that have found ways to store the energy solar power plants use in a giant thermos.

At Black & Veatch, a builder of power plants, Larry Stoddard, the manager of renewable energy consulting, said that with a molten salt design, “your turbine is totally buffered from the vagaries of the sun.” By contrast, “if I’ve got a 50 megawatt photovoltaic plant, covering 300 acres or so, and a large cloud comes over, I lose 50 megawatts in something like 100 to 120 seconds,” he said, adding, “That strikes fear into the hearts of utility dispatchers.”

Thermal storage using molten salt can work in a system like Ausra’s, with miles of piping, but if the salt is spread out through a serpentine pipe, rather than held in a heavily insulated tank, it has to be kept warm at night so it does not solidify, among other complications.

A tower design could also allow for operation at higher latitudes or places with less sun. Designers could simply put in bigger fields of mirrors, proponents say. A small start-up, eSolar, is pursuing that design, backed by Google, which has announced a program to try to make renewable electricity for less than the price of coal-fired power

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