Environment

Sea Shepherd Helps Whales Survive

- Adam Clare

Japan’s notorious killing spree of whales has been challenged by Sea Shepherd for years and this past year Sea Shepherd literally saved whales.

Japan’s whaling ships have returned from the Southern Ocean with their smallest catch in years, prompting the fleet’s leader to blame harassment by the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group for the shortfall.

The Nisshin Maru, the fleet’s mother ship, returned to Tokyo harbour yesterday with just 507 whales, a little over half the target catch of 935, according to the fisheries agency. The haul of minke whales and a single finback was well down on last year’s catch of 680.

The fleet said Sea Shepherd’s attempts to sabotage the hunt had deprived it of 31 days’ whaling.

The annual confrontation between the two groups reached its height in January with the sinking of Sea Shepherd’s high-tech powerboat, the Ady Gil, after a collision with the Shonan Maru 2 harpoon boat.

Read more at The Guardian.

Iceland and Norway also participate in annual whale killing.

Let us not forget that Bluefin Tuna is endangered and we need to protect them too.

Waterlife on the NFB

- Adam Clare

The National Film Board of Canada has a great website for the documentary Waterlife. The site has music by Brian Eno and features a neat way to explore the issues surrounding water in the Great Lakes region of Canada.

Here’s some info on the film.

Waterlife follows the epic cascade of the Great Lakes from Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean, telling the story of the last huge supply of fresh water on Earth. Filled with fascinating characters and stunning imagery, Waterlife is a cinematic poem about the beauty of water and the dangers of taking it for granted. Narrated by Gord Downie, lead vocalist of The Tragically Hip and Waterkeeper’s Trustee of Lake Ontario. Featuring music by Sam Roberts, Sufjan Stevens, Sigur Ros, Robbie Robertson and Brian Eno.

Plastic Boat Sets Sail to Plastic Patch

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

The Plastiki is a plastic boat that has set sail to raise awareness of the all the pollution from plastics that’s sitting in our oceans and it looks like they are off on an exciting trip!

The purpose, said expedition leader David de Rothschild, is to draw attention to the health of the oceans and to demonstrate the value of recycled plastic bottles. De Rothschild and his crew of five hope to sail to Australia, a voyage of about 11,000 nautical miles.

The Plastiki, named in honor of Norwegian explorer Thor Hyderdahl’s raft Kon Tiki, is a boat like no other in the world. Besides the hull of recycled plastic water and soda bottles, the vessel is made of a hardened plastic called PET.

The boat is a twin-hulled catamaran rigged as a ketch. It will rely on the wind for propulsion and has only a small auxiliary engine. No such boat has ever made an ocean passage before.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/20/BAIO1CILMT.DTL

You can take the Plastiki Pledge.

“Nom nom nom” Says the Cement

- Adam Clare

Our good friend algae is at it again and is cleaning smokestacks!

A mixture of hot gas rises out of a flue stack at the St. Marys Cement plant about 50 kilometres west of Waterloo. But not all the CO2-rich exhaust is vented to the open air.

Some is redirected through a 15-centimetre thick pipe connected to the side of the stack. The pipe carries the gas into a high-tech facility where a species of algae from the neighbouring Thames River uses photosynthesis to absorb the carbon dioxide and release oxygen in return.

“It’s a small model of what a big full-scale facility could be,” says Martin Vroegh, environment manager with St. Marys Cement Inc., headquartered in Toronto. The algae project, which went live last fall, is believed to be the first in the world to demonstrate the capture of CO2 from a cement plant.

The idea, Vroegh explained, is to turn CO2 into a commodity rather than treat it as a liability. The CO2-consuming algae will be continually harvested, dried using waste heat from the plant, and then burned as a fuel inside the plant’s cement kilns. Alternatively, the green goop can be processed into biofuels for the company’s truck fleet.

Keep reading at The Star.

Thanks Mike!

C’est What? Vegetable Oil!

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

A restaurant in downtown Toronto has converted their deep fryer into a more efficient model and use the waste oil from the fryer to fuel a car. Neat!

Since installing the new deep fryer in late January, Broughton says his vegetable oil use has been cut in half and the amount of gas to run the fryer has been drastically reduced.

“The fryer is supposed to use 40 per cent less gas, but we’re still assessing exactly how much we’re saving. Just from the lower vegetable oil use, I’m saving $80 a week, about $4,000 a year. My waste used to be about 100, 110 litres a week. Now it’s about 50 litres a week. Angelo now takes pretty much all of our used oil for his car.”

Rigitano says the only problem he has had so far with the car is when he took it to be serviced.

“My mechanic started laughing. He said, ‘I’m getting hungry.’ ”

Fact: According to Natural Resources Canada, North Americans produce 5 to 6 kg per person of trap grease removed from commercial cooking operations each year and another 3 to 5 kg of cleaner used cooking oils. Converting this could produce almost 2.5 billion litres of clean diesel a year, worth about $2 billion.

Read the full article at The Star.

Thanks Kathryn!

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