Friday, 13 May 2005

A Sorted Affair

Japanese municipalities take recycling to a whole new level

Yokohama, Japan, a city of 3.5 million, recently sent its citizens a 27-page instruction book on how to sort trash for recycling into 10 different categories, detailing how to dispose of more than 500 separate items, from used lipstick tubes to old socks. The city aims to slash the amount of waste being sent to incinerators by 30 percent by 2010. Kamikatsu, a small town of 2,200 residents, has set its goal even higher -- no garbage thrown out at all by 2020. To achieve this lofty aim, the town requires citizens to sort their waste into a growing number of recycling categories -- now standing at 44. Of course, some residents grumble that the sorting is too complicated for mere mortals, but despite complaints, in the last four years, Kamikatsu's recycling rate has hovered around 80 percent. Intense social pressure helps, with volunteer garbage guardians across Japan inspecting their neighbors' sorting efforts and pestering laggards to get with the program.


Kenn Kaufman, a birding expert known for his popular field-guide series, is frustrated that the growing population of birders has little political clout, and suggests that they could learn a few things from the hook-and-bullet crowd. Kaufman ranges far and wide in answering reader questions, touching on the reappearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker, predation on songbirds by house cats, the tricky topic of wind farms, and how to keep spirits up when the going gets tough.

Teach an Old Dog a New Mix

Brit researcher says clean energy has more juice than previously thought

It's a familiar argument: Renewable-energy technologies are not "mature," and the power they provide is intermittent, so nuclear power is our only reliable, large-scale alternative to greenhouse-gas spewing oil and coal. But Graham Sinden of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute begs to differ. With the right mix of technologies, properly distributed, Sinden says, renewables can "be made to match real-time electricity demand patterns" and represent "a serious alternative to conventional power sources." His research focused on a mix of wind, solar, and dCHP -- domestic combined heat and power, involving high-tech boilers that generate electricity as they heat water -- and concluded that the right mix could generate over half the electricity the U.K. needs.

Rivers Phoenix

Many small waterways rising from ashes, but U.S. rivers still ailing

With press attention focused on major river cleanups -- when it's focused on rivers at all -- some 37,000 small river and stream restoration projects in the U.S. have gone largely unnoticed, despite their environmental importance. The local, state, and federal restorations, costing an estimated $14 billion or more since 1990, range from restoring streams' natural curves on behalf of salmon and groundwater supplies to creating streams out of formerly buried plumbing in urban areas, and have contributed to the overall health of the nation's ecosystems one bit at a time. But despite many small victories, the nation's waterways overall have been getting dirtier since about 1998, following a few-decade stretch of increasing cleanliness. Now over a third of rivers are polluted or impaired and freshwater use is so ravenous that some rivers never reach the ocean. Stir in the aging sewer-treatment plants that the U.S. EPA says need to be replaced -- at a cost of up to $450 billion -- and the issue of clean waterways in the U.S. becomes muddy indeed.

Better Latte Than Never

Eco-friendly coffee could save El Salvador's dwindling wildlife

Environmental groups are working to help El Salvador's coffee farmers achieve green certification so that they can survive in a volatile worldwide market -- and the wildlife that finds refuge on their farms can survive as well. The country's native ecosystems have been almost entirely wiped out, and its once-prodigious wildlife now finds safe haven among the tall shade trees planted to protect coffee shrubs from harsh sunlight. It's also coffee farms that are "protecting the watersheds, that are buffering and extending the few parks, and that are conserving the soils," says Chris Wille of the Rainforest Alliance. Coffee farms now cover some 10 to 15 percent of the country, but the vicissitudes of the coffee market mean that many are being sold to developers and cattle ranchers. Certified "green" coffee (there are a number of different certifications) tends to hold its value through market fluctuations. So next time you're picking up a latte, pay attention.