So do you want a free telephone directory ?

So yesterday the telephone company distributed telephone directories in Jerusalem . Loads and loads of big fat directories to everyone , want it or not . Who uses a telephone directory these days ? The print I realised was so small that a granny ( I am assuming its only the granny generation would use a directory ) wouldn't be able to read a thing . Unless you are referring to the Yellow Pages . There is directory service at 144 ( you pay for it ) , there is directory service on the internet at Dapey Zahav and many others . And then it struck me , it is for the yellow pages , it is an advertisement as all the junk 'supplements' that one gets with the weekend newspaper , like the junk newspaper that one is handed out on the traffic crossing . But then how much does this add to the waste stream ? Yesterday the street was littered with the directories and tomorrow all the bins will be full of directories since nobody will bother to take the old ones for recycling . I weighed the directory and it weighs about 800 grams , with a very conservative estimate of 100,000 directories distributed in Jerusalem , it works out to 80 tonnes of newsprint . If 12 pines 40 feet (12.2m) tall, 8 inches (20cm) in diameter trees give a ton of newsprint , so that works out to 960 trees !! If the trees are spaced at 3 meters , each tree takes 9 sq.m which works out to 8640 sq.m of forest . So for the pleasure of distributing free directories in the city of Jerusalem we cut down nearly a hectare of of forest which is between 10-14 years . And we did not begin to talk about the energy required from the raw material stage to the delivery of the product .

So how many trees would make a ton of paper?

Claudia Thompson, in her book Recycled Papers: The Essential Guide (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), reports on an estimate calculated by Tom Soder, then a graduate student in the Pulp and Paper Technology Program at the University of Maine. He calculated that, based on a mixture of softwoods and hardwoods 40 feet tall and 6-8 inches in diameter, it would take a rough average of 24 trees to produce a ton of printing and writing paper, using the kraft chemical (freesheet) pulping process.

If we assume that the groundwood process is about twice as efficient in using trees, then we can estimate that it takes about 12 trees to make a ton of groundwood and newsprint. (The number will vary somewhat because there often is more fiber in newsprint than in office paper, and there are several different ways of making this type of paper.)

Some more paper stats here .

Greywater system

Today we finalised the greywater system that we are going to install . It is a very basic setup , greywater from the bath and the washing machine goes in a subterranean tank with a submersible pump which pumps it up to the terrace . The contractor is going to do the job of pumping up the terrace and I will make the rest of the filtration system which is essentially going to be a trench with gravel . The water will be released into a subsurface drip system . Schematically it is going to be like this .
If the water pump is 0.5 kw and takes even as much as half an hour everyday to pump up the water , the monthly consumption of electricity will be 15 Kwh which at 0.50 shekels/Kwh works out to 7.50 shekels a month or less than 2$ a month . The water saved will definitely offset the cost of running the pump .

Should we be worried about the price of tortillas

Ok , it has started happening . BBC reported that in Mexico the Mexicans stage tortilla protest

The price of the flat corn bread, the main source of calories for many poor Mexicans, recently rose by over 400%.

President Felipe Calderon has said the government will clamp down on hoarding and speculation to ease the problem.

But some blame the rise on demand for corn to make environmentally-friendly biofuels in the United States.

So is this where we are headed , the developed nations divert food crops to the production of bio-fuels and in the developing nations there is shortage of food ?
If this story is indicative of what is un store we are headed for worse times than 'tortilla protests' To reiterate what I has been said before about the damage bio-fuels can wreak read George Monbiot's Worse than fossil fuel .
Bio-fuels are no silver bullet , the one all inclusive means to salvation . It has to be a number of ideas leading to the same goal . Also we just cannot fool ourselves into believing we can continue to expend energy at the same levels as we did at our arrogant best if we switch to 'sustainable alternatives ' .

Carbon Offsets : More snake oil

Saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient truth the other day . The film is quite
convincing to somebody who doesn't need convincing , it just reaffirms one's faith in reducing one's footprint on planet earth . I believe it is
also quite convincing to the skeptics that one needs to take action. I
heard my boss spewing the need to go green . And what better way to be
green than to buy green !! I mentioned this need to buy green in a
previous blog. Coming back to the movie , the
movie suggests to take action and sends you to Climate Crisis to learn more
about global warming and action we as individuals can take. I agree
with everything in varying degrees to what the site promotes until it
comes to the point of carbon offsets/credits . The site points to the Cool driver site that allows you
to clean your conscience . It proclaims at the top of the site "You do
not have to stop driving to fight global warming "


The idea is that you clean your conscience by buying green credits that go towards seting up green energy like wind power , planting trees etc , very much akin to
absolving yourself of your sins by giving to the temple/priest/poor . I
understand the logic of carbon credits and I am for it but when somebody
starts promoting it as a tool to take care of one's sins , it really
gets my goat .
Rather than promoting a lifestyle that involves reduction of consumption
and using a car only when necessary it says , go and drive and we will
clean up the mess afterwards which is a lot of bull !!
The argument advanced by the likes of SinksWatch, Carbon Trade Watch or The Corner House is that such schemes fail to address (or, worse, deliberately disguise) the fact that the real problem is our excessive burning of fossil fuels. The Corner House’s uncompromising position is that “the only realistic approach to the dangers of climate change is to stop production of coal, oil and gas as soon as possible, leaving the great bulk of fossil fuels safely underground”.
Offsetting, in this view, merely salves consciences, while creating the
illusion that consumption (cheap air travel being a prime example) and
production patterns in the richer countries can be maintained without
harming the climate . Businesses offer the option to neutralize
everything from buying a plane ticket or cars by buying equivalent green
credits with ready calculators online .
The subtext that
these adverts forget to write is " We are a corporation that makes money doing green power
projects and we use suckers to pay for it . "

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Links
http://www.greenfutures.org.uk/features/default.asp?id=2599
http://www.newint.org/features/2006/07/01/keynote/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/19/selling-indulgences/

Biodiesel : Snake oil ?

Wikipedia defines Biodiesel as

Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent, processed fuel derived from biological sources. ...biodiesel refers to alkyl esters made from the transesterification of both vegetable oils and/or animal fats. Biodiesel is biodegradable and non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned. Biodiesel functions in current diesel engines, and could in theory supplement fossil fuels as the world's primary transport energy source.

Which loosely translated means that biodiesel is a fuel from vegetable/animal sources that does not need to be taken out from the earth's crust , is less polluting and since it is not extracted from beneath the surface , it doesn't add to the carbon in the system . And so it is being touted as the next saviour in our effort against global warming . Biodiesel can be synthesised from waste vegetable oils , vegetable oils , animal fat , waste agricultural produce and algae . So theoretically one can pop over to the local felafel/fish 'n chips shop , get all the waste oil which needs to be disposed off and through a simple process make it ready to be poured into the car !! Alternatively you can buy a load of oil from the supermarket . So if we shifted to biodiesel we would be doing a lot of good to the environment .

Wikipedia defines Snake oil as

a traditional Chinese medicine used for joint pain. However, the most common usage of the words is as a derogatory term for medicines to imply that they are fake, fraudulent, and usually ineffective. The expression is also applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality. In short, it refers to a product sold as part of a hoax.

As the title suggests I am pointing out to the discrepancies in the theory .

• The local felafel shops can provide a very limited quantity of waste oil that can be used as a fuel .


• If biodiesel is to be used extensively one needs to grow oil producing crops specifically for biodiesel . Since the arable land under cultivation is also finite , oil producing crop can come intead of food producing crop . shortage of food , starvation is a likely scenario. ..more


• Or else forests could be cut down to make room for oil producing plants. This as we know is not a very smart thing to do as well

We can see the effect of deforestation here

The need is to regulate the production of biodiesel . Biodiesel from wastes or from industrial waste sites can provide a fraction of our needs .
According to an article by George Monbiot

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota.”(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals.

Biodiesel as I see is not a sustainable option at all. In it's billed avatar as a solution to all our woes is not just snake oil , it is something much more destructive .