A sweater for your house?

Why not give your house a sweater!

http://www.secondnatureuk.com/

Insulation made from wool!

Sounds so simple, at it seems to be that simple!

WB encourages deforestation?

In a news tidbit from February it seems that the World Bank wants to encourage deforestation and ecosystem degradation.

"The World Bank has released a report encouraging the Indonesian government to create vast timber plantations that would damage local ecosystems and livelihood, in order to encourage economic growth."

Read more on:
http://www.theecologist.org/news_detail.asp?content_id=760

REN wants nuclear power in Portugal

In Jornal de Negocios of 2007-03-27 was an article after an interview with the current president of REN (the electricity grid operator in Portugal) Jose Penedo.

He had some really amazing things to say:

"No cannot think that other countries will take of nuclear power. It has to be resolved by us". That would strike most people as a very weird statement since Portugal does not have nuclear power nor do the current government want to have it! So there is nothing to be taken care or be resolved...

Gladely he thinks that solar and wind power together will cover 50% of Portugal needs for electricity (current usage I guess). So instead of building nuclear power plants as Jose wants one should increase the efficiency of the use of electricity. Doubling the efficiency does not seem very much out of reach!!! At least considering the inefficiency of today ...

Furthermore Jose wants that someone should go to prison for not building a hydroelectric dam in Foz Coa. Jose thinks that UNESCO attributed Foz Coa as World Heritage site made Foz Coa into a prisoner. Go figure what is going on in the grey matter of that guy!!!

Since he is head of the only company in Portugal that distributes electricity he of course wants the company to stay in business. Solar panels and wind power (and wave power) would generate plenty of electricity for REN to distribute.

But it is a bit extreme to introduce nuclear power plants in Portugal and to drown a world heritage site just to stay in business ...

Agros

There is a new organic milk in Portugal.
Agros (and Lactogal) has spent some money on putting up billboards about their organic milk in Portugal.

But the milk itself is made in France.

According to my favorite ecosalesperson it is because Agros and Lactogal does not want to pay more for organic than conventional milk. But of course they want to charge the consumer twice the price for organic compared with conventional milk. So one perhaps should not be surprised that there yet are no Portuguese organic milk (or milk derived products).

I wrote a letter to Agros some months ago but have yet not received any answer. The certifier says he wants to bring French organic farmers to Portugal, but as long as the farmers cannot expect better price nothing much will happen ...

Moreover, I cannot find information on their website(www.agros.pt), although they apparently has spent plenty of money on a PR campaign in Portugal.

Oddly enough they have a news flash from almost exactly a year ago stating that milk from organic production is not more secure nor better than conventional milk. This is also the only information on milk from organic agriculture on their website
(today 2007-04-25).

Read more (in Portuguese):

http://www.agros.pt/Noticias/noticia173.htm

Leite Biológico Não É Melhor nem Mais Seguro que o
Convencional
3/29/2006 2:04:00 PM

Um estudo da Universidade de Berna, na Suíça, que
comparou o leite biológico com o leite convencional,
concluiu que não existe nenhuma diferença entre ambos,
no que respeita à qualidade, valor nutricional ou
segurança para o consumidor.

Outra das conclusões da pesquisa, avança o
Agrodigital, é que as vacas biológicas produzem, em
média, menos 12% de leite, devido à sua alimentação
ser menos rica em energia, já que não é permitida a
adição de suplementos. No entanto, o consumo de
energia global por litro de leite é maior neste tipo
de produção.

Fonte: Agrodigital

black

Seth Godin says in his post on the no impact man that "zero is the new black".