Better food additives?

There seems to be some joggling with the EU regulations for food additives going on. The EU parliament wants environmental concerns to be included in the evaluation of food additives. In the current form of the proposal, currently authorised food additives will remain so but any additives not on the list will be automatically banned. One concern seems that the authorisation will be done by an external committe and not via the usual co-decision procedure. Some of you might remember the overly relaxed attitude that the EFSA has with regards to GMO products ...

No more incandescent light bulbs!

Step 4 in the Greenpeace 7 steps:

Challenge lightbulb makers

Petition text:

“Dear Philips, Osram, GE and SLI Sylvania,
You cannot deny the scale of the climate emergency, and the need for urgent action including energy conservation. Some of the lightbulbs you make are energy savers, and some of them squander energy unnecessarily. Stop manufacturing inefficient lightbulbs by January 2010 at the latest.

P.S. Philips: As a sponsor of Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts, you should be taking the lead on this!”

Here is the place to do it u 2!


Here is my comment:
"Even better, put more emphasis on developing and selling LED based lights. At the moment they are even more expensive then the CFLs. So with the supposed “efficiency of scale” I guess you could slash those prices a lot. This would lead to even more energy savings and no heavy metal waste compared to CFLs LFs.

Perhaps you should view yourselves as providers of lighting solutions rather than light bulb vendors?!"

energy [r]evolution - Ban this bulb (I did)

I joined GreenPeace energy [r]evolution campaign:

Take 7 (simple?) steps:



- First step: Ban this bulb (I did)
Replace normal incadescent bulbs for CFLs. But I already had done that so I replaced some in my gfs flat.
- Next step was to invite 7 friends. I think I invited twice as many.
- The third was to go public. So I choose to make a mention on some spots, like Flickr and now this blog.

Sofar the steps have been fairly easy so it is a campaign for all to partake in! Feel free to join us on http://greenpeace.org/7steps.

Compare these transports

In DN.se today is an article about greening flights. They also mention a comparison of the greenhouse gas emission caused by a number of transportations in kg CO2 equivalents per person going between Stockholm and Malmö, ie ca 600km:

Plane: 132
Car: 96
Bus: 18
Train: 2

Time to cover 600 kms in hours (estimate from google maps, SJ.se and flynordic.com)
Train: 4.5 (X2000)
Car: 6.5 hrs plus resting highway - (11 hours with the scenic route - national roads)
Bus: Roughly same time as by car but more waiting at bus stops etc and waiting for connecting buses.
Plane: 1.2 hrs plus transport to and from the airports and delay for check-in and picking up luggage. Say 2.5 hrs.

Train is nice because you can also get internet access and a "decent" table and its more uninterupted compared to all others. From city centre to city centre.

Normal, light and zero

Apparently one cannot sell a soft drink called light to men, it has be called something else, like zero. Normal Coca Cola contains sugar, caffeine, the secret ingredient, E338 and E150d, the sugar free version light and zero both contain E950, E951, E952, zero also contains E331 while light instead contains E330 and E221.

Common ingredients stated as E:
E338 - phosphoric acid - gives a tangy taste - can lead to lower bone density and can be used to remove rust
E150d - Sulphite ammonia caramel - colouring agent

Sweeteners:
E950 - Acesulfam K
E951 - Aspartam - could be carcinogenic upon sustained long time exposure
E952 - cyclamate

Preservatives specific to the sweetened versions:
E331 - sodium citrate - preservative and gives sour flavour
E330 - citric acid - preservative and gives sour flavour
E221 - sodium sulphate - preservative

Btw:
One of the current commercials for CC zero very much looks inspired by Michael Jackson's music videos. It is ok for a man to be androgyn or metrosexual?