Decrease your own use of non environmental friendly plastics

On an  individual level, we can all help to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up on the wrong place. The Plastic Pollution Coalition challenges us to find out the "plastic footprint" we hand down every week.

It is easy to reduce this footprint. Say no to styrofoam, disposable plastic bags, packaging, - straws, razor blades, and take-away packagings. Carry home the groceries in a reusable bag. Buy large packages, and select products with minimal or recycled packaging. Reuse glass and stainless steel containers. Buy less plastic, and instead choose sustainable products that you maintain

What to do with all the plastics?

In total eight percent of the world's oil production are used in manufacturing plastics, and only five percent of the plastics are recycled. Most of it is buried as land filling, with the result that the plastics are, for decades, leaking toxic chemicals into the groundwater. Less than 0.2 percent of today's plastics are biodegradable and there are few facilities that compost "bioplastics" made from corn or other cereals.

Huge quantities are dumped into the sea. This and other effects are described in detail in the Royal Society's report "Plastics, environment and human health". However, there are rather simple solutions to come around parts of the problems. Australia, Ireland, Italy, Taiwan and South Africa are leading an international movement to prevent or ban plastic bags. Since 2002, Ireland imposed a 15-cents 'plastic tax', the use of plastic bags dropped by 90 percent and tax revenues have funded recycling programs. The leader of the UN Environment Programme has called for a global ban on thin plastic bags.

Environmental friendly plastics?

This year, approximately 300 million tons of plastic will be produced in the world. This is the equivalent weight of 800 Empire State Buildings! Since the millennium, almost as much plastics have been produced as during the second half of the 1900’s.

One third of all plastics are used in packaging which are opened, empted and thrown. Bags and bottles will soon be all over the place. Worldwide, more than one billion plastic bags are distributed to consumers every day. Most of them are burned, but many are just thrown away. Travelling the highways in Saudi Arabia for example, you will find both sides of the road covered with plastic items.

In the U.S., 3.5 billion kilograms of packaging are thrown in the garbage cans each year, at a cost of four billion dollars for dealers and customers. This equals the amount of petroleum needed to energize one million cars. Neither is good, because they emit CO2 to the atmosphere or, as plastic items, degrade very slowly. So why not ban plastic bags.

Did anybody say environmental friendly plastics?

Along the South Pacific shores, you do not walk around in nice sand and clam shells not even in seaweed, dead fish or oil lumps? No, you wander about among lots of plastic bottles, and other plastic material that have been washed up on the shore.
The oceans are flooded with plastic debris. 50 000 pieces of plastic pieces on every square mile of the ocean! The marine food chain consume partially degraded but almost indestructible plastics. Every year, approximately 100 000 whales, dolphins and other marine mammals as well as one million birds die from the plastic that they eat. This according to the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP

Are trees world's lungs? In a way!

Very simplified, but rather spot on:

A tree takes up CO2 from the air, minerals and water from the ground. With the help of solar energy the tree converts this into sugar and oxygen as long as the sun shines during the day.

Then in the tree uses this sugar plus water, minerals and oxygen for the cellular respiration and the construction of new cells just like any living organism at any time.

Thus the tree is generating oxygen during sun shine and but consumes a portion of it for its own metabolism. Overall more oxygen is generated than consumed, so when the tree reaches maturity, it has contributed to releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

If it just dies and falls to the ground, it will decay and in the spirit of nature’s cycles, the small insects and micro organisms that feed on the dead tree will consume the small excess of oxygen that the tree produced during its life.

So in a perfect natural eco system, there is no extra oxygen produced. The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is rather stableIt. But is very important that there are plants or other biomass that can convert the CO2 animals breathe out to the O2 so that the cycle works.

When CO2 increases, will all Oxygen be consumed?

The atmosphere contains of 21% oxygen and only 0.04% carbon dioxide (CO2). If we burn all fossil fuels, scientists have estimated that the amount of CO2 could rise to 0.1%. Which means that only a fraction of today's oxygen would be tied up in new CO2. Theoretically, the amount of oxygen would be reduced by almost 2% percentage to 19%.

In the sea there is about 0.001% oxygen so a large part of Earth's organisms have adapted to that level. Even with such a large organsim that Whale sharks get enough oxygen through their gills.

So the reduced amount of oxygen would not be a disaster as such, but many scientists believe that such a dramatic increase of the CO2 content in the athmosphere would.

Small and big big scale use of resorces

Would you simply say that everything that does not disturb the natural cycle is environmentally friendly?

It would mean that anyone using a natural rersourse, in small or big scale, in one way or another may not return it to the ecosystem, wiyhout restoring it?

A clear example of how small scale becomes large scale is the use of water closets. A toilet uses about 6 liters of fresh water to flush out the contents.

In Mexico, at least 30 percent of all water drains are released directly into the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. There are about 110 million people in Mexico who flushes out a total of 6 liters of fresh water after each visit three times a day. 18 liters per 100 million people will be 1.8 billion liter of water a day where at least 30%, ie about 600 million liters, of sewage goes straight out into the sea. Every day! And water is a scarce commodity?

Imbalance is the word! Why is the question

For the second year in a row, Sweden has got record levels of snow and temperatures lower than usual. To try to be a little bit cynical, I think the climate conference in Copenhagen last year was a total success. Since the conference, it has been freezing cold during the winter in most of Europe. This is of course a local phenomenon in Europe while other parts on the northern hemisphere suffer from much warmer climate than usual.

After years of drought, the more rain than normal is pouring down in Australia. Areas around the Globe that in some ways normally are flooded within certain periods are hit in a much larger scale. Storms and hurricanes raging, the polar winds blow down from the poles and the whimsical ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean giving rise to the climate phenomenon such as El Niño and La Niña. But what is normal and what is due to the impact human activity has on the climate?

I think it is a combination of global warming and natural cycles. The problem is that the topic is very complicated and it seams like the arguments are either pro or con. There are few articles admitting that it could be several causes to the climate change the last 20-30 years, both natural and as an effect by human impact..

Either way, the fight against climate change for me is mainly about getting people to decrease the general pollution of our planet. This of course includes the suppression of carbon emissions, but the main issue is to fight the whole spectrum of the over-exploitation of natural resources

Thinktank: Possible to reverse the Green House effect by planting trees?

Thinktank: Possible to reverse the Green House effect by planting trees?

Possible to reverse the Green House effect by planting trees?

I claim that we could assimilate all the CO2 emitted by all cars in the world by investing 2 percent of the world's common military budget.

All countries in the world engaged in active forest management contributes to binding CO2, but the big potential lies in reforest areas which previously were forest, but have been degenerated.

The world's common military budget is said to be 1 200 billion Euros. If we were to cut two percent of this, we have 24 billion to buy and plant seedlings for. We make a rough estimate that it costs 1 € to bring down a plant in the soil wherever it is possible to cultivate forest. So we have the money to plant 24 billion seedlings. And there are huge areas around the globe that can be reforested. If plant the same amount of new trees for the coming 80 years we would assimilate enormous amounts of CO2.

A fully grown trees of approximately 80 years, has converted around 4000-5000 kg of CO2 into wood. When the trees are small it converts small amounts so there will be a slightly slow start in our assimilation project. After only 10-15 years, we have converted the same amount of CO2 that the world all cars emit in a year. After 80 years, all these trees have tied all CO2 that all cars in the world have emitted during the same period. Given that the car's increase, but emissions per car decreases.

The example above shows that it is possible with a fraction of some given annual costs to tie much of the CO2 in the atmosphere. I am aware of the importance to reduce all kind of emissions, but there are relatively quick ways to convert parts of the CO2 now liberated into new biomass.

By for now

Where do coal, oil and gas come from?

Perhaps it is too simple to say that all the coal, oil and gas (fossil fuels) originates from the vast forests produced during the Carbon Time which extends the time between 359-299 million years ago.
There are a number of theories about how fossil fuels are actually created. The most widespread is that many of the plants, algae and plankton which were produced during this period did not decay again, but has given origin to the coal, oil and gas.

The main terrestrial plant varieties were not trees as we are used to seeing them but it was enormous horsetail plants, fern and club mosses. Much larger than the variations we see in our forests today.
Oil and gas is considered mainly to originate in algae and plankton when they die sunk to the seabed. There they have not broken down but formed huge warehouse sediments. These sediments are then under pressure and temeparatur converted into oil and natural gas.

The parallel to the today's oxygen-free sea-bottoms is easy to make, where the dead algae and plankton does not break down but creating thick mats of dead material.

So if the the theory is right, it is these hydrocarbons, the main components of fossil fuels, which we now released into the atmosphere again.

We are not creating something that has not been there before, just changing the rules for the current life forms on the planet.

Including us.

Can forestry prevent the Green House Effect?

I got an interesting question the other day: "-Forestry as it is run today, stores atmospheric carbon by transforming CO2 into trees that eventually become wood in buildings or paper. The trees convert carbon dioxide(CO2) through several steps into cellulose molecules. Why do we then see an increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?"

Millions of years ago tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide were tied in vast forests. The amount of trees must have been so high that all of them did degrade after they died. The cellulose was instead, over millions of years, transformed into COAL, OIL AND GAS. When we burn coal, oil and gas carbon dioxide is again released. So in a sense, we bring back the carbon dioxide that once existed in the atmosphere at a speed that might cause serious environmental disturbances.

A well functioning forest industry partially prevents this development, but is today too small to convert all the excessive CO2. More about this in the next blog.

Johan