Looks like valley cities are doing well to improve their environmental scores on Valley Forward’s report card. The city of Phoenix did particularly well scoring straight A’s. The report looks at city’s air, land use, transportation, and water. To see the report click here.

This is a really interesting documentary about working toward no waste, making products that are truly recyclable or compostable, buildings that respect the occupants and the land, and doing it in a way that is beneficial to business.

Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in na­tions like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill. But there is hope. The German chemist, Michael Braungart, and the American designer-architect William McDonough are fundamentally changing the way we produce and build. If waste would become food for the biosphere or the technosphere (all the technical products we make), produc­tion and consumption could become beneficial for the planet.

http://www.vpro.nl/

Some irresponsible biodiesel producers are dumping their waste products mostly consisting of glycerin into rivers and streams. This can kill plants, animals, and especially fish. Even though these are mostly classified as non-toxic chemicals the glycerin needs to be cleaned of any methanol residue in it. Also large amounts of this in the environment quickly reduces the amount of oxygen in the water which kills fish and plants.

A producer needs to know what they are going to do with their waste products before going into this business.  You can’t just dump your waste into a stream and expect to get away with it. Check out the story at nytimes.com.

Mark Edwards, PhD, Arizona State University

Burning 100 million tons of our primary food for fuel is unsustainable and wastes non-renewable resources, especially water. Growing massive amounts of corn represents ecological suicide as it drains trillions of gallons of non-replenishable groundwater, spikes food and fuel prices, decimates food exports and threatens millions with starvation from a food cascade.

Biowar I inflicts costs, casualties and catastrophe in a magnitude far greater than a conventional war. Taxpayers are forced to pay $43 B annually to subsidize erosion and pollution of our air and water for a tiny, 2.4%, replacement of foreign oil. America has insufficient disposable cropland, water or energy to waste on a policy that fails its objectives.

Compared with biofuel alternatives:

• Corn requires more water, land, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides

• Severely pollutes air, soils, rivers, lakes and well-water

• Degrades and erodes soils at the rate of 6 tons per acre

• Grows slowly and produces a low energy biomass yield, 3%

Corn ethanol is not sustainable. It consumes too much water, land, fertilizer and energy. The direct and indirect costs of the ethanol industry are neither sustainable nor sensible for farmers, consumers, taxpayers or food support recipients.

Biowar І offers sustainable alternative to corn ethanol, algae which does not compete for food cropland, uses 0.001 as much water and creates an ecologically positive footprint. Algae is over 30 times more productive than corn and can be made into higher value products such as jet fuel and green diesel. The coproducts from algae, proteins and carbohydrates, may have more value for food, medicines, animal feed and low energy input fertilizers than the oils used for making jet fuel. See more about Biowar І at www.biowar1.com .

• Biowar I Summary and FAQ

The reservoirs in SRP’s system are at 93% and rising thanks to plenty of snow pack this year. Just a couple months ago the system was just below 50% so all this water is great. Don’t go out and throw a water party though, Phoenix’s insatiable thirst for water will go through all that pretty quickly. It never hurts to save some for tomorrow.
SRP provides around 54% of the valley’s water.

Despite the filled lakes, one wet season does not a dry spell break, warned Ester. “We need another wet winter in a row to be able to lay this current drought to rest.”

Article with nice pictures and video at East Valley Tribune.