If we don’t watch out, agriculture could destroy our planet. Here’s how to grow all the food we need with fewer chemicals.
A century ago, when chemist Fritz Haber first learned how to capture nitrogen from the air, synthetic fertilizer seemed like an easy shortcut out of scarcity, delivering a limitless supply of agriculture’s most important nutrient. Yet new limits on nitrogen are appearing. This time the innovations that save us—and our planet—may not be invented in a chemistry laboratory. Instead they may come from farmers and fields in every corner of the world.
In a newly released study conducted In August of 2014, Gibbs-rrb interviewed over two thousand adults to assess the impact of sustainability on grocery buying habits. Not surprisingly, they found that sustainability continues to be a key factor in American purchasing habits at the grocery. Consumers greatly prefer buying products that support their own personal principles of social responsibility, according to the study.
Although price is always important, Americans are willing to spend an average of 31% more per week on “safe and sustainable” foods that are produced in ways that advance the well-being of the planet and humans, and the safety of food sources. Jeffrey R. Graubard, managing director of Bibbx-rbb Strategic Communications stated “Consumers are voting with their wallets [and] increasingly choosing brands aligned with their values, while penalizing brands that disappoint them. This is true not only for actual food items, but for the brand banner of the grocers themselves as well.
To boil it down, visibility of these key elements can be achieved following a set of seven clear steps and activities:
Go local to insure traceability, freshness, and nutrition. Engage with local farmers wherever possible.
Protect nature, and save fish. Be sure your fish and food is from sustainable sources.
Think welfare and treat your employees and suppliers well: Employee attitude is important. Word gets out!
Eliminate and recycle food waste. Be sure you have a clear procedure to dispose of compostable waste separately from trash. Engage with a local community group that will take unsellable and post-expiration date food for food banks.
Provide options for customers who wish to avoid processed food and products.
Make your facility sustainable with energy efficient design, lighting, and Leed design. Some stores, such as Wegmans, have even implemented energy efficient hydrogen fuel cells for their handling equipment.
Provide a sustainable solution for your customers to get their food home. Many shoppers now bring their own bags tocarry their groceries. However, for those that don’t, a sustainable carryout bag will be your emblem to show customers and the community that you care about the environment. Instead of paper or plastic, which are both energy resource intensive (and expensive in the case of paper), consider offering your customers a product such as ECOgrade Degradable bags. These bags cost the same as plastic, but solve the plastic bag pollution issue, as they will photo-degrade to a non-toxic residue from sunlight exposure within 240 days if littered. In addition, they are recyclable with plastic and use less energy and produce fewer greenhouse gasses in production than plastic or paper. As a follow-up to all you do in-store, ECOgrade bags provide a medium to send the message that you care about the environment home with your customers.
As we saw in all of the categories surveyed, visible sustainability has a major impact on the decision of customers to shop in your store. 31% more per week on “safe and sustainable” products is a great business booster, and certainly worth striving for. But it all depends not only on your actions, but also your ability to communicate this to your customers. Be sure that both when they are in the store, and when they carry their groceries home, they know that you and they have both done your best to mitigate negative impacts on our planet.
by Edward Weisberg is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, GXT Green, Inc.
Think you eat only healthy, unprocessed foods? Think again. Joanna Blythman went undercover and discovered that even your fruit salad is not what it seems.
Manufactured foods often contain chemicals with known toxic properties – although, again, we are reassured that, at low levels, this is not a cause for concern. This comforting conclusion is the foundation of modern toxicology, and is drawn from the 16th-century Swiss physician, Paracelsus, whose theory “the dose makes the poison” (ie, a small amount of a poison does you no harm) is still the dogma of contemporary chemical testing. But when Paracelsus sat down to eat, his diet wasn’t composed of takeaways and supermarket reheats; he didn’t quench his thirst with canned soft drinks. Nor was he exposed to synthetic chemicals as we are now, in traffic fumes, in pesticides, in furnishings and much more. Real world levels of exposure to toxic chemicals are not what they were during the Renaissance. The processed food industry has an ignoble history of actively defending its use of controversial ingredients long after well-documented, subsequently validated, suspicions have been aired.
The precautionary principle doesn’t seem to figure prominently in the industry’s calculations, nor – such is their lobbying power – does it loom large in the deliberations of food regulators. If it did, then steering clear of manufactured products would be a lot easier.
The pace of food engineering innovation means that more complex creations with ever more opaque modes of production are streaming on to the market every day. Just last month, a dossier for a new line of dairy proteins dropped into my mailbox. Alongside a photo of a rustic-looking, golden pan loaf, the explanation read: “Many bakers are now turning to permeates, a rather new ingredient in the food ingredients market. Permeate is a co-product of the production of whey protein concentrate (WPC), whey protein isolate (WPI), ultrafiltered milk, milk protein concentrate (MPC), or milk protein isolate (MPI).”
Permeate, apparently, “contributes to the browning of baked goods” and produces bread that “retains its softness for a longer period of time and extends shelf life”. How clever. But I would prefer that my bread was browned solely from the application of heat. I’m prepared to accept that it will stale over time, rather than eat something that owes its existence to ingredients and technologies to which I am not privy, cannot interrogate and so can never truly understand. Am I about to hand over all control of bread, or anything else I eat, to the chemical industry’s food engineers? Not without a fight.
What your food label really means
Added vitamins One-dimensional factory versions of natural vitamins found in whole foods: ascorbic acid (man-made vitamin C) is usually synthesised from the fermentation of GM corn, while artificial vitamin E is commonly derived from petrol.
Soluble fibre A healthier-sounding term for modified starch, which is widely used to reduce the quantity of more nutritious ingredients in processed foods, and keep down manufacturers’ costs.
‘Natural’ colourings The only difference between these and artificial ones is that they start with pigments that occur in nature. Otherwise, they are made using the same highly chemical industrial processes, including extraction using harsh solvents.
Artificial ‘diet” sweeteners Several large-scale studies have found a correlation between artificial sweetener consumption and weight gain. Accumulating evidence suggests that they may also increase our risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Enzymes Used to make bread stay soft longer; injected into low-value livestock before slaughter, to tenderise their meat; and used in fruit juice processing to create a cloudier, more natural appearance.
‘Packaged in a protective atmosphere’ Food that has been “gassed” in modified air to extend its shelf life. It delays what food manufacturers call “warmed over flavour”, an off-taste that occurs in factory food.
Beef/pork/poultry protein Collagen extracted from butchered carcasses, processed into a powder and added to low-grade meats. It adds bounce, increases the protein content on the nutrition label and, combined with water, is a substitute for meat.
Washed and ready-to-eat salads “Cleaned” by sloshing around in tap water dosed with chlorine, often with powdered or liquid fruit acids to inhibit bacterial growth. The same tank of treated water is often used for 8 hours at a time.
‘Pure’ vegetable oil Industrially refined, bleached, deodorised oils. Food processors often add chemicals to extend their “fry life”.
‘Natural’ flavourings Even the flavour industry concedes that “there isn’t much difference in the chemical compositions of natural and artificial flavourings”. They are made using the same physical, enzymatic, and microbiological processes.
Conclusion: The uncertainties and challenges associated with NETs deployment are significant. While NETs are capable of making a contribution to tackling climate change, particularly for ‘stubborn’ non-point source emissions, they are very unlikely to alter the sheer scale of mitigation required between now and 2050. While it is conceivable that there is significant technical potential beyond 2050, this is extremely uncertain.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to continue investing in the development of ‘low probability, high impact’ post- 2050 options in the hope that viable, large-scale NETs might be available in the unfortunate (but increasingly likely) event that they are required. The nature of these investments will vary by technology, but one thing is certain – without viable CCS large-scale post-2050 NETs will not be available. In addition to these observations, there are several related recommendations that carbon-intensive sectors and policymakers should take into account when considering NETs:
First, ‘no-regrets’ NETs (NR NETs), which are characterised by low upfront capital costs, co-benefits (such as enhanced soil fertility), no CCS dependence, economic and environmental co-benefits, and fewer uncertainties, include afforestation, soil carbon improvements, and biochar. Even considering the potential for limited release of stored carbon in the future, they are the most promising NETs between now and 2050. To the extent that NR NETs create additional carbon budget, this should be reserved for the residual emissions (emissions after feasible mitigation actions) from important, but ‘stubborn’ non-point source emitters like agriculture and aviation. It is possible that NR NETs will have a niche role by 2050 offsetting these difficult to mitigate emissions sources. Policymakers and the owners and operators of assets in the relevant sectors should work together to maximise NR NETs deployment, minimise residual emissions from stubborn sectors, and develop plausible deployment pathways.
Secondly, the question of the cost of NETs and how those costs are shared is of profound importance for a range of issues, including the following: understanding how assets might be impacted by such costs; securing the cash flows and financing necessary for NETs deployment; and identifying implications for fairness and sustainable development. The challenge of commissioning and paying for conventional CCS demonstration plants highlights how difficult these issues are to resolve. International cooperation to address free riding and related issues is also required and this should be overlaid on to existing international processes and negotiations.
Thirdly, successful NETs deployment would not mean business as usual for carbon-intensive assets. Sectors (and consumers) will have to pay directly or indirectly for the cost of mitigation actions, and quite probably the cost of negative emissions deployment, to address overshoot and stubborn emissions from non-point sources. NETs deployment addresses risk on the one hand (by extending carbon budgets), and creates it on the other (through new and uncertain costs). NETs should not be seen as a deus ex machina that will ‘save the day’. Consequently, businesses and investors need to factor carbon asset risk into their business planning and strategic asset allocation processes. Scenario planning and regular assessments of how carbon budgets are being translated into policy and regulation will be important,87 as is work to understand other environment-related risks that could strand assets.
Fourthly, CCS is a key bottleneck for post-2050 NETs and this should be addressed to keep the option open for significant future deployment of DAC, Ocean Liming, and BECCS. While this option is uncertain, it is of sufficiently high potential impact to merit investment, as long as a possible dilemma can be resolved: deploying conventional CCS today results in positive net emissions and uses finite geological storage that might constrain storage capacity in the future; but unless conventional CCS is deployed at scale, the technology for negative emissions CCS might never be developed. The trade-off between these options and to what extent conventional 87 See: Caldecott, B. L., J. Tilbury and C. Carey (2014). Stranded Assets and Scenarios. Discussion Paper, Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford.Stranded Carbon Assets and Negative Emissions Technologies – February 2015 33 CCS needs to be deployed for DAC, Ocean Liming, and BECCS to be viable future options is an important area for future research.
Finally, it is clear that attaining negative emissions is in no sense an easier option than reducing current emissions. To remove CO2 on a comparable scale to the rate it is being emitted inevitably requires effort and infrastructure on a comparable scale to global energy or agricultural systems. Combined with the potentially high costs and energy requirements of several technologies, and the global effort needed to approach the technical potentials discussed previously, it is clear that very large-scale negative emissions deployment, if it were possible, is not in any sense preferable to timely decarbonisation of the energy and agricultural systems.
The independent beer movement has exploded, threatening Big Beer and posing new dilemmas for ambitious craft brewers.
A troubling milestone for Big Beer came in 2013, when craft brew snuck past Budweiser — the once-dominant “King of Beers” — in number of barrels shipped, by 16.1 to 16 million. Compare that to 2003, when Budweiser shipped almost 30 million barrels to craft’s 5 million, and the trajectory is clear.
“At Anheuser-Busch, you see a future where if you don’t act now to restructure the marketplace, your present product selection is going to confine you to a much smaller business down the road,” said Barry Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who has done extensive research on the beer market.
So restructuring the marketplace is what Big Beer has begun to do, experts say. Contrary to its recent anti-craft messaging, Anheuser-Busch currently owns a handful of craft breweries itself, starting with the 2011 purchase of Goose Island in Chicago. It has since bought out Blue Point, 10 Barrel, and, last year, Elysian in Washington. The company has not commented whether the buying spree will continue, including in an email to Al Jazeera, but its strategy so far seems to involve subsidizing and selling its craft offerings cheaper than its competitors, proliferating them across its massive, coordinated distribution networks.
Lynn said he didn’t think the plan was to profit off these beers directly. “What they want to be able to do is offer wholesalers or retailers a full array of products, to say ‘you don’t need to go anywhere else, we’ve got your craft covered.’”
That’s what the Brewers Association, which represents the craft beer industry, fears. Paul Gatza, the association’s director, said the Big Two can, by way of co-opted distributors, offer preferential treatment – prices and promotional displays, for example – to bars and stores who choose not to carry independent brews. Now that craft is in their repertoire, Gatza said, “you’ll see it more and more at bars, where Anheuser-Busch is dominating the facility and all the beers on tap are produced or owned by them.“
In some states, Big Beer has taken the even more aggressive strategy of buying out wholesale distributors, which move alcohol from the brewers themselves to retailers. In doing so, Big Beer is challenging the formalized 3-tier system that has regulated the alcohol market in the U.S since the 1930s — whereby the brewer or distiller, wholesale distributor and retailer are all supposed to be separate entities, or tiers. Established in the aftermath of prohibition, the idea was that an intentionally inefficient system would keep the alcohol industry’s once-formidable political power in check. Decades later, those safeguards against vertical integration helped catalyze the craft revolution.
Small brewers argue that the acquisitions should be illegal, pointing out there is no incentive for a distributor owned by Anheuser-Busch to carry anyone else’s brew. The controversy has come to a head in a number of states, most recently Kentucky, where earlier this month the House approved a bill backed by independent brewers that could require Anheuser-Busch to sell its distributors in the state.
Damon Williams, director of sales and marketing for Anheuser-Busch in Louisville, Kentucky, told Al Jazeera in an email that the bill "has nothing to do with craft beers and everything to do with greedy special interests.”
But craft brewers in other states say the threat of consolidation is real. In Washington state, a craft mecca where the Big Two once had among the lowest market shares in the country, small brewers like Heather McClung say their options have begun to dwindle since Anheuser-Busch swooped in to buy out distributors.
“At some point there won’t really be any choice left,” said McClung, the co-founder and owner of Schooner Exact in Seattle, and president of the Washington Brewers’ Guild. “And then you become lost in someone’s distributor books, because all these little brands will have to go somewhere.”
Even in states where brewers are prohibited from buying distributors outright, Anheuser-Busch Inbev and SABMiller can exert considerable pressure on wholesalers. Thanks to an unprecedented spate of mergers and acquisitions that have gone mostly unfettered by anti-trust regulators — the “other revolution in beer,” as Lynn termed it — the Big Two now encompass all of the top five name-brand domestic beers: Bud Light, Coors Light, Budweiser, Miller Light and Natural Light. Most wholesalers can’t afford to lose their business, even if consumers are demanding more interesting, complex flavors of craft.
Compounded pressure from above and a widening ground floor have left small brewers with difficult choices to make. Selling out to the Big Two remains fraught with risks for brands like Goose Island, not to mention frowned upon by craft purists. “Some say it doesn’t feel as good when your money isn’t going to a small, local company anymore,” said Gatza of the Brewers Association.
A more palatable option for ambitious craft breweries, analysts say, is to reach out to venture capital firms for help with expansion they can’t achieve on their own. But even the idea of forging partnerships with profit-maximizing investors — sacrificing the craft industry’s hallmark independence, and perhaps its emphasis on local job creation — makes many brewers uneasy.
“It’s awesome that they’re interested, but there are drawbacks,” said McClung, of Schooner Exact. “More and more people are entering the market because they think there’s a chance to make money, rather than for the true craft brewing ideals.” An influx of inexperienced or undertrained brewers could undermine or dilute the “craft” distinction, she said. “Then our bubble could burst.”
At Bronx Brewery, Brown and Gallant said venture capital was something they’d consider if the circumstances were right. But they also recognized that in today’s increasingly stratified market, being small might not be the worst thing. Big Beer seems to have its sights set on marginalizing or co-opting major craft players, rather than 6,000 barrel-per-year microbreweries like theirs. “The little guys will always have a niche market, even at a higher price point,” Brown said.
“We’ve seen a rather dramatic change in the makeup of the marketplace as a whole, and I don’t envision that changing one way or another,” added Stephen Beaumont, author of the World of Beer blog and two books on beer. The Big Two can leverage their economies of scale to restrict market access, he said, “but they can’t change tastes. To a certain degree they’re grasping, and they have been for some time.”
Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison pointed to the growing skepticism of large food makers that has resulted from consumers’ changing tastes as a key challenge for her industry.
The company, whose portfolio of products ranges from V8 juice to Pepperidge Farm cake to its namesake soups, has found itself grappling with big changes in consumer behavior, in particular growing interest in fresh food and consumers much more keen to know what impact what they’re eating is having on their health and where it’s from.
Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison said consumers don’t trust big food makers, and the company announced a $200 million a year cost-cutting program to help its sagging profit margins
On top of that has been a “mounting distrust of so-called Big Food, the large food companies and legacy brands on which millions of consumers have relied on for so long,” Campbell CEO Denise Morrison said on Wednesday at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York meeting in New York.
“Like other companies in our industry, we’re contending with now not just the long-term impact of the Great Recession on consumer purchasing behavior, or the increasingly complex public dialog when it comes to food, or the regulatory environment for food.” What’s more, the traditional avenue for selling Campbell’s products—grocery stores—are coming under a lot of pressure from alternative retailers she said.
Campbell recently lowered its full-year results forecast after only one quarter, suggesting it doesn’t expect much relief in the pressure on its profit margins anytime soon. In January, Campbell said it would re-organize its divisions according to product category, rather than by geographic region. It plans to eliminate some management layers as well. Campbell estimates its cost-cutting measures will save it $200 million a year.
Campbell is by no means the only food maker struggling to adapt to new consumer behavior. Last week, cereal maker Kellogg cut its long-term annual revenue growth estimate to a range of 1% to 3%, excluding some items, from an earlier forecast of 3% to 4%, citing poor cereal and snacks sales.
Morrison’s comments about adapting to changing consumer attitudes echoed those of a major competitor. “I don’t think Kraft has done as aggressive of a job in this regard as we need to,” said John Cahill, who in December became CEO of Kraft Foods, last week. He noted that Kraft has lost market share in 40% of its U.S. businesses in 2014. Also last week, ConAgra, the maker of Chef Boyardee, announced it was naming a new CEO—the ex chief at Hillshire Brands, Sean Connolly—and lowered its earnings guidance for the year ending in May.
All this turmoil is enough to give any food executive indigestion.
from the curator: Last fall, Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, wrote a thought provoking article describing the importance of business leaders “to get off the sidelines and make a difference.” I couldn’t agree more!
The Soil-to-Table mailing has assumed a recipe of 3-parts food, and 1-part environmental advocacy due to a required interdisciplinary “solutions of change” approach needed to rectify these closely tied systemic problems.
As Professor Edmondson discusses, the only force with a quick enough cadence to address spiraling climate and health issues is the free market. The good news, for the health of the planet and its beings, the consumer seems ready to buy based on value, provenance and a storyline for the betterment of the future. In the book ‘Immoderate Greatness’, William Ophuls navigates history with a summary of why civilizations inevitably fail. Hubris, corruption and greed seem constants throughout social anthropology, but the change agent in our modern world will be our ability to break from our apeish hard-wired short-term perspective that has plagued man’s past great empires and start to plan for our future, our kid’s future, and hopefully an evolved cultural belief of seventh generation sustainability – which may take some convincing weather events and food shortages amplified across the broad shoulders of the information age. The ability to quantifying how climate change will affect and effect personal and cultural well-being will expedite adoption of this forward thinking, especially when properly delivered to capital market gatekeepers as a pragmatic multi-prong advantage to protect long-horizon real assets – while also harvesting new cash-flow opportunities by fueling products that best align with the ethos of GenX, Millennial and soon GenZ consumers.
Paulson, Bloomberg and Stayer seem to have the proper formula with Risky Business – where a fiscally savvy appeal to the insurance mainstay and large scale institutional investors should act as unprecedented trim tabs that will quickly influence markets, and later sway a reactionary political system. IMO – the Risky Business approach should act as a framework for the future of food that will have to take into account the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, environmental impact, misplaced subsidies when quantifying the "true costs” of modern food production and systems.
Take A Trim Tab Approach To Climate Change | FORBES:
The “bully pulpit”—a term coined by Theodore Roosevelt back when the word “bully” meant terrific—originally referred to the US presidency and its tremendous potential for speaking out and influencing public opinion. Nowadays, the term describes any position with the potential to get the public’s attention, and thereby educate people to influence the tide of events.
Prominent business leaders have a bully pulpit, if they want to take it, on the issue of climate change and environmental sustainability. Today’s business leaders have visibility and media access that is unparalleled in history. No longer the gray-flannel-suited organization men of yesterday avoiding the spotlight even in senior positions, today’s businessmen and women have Facebook pages, media offices, press releases, and much more at their disposal. But do they use these pulpits well?
Large and growing numbers of business leaders acknowledge, behind closed doors—and some doors that are distinctly ajar—the threats to future generations, and even to business and society in the near term, created by their operations. For just one example, earlier this year a New York Times article reported that a growing number of business leaders are viewing climate change as a threat to supply chains and thus ultimately bottom lines. A good start. But CEOs of global companies like Coca-Cola , the company figuring most prominently in the Times piece, and Nike (also mentioned) must start to recognize and take responsibility for using the bully pulpit that they in fact occupy.
When elected officials don’t own this crucial responsibility, other leaders in society must step into the vacuum. Why not business? Often depicted as greedy and shortsighted, consumed with this quarter’s profits and blind to the larger impact of their actions on society, business leaders face a crucial opportunity today to change that perception (and that reality).
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, many thoughtful leaders throw up their arms, thinking, understandably, that my company is just a drop in the bucket. “Until regulations happen,” they muse (and they will, eventually, just perhaps not fast enough to make the difference the world sorely needs), “there’s really nothing I, or my company, can do to make a difference.” That’s where the “trim tab” comes in.
Quoting Wikipedia, “Trim tabs are small surfaces connected to the trailing edge of a larger control surface on a boat or aircraft” (e.g., a rudder on an ocean liner) to control or alter the direction of a very large craft (e.g., the ocean liner itself). How do you change the direction of an enormous ship like the Queen Mary? The rudder itself is far too big to be easily maneuvered by a single skipper. The trim tab, however, is tiny and thus easy for the captain to shift. The small trim tab’s movement then creates a low-pressure zone that pulls the rudder around. Inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller, with whom I worked years ago as a geodesic engineer, pointed out that anyone can act as a trim tab, in part by recognizing the potential downstream influence of small, high-leverage actions pointing in the right new direction. The trim tab’s tiny movement has leverage. The right shift in the right place at the right time.
Business leaders must recognize the trim tab principle. Don’t wait for the rest of the industry to act first . Just get started. Contribute, through action, to building pressure that pulls on the rudder and ultimately changes the course of the ocean liner. Of course when you’re changing social systems, it’s hard to know the precise mechanics of the influence your business actions can and will have. But it’s a given that your business won’t have any influence at all if no changes are made.
Pick your approach. Bully pulpit (advocacy, voice) as a means of influence? Or trim tab (small, well-placed actions that start a trend) as a means of influence? Your pick.
Either way, it’s time for business leaders to get off the sidelines and make a difference.
About the author: Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School.
The people from Harvest Power believe solutions to our planet’s energy and pollution problems must be addressed first at a grass roots level, “where people and organizations can work together in a climate of mutual responsibility and trust.”
This company, founded in 2009, and with operations now spread through the United States and Canada, appears to be taking this philosophy to heart in how it regards over 500 million tons of organic waste that are produced each year in North America.
Harvest Power’s nearly 450 employees refer to their sustainable methodologies as the ‘Power-of-We’: “It’s a simple concept – we are part of a larger system, and if we all recognize this, and participate to the best of our abilities, the system will get better.”
Facing global issues of soil degradation, along with a growing demand for food and clean energy that is staggering, CEO Paul Sellew how he views organic waste and managing it as an asset. He simplifies Harvest Power’s approach to waste management and anaerobic digestion, likening it to the process that takes place in a cow’s stomach.
“People call that biomimicry,” says Sellew, “which is taking a natural process that’s evolved over millions of years, and we apply modern engineering to that: natural microbes break down organic materials and turn it into biogas.”
Add vast quantities of compost to this list, a natural formula for reviving thinning topsoils.
The company’s huge anaerobic digester in Orlando, Florida is considered to be one of the most innovative anaerobic digestion projects of its kind in North America. The facility provides waste management through its specially engineered design to co-digest biosolids with food wastes from local resorts, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, sports arenas, golf courses and the food processing community. Some waste from Disney World is brought to the facility, including the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels at Grande Lakes Orlando.
The Florida facility has a capacity of 130,000 tons per year with 5.4MW combined heat-and-power output. This is a significant amount of clean energy being produced. In Vancouver, Canada goals of environmental management and sustainability are being tackled. According to the Harvest Power website, these issues are being addressed:
Landfills have become more expensive, more distant, and are filling to capacity with waste that future generations will have to handle
The Zero Waste Challenge has set landfill diversion goals that cannot be me using only current recycling and diversion strategies
Communities are seeking sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels
Farms, gardens, nurseries and stormwater control projects demand high-quality, nutrient-rich soil and compost products
Harvest reports it currently manages over 2 million tons of organic material through 30 operating sites in North America. In addition, the company produces nearly 65,000 megawatt-hours per year of heat and power generating capacity and sells nearly 33 million bags of soil, mulch and fertilizer products to agricultural producers and landscapers annually.
Harvest has targeted creating a more sustainable future through helping communities it operates with to better manage and beneficially re-use their organic waste.
Considering some 500 million tons of organic materials are produced in North America each year, while landfill availability declines, Harvest Power has what appears to be a timely and very beneficial business model. To support this model, the company has a management team with extensive experience in composting, renewable energy, supply chain management, engineering, law and finance.
Science paper recommended ways of identifying hormone-mimicking chemicals in pesticides linked to foetal abnormalities, genital mutations, infertility and other diseases including cancer
As many as 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon, the Guardian has learned.
The science paper, seen by the Guardian, recommends ways of identifying and categorising the endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that scientists link to a rise in foetal abnormalities, genital mutations, infertility, and adverse health effects ranging from cancer to IQ loss.
Commission sources say that the paper was buried by top EU officials under pressure from big chemical firms which use EDCs in toiletries, plastics and cosmetics, despite an annual health cost that studies peg at hundreds of millions of euros.
‘No poison on our fields’ near Fahrland, Germany.
The unpublished EU paper says that the risks associated with exposure to even low-potency EDCs is so great that potency alone should not serve as a basis for chemicals being approved for use. Its proposed criteria for categorisations of EDCs – along with a strategy for implementing them – was supposed to have enabled EU bans of hazardous substances to take place last year.
But commission officials say that under pressure from major chemical industry players, such as Bayer and BASF, the criteria were blocked. In their place, less stringent options emerged, along with a plan for an impact assessment that is not expected to be finalised until 2016.
“We were ready to go with the criteria and a strategy proposal as well but we we were told to forget about it by the secretary general’s office,” a commission source told the Guardian.
“Effectively the criteria were suppressed. We allowed the biocides and pesticides legislation to roll over.”
Last month, 11 MEPs complained in a cross-party letter to the health and food safety commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, about the EU’s failure to honour its mandate and adopt the EDC criteria.
This was supposed to have happened by the end of 2013, and is now the subject of court proceedings brought by Sweden, the European parliament and council.
But Catherine Day, the EU’s powerful secretary general, laid the blame for the delay on poor communication between the commission’s health (Sanco) and environment (Envi) departments, which shared responsibility for the file.
“They were working in different directions, which made no sense so the secretariat-general did intervene to force them to do a joint impact assessment with the aim of coming up with one analysis on which the commission could base itself,” she told the Guardian.
“The commission is under no obligation to publish internal working papers,” another commission spokesperson said. “As you know, the European commission acts in full independence and in the general European interest.”
A counter-narrative popularised in the film Endocrination holds that Sanco was brought into the policy process as a proxy for industry interests.
“We had a lot of arguments with Sanco,” a commission source said. “At one point, the secretary general intervened to halt the process and then basically it was just stopped. We were told that we and Sanco had to bang our heads together. But when the two directorates eventually – and reluctantly – reached an agreement,even that was blocked by the secretary general.”
