Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found.

Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes’ ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Philip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

“For several years our team have been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in sea water containing higher levels of dissolved CO2 – and it is now pretty clear that they sustain significant disruption to their central nervous system, which is likely to impair their chances of survival,” Prof. Munday says.

In their latest paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Prof. Munday and colleagues report world-first evidence that high CO2 levels in sea water disrupts a key brain receptor in fish, causing marked changes in their behaviour and sensory ability.

“We’ve found that elevated CO2 in the oceans can directly interfere with fish neurotransmitter functions, which poses a direct and previously unknown threat to sea life,” Prof. Munday says.

Prof. Munday and his colleagues began by studying how baby clown and damsel fishes performed alongside their predators in CO2-enriched water. They found that, while the predators were somewhat affected, the baby fish suffered much higher rates of attrition.

“Our early work showed that the sense of smell of baby fish was harmed by higher CO2 in the water – meaning they found it harder to locate a reef to settle on or detect the warning smell of a predator fish. But we suspected there was much more to it than the loss of ability to smell.”

The team then examined whether fishes’ sense of hearing – used to locate and home in on reefs at night, and avoid them during the day – was affected. “The answer is, yes it was. They were confused and no longer avoided reef sounds during the day. Being attracted to reefs during daylight would make them easy meat for predators.”

Other work showed the fish also tended to lose their natural instinct to turn left or right – an important factor in schooling behaviour which also makes them more vulnerable, as lone fish are easily eaten by predators.

“All this led us to suspect it wasn’t simply damage to their individual senses that was going on – but rather, that higher levels of carbon dioxide were affecting their whole central nervous system.”

The team’s latest research shows that high CO2 directly stimulates a receptor in the fish brain called GABA-A, leading to a reversal in its normal function and over-excitement of certain nerve signals.

While most animals with brains have GABA-A receptors, the team considers the effects of elevated CO2 are likely to be most felt by those living in water, as they have lower blood CO2 levels normally. The main impact is likely to be felt by some crustaceans and by most fishes, especially those which use a lot of oxygen.

Prof. Munday said that around 2.3 billion tonnes of human CO2 emissions dissolve into the world’s oceans every year, causing changes in the chemical environment of the water in which fish and other species live.

“We’ve now established it isn’t simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption – as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons – but the actual dissolved CO2 itself is damaging the fishes’ nervous systems.”

The work shows that fish with high oxygen consumption are likely to be most affected, suggesting the effects of high CO2 may impair some species worse than others – possibly including important species targeted by the world’s fishing industries.

The team’s latest paper “Near-future CO2 levels alter fish behaviour by interfering with neurotransmitter function” by Göran E. Nilsson, Danielle L. Dixson, Paolo Domenici, Mark I. McCormick, Christina Sørensen, Sue-Ann Watson, and Philip L. Munday appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Source: http://www.coralcoe.org.au/news_stories/braindamage.html

Predicted future CO2 levels have been found to alter sensory responses and behaviour of marine fishes. Changes include increased boldness and activity, loss of behavioural lateralization, altered auditory preferences and impaired olfactory function1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Impaired olfactory function makes larval fish attracted to odours they normally avoid, including ones from predators and unfavourable habitats1, 3. These behavioural alterations have significant effects on mortality that may have far-reaching implications for population replenishment, community structure and ecosystem function2, 6. However, the underlying mechanism linking high CO2 to these diverse responses has been unknown. Here we show that abnormal olfactory preferences and loss of behavioural lateralization exhibited by two species of larval coral reef fish exposed to high CO2 can be rapidly and effectively reversed by treatment with an antagonist of the GABA-A receptor. GABA-A is a major neurotransmitter receptor in the vertebrate brain. Thus, our results indicate that high CO2 interferes with neurotransmitter function, a hitherto unrecognized threat to marine populations and ecosystems. Given the ubiquity and conserved function of GABA-A receptors, we predict that rising CO2 levels could cause sensory and behavioural impairment in a wide range of marine species, especially those that tightly control their acid–base balance through regulatory changes in HCO3− and Cl− levels.

Carbon Dioxide Capture from the Air Using a Polyamine Based Regenerable Solid Adsorbent

Alain Goeppert, Miklos Czaun, Robert B. May, G. K. Surya Prakash, George A. Olah, and S. R. Narayanan

Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, University Park, Los Angeles, California 90089-1661, United States

Easy to prepare solid materials based on fumed silica impregnated with polyethylenimine (PEI) were found to be superior adsorbents for the capture of carbon dioxide directly from air. During the initial hours of the experiments, these adsorbents effectively scrubbed all the CO2 from the air despite its very low concentration.

The effect of moisture on the adsorption characteristics and capacity was studied at room temperature. Regenerative ability was also determined in a short series of adsorption/desorption cycles.

Download as PDF attachment

MIT today announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called “MITx.” MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses through an online interactive learning platform that will:

• organize and present course material to enable students to learn at their own pace
• feature interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication
• allow for the individual assessment of any student’s work and allow students who demonstrate their mastery of subjects to earn a certificate of completion awarded by MITx
• operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions.

MIT expects that this learning platform will enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences. MIT also expects that MITx will eventually host a virtual community of millions of learners around the world.

MIT will couple online learning with research on learning

MIT’s online learning initiative is led by MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif, and its development will be coupled with an MIT-wide research initiative on online teaching and learning under his leadership.

“Students worldwide are increasingly supplementing their classroom education with a variety of online tools,” Reif said. “Many members of the MIT faculty have been experimenting with integrating online tools into the campus education. We will facilitate those efforts, many of which will lead to novel learning technologies that offer the best possible online educational experience to non-residential learners. Both parts of this new initiative are extremely important to the future of high-quality, affordable, accessible education.”

Offering interactive MIT courses online to learners around the world builds upon MIT’s OpenCourseWare, a free online publication of nearly all of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate course materials. Now in its 10th year, OpenCourseWare includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.

MIT President Susan Hockfield said, “MIT has long believed that anyone in the world with the motivation and ability to engage MIT coursework should have the opportunity to attain the best MIT-based educational experience that Internet technology enables. OpenCourseWare’s great success signals high demand for MIT’s course content and propels us to advance beyond making content available. MIT now aspires to develop new approaches to online teaching.”

OCW will continue to share course materials from across the MIT curriculum, free of charge.

MITx online learning tools to be freely available

MIT will make the MITx open learning software available free of cost, so that others — whether other universities or different educational institutions, such as K-12 school systems — can leverage the same software for their online education offerings.

“Creating an open learning infrastructure will enable other communities of developers to contribute to it, thereby making it self-sustaining,” said Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “An open infrastructure will facilitate research on learning technologies and also enable learning content to be easily portable to other educational platforms that will develop. In this way the infrastructure will improve continuously as it is used and adapted.” Agarwal is leading the development of the open platform.

President Hockfield called this “a transformative initiative for MIT and for online learning worldwide. On our residential campus, the heart of MIT, students and faculty are already integrating on-campus and online learning, but the MITx initiative will greatly accelerate that effort. It will also bring new energy to our longstanding effort to educate millions of able learners across the United States and around the world. And in offering an open-source technological platform to other educational institutions everywhere, we hope that teachers and students the world over will together create learning opportunities that break barriers to education everywhere.”

Source: http://web.mit.edu

BEIJING — As the Chinese government struggles to meet several of its own environmental targets to 2015, China’s textile industry could face a new ‘green tax’, which together with higher wages and a slump in exports, puts additional pressure on an industry that is already facing big challenges.

Within the last few weeks, the State Council of China has revealed that it is preparing a new ‘green tax’ for the country’s giant manufacturing sector in a bid to meet its own overall environmental targets and commitments as part of its 12th five-year plan to 2015. And in a bid to boost its chances of hitting these targets, China will now “actively promote reforms in environment related taxes” and “conduct research regarding the collection of an environmental tax’’, a policy note carried by the state-run Xinhua news agency has reported.
The move suggests that the debut of a ‘green tax’ is now officially on the Chinese government’s agenda and that reform will make substantial progress during the country’s 12th Five-Year Plan period, said the official state media organization.

Calls for the debut of an environmental tax have grown considerably in recent years, as China’s explosive development in the manufacturing sector has taken a heavy toll on its resources and environment. “The stress on environmental tax reforms in the guideline comes as China faces a grim situation in meeting its emission control target,” Bai Jingming, an official from the Ministry of Finance said.

In a blueprint of China’s energy-saving programs, China says it aims to cut energy consumption per 10,000 yuan ($1,570) of gross domestic product (GDP) by 16 per cent by 2015, saving 670 million tons of coal equivalent by that time.

The move comes as China’s government also promises to evaluate the environmental performance of listed companies and on November 16 it listed an investigation into the environmental responsibility of more than 2,000 A-share listed companies. The evaluation “will be based on the most prevalent international standards and conducted by third parties,” said government sources, and the results are planned to be released in a report in December 2012, along with a list of the most environment-friendly companies as an example for future industrial development.

Meanwhile, last month, the Vice-chairman of Federal of Hong Kong Industries said that minimum wages in the Pearl River Delta region are likely to go up by 16 – 20% from January 1st 2012.

“This means textile companies here can expect a dramatic rise in labour costs and together with higher raw material prices,” it said, and could result in significant business failures for firms that are “highly labour intensive and produce basic textile products”.

]]> http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/china-manufacturing-tax/feed/ 0 http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/google-earth-climate-change/ http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/google-earth-climate-change/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:06:47 +0000 Flainox http://www.flainox.com/blog/?p=1491 Explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet Earth and learn about solutions for adaptation and mitigation, in the context of the United Nations’s Climate Climate Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen.

With Google Earth you can view climate change scenarios, interact with narrated tours, investigate deforestation, and even dive into the depths of the oceans.

]]> http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/google-earth-climate-change/feed/ 0 http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/vintage-denim-and-environment/ http://www.flainox.com/blog/2011/12/vintage-denim-and-environment/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:05:41 +0000 Flainox http://www.flainox.com/blog/?p=1340 Vintage Denim – At What Cost To Environment ?

Vintage Denim – At What Cost To Environment ?

Readymade garment sector is booming world wide & specially in 3rd world countries, and garment processing has emerged as one of the important production routes towards meeting quick changing demands of the fashion market. In this article we look at processing of denim garments & its impact on environment.

Brands seeking to improve their environmental credentials can look beyond the use of organic cotton to a range of new products and technologies that lower the levels of chemicals, stones residue, rivets, buttons, hand tags, water and energy needed to manufacture denim fabric & garments.

The spread of denim culture, all over the world brought with it a trend of fast changing fashions. One after another, several washes were introduced such as stone wash, acid wash, moonwash, monkey wash, show wash, frosted wash, white wash, mud wash, distressed wash etc. Over the last 6-8 years, India has probably seen the most dramatic and exciting changes in the washing of denim garments.

Although the denim industry has long been known to be resource intensive, a full picture wasn’t known publicly until Levi Strauss & Co. shared results of its life cycle assessment on what went into making one pair of its iconic Levi’s 501 style.

Examining the 2006 production year for jeans headed to the U.S. market, Levi’s found that making one pair of 501s required almost 920 gallons of water, 400 mega joules of energy and expelled 32 kilograms of carbon dioxide. Levi’s said this was equivalent to running a garden hose for 106 minutes, driving 78 miles and powering a computer for 556 hours.

Faded, ripped scrunched and ‘distressed’ to the ultimate degree are very costly denim garments for well-known brands cost USD 100 plus for a pair! However, hot this distressed denim might appear on the runway there is a more depressing tale to tell apart from the overpricing, regarding the production of denim in general and the techniques and practices employed in the stonewashing and distressing process with various chemicals.

There are huge ecological and ethical concerns as this business is an enormous affair. To give an example , more than 520 million pairs of jeans are sold in USA alone each year. The majority of which will have been coloured with dyes, acid bathed, sandblasted and chemically doused to give the aged , worn in look we all so desire.

• The life cycle of denim starts with the cotton boll, amid the vast cotton crops recorded as covering 2.4% of the world’s farm land. If not organically grown the valuable crops will be drenched in toxic pesticides to protect them from insects and weeds. Organophosphates are used which are poisonous and ultimately pass into the soil and reek havoc with wildlife.
• Cotton fibres are spun into yarn and the denim yarn is “sized” using starch to give it strength and “mercerized” in caustic soda. Starch is biodegradable but if released into the rivers the microbes that devour it also consume the oxygen. This in turn kills off the aquatic life in the water as does the toxic caustic soda.
• Other shocking facts are that it takes 1,500 gallons of water to produce 1.5 lbs of cotton needed to make one pair of jeans.
• To achieve the correct blue shade, the denim in doused in vats of synthetic indigo. Environmental regulations are not upheld in many developing countries. Apart from the initial dyeing the stone washing or distressing of the denim is achieved by repeated washing and rinsing and bleaching, chemical blasting with such toxic substances such silica, dye stripped or bleached with potassium permanganate. All toxic to wildlife if let into the waterways and to the workers who breathe it in.
• Very recently we came to know similar situation of untreated water was going in to rivers & waste was spread every where on streets in Lesotho. Worldwide many water sources and land are affected by untreated water from Laundries & Denim plants.

Is Anything Can Be Or Being Done To Control The Damage

1. There are  many up and coming companies producing friendly denim using organic cotton and more eco friendly ways of distressing the fabric, such as using ozone to fade the denim It is the responsibility of the consumer to search these enlightened businesses out by checking for labels such as Fair Trade and Global Organic Standard certification and the Recycling logo.
2. Some designers have solved the problem in another way by recycling old denim, naturally aged and worn by time, and re-styled and modelled it into new and inventive fashion designs. Denim seems to be an ongoing favorites on the fashion scene and as such needs to clean up its act totally to keep in step with the environmental and ethical requirements that are so rightly being put into place as a global fashion and textile effort.
3. There are many eco friendly ways being introduced & keep coming. Reducing chemicals consumption and Stone usages , Enzymes being introduced in each process step.. desizing , Abrasion & now its being used bleaching enzymes also…. these are bio degradable products hence eco friendly. At fabric front Denim Mills started producing quicker wash down denim to have faster distress look with minimum efforts & usage of chemicals.
4. Many chemical companies making their products keeping in mind the Global Restricted substances of toxic chemicals to produce environment friendly products. All most all leading brands started critical testing’s of their merchandise through third party testing for these banned chemicals.A large chemical company – Clariant – recently introduced a product – Advanced Denim – which it claims water usage by 60% during dye process.
5. Buildinggreen.com is using denim waste to create cotton insulation products.

However, these steps are far few and make hardly any impact. It is only when the governments the world over realize the impact of denim that we will see real innovations towards creating products which will help in reduction of the same.

Source: denimsandjeans.com

The financial crisis of 2009 saw the developing world’s carbon emissions from consumption shoot past the developed world’s years earlier than expected, new research shows

The carbon footprint from consumption in the developing world has overtaken that of the developed world, according to research published on Monday. The change happened years earlier than expected due to the fact that the developing world’s emissions were largely unaffected by the global financial crisis.

Emissions within the borders of developing countries outstripped those emitted in developed countries (as defined by the Kyoto Protocol’s ‘Annex B’) in around 2005. But the rich world still accounted for the majority of the carbon footprint of consumption due to the goods it imports from China and other developing economies.

Crowds outside an Apple store in Beijing in 2011; the developing world's carbon emissions from consumption have now overtaken the developed world's. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

Experts expected this situation to remain unchanged until around 2015, but the research in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that developing nations came to represent the majority of the carbon footprint of global consumption in around 2009, years earlier than expected.

The shift happened as a result of the markedly different way that emissions were affected by the global financial crisis in rich and poor countries. As the chart above shows, whereas the developed world’s emissions fell steeply in 2009 before bouncing back to a lower level in 2010, the developing world shot up throughout the period, apparently unaffected by the financial crisis.

Of course, this revelation doesn’t make individuals in the developing world more responsible for climate change than those in the developed world. On the contrary, the footprint per person is still far greater in the rich world, with its much smaller population, than in the highly populous developing world.

Furthermore, the rich world still has a larger historical footprint, having emitted around 73% of the CO2 since 1850, according to [figures from the WRI. Free log-in required]. Much of that CO2 is still in the air and driving current global warming.

Nonetheless, the fact that developing nations have come to represent the majority of the world’s carbon footprint touches on some of the key tensions in the UN global climate talks – in particular, the question of whether any deal needs to include binding emissions commitments from China and others large emerging economies.

The figures also highlights the increasing fragmentation of the traditional “developing world” category into different groups, including the poorest countries with minimal carbon emissions and the larger transitional economies with substantial carbon footprints.

The paper also examines how the recent financial turmoil compares to four previous economic crises in terms of impact on emissions.

How emissions have bounced back after economic crises. Source: Nature Climate Change

Worryingly, as the chart above shows, whereas previous recessions appear to have reduced the rate of emissions growth for decades to come, the current crisis has seen a full rebound to the recent rising trend within two years. In other words, thanks to strong growth in emerging economies, recent economic woes appear to have had almost zero impact on global carbon emissions.

Source: guardian.co.uk

Capturing CO2 Too Costly to Combat Climate Change?

Since a buildup of humanmade carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm, why not just suck this greenhouse gas straight out of the atmosphere? That’s one strategy scientists have proposed to combat climate change. But a new analysis suggests that the approach may be neither economical nor practical.

Before widespread industrial activity began spewing CO2 into the air in the mid-1700s, atmospheric concentrations of the gas were around 280 parts per million (ppm). They now exceed 390 ppm and are growing rapidly, about 2 ppm per year. Rather than reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas by shifting to carbon-neutral sources of energy—wind, solar, and nuclear power, for example—and then letting vegetation and the oceans gradually absorb CO2 in the long term, humans could lower concentrations more rapidly by actively pulling CO2 from the air, some scientists have suggested.

In such a scheme, researchers would leave large vats out in the open, filled with solutions of sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, or chemicals called amines. Or, the CO2-laden air could be forcefully bubbled through such reservoirs. When CO2 in the air reacts with these solutions, it becomes trapped in carbonate-rich compounds. Scientists can later heat these compounds and release the CO2 and dispose of it, typically by injecting it into deep geologic formations beneath impermeable rock, such as natural reservoirs of oil and natural gas.

The approach is a form of carbon capture, which also includes strategies for grabbing CO2 before it gets into the air, from smokestacks, for example. Carbon capture itself is part of a suite of ideas, dubbed geoengineering, in which scientists hope to use technology to curb global warming. (Other ideas involve schemes such as seeding the seas with zillions of tiny bubbles to reflect sunlight back into space.)

Previous studies have hinted that capturing CO2 directly from the air could cost a few hundred dollars per metric ton of CO2. At a rate of $300 per metric ton, that would total more than $10 trillion to completely counteract the estimated 33.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions generated by humans—a tremendous cost, yet one that is still economically viable. But Kurt House, a geoscientist with C12 Energy in Berkeley, California, and his colleagues suggest online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that slurping a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere may actually be much more expensive.

Among other techniques, the researchers estimated the costs of this form of carbon capture by comparing it with the price of scrubbing other pollutants such as oxides of sulfur and nitrogen from industrial emissions before they leave a power plant’s smokestack. Although pulling CO2 from ambient air rather than a smokestack, where CO2 concentrations can be as high as 12%, would be more difficult, it is technically possible. The problem, House says, is that it’s energetically as well as economically expensive to do so. Capturing CO2 once it’s in the atmosphere takes about four times the energy generated by burning the fossil fuel in the first place, he notes.

Overall, just to capture CO2 would cost at least $1100 per ton, the researchers estimate. That’s a total price tag of at least $33 trillion just to hold atmospheric concentrations of CO2 steady Then, once the gas is captured, even more energy must be expended to compress the gas into a liquid and then dispose of it. And unless the energy needed to drive these processes are carbon-neutral—that is, unless they produce no CO2 emissions of their own—the net result might add CO2 to the atmosphere, not reduce it.

“I agree that this [carbon-capture] process would be expensive now, and I agree that we need clean sources of energy to do this,” says Robert Socolow, a physicist at Princeton University. “Today, we don’t know how to do this at low cost, but there’s work that can be done that might reduce costs significantly,” he adds.

The analytical techniques used by House and his colleagues are perfectly sensible, but there’s a lot of uncertainty associated with them, says David Keith, a physicist at Harvard University. As a result, he notes, costs to pull a ton of CO2 from the air could range anywhere from several thousand dollars to as low as $100. Still, “at this point, carbon capture [from ambient air] is a very conceptual environment,” says Keith, who is also president of a start-up company developing such technology. “To really know what it costs, someone actually has to build it.”

House and his colleagues note that for the near future, it’s probably better to avoid releasing CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place. Between now and 2050, they say, carbon emissions can be captured—using more-developed techniques such as scrubbing the gas before it ever leaves the smokestack, for instance—for less than $300 per ton. But the best approach, many suggest, is simply to find greener sources of energy.

Source: news.sciencemag.org

Flainox was there!

Ecomondo is the biggest expo of green technologies and new lifestyles, a special forum where businesses in the environmental and sustainability sectors can meet institutional stakeholders, trade associations, local/central governments, NGOs and all types of industries and goods manufacturers, to discuss new models of economic growth driven by a focus on innovation, clean technologies and a new approach to urbanization and social contexts.

A dedicated forum for KEY MARKET PLAYERS to meet and share experiences on the green economy.

An unrivalled source of information and training on ecologically sustainable materials and energy efficiency for recycling and waste recovery operators.

An exemplary plan of action for businesses and local bodies that have based their business, competitiveness and quality standards on sustainability.

A single point of interaction to discuss the requirements and best ways of doing ETHICAL, RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS.

Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo attended the opening ceremony with official authorities on Wednesday 9 November.

The sharp rise in the numbers registering to attend is a sign that Italian businesses have embraced the green economy (and the importance of the environment) as an important new challenge for their business and also a means of gaining an added competitive edge.

There has also been a positive response from the green equipment.

INTEXUSA INTELLIGENT INNOVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE TEXTILE PRODUCTION. FLAINOX HAS PARTICIPATED TO THE PROJECT.

Optimisation of dyeing processes with UltraSonic Technology and its integration with automatic on-line control

The usage of auxiliares (dyestuffs, solvents,…) must be NOT necessary, where it’s possible, and not dangerous if used.
GREEN CHEMISTRY Energy and water comsumption MUST be reduced.

Wool fibre at FE-SEM, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope, before and after UStreatment.

The course aims to introduce the participants into the wonderful world of natural dyes will use the historical dyeing plants dried and wild plants collected in the territory; dye yarn and fabric in various fibers: wool, silk, cotton, linen, etc.

we’ll see how the color will change with the variation of mordent, the pH of the bath.

will dye also in INDIGO.

Stefano Panconesi, more than thirty years dealing with natural dyes: courses, participation in conferences, consulting in the textile industry.

INTRODUCTORY COURSE ON NATURAL DYEING

FRIDAY 4 nov

4 p.m. Course presentation – A brief history of natural dyeing over the centuries; Today’s market for natural dyes
8 p.m. Dinner
9:30 p.m. Video on natural dyes in the world

SATURDAY 5 nov

8 a.m. Breakfast
9 a.m. Preparation of the fibres to be dyed: wool, cotton, silk.
Dyeing with COCCINIGL to get red with WELD to get yellow
1 p.m. Lunch
2:30 p.m. Preparation of the fibres to be dyed: wool, cotton, silk
Dyeing with COSMOS to get brown with LOGWOOD to get purple
8 p.m. Dinner
9:30 p.m. Video on indigo dyeing in the world

SUNDAY 6 nov

8 a.m. Breakfast
9:30 a.m. Preparation of the fibres to be dyed: wool, cotton, silk
Double dyeing with colour modification through addition of salt, change in pH, etc.
11:30 a.m. Creation of a colour chart with the previously dyed sampled
1 p.m. Lunch

Fees for the course

Association 2011 € 15,00
Course Fee € 200,00
Board and lodging €100,00 in twin-bed room

ASSOCIAZIONE CASA CLEMENTINA
via Italia, 6 13843 Pettinengo (BIELLA)
Phone +39 348 3326570
casaclementina@alice.it

Or maybe it’s a taste of excitement, because it seems entirely possible that the trailer-truck-size machine that he’s leaning up against is actually going to work.

“It’s amazing to see all this talk and paper get turned into hardware,” he says. “I really love it.”

Keith is on a patch of blacktop on the campus of the University of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, where until very recently he has been a professor. Now his academic hat is Harvard, where he is both a professor of public policy and a professor of applied physics. His hard hat is a little start-up company, called Carbon Engineering, housed on the Calgary campus. And that company is building a machine that can actually suck carbon dioxide from the air.

The technology at the core of the device is not new. “People have done this for a long time,” he says. “There were commercial processes that took CO₂ out of the air, in fact, in the 1950s, so there’s no mystery that we can do it.”

But those companies were just extracting small quantities of carbon dioxide for industrial purposes. Keith is after a much more important question, one that is universal for anyone trying to develop a technology: Can it be done affordably on a grand scale?

“So our interest is in building full-scale commercial systems that would take tens of thousands of tons — or more — of CO₂ out of the air,” he says.

‘Not As Hard As You Think’

Taking on climate change is in part personal for Keith. This wiry man has skied across many hundreds of miles of the rapidly melting Arctic, so he knows more than most people what’s at stake.

Getting this project to work is also an intellectual challenge. “It’s fun to go after problems where there’s a wide public consensus in one direction that is sort of thin, where people haven’t thought about it very much,” he says.

Mr Forrest, chief executive of the iron ore miner Fortescue Metals, held up China as an exemplary economy that was turning its back on communism by lowering resources taxes.

”In China right now there’s a fierce debate about how to lower their resources tax to encourage the mining industry,” he told an ”axe the tax” protest before a speech by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

”I ask you which communist is turning capitalist and which capitalist is turning communist?”

Analysts in China were perplexed by Mr Forrest’s comments, as China is in fact taking steps towards imposing a resources tax, which Beijing sees as a means of conserving resources, slowing environmental destruction and rebalancing an economy that delivers bloated corporate profits at the expense of households.

“We didn’t have any taxes before. It was tiny, like 0.3 per cent on some resources, and now people are starting to think we should charge,” said Huang Yiping, professor of economics at the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University. “A resources tax will definitely be imposed in the next five years.”

China Daily, the Communist Party’s main English-language newspaper, has held up Australia as an example for China to follow.

“A hint to this nation’s policymakers: if they are looking for guidelines to the long-awaited tax reform, take a good look at Australia’s latest plan to increase worker pension funds with a new tax on resource projects,” the paper said on May 26.

On June 1 China’s unveiled its first resources tax, at a rate of 5 per cent on fossil fuels in Xinjiang, as a way of retaining some of the region’s mineral wealth in local hands.

Since then a vice-premier, Li Keqiang, has advocated a national resources tax in a speech published in Seeking Truth, the Communist Party’s leading theory magazine.

Officials have hinted that Xinjiang will be a pilot for a resource taxes that will gradually be imposed on all mineral resources.

Chinese industry leaders are lobbying officials to obstruct the proposed tax, as they are in Australia.

Zeng Shaojin, vice-president of the  China Mining Association, said taxes on iron ore should be reduced to stimulate domestic suppliers and reduce dependence on imports.

The vice secretary of the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA), Qi Xiangdong, said he had lobbied government to reduce iron ore taxes.

Mr Forrest’s comments yesterday were not the first time an Australian mining billionaire has levelled the “communist” charge. Last week the maverick Queenslander Clive Palmer said the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, was a “communist” and a “goose”.

Nor is it the first time Mr Forrest has got China upside down when it has suited his interests. Last August he said CISA had the power to implement a vague investment deal.

”CISA was once viewed as a dog with a lot of bark. I think it is now viewed across China as a dog with a lot of bark and bite,” said Mr Forrest, after agreeing with CISA to a slightly larger price cut of 35 per cent on the condition of up to $US6 billion in finance from an unnamed Chinese institution.

One of Mr Forrest’s own advisers told the BusinessDay at the time: “Mr Forrest does not understand China – the China Iron & Steel Association has nothing to do with Chinese financial institutions.”

The proposed investment never materialised, and CISA has been ignored or overruled in China on every substantial policy matter since.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/now-china-mulls-tax-on-resources-20100609-xwwn.html#ixzz1bDFg7Lfw

Right now, 10 countries — including the U.S., China and Russia — are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. The United States is the world’s second largest emitter (China ranks no. 1), sending around 5.8 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere a year. That’s the equivalent to a year’s worth of greenhouse gas emissions from 1.1 billion average passenger vehicles. Below, a look at today’s big CO2 emitters — and projected emissions giants in 2030.

Countries With Top Coal Reserves

Across the globe, coal reserves are the most carbon-intensive energy resource.

Source: World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, 2009re

Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are much higher than they were in the industrial era, and have been increasing steadily over the last half century. The yearly dips represent seasonal changes.

Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

CO2 Emissions Compared With GDP

About half the electricity used in the United States comes from burning coal. China depends on coal even more. Burning coal puts out more greenhouse gases than does any other single source of electricity.

Source: World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, 2009; CIA World Factbook

For more information and details please read the original article on NPR.org: http://tinyurl.com/62htd75

http://www.flainox.com/blog/profile/video-multimedia/

While to some this language may seem extreme, the reality is that an unprecedented range of threats are coming together to challenge the health of oceans and underwater life. The report identifies the main drivers of these threats, including: climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss. The report also finds increasing hypoxia (low oxygen levels) and anoxia (absence of oxygen, known as ocean dead zones) along with warming oceans and increasing acidification are creating multiple stessors on the world’s oceans – and multiple stressors are, in their words, a precondition for other mass extinction events in the Earth’s history.

The bottom line is that these combined threats– much of it caused by human activity— are undermining the sustainability of our fragile ocean ecosystems, sea life and the value they hold. The World Resources Institute has been working on these issues over its 30 year history— particularly focused on the threats to coral reefs and issues around eutrophication and hypoxia (commonly referred to as “dead zones”).

Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are an essential part of ocean ecosystems – home to over 25 percent of all known species of marine life. The new IPSO report finds that in the past 50 years, activities related to “overfishing, pollution, and unsustainable practices” have led to severe declines in many marine species and an unprecedented level of degradation and loss of critically important habitat types such as mangroves, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. These pressures are being compounded by global warming, which leads to coral bleaching and related threats from ocean acidification.

These findings echo themes from WRI’s recent report, Reefs at Risk Revisited, which finds that 75 percent of the world’s reefs are already at risk. WRI found that the main local pressures include overfishing, destructive fishing and pollution are leading threats to coral reefs. Like the IPSO, WRI looked at global pressures as well, namely global warming, coral bleaching and ocean acidification. WRI found that unless these combined threats are turned back, more than 90 percent of coral reefs will at risk by 2030 and all the world’s reefs will be threatened by 2050. In addition, WRI found that in the past 10 years, threats to coral reefs increased by 30 percent – showing that the threats to reefs are increasing both in speed and intensity.

Dead Zones

The new IPSO report identifies hypoxia as one of the factors which is threatening ocean life. Last year, WRI worked with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) to identify and map areas around there world that are showing signs of eutrophication and hypoxia. The new research identified 535 low-oxygen “dead zones,” only 56 of which can be classified as improving; an additional 248 sites worldwide were identified as areas of concern that currently exhibit signs of marine eutrophication and are at risk of developing hypoxia. According to our analysis, the number of eutrophic or hypoxic areas have increased from 42 known hypoxic or eutrophic sites in 1950 to the 783 sites we’ve identified today. This represents an 1800% increase in eutrophic and hypoxic areas over the past 60 years.

Dead zones are the result of over-fertilization of our coastal areas from sources such as runoff from agriculture, discharges from industry, and human sewage. When a dead zone forms, oxygen in the water is severely depleted– threatening animals, plants, and other sea life with it. A combination of stressors from climate change, fisheries, pollution and habitat destruction are leading to more dead zones, further comprising our oceans, including the fragile world of coral reefs.

Cause for Hope?

While these findings are grim, there are reasons for hope. The IPSO identifies some key steps that could help reverse the dire direction for our oceans to help restore and protect ocean ecoystems. Their recommendations include:

1. Reducing carbon emissions,
2. Restoring the structure and function of marine ecosystems
3. Proper and universal implementation of the precautionary principle; and
4. Urgent introduction by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly of effective governance of the High Seas

WRI’s research has made it clear that with growing awareness of the declining status of the world’s oceans and identifying the most urgent threats and primary drivers of ecosystem degradation, people can take steps to reduce our impact – especially at the local level. Engaging in sustainable business practices (including ecotourism), reducing local pollution (including the over-use of fertilizers), protecting coastal mangroves and establishing more fish sanctuaries and strengthening marine protected areas as well as improved fisheries management can all help to buy time for coral reefs.

Supporting comprehensive national assessments to identify the root causes of species declines and degradation of ecosystem services and mobilize support for urgently needed policy and institutional reforms, improvements in regulatory frameworks and market-led economic incentives can help to turn the tide.

On a global level, however, the threats from climate change looms large – more political will is needed along with more action by governments to prevent the worst possible forecasts of the State of Oceans Report. It is up to people, policymakers, and international leaders to make decisions today to ensure that the truly frightening predictions of mass extinction of sea life do not come to pass.

Source: greenme.it

It has been calculated the carbon foot print (total absolute emissions) of CO ₂ and GHG produced by the company in 2008, 2009 and 2010 according to ISO 14064-1 and 2 / 2006 and (PAS) 2050:2008. They were chosen emission factors ISPRA (Institute for Research and Environment of Rome) and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

The results of the study are highlighted here below :

The figure of absolute emissions in 2010 (the year of application) was reduced by 15.4% compared to the historical average. Result is even more significant (-45.6% and -42.7%) achieved on historical data and machinery sales.

It  has been recognized  the  Blue Carbon Certification by Rexizon:

A very positive result that will be further stimulus to the search for improvement of corporate conduct in respect of the mission has long adopted.

Continuing in the line set in 2009 Flainox has successfully conducted the verification and validation of the Life Cycle  Assessment of the  series of rotary dye-extractors  “NRG-Universal. ” The aim was to confirm and further reduce the emissions of CO ₂  and GHG during the life cycle of the machine.

Compared to the relative value of 24,330 t / CO ₂ eq. there was a reduction of 8,353 T / CO ₂ on the previous model.

This result was achieved thanks to the pressing action of the balance of quality and ways of producing materials (-54.6%), eco-design and assembly (-77.1%), transport / logistics (-24, 4%).

The use stage have recorded a significant 34,3 % reduction in GHG and CO ₂ emissions and  consistent savings of water, steam and chemicals.

The result means the proper management and mitigation made ​​by Flainox and spurs the commitment to continue the search for better solutions.

Measure, Mitigation and Management of the Carbon  Footprint of product, machinery and dyeing process for energy-saving and effluent-reducing.

Carbon Footprint

The Carbon Footprint is a measure of the relative global amount of carbon dioxide (CO2 in Kgs or tonnes) and other greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity or accumulated over the full life cycle of a product or service. Those gases are the major responsible of global warming and a  peril to climate.

EX. 1 KG OF OIL WHEN IT BURNS WITH OXYGEN FROM AIR IT PRODUCES UP TO 3.3 KG OF CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2).

Base of the Life Cycle Concept

Textile Industry: One of the worst Impact on Global Warming

200 grams Cotton T-Shirt resources requirement:

50 Liters Water in industrial processing
2000 Liters Water in agriculture
4 square metres land
5 kWH
4 kg steam
0,4 kg chemicals
10 kg CO2 emissions

UP TO 50 TIMES CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSION FOLD ITS OWN WEIGHT !!!

IMAGINE UP TO 60 billions kg textile goods processed per year worldwide

Flainox Nrg-Universal 240 – Year 2010 Management & Mitigation of Carbon Footprint life cycle 15 years

The Carbon footprint of Universal NRG through all its is Life Cycle of 15 years is 15 977 tonnes CO2 e.
and 99,6% of GHG emissions occur at usage phase in textile plant.
With Universal NRG Flainox has already achieved outstanding  sustainable performance on CO2 e
reduction of 8,353 tonnes per machine with significant water consumption and energy savings.
The technological improvements through Eco-Design are providing further carbon emissions mitigation at customer usage phase with over 34% reduction versus standard model NRP.
For the textile plant user it could represent up to 35% CO2 e reduction per kg fabric
produced and up to $2,4 million in 15 years savings of operating costs per machine.

The outlook is bright for Africa’s cotton, textile and apparel sector. The industry is undergoing a renaissance fueled by a global demand for cotton, diversification of sourcing and manufacturing locations around the world and an African middle class that is stimulating demand for African-made apparel. To capitalize on these trends, USAID East Africa’s Competitiveness and Trade Expansion (COMPETE) program is bringing industry buyers and designers together to share innovations in textile technology and showcase Africa’s fashion designers at Origin Africa Fiber to Fashion in Port Louis, Mauritius March 17-18. This event is organized with the Mauritius Export Association (MEXA), Enterprise Mauritius (EM) and the African Cotton & Textile Industries Federation (ACTIF). Its aim is to strengthen business relationships and develop new trade opportunities for the hundreds of producers, traders and buyers who will attend the event.
Mookeshwarsing Gopal, chairman of MEXA, commented, “The need to generate demand in new emerging markets and drum up demand in our own markets has become critical for the African region. With the fading of the economic crisis and an increase in financial confidence, there is an urgent need for increased manpower and skilled workers.”
Origin Africa Fiber to Fashion 2011 is divided into a Fiber to Fashion Symposium, a Pan-African Graphic Design Show and the Origin Africa Designer Showcase.
Symposium agenda items include Green/Eco-friendly manufacturing practices, New Product Development and Innovation in Cotton Fabric and Fiber, and Integrating Design and Marketing. The conference will wrap up with a Buyer/Sellers Platform led by USAID COMPETE’s Friends of Africa Apparel Advisory Board (business leaders in the US apparel sector who are committed to increasing trade with Africa).
The Pan-Africa Graphic Design Show taps into Africa’s new and exciting design talent. The competition asked designers to create compelling designs for the Africa of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
The colorful prints and textures of African fabrics will be featured as up and coming designers show their collections in the Origin Africa Designer Showcase. This competition challenges designers to create collections with commercial appeal using locally sourced fabrics and facilities. Twelve designers representing countries from West, South, East Africa and the Indian Ocean and three fashion students from Mauritius will show their collections before a panel of international judges. Participation in the Origin Africa Designer Showcase gives international exposure to promising African design talent. The Designer Showcase winner will be flown to New York and featured at AFRICA Fashion Week New York in July 2011.
USAID COMPETE’s Origin Africa global awareness campaign is changing perceptions about doing business in Africa while USAID COMPETE’s East and Central Africa Trade Hub helps African businesses take advantage of preferential trade opportunities available under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Over the past two years the ECA Hub has facilitated nearly USD $35 million of exports in apparel, cut flowers, specialty foods and home decor/fashion accessories under AGOA.

source: eastafrica.usaid.gov

The primary driver of this trend is taking recognised measurements for water consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions and applying them to a company’s supply chain.

But many businesses are finding this tricky for their overseas suppliers as the practical implementation of responsibility can vary from country to country.

Shirahime, a UK based ethical fashion consultancy, has published a guide to responsibly sourcing textiles and clothes from India.

Despite its narrow country and industry focus, the guide is packed with advice for any business looking to find responsible goods or services suppliers from overseas.

Key points

Be clear about the outcomes you want to achieve

Define aims clearly and build a strategy around the outcomes you want to achieve. Don’t try to do everything all at once: focus on what is important now.

Don’t look exclusively for suppliers who have certification. Certification is a costly process and may not guarantee the specific outcomes youwant.

Instead, visit potential suppliers and examine their operations for yourself. If you do this, make sure you have a suitable translator and cultural liaison who can guide your decision making process.

In addition, start networking, even if it’s with your competitors. If you do this up front it can vastly increase your chances of success in finding the right supplier.

Consider company size alongside business practices

There can be a correlation between a supplier’s size, the goods or services it provides, and its ability to operate responsibly.

As a broad rule of thumb, the larger the company the more comprehensive their offering will be. Yet the larger the company, the more likely it is that their business is focussed upon financial efficiency, not responsible practice.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a responsible supplier it may be worth choosing smaller producers rather than bulk providers as your partners.

To make this affordable, you should collaborate with other companies, including competitors. Effective purchasing partnerships can influence medium sized enterprises significantly, leading to a greater overall focus on sustainability.

Consider alternatives to your preferred goods, service or country

India is the largest organic cotton producer in the world. However it also produces other sustainable natural fibres and is the eighth largest wool producer in the world. Few people would think of India as a source of wool and if your intention was to buy textiles from India you wouldn’t immediately think of wool, would you?

In order to get the most responsible procurement deal, businesses have to change their mindset and be open minded about both the country of origin and the goods or service they’re looking to procure.

Be prepared to invest as well as purchase

This final point is possibly the most important in Shirahime’s report: the days of simply handing over the money to supplier are fading fast.

Instead, businesses need to think about how they can contribute long term value to their suppliers’ enterprise beyond a simple commercial deal.

This is where the value of being clear in your outcomes and partnering with other companies can yield substantial benefits.

For example, your business wants to reduce carbon emissions and you and your partners have found a suitable company. However, you know this company’s health and safety record is not desirable … what can you do to improve it?

As part of the commercial relationship with your supplier, you can offer health and safety training and leverage resources across the partner companies as appropriate.

This is not about financial gain. It’s about investing long term in the sustainability of both the supplier and purchasing companies: sharing skills and knowledge on a commercial basis for the benefit of all.

Richard Perkins, WWF’s senior commodities adviser, agrees with Shirahime’s approach. “You must be clear about the risks arising from your impacts and dependencies, that you’re trying to mitigate,” he says.

“It’s all about drawing up your own analysis and then speaking to stakeholders to place risk mitigation and identification of opportunities alongside other purchasing criteria.”

source:  guardian.co.uk

“Our announcement tomorrow will be an agreement between those three governors — Schwarzenegger, the governor of Acre, and the governor of Chiapas — to actually move these states, projects from these states, into the carbon market and to hopefully provide a path for others to follow,” Secretary Linda Adams said in an interview on Monday.

The regions — Acre in Western Brazil, and Chiapas in southeastern Mexico — are heavily forested and have made considerable progress in addressing deforestation, Adams said.

“They are on a mission to get into our compliance market by the time it begins in 2012,” Adams said. “These will be pilots rather than just opening up to the world and controversy.”

The agreements must be codified by the state’s Air Resources Board, which manages climate change regulation.

Carbon markets seek to cap total emissions of greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming. Factories and power plants buy and sell permits to emit gases, relying on the market efficiency to find the best ways to cut emissions.

Emitters often are allowed to buy some credits for projects which reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Preserving tropical forests is seen as one of the most cost-effective ways to cut global carbon emissions, but is controversial. The few carbon markets in the world have avoided giving credits for Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD.

California’s market will start in 2012.

Schwarzenegger is hosting the third annual Governors’ Global Climate Summit, which intends to spur state and local governments to address climate change, a mission that has taken increased importance given the recent failure of global and U.S. action.

Schwarzenegger is about to hand over the state to Governor-elect Jerry Brown, a Democrat who campaigned hard on the importance of California’s climate change law.

source: AlertNet

China Expected to Achieve Green Goal on Schedule
China is expected to achieve its target of a 20-percent cut in energy use per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) in the five years to 2010 as planned, Said Mr. Li Yizhong, China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology.
With efforts in the fourth quarter, the energy efficiency goal for the 11th Five-Year (2006-2010) period would be met. Li also forecast energy consumption per unit of industrial value-added output would decline 6 percent this year from a year ago.The year-on-year reductions for the previous four years were 1.98 percent in 2006, 5.46 percent in 2007, 8.43 percent in 2008 and 6.62 percent last year, he said. China would make the industrial sector a key area for pushing through energy efficiency measures and emission cuts, Li said.
In 2009, the industrial sector consumed 71.3 percent of China’s total energy, and was responsible for 84.3 percent of the China’s sulfur dioxide emissions and 34.4 percent of chemical oxygen emissions. Currently, China was facing a tough challenge in restructuring its industrial sector as it struggled to be rid of production overcapacity and highly energy-intensive businesses.
Apart from the iron and steel and concrete manufacturing, other industries suffering from overcapacity included the sectors of wind-powered electricity generation and the solar photovoltaic industry. The extremely high proportion of energy-intensive businesses in the industrial sector also gave rise to heavy energy and environmental pressures.
“Although half of China’s backward production capacity will be eliminated during the five years from 2006 to 2010, there is still a long way to go before our conventional industries can be upgraded,” Li said. The authorities would continue to raise energy efficiency by promoting indigenous innovations, improving the structure of investments and by enforcing strict market access rules to curb high energy-guzzling businesses. Official statistics indicated China’s consumption of energy relative to economic output has fallen by 15.6 percent from 2005 to 2009. However, energy use per unit of GDP rose 3.2 percent year-on-year during the first quarter this year. Energy consumption per unit of industrial value-added output was up 0.38 percent from one year ago during the first three months. The first half of this year saw a 0.09-percent increase year-on-year in energy use per unit of GDP.
The government has introduced a series of measures to ensure the target on energy efficiency is met, including eliminating out-dated industrial capacity and restricting new projects for capacity expansion in energy intensive and polluting industries. During the four years to 2009, small thermal power plants with a total capacity of 60 million kilowatts were shut down. For the first seven months this year, small thermal plants with another 10 million kW of capacity were eliminated. Authorities also phased out inefficient production capacity of 87.12 million tons of steel, 60.38 million tons of iron and 214 million tons of cement in the past four years.
This year, the government was aiming to save energy of another 16 million tons of standard coal by shutting down small thermal power plants with a total capacity of 10 million kw and eliminating inefficient production capacity of 25 million tons of steel, 6 million tonnes of iron and 50 million tons of cement.
China would exhaust all effective means possible to meet the target of improving energy efficiency, Zhang Xiaoqiang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the Summer Davos in September.

fonte: China Textile

“Organisations that implement comprehensive carbon reduction programmes can enhance their corporate reputation by showing customers, staff and prospects that they are taking direct action against climate change,” he added.

“A one metre rise in sea levels, which some climate scientists warn will happen if nothing is done to reduce carbon pollution, would be devastating for the Maldives,” he said. “The government is doing everything we possibly can to remain here and that is why we have a plan to make the Maldives carbon neutral in ten years.”

source: businessgreen.com

Source: http://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/

The powder shows bright promise for a number of other uses, they said. It may, for instance, be a greener, more energy-efficient way of jump-starting the chemical reactions used to make hundreds of consumer products. Dry water also could provide a safer way to store and transport potentially harmful industrial materials.

“There’s nothing else quite like it,” said Ben Carter, Ph.D., researcher for study leader Professor Andrew Cooper. “Hopefully, we may see ‘dry water’ making waves in the future.”

Carter explained that the substance became known as “dry water” because it consists of 95 percent water and yet is a dry powder. Each powder particle contains a water droplet surrounded by modified silica, the stuff that makes up ordinary beach sand. The silica coating prevents the water droplets from combining and turning back into a liquid. The result is a fine powder that can slurp up gases, which chemically combine with the water molecules to form what chemists term a hydrate.

Dry water was discovered in 1968 and got attention for its potential use in cosmetics. Scientists at the University of Hull, U.K. rediscovered it in 2006 in order to study its structure, and Cooper’s group at the University of Liverpool has since expanded its range of potential applications.

One of the most recent involves using dry water as a storage material for gases, including carbon dioxide. In laboratory-scale research, Cooper and co-workers found that dry water absorbed over three times as much carbon dioxide as ordinary, uncombined water and silica in the same space of time. This ability to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide gas as a hydrate could make it useful in helping to reduce global warming, the scientists suggested.

Cooper and colleagues demonstrated in previous studies that dry water is also useful for storing methane, a component of natural gas, and may help expand its use as a future energy source. In particular, they hope that engineers can use the powder to collect and transport stranded deposits of natural gas. This also exists on the ocean floor in the form of gas hydrates, a form of frozen methane also known as the “ice that burns.” The powder could also provide a safer, more convenient way to store methane fuel for use in vehicles powered by natural gas “A great deal of work remains to be done before we could reach that stage,” Carter added.

In another potential new application, the scientists also showed that dry water is a promising means to speed up catalyzed reactions between hydrogen gas and maleic acid to produce succinic acid, a feedstock or raw material widely used to make drugs, food ingredients, and other consumer products. Manufacturers usually have to stir these substances together to get them to react. By developing dry water particles that contain maleic acid, Cooper and colleagues showed that they could speed up the acid’s reaction with hydrogen without any stirring, resulting in a greener, more energy-efficient process.

“If you can remove the need to stir your reactions, then potentially you’re making considerable energy savings,” Carter said.

Prof. Cooper’s team describes an additional new application in which dry water technology shows promise for storing liquids, particularly emulsions. Emulsions are mixtures of two or more unblendable liquids, such as the oil and water mixture in mayonnaise. The scientists showed that they could transform a simple emulsion into a dry powder that is similar to dry water. The resulting powder could make it safer and easier for manufacturers to store and transport potentially harmful liquids.

Carter noted that he and his colleagues are seeking commercial or academic collaboration to further develop the dry water technology. The U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Center for Materials Discovery provided funding and technical support for this study.

Source: ACS Chemistry for Life

In the town of Xintang, textile and denim dyeing is a big business. According to the Chinese government, Xintang produces 200 million pairs of jeans or roughly half of the jeans sold in the U.S. annually.

Denim starts as white cotton thread which is boiled in giant vats of indigo-blue dye before being woven into fabric. The water used in the dyeing process needs to be drained, but instead of treating and recycling all of  it (which is expensive), the wastewater flows through pipes into the Pearl River. The pollution is so bad that local residents and satellite images alike reveal that the river water is black in areas adjacent to denim factories.

“The number one problem (China) face(s) is water pollution,” Deborah Seligsohn of the World Resources Institute told CNN. “The textile industry is one of China’s larger industries and one that uses a lot of water, so it’s traditionally had a lot of wastewater problems.”

The Chinese government knows this is a problem; we know it’s a problem; and if you follow this blog, you know it’s a problem. Now readers of CNN.com know it too, and that’s an indication that the issue is gaining wider recognition among the public.

Companies that source goods from offending dye-houses should recognize the potential for textile pollution to become a public relations nightmare. We believe water pollution will be the new sweatshop issue for the industry–garnering mainstream media attention, and eventually, spurring change.

Top executives whose companies rely on those dye-houses may assume they would be shielded from blame and bad PR if a controversy erupts over water pollution–after all, they might argue that they are merely customers, and don’t own the dye-houses. We suggest they talk to Nike about how that defense worked a few years ago.

According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, industrial manufacturing accounted for 18.5 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2004. The textile industry, which outputs 60 billion kg of fabric annually around the globe, is responsible for a significant portion of the industrial carbon footprint. Through the production of fibers, both natural and synthetic, dying, bleaching, and finishing, 132 million metric tons of coal are burned every year and six to nine trillion liters of water are used.

The textile carbon footprint is as enormous and overbearing. In the United States, textiles are the fifth largest contributor of CO2 emissions. In the rest of the world it is even worse. It is estimated that on average each person is responsible for 19.8 tons of carbon dioxide emissions during their lifetime. One of those tons is because of the clothes you wear. There are many factors contributing to this disastrous lack of efficiency, and just as many solutions.
Factors Behind Textile CO2 Emissions

There are many reasons that the environmental impact of the textile industry is such a problem.

• The vast majority of fibers produced are synthetic. These materials, such as petrochemical-based nylon and polyester, and chemical-treated rayon, use massive amounts of energy to create. Not only that, but the chemicals used during the manufacture of these materials end up as toxins polluting the air, soil, and water.
• Conventional cotton, which makes up the next largest percentage of worldwide fiber production, is also heavily detrimental to the environment. Cotton growth requires intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and water. Cotton manufacturing also requires the heavy use of chemicals and energy.
• The dyeing and bleaching of fabrics involves chemicals, energy, and huge amounts of water. Approximately one million tons of chemical dyes are used every year.
• The wet finishing process uses huge amounts of water and energy.

Eco-Friendly Textile Progress

There is no question that the current state of the worldwide textile industry is unsustainable. Accounting for almost one-third of water usage and 4.3 percent of energy consumption, the present global production of fabrics needs to evolve. No one is more aware of this than the industry itself.

Environmental groups such as Ecotextile and Carbon Neutral Clothing are trying to raise awareness about the eco-effects of this industry. Ecotextile has a calculator for finding the carbon footprint of your wardrobe. Carbon Neutral Clothing is working with clothing companies to develop environmental certification standards. In 2009 the first carbon footprint label for clothing and other textile goods was released in the UK, giving consumers a way to compare not only the prices of different products, but the environmental impact as well.

Aside from the strides towards greater efficiency in the industry and the awareness-raising efforts of environmental groups, what can individuals do for the textile carbon footprint? As a consumer, you can make a difference by choosing eco-friendly textiles. Buy hemp, bamboo, and flax-based clothing and linens. Choose organic cotton over conventional cotton. Don’t buy products made from synthetic fibers. As the demand for sustainable, environmentally-sound textiles grows, the organic textile farmers, eco-friendly dye companies, and responsible producers will be able to thrive.

The carbon footprint of the textile industry is just as suffocating. This is a worldwide problem, that only a worldwide effort can solve.

The use of natural fibres, both plant and animal, to meet our needs goes back thousands of years and plays a significant role in history. In the history of natural fibres, one of the oldest recorded uses of plant fibre for fabrics is the use of hemp which was already being cultivated in China in 2800BC.

In the last century there has been a turn away from natural fibres towards synthetic materials, mostly derived from petrochemicals. This change was a result of the technological revolution and the short term economic advantages of synthetics.

We are now seeing a growing movement away from petrochemical based fibres back to natural fibres. There are three reasons for this. Petrochemical based fibre production has undergone continuing rising costs. Synthetic fibres rely on precious non-renewable resources and incurs environmental costs in their production. Petrochemical based products pose a health risk in most applications, both from direct exposure and also from secondary exposure through soil, water and air pollution.

Natural fibres are either extracted from plants from the leaf, the inner bark or fruit/seed crop, or from animal wool/hair, or insect cocoon or from mineral product. Plant sources of fibre include cotton, hemp, kenaf, ramie, sisal, flax, linen, lime, jute, seagrass, and abaca. Animal sources of fibre include sheep, alpaca, llama, goat, and camel, and can be either wool, hair or leather. Insect fibre is predominantly from silkworm cocoons.

The return to natural fibres to meet our fibre needs is only one part of the change that is required if we want to achieve sustainable living. We must also return to traditional methods of production – back to chemical free and organic production methods. Cotton is one of the most environmentally expensive fibres to produce. Cotton production is the second largest agricultural use of pesticides in the world with five of the nine top ‘nasty’ pesticides used. Cyanide, dicofol, naled, and propargite are commonly used in cotton production and these chemicals are known cancer-causing chemicals.

Resources and Links

• Binhaitimes
• Wholesale Chef Knives
• Wholesale Hospitality Products and Kitchenware Supplies Australia
• Decompression
• Glyconutrients
• Social Capital
• Slow Movement

Natural fibers have a history of being considered the highest quality fibers, valued for their comfort, soft hand and versatility.  They also carry a certain cachet:  cashmere, silk taffeta and 100% pure Sea Island cotton convey different images than does 100% rayon,  pure polyester or even Ultrasuede, don’t they?  And natural fibers, being a bit of an artisan product, are highly prized especially in light of campaigns by various trade associations to brand its fiber:    “the fabric of our lives” from Cotton, Inc. and merino wool with the pure wool label are two examples.

Preferences for natural fibers seem to be correlated with income; in one study, people with higher incomes preferred natural fibers by a greater percentage than did those in lower income brackets.   Cotton Incorporated funded a study that demonstrated that  66% of all women with household incomes over $75,000 prefer natural fibers to synthetic.

What are the reasons, according to the United Nations, that make natural fibers so important?  As  the UN website, Discover Natural Fibers says:

Natural fibers are a healthy choice.

1. Natural fiber textiles absorb perspiration and release it into the air, a process called “wicking” that creates natural ventilation. Because of their more compact molecular structure, synthetic fibers cannot capture air and “breathe” in the same way. That is why a cotton T-shirt is so comfortable to wear on a hot summer’s day, and why polyester and acrylic garments feel hot and clammy under the same conditions. (It also explains why sweat-suits used for weight reduction are made from 100% synthetic material.) The bends, or crimp, in wool fibers trap pockets of air which act as insulators against both cold and heat – Bedouins wear thin wool to keep them cool. Since wool can absorb liquids up to 35% of its own weight, woollen blankets efficiently absorb and disperse the cup of water lost through perspiration during sleep, leaving sheets dry and guaranteeing a much sounder slumber than synthetic blankets.
2. The “breathability” of natural fiber textiles makes their wearers less prone to skin rashes, itching and allergies often caused by synthetics. Garments, sheets and pillowcases of organic cotton or silk are the best choice for children with sensitive skins or allergies, while hemp fabric has both a high rate of moisture dispersion and natural anti-bacterial properties.   Studies by Poland’s Institute of Natural Fibers have shown that 100% knitted linen is the most hygienic textile for bed sheets – in clinical tests, bedridden aged or ill patients did not develop bedsores. The institute is developing underwear knitted from flax which, it says, is significantly more hygienic than nylon and polyester. Chinese scientists also recommend hemp fiber for household textiles, saying it has a high capacity for absorption of toxic gases.

Natural fibers are a responsible choice.

1. Natural fibers production, processing and export are vital to the economies of many developing countries and the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers and low-wage workers. Today, many of those economies and livelihoods are under threat: the global financial crisis has reduced demand for natural fibers as processors, manufacturers and consumers suspend purchasing decisions or look to cheaper synthetic alternatives.

1. Almost all natural fibers are produced by agriculture, and the major part is harvested in the developing world.

1. For example, more than 60% of the world’s cotton is grown in China, India and Pakistan. In Asia, cotton is cultivated mainly by small farmers and its sale provides the primary source of income of some 100 million rural households.
2. In India and Bangladesh, an estimated 4 million marginal farmers earn their living – and support 20 million dependents – from the cultivation of jute, used in sacks, carpets, rugs and curtains. Competition from synthetic fibers has eroded demand for jute over recent decades and, in the wake of recession, reduced orders from Europe and the Middle East could cut jute exports by 20% in 2009.
3. Silk is another important industry in Asia. Raising silkworms generates income for some 700 000 farm households in India, while silk processing provide jobs for 20 000 weaving families in Thailand and about 1 million textile workers in China. Orders of Indian silk goods from Europe and the USA are reported to have declined by almost 50% in 2008-09.
4. Each year, developing countries produce around 500 000 tonnes of coconut fiber – or coir – mainly for export to developed countries for use in rope, nets, brushes, doormats, mattresses and insulation panels. In Sri Lanka, the single largest supplier of brown coir fiber to the world market, coir goods account for 6% of agricultural exports, while 500 000 people are employed in small-scale coir factories in southern India.
5. Across the globe in Tanzania, government and private industry have been working to revive once-booming demand for sisal fiber, extracted from the sisal agave and used in twine, paper, bricks and reinforced plastic panels in automobiles. Sisal cultivation and processing in Tanzania directly employs 120 000 people and the sisal industry benefits an estimated 2.1 million people. However, the global slowdown has cut demand for sisal, forced a 30% cut in prices, and led to mounting job losses.

Natural fibers are a sustainable choice.

1. Natural fibers will play a key role in the emerging “green” economy based on energy efficiency, the use of renewable feed stocks in bio-based polymer products, industrial processes that reduce carbon emissions and recyclable materials that minimize waste.  Natural fibers are a renewable resource, par excellence – they have been renewed by nature and human ingenuity for millennia. They are also carbon neutral: they absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide they produce. During processing, they generate mainly organic wastes and leave residues that can be used to generate electricity or make ecological housing material. And, at the end of their life cycle, they are 100% biodegradable.
2. An FAO study estimated that production of one ton of jute fiber requires just 10% of the energy used for the production of one ton of synthetic fibers (since jute is cultivated mainly by small-scale farmers in traditional farming systems, the main energy input is human labor, not fossil fuels).
3. Processing of some natural fibers can lead to high levels of water pollutants, but they consist mostly of biodegradable compounds, in contrast to the persistent chemicals, including heavy metals, released in the effluent from synthetic fiber processing. More recent studies have shown that producing one ton of polypropylene – widely used in packaging, containers and cordage – emits into the atmosphere more than 3 ton of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. In contrast, jute absorbs as much as 2.4 tonnes of carbon per tonne of dry fiber.
4. The environmental benefits of natural fiber products accrue well beyond the production phase. For example, fibers such as hemp, flax and sisal are being used increasingly as reinforcing in place of glass fibers in thermoplastic panels in automobiles. Since the fibers are lighter in weight, they reduce fuel consumption and with it carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution.
5. But where natural fibers really excel is in the disposal stage of their life cycle. Since they absorb water, natural fibers decay through the action of fungi and bacteria. Natural fiber products can be composted to improve soil structure, or incinerated with no emission of pollutants and release of no more carbon than the fibers absorbed during their lifetimes. Synthetics present society with a range of disposal problems. In land fills they release heavy metals and other additives into soil and groundwater. Recycling requires costly separation, while incineration produces pollutants and, in the case of high-density polyethylene, 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for every tonne of material burnt. Left in the environment, synthetic fibers contribute, for example, to the estimated 640 000 tonnes of abandoned fishing nets and gear in the world’s oceans.

Natural fibers are a high-tech choice.

1. Natural fibers have intrinsic properties – mechanical strength, low weight and low cost – that have made them particularly attractive to the automobile industry.
2. In Europe, car makers are using mats made from abaca, flax and hemp in press-molded      thermoplastic panels for door liners, parcel shelves, seat backs, engine shields and headrests.
3. For consumers, natural fiber composites in automobiles provide better thermal and acoustic insulation than fiberglass, and reduce irritation of the skin and respiratory system. The low density of plant fibers also reduces vehicle weight, which cuts fuel consumption.
4. For car manufacturers, the moulding process consumes less energy than that of fibreglass and produces less wear and tear on machinery, cutting production costs by up to 30%. The use of natural fibres by Europe’s car industry is projected to reach 100 000 tonnes by 2010. German companies lead the way. Daimler-Chrysler has developed a flax-reinforced polyester composite, and in 2005 produced an award-winning spare wheel well cover that incorporated abaca yarn from the Philippines. Vehicles in some BMW series contain up to 24 kg of flax and sisal.  Released in July 2008, the Lotus Eco Elise (pictured above) features body panels made with hemp, along with sisal carpets and seats upholstered with hemp fabric. Japan’s carmakers, too, are “going green”. In Indonesia, Toyota manufactures door trims made from kenaf and polypropylene, and Mazda is using a bioplastic made with kenaf for car interiors.
5. Worldwide, the construction industry is moving to natural fibres for a range of products, including light structural walls, insulation materials, floor and wall coverings, and roofing. Among recent innovations are cement blocks reinforced with sisal fibre, now being manufactured in Tanzania and Brazil. In India, a growing shortage of timber for the construction industry has spurred development of composite board made from jute veneer and coir ply – studies show that coir’s high lignin content makes it both stronger and more resistant to rotting than teak. In Europe, hemp hurd and fibres are being used in cement and to make particle boards half the weight of wood-based boards. Geotextiles are another promising new outlet for natural fibre producers. Originally developed in the Netherlands for the construction of dykes, geotextile nets made from hard natural fibres strengthen earthworks and encourage the growth of plants and trees, which provide further reinforcement. Unlike plastic textiles used for the same purpose, natural fibre nets – particularly those made from coir – decay over time as the earthworks stabilize.

Natural fibers are a fashionable choice.

John Patrick Organic Fall/Winter 2010

1. Natural fibers are at the heart of a fashion movement that goes by various names: sustainable, green, uncycled, ethical, eco-, even eco-environmental. It focuses fashion on concern for the environment, the well-being of fiber producers and consumers, and the conditions of workers in the textile industry. Young designers now offer “100% carbon neutral” collections that strive for sustainability at every stage of their garments’ life cycle – from production, processing and packaging to transportation, retailing and ultimate disposal. Preferred raw materials include age-old fibres such as flax and hemp, which can be grown without agrochemicals and produce garments that are durable, recyclable and biodegradable. Fashion collections also feature organic wool, produced by sheep that have not been exposed to pesticide dips, and “cruelty-free” wild silk, which is harvested – unlike most silk – after the moths have left their cocoons.
2. The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)   sets strict standards on chemicals permitted in processing, on waste water treatment, packaging material and technical quality parameters, on factory working conditions and on residue testing.
3. Sustainable fashion intersects with the “fair trade” movement, which offers producers in developing countries higher prices for their natural fibres and promotes social and environmental standards in fibre processing. Fair trade fashion pioneers are working with organic cotton producers’ cooperatives in Mali, hand-weavers groups in Bangladesh and Nepal, and alpaca producers in Peru. A major UK chain store launched in 2007 a fair trade range of clothing that uses cotton “ethically sourced” from farmers in the Gujarat region of India. It has since sold almost 5 million garments and doubled sales in the first six months of 2008.
4. Another dimension of sustainable fashion is concern for the working conditions of employees in textile and garment factories, which are often associated with long working hours, exposure to hazardous chemicals used in bleaching and dyeing, and the scourge of child labor. The recently approved (November 2008) Global Organic Textile Standard, widely accepted by manufacturers, retailers and brand dealers, includes a series of “minimum social criteria” for textile processing, including a prohibition on the use of child labor, workers’ freedom of association and right to collective bargaining, safe and hygienic working conditions, and “living wages”.