September 15, 2007

Kenyans plant trees to coax back flamingos

Five years ago, dead flamingos littered the drying shores of Lake Nakuru in Kenya’s scenic Rift Valley. Sickly birds struggled to stand upright while stray dogs scavenged on the depleted flock.

The once world-renowned heartland of the majestic birds — with their long necks and striking pink, scarlet and black plumage — was yet another depressing symbol of deforestation, pollution and global warming in Africa.

But now, after fighting for two years to reverse their role in the damage, Nakuru’s local community has set itself the task of replanting a whole forest they had razed as a measure of desperation in times of poverty.

They hope that as the flamingos return, so will the tourists.

The flock of millions — drawing thousands of tourists to Nakuru each year — was reduced to 10,000 by 1996.

The community knows full well the cost of deforestation. Along with their lakes and flamingos, the numbers of American and European tourists who came each year dropped. The local economy took a battering as the business of this region depends on visitors.Nakuru community groups have already planted more than 3,000 trees, but they say it will take decades to fully reverse the harm already done by cutting the forests.


Global partnership to combat unhealthy e-waste habits

Faced with an annual global gadget toss approaching 40 million tons, the United Nations has launched a partnership to battle the world’s heaps of e-waste and the environmental and health problems caused by impromptu e-recycling.

Solving the E-waste Problem, or StEP — which counts governments, universities, and 16 companies including Dell and Hewlett-Packard among its members — will aim to create a global electronics recycling standard and encourage companies to make longer-lasting products.

With 80 per cent of e-waste ending up in developing countries and often recycled by untrained, unprotected citizens, exposure to toxics like lead, arsenic, and mercury is high. European Union law requires companies to collect and dispose off electronics, and four US states — Maine, Maryland, California, and Washington — also have some form of end-of-life legislation. But, says StEP head Kuehr, “The global materials flow of electronic and electrical equipment requires a global approach.”


British homes throw away a third of food

British homes throw away around a third of all the food they buy, wasting money and the energy used to produce it, a government agency said recently.

Around half of the 6 million tonnes of waste is inedible — such as tea bags, bones and vegetable peelings — but the other half is food that could be eaten.

Supermarket shoppers should realise that 15 pence of every pound they spend is going into the bin, said Jennie Price, chief executive of the Waste and Resources Action Programme [WRAP].

“It’s very easy to buy lots of food, we have masses of choice, we like to make sure there is plenty in the fridge and we just don’t see what we throw away,” said Price. Her agency interviewed 1,900 people for its research and found that only 10 per cent considered they were throwing away a significant amount of the food they bought.

Price recommended people eat the food in their fridge in sell-by date order to avoid unnecessary waste. Supermarkets could also help by putting fewer items in packs of meat, fruit and vegetables.

As well as saving shoppers money, planning ahead and buying only what was needed would also help the environment.

“When you think about the amount of effort and energy — carbon-type energy — that goes into food production, this really is a serious issue for everybody, including the supermarkets,” she said.

WRAP was established by the government in 2000 to help Britain reduce waste and boost recycling.


Exposure to chemicals could contribute to obesity

Obesity is largely blamed on calories (too many) and exercise (too little), but recent studies suggest that chemical exposure may also pack on pounds. And it’s tough to diet from so-called ‘obesogens’, which show up in everything from pesticides to food containers.

Chemicals found to produce more and larger fat cells in mice include waterproof-paint ingredient tributyltin; diethylstilbestrol, which was widely prescribed to pregnant women from the 1940s to the ’60s; and estrogen-like bisphenol A, which showed up in 95 per cent of people tested in one study.

BPA promotes fat-cell activity in utero, producing ‘lifetime effects’ that occur at ‘phenomenally small levels’ of exposure, says biological sciences professor Frederick vom Saal; he dismisses the chemical industry's claim that BPA poses no health risk as a ‘blatant lie’.

The production and use of BPA has quadrupled in the last couple of decades, in roughly the same timeline that obesity has noticeably risen.