Posts about Sustainability

A Clown Fish receiving massage by a sea anemone. Photo: Nick Hobgood.

TED Talk. Paul Greenberg: The four fish we are overeating

7.03.2024

“Grinding Nemo”

Overfishing is only half of the story, says Paul Greenberg in his talk. The other half is about the boom in fish farming and aquaculture, which – over the past few years – has started to exceed the amount of wild fish produced. In America and a great part of the Western World, shrimp is by far the most consumed seafood. 5, 10, 15 pounds of wild fish – deemed trash fish by the fishing industry – are killed to bring one pound of shrimp to the market. Filmmaker Mark Benjamin called the phenomenon “Grinding Nemo“: Shrimp dredgers vacuum up a huge amount of by-catch that is then minced and turned into shrimp feed. An „ecosystem literally eating itself and spitting out shrimp“. A recent study has found that dredging for shrimp represents one of the most carbon-intensive ways of fishing there is.

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Workers burning harmful waste at the Agobogbloshie dump in Ghana.

Electronic Waste: Intoxicating Agbogbloshie

24.12.2023

At breathtaking speed, our world is being inundated with ever more sophisticated electronic equipment. Devices hardly a year or two old, are replaced at increasing frequency, to be cashed in or be thoughtlessly dumped for the next much fancier gadget. Most “outdated” models are added to a recycling bubble already straining at the seams. Considering that resources are scarce and thus valuable, this rotation system is still unrivaled. Yet, have you ever wondered how – and above all – where, your discarded cell phone, laptop or PC may have ended up eventually? More than half of the electronic waste from, for e.g., the United States, is shipped to countries fairly ignorant of environmental issues – like for instance to China, India or Ghana in West Africa. A Boston-based company is shining a light for sensible recycling worth copying.

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A turtle in Galapagos.Photo: Finch-Bay Hotel.

Galápagos: Rare Fauna and a Leading Green Hotel

13.09.2021

They may not appear overly enthusiastic when it comes to appreciating what’s going on around them on their native Galápagos islands, whose name-givers they are: the weighty Giant Tortoises – eye-lids on half-mast – remain in the know by sheer age. With some of them having been around for nearly one-and-a-half centuries, they have posed as reliable long-term witnesses of the wondrous proceedings happening on the remote archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. 1,000 kilometers west off the South American coast and under the sovereignty of Ecuador, the islands are teeming with rare fauna ranging from cute to ugly to downright strange: the pre-historic looking Iguana’s serrated crest lends him a ferocious dragon-like air; the male Frigatebird makes a mighty fuss during the mating season, when he stages his macho parade in front of adored females and fortifies his efforts by inflating his Ferrari-red gular sac until it stresses at the seams; the Blue-footed Booby wraps its courtship into a wobbly dance performance. By awkwardly swaying from foot to foot Chaplin-style, he offers amused onlookers an endearing sight and has become the star of many a nature video. Preserving the archipelagos of Galápagos is a primary goal locally. One of the precursors in achieving it, is the Finch Bay Eco Hotel on the isle of Santa Cruz.

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TED Talk. Elora Hardy: Magical houses, made of bamboo

3.04.2021

Imagine you were the fortunate citizen of a lush tropical island, say Bali, and financially privileged enough to afford an extraordinary home built according to your most daring desires. Ideally, renewable materials would be used almost exclusively so that your new residence became a sustainable and thus environmentally friendly affair. Bamboo is one of these resources – abundantly available locally, easily cultivated and growing back rapidly. It is light yet sturdy, albeit a little stubborn when it comes to delivering reliably straight rods: No two poles are alike and creative thinking is required on a permanent basis in order to come up with a feasible design. In Elora’s case, her enigmatically shaped edifices are the surprising result of these given twists and curves. Bamboo structures can now last a lifetime. Whereas formerly they used to get eaten away by insatiable termites and bugs, this building material receives treatment with a boron solution, a natural salt despised by hungry insects.

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The Floating Farm Project in Rotterdam

Rotterdam: Modern cows float!

7.09.2016

Should you be speculating on treating your corporate team (or family or friends) to an enlightening outing, why not propel them right into the future of, say, a dairy farm? Now, usually, admiring cattle standing around mooing and chewing while waiting to be milked, may not unleash unbridled excitement in your colleagues when first introduced to the idea. But what, if cows and dairy plant were progressively housed in a stylish, transparent, shell of glass, quietly bobbing on the rippling waters of a quirky city like Rotterdam? And when the floating dairy plant were a splendid example of an environmentally friendly, sustainable concept cleverly put into practice by means of a remarkable project? Wouldn’t a really rewarding excursion be one that may trigger a lasting effect that ushers in a change of attitude even in people outside the agricultural fraction?

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