Green, Environment News 1 March 2017

A round-up of this week’s environmental, green and ecofriendly news and updates.

For many years, China has been replacing natural rivers and wetlands with dams, reservoirs, and vast concrete cities. As a result, many cities flood each year. China will now create “sponge cities” which will hold, clean, and drain water in a natural, ecological way.

Which is great! But even better in my opinion is the plan to develop a world-first “bird airport”. Yes, an airport for birds!

About 50 million birds migrate each year along the  East Asian-Australasian Flyway. (That’s a LOT of birds). They need to land, so they can rest and feed along the way – but their usual habitat is now gone due to unchecked coastal development along their route.

So the “airport” will provide 3 different habitats to allow many different migrating birds to stop and refuel before the next legs of their journey. Wonderful!

When your skin is annoyingly itchy, you want to get rid of that itch – fast.

Of course, there are over-the-counter medications – but it’s much cheaper (and more green and ecofriendly) to use these natural home remedies instead. Which ones do you use? Check out the post here.

Provenance is a wonderful company that produces an app which tracks food – where a product comes from, from its origins to its point of sale.

Every product is a complex chain of people and places. Knowing the origins of your food lets you make better buying decisions – and the app is for retailers as well as consumers.

The founder Jessi Baker says her mother really cared about “conscious consumption”, and raised her kids to care about what they eat and buy. Growing up, most of their food came from less than a mile from their home, vegetables from the garden and animal products from their neighbour’s farm.

Provenance has staff based in four countries: the UK, the US, France and Germany.

It’s really important that kids (and grandchildren) get proper nutrition – they’re growing so fast they need plenty of “fuel”. But you’ve also got to make sure they build a healthy relationship with food at this stage too. 

Here are my top 3 tips to make sure these good things happen. 

Global Green News:

I don’t know about you, but I  tend to think of human evolution as being, well, static. Of course, humans evolved over time, but I sort of don’t think of it as happening much now.  Wrong! Humans living in South America’s Atacama Desert have evolved to be able to survive on water tainted with high levels of arsenic! There’s very little water there (obviously!) and over time, residents have developed an enzyme which allows them to drink poisonous water and survive – isn’t that amazing?

There’s a massive drought in parts of Africa including Kenya, and it’s causing huge hardship for people – and animals. In a wonderful conservation effort, pea farmer Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua drives a 55-mile round trip 4 times a week delivering water – to elephants, zebras, African buffaloes, antelopes, and more. Amazingly, his elated four-legged customers come racing when they hear the rumble of his engine. Each truckload of water costs $250, and he does 2 or 3 trips in one day. Wonderful people from around the world are helping to fund this incredible initiative – and you can also make a donation here. You can see photos of the animals he is helping on his Facebook page here.

US Green News:

We all know about the mercury contaminating fish. But there’s some good news – mercury levels in Atlantic bluefin tuna have dropped, since power plants reduced their use of coal. This is from a new study which proves a direct correlation between coal-fired plants and mercury in fish.

If you buy kale in New Jersey, it may have been grown by a robot! A new startup uses 95 percent less water than traditional methods, and is 100 times more productive on the same footprint of land, according to the company. The robot adjusts the lighting, minerals, and water using sensors, to create deal growing conditions in a pesticide-free environment.

It’s a global trend – and the US is right up there with it. Between rowdy kids, cellphones, and a general lack of social skills, restaurant patrons forget their table manners. The trend is for restaurant managers to fight back with discounts – for good behaviour! It’s not just for well-behaved kids, either. People who unplug their electronics (and – gasp – actually talk to each other during a meal) get a discount on their food, including at a restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa. Do you think people should just behave, or is it good that restaurants are offering discounts?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

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