The study illustrates that composting and compost use:

• reduce waste
• improve soil
• reduce stormwater runoff & soil erosion
• protect climate
• create jobs & supports local economies

While all sections of this report are likely to be of interest to municipalities and private sector compost operators and advocates, GallonDaily’s attention was particularly drawn to the section on jobs and economic growth.  That section points out that

• composting can be small-scale and local
• jobs are local
• composting is linked to urban farm production
• composting can diversify farm products and increase farm income
• compost products tend to be used locally
• use of compost products sustains additional businesses and green jobs

Other related findings that are likely to be of broad relevance:

• On a per-ton basis, composting in Maryland sustains twice the number of jobs as landfills and four times the number of jobs as incinerators.
• Composting systems – even the high-tech ones – do not require the same level of capital investment as landfills or incinerators.

The report, which is packed with data, an Executive Summary, and supporting documents can be found at http://www.ilsr.org/paydirt/

The authors have studied agricultural, energy, and mining supply chains. They have concluded that climate change impacts will likely be greatest on global commodity food supply chains though all international supply chains are likely to be affected. They recommend that:

• Businesses need to identify not just the risks emerging from the impacts of climate change, but how the resulting impacts interact with existing risks.
• Governments and the business community need to start considering risk management plans in a world with a climate change of not just two degrees C, but also four degrees C or even 6 degrees C. Effects are already being felt in some regions and they are projected to worsen globally.
• Competition for scarce resources may intensify, and can be compounded by political and economic developments. Developing a collaborative and sustainable resource management strategy at a global level can help avoid the risks of ‘resource grab’ and conflicts.

The article is available at http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/governance-risk-compliance-consulting-services/resilience/publications/business-not-as-usual.jhtml by clicking on Download a PDF of this article. Resilience: A Journal of strategy and risk is a PwC publication.

GallonDaily commends the Transportation Options Association of Ontario for this very worthwhile initiative. Not only is it a great way for car-less families, and those who prefer not to drive the congested roads to ‘cottage country’, to reach central and northern Ontario camping with the help of a professional driver but it is also an illustration of how non-governmental groups can help expand Canada’s public transit system. We do not have to leave everything transit to our governments.

The initiative does illustrate that one of the challenges for non-government transportation services will be the fare. The round trip fare from Toronto to Algonquin Park on Parkbus is $83.98 for an adult and $41.98 for a child under 12. A family of four will face a fare of just over $250 for the round trip, plus provincial park camping fees and canoe rental if desired. This is not yet opening the wilderness family camping experience to low income people, but with the bus service already in place maybe there is an opportunity for businesses to provide contests and subsidies that will help enable low income families to experience Canada’s great outdoors. Mountain Equipment Coop is already providing generous discounts on camping equipment rentals for Parkbus ticket holders.

Details of the Parkbus, including routes, schedules, and fares, are available at http://www.parkbus.ca/

To mark this special anniversary we will be awarding the traditional Gallon Environment Letter draw prize – 500 grams of organic fair trade chocolate.

All you have to do to win is visit GallonDaily.com on the day that the 500th column is published. Full details on how to win – very simple – will be published that day and only that day. There will be no obligation and no purchase required – the only requirement is that you visit GallonDaily.com on the day of the 500th column.

So watch out for our 500th anniversary column and be prepared to answer a very simple skill testing question. Draw open only to residents of Canada, the United States, and the UK. Persons associated with GallonDaily or Gallon Environment Letter not eligible!

Watch out for the GallonDaily 500th anniversary draw!

The IEA special report points out that the energy sector is the single largest source of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. Although the deployment of renewables is already broadly on track towards the ambitious level required to deliver their expected contribution to meeting long-term climate targets, much wider adoption of efficiency measures will be necessary to fulfill the energy efficiency expectations of a scenario consistent with the achievement of the international 2 °C climate target.

Describing its 2020 plan as the 4-for-2 °C Scenario, the report proposes:

• Targeted specific energy efficiency improvements in the industry, buildings and transport sectors.
• Limiting the use and construction of inefficient coal-fired power plants.
• Minimizing methane emissions in upstream oil and gas production.
• Further partial phase out of fossil-fuels subsidies to end-users.

Only the second of these has to date been fully adopted in Canada.

For the beyond 2020 period, the report looks at:

• early adoption of low carbon technologies.
• carbon capture and storage, something which currently comes with significant challenges; and
• carbon pricing, an essential component of a post-2020 scenario.

This well-written 116 page analysis lays out very clearly the industry-impacting initiatives that can be expected if the global commitment to limit ourselves to a 2 °C climate target is to be met. This recommended reading for all policy makers, industry leaders, and environmentally-interested citizens, titled Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, can be found at http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2013/june/name,38773,en.html

The study in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that 57% of China’s GHG emissions are related to goods that are consumed outside of the province where they are produced. China has a target to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 17% from 2010 levels by 2015, with regional efforts ranging from a 10% reduction of carbon intensity in the less developed west and 19% reduction in east coast provinces. The regions that produce the most emissions and use the least advanced technologies have less stringent intensity targets than the more affluent and technologically east coast regions. The authors suggest that, in addition to interprovincial emissions trading, progress against emissions targets could be evaluated not only by “production-based” inventories of where emissions occur, but also by “consumption-based” inventories that allocate emissions to the province where products are ultimately consumed.

This thinking is not new. Some have even suggested that the US should take responsibility for that part of Canada’s oil sands emissions that arise from production of oil consumed in the US. Of course, a similar approach would need to be applied on a global scale if the unfairness of the present production-focused quantification of emissions is to be overcome. The paper presents a methodology that may be appropriate for this.

The study report is available at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/06/04/1219918110.full.pdf+html

The study was of the Daly River system, a tropical river system, in northern Australia and was conducted through social research methodologies. The study found that the 110,000 people in the Daly River catchment area and the people of the city of Sydney, more than 3500km distant from the Daly River basin, would be willing to pay an average of $120 to maintain high quality recreational fishing in this river system, $91 to maintain biodiversity in the area, and $161 to maintain waterholes for Aboriginal people in good condition. In total, people told the researchers that they would be willing to pay about $87 million to maintain the river system in essentially its present condition. This means, at least in theory, that interests, primarily agricultural irrigation interests, wishing to disrupt this river system would have to provide an economic benefit of at least the same amount of money to win over public support for retaining the river system as it is today.

The report is very readable and provides interesting discussion of the non-tangible or conventionally unquantifiable aspects of public willingness to pay, such as the maintenance of Aboriginal watering holes.  For industry, extension of this type of ecosystem services valuation from the journal page to the real world may change for ever the cost of access to ecosystem services.

The article is available at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064411

• Food redistribution or donation programs, voluntarily giving away food that otherwise would be lost or wasted to recipients such as food banks, are a method for reducing both food loss and waste.
• Using plastic crates instead of other forms of containerization has demonstrated significant reductions in food losses during handling and storage, particularly among fruits, vegetables, and other forms of fresh produce.
• Dates provided on the packaging of food and drinks, such as “use-by,”“sell-by,” and “best before,” are intended to provide consumers with information regarding the freshness and safety of foods. However, these seemingly simple dates can actually confuse consumers about how long it is safe for them to store food and when they should dispose of uneaten items. One study, for instance, found that a fifth of food thrown away by households in the United Kingdom is thrown away due to food being perceived as “out of date” due to labeling, when in fact some of the food was still suitable for human consumption. This suggests that while some of this waste may be legitimate due to food safety concerns, there may be room to reduce unnecessary household food waste by clarifying the meaning of these dates and changing the way in which they are used, displayed, and interpreted by consumers.
• Consumer attitudes and behavior play a large role in determining the amount of food that is wasted in households. Although changing the way people consume and throw out food can be difficult, communication campaigns can help influence consumer behavior at the household level. The grocery retailer can play an important role in reducing food waste at the consumption stage because of the retailer’s direct interaction with food consumers. Pioneering retailers have implemented a number of approaches designed to tackle food waste. For example, the Co-operative Group, which has more than 2,800 grocery stores all across the United Kingdom, has begun printing tips for improving food storage and lengthening shelf-life for fruits and vegetables directly onto the plastic produce bags in which customers place their purchases. The Co-operative Group has also shifted away from “Buy-One-Get-One-Free” promotions for perishable goods, using price reduction promotions on such goods instead.
• For restaurants and other food service providers, food portion sizes can dictate the amount of food waste that occurs within the four walls of their business, since larger portions increase the likelihood that a consumer will not consume all of the food purchased. Reducing portion sizes for consumers in both direct and indirect ways can both decrease food waste and save money for food providers.

The report, which contains many more proposals to reduce food waste as well as much more detail on the above, can be found at http://www.worldresourcesreport.org/ by scrolling down to Installment 2: Reducing Food Loss and Waste, Download the report.

Their claim is based on:

• To save water, wash cars at a professional carwash instead of in the driveway. Professional carwashes use on average about a third of the water used when washing a car at home.
• Letting any type of chemical or soap run into storm sewers can be environmentally harmful.
•  The dirt on cars can contain toxic chemicals, heavy metals, oil and grease. Commercial car washes send the wash water to the sewage treatment plant rather than allowing it to flow down storm sewers into rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

These are interesting claims but GallonDaily is not totally convinced. It is certainly true that wash water from car washing should not be allowed to flow into street drains because these are not connected to the sewage treatment plant. So far, one for the industry. Some, but not all, automatic car washes recycle the wash water. That is certainly a good thing for the environment when compared to not recycling the wash water and another plus for the operators of that type of car wash. Others advertise fresh waster for every wash. That is wasteful.

But is car washing actually a good thing to do at all. We suspect that the industry would claim that washing your car prevents all that dirt from being washed on to the road and into the storm drains. The problem with the claim is where that dirt came from in the first place. Most of it came from the road surface and from droppings of oil, grease, rubber, and other materials from the underside of the car. If your car was not on the road, all the dirt would be washed into the storm drain. By being on the road, your car is picking up some of the dirt but is also adding to the dirt. Our guess is that most cars add more to the dirt than they pick up and that however you wash the car you are not really helping the environment.

We will give the car wash industry the benefit of the doubt and indicate that washing your car at a commercial wash may be better than washing it on your driveway if your driveway drains into the storm drain on your street. But we are still worried about the amount of water and energy that a car wash uses. Maybe the best thing to do is not to wash your car at all, and for sure the even better thing to do is to not use your car at all, or at least to dramatically reduce the amount of car driving you do.

We thank the Canadian Car Wash Association for drawing this matter to our attention and we look forward to more research on all kinds of car wash options. More information about the Canadian Car Wash Association’s environmental position can be found at  http://www.canadiancarwash.ca/files/cwevents/City_of_London_carwash_pamphlet.pdf  and http://www.canadiancarwash.ca/Carwash_Myths.aspx

In this particular case the property does not contain any buildings and was apparently used only for the illegal storage of scrap metals, liquid, tires, and batteries. The property was worth only about $60,000. However, the precedent has been set and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency intends to go after chronic other environmental offenders in the same manner.

The owner of the property could not claim that he did not see this coming. SEPA states that it tried to work with the company but that agreed compliance deadlines were not met. The Scottish Government established an Environmental Crime Taskforce in  2011 to deal with the issue of organised crime operating in the environment sector, be it stolen equipment found at landfill sites, money laundering at unlicensed scrap yards or illegal dumping of industrial chemicals. Its final report and recommendations are due to be given to the Minister within the next few weeks. GallonDaily will be reporting.

Some information about the Environmental Crime Taskforce is at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/waste-and-pollution/environmental-crime-taskforce

The announcement of the Taskforce, including rationale for its establishment, is at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2011/11/10133202

Information regarding use of proceeds of crime legislation in the case of illegal storage of wastes on land in the town of Duns, Scotland, is at http://www.sepa.org.uk/about_us/news/2013/borders_company_handed_first.aspx