A new book on biofuels

Biofuel is now a hot topic. There are different bifuels in the global market, in which ethanol has a the largest share, while biogas and biodiesel are also important actors. There are several books on biofuels so far. There is a new one coming out in July this year entitled "Biofuels: Alternative Feedstocks and conversion processes". It deals with ethanol, biodiesel and biohydrogen and seems to cover interesting subjects.

Intensive April for International collaborations on waste

April 2011 is an intensive month for international collaborations on waste management and resource recovery:
1- A trip of waste recovery group to Brazil (Sao Paulo, San Bernando do Campus, Natal and Guamare),
2- My trip to Australia (Melbourne, Geelong) for the Big Green Conference, concerning textile industries and thier wastes,
3- Receiveing a delegation from Brazil (the municipality and different actors in Fortaleza)
4- Receiveing a delegation from Indonesia (Municipality of Palu City and Tadulako University in Solawesi),
5- Receiving the Swedish ambassadors in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia
6- Planning for the visit of the Swedish King and queen in September regarding waste recovery,

These activities are for just in April, while the entire year of 2011 seems to be very intensive for the sake of a better global environment and more renewable energies in the world!



(Two pictures of the beautiful and ugly sides of Guamare in Brazil)

Collecting system for textile wastes

In Sweden, we have a deposit system (pant) for PET and aluminium, and dedicated collecting system for recycling materials such as newspapers, glasses, metals etc. However, there is no such system for cloths and textiles, except the collecting system of the charity organizations for the reusing of the cloths. In Sweden, everybody in average leave 3 kg textiles to the charity organization and 8 kg textile wastes goes to the waste stations. Read the report about it here. In 2009, we opened a discussion on developing a deposit system for collecting cloths separately and not mix it with the waste materials. There have been so far a lot of discussions on such system in Sweden. Today, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published the results of a survey in Sweden, in which 70% of Swedes are in favor of having a deposit or particular collecting system for the cloths. You can read it here (in Swedish). Let's hope we don't see such this picture in the world in the future!


(The textile wastes in a landfill around Damascus, Syria)

Resíduos Sólidos Urbanos

This week, we had a conference about socioenvironmental aspects of municipal solid wastes. The conference was hosted by Sao Paulo University, in collaboration with some Brazilian actors and our Waste Recovery. There were several hundreds participants from companies, universities, municipalites and even scavengers. In Brazil, in general, they talk about phasing out the open landfills, but the discussion and actions usually stops as controlled landfill and not further. However, it seems our contribution in Brazil is getting more and more interest to improve their environment. Brazil is a very big country with 190 million inhabitant and green development is on their agenda, such as this car!


(A green car, designed by architectures at Sao Paulo University)