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)

Waste incineration, but no energy in Japan!

Japan is now on the top of the news because of its Fukushima nuclear power plant and its problems after the earthquake. We have started our discussion and collaboration with Japan about waste recovery long before this disaster. Japan is a developed country. But, it is amazing that they do not use their waste as resource, as we do in Sweden. Biogas is not on their agenda, while they just burn the waste without any usage. Let's hope our collaboration now with Japan can result in changing this view and they start extracting energy from their waste!

Swedish king and queen for waste recovery

Sweden has a king (Carl XVI Gustaf), who left the power to the parlament in 1973. But, he remains as an important symbol of the country and is a respected man in the world. His wife, the queen Silvia is also a very respected woman with a huge contribution to the humanity. Their majesties showed interest in our international environmental work (waste recovery) and will visit us in Borås in Sep. 2011. As I heard, it is the first time this pair visit Borås together. Let's hope this great news give us more energy for further international work!

Use snow to chill the summer!

In a major part of the world, we have four seasons, which means we need heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. In the old time, people used to save deep snow and ice in shadow and use it for the summer time. However, this old tradition is gone. We have chill and perhaps piles of snow in the winter and hot climate in the summer. If we can manage save this huge amount of energy for 6 months, it can be the source of our heating and cooling throughout the year!


(Remaining of snow in Borås in the middle of March. In this place snow is piled to a height up to about 10 meter during the winter, and smells down during the spring without any use)

Swedish contribution to the global reduction of CO2 emissions

Carbon emission credit is a means to regulate the global emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the moment, there are two programs named CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) and JI (Joint Implementation), in which the developed countries help more developing countries in reducing their emissions. There are today a total of about 2500 CDM projects, in which China and India absorbed about 2/3 of all the projects. A latest report by the Swedish Energy Agency, show that Sweden is financing 40 projects (3 in Brazil, 5 in India, 19 in China, one in Malaysia, one in Thailand, 2 in Vietnam, one in Benin, and 2 in Mauritius, 2 in Rwanda, 2 in Tanzania, one in Estonia and one in Romania), which cost about 300 million SEK per year. It is equal about 85 SEK/ton CO2. However, this price is much less than the tax of CO2 in Sweden (1050 SEK/ton CO2). Sweden has a goal to reduce the total CO2 in 2020 to a level of 60% of the total reduction in 1990, i.e. 31 million tons CO2 per year. You can read the report for more information (although it is in Swedish).


The geographical distribution of CDM projects in the world. Ref: www.unfccc.int

Waste refinery in poor countries

Dumping the wastes is a global facts, and we can see that all around the world. However, there are some businesses around these dumping stations. There are scanvengers whose business is to find some valuable materials and collect and sell them. In addition, there are animals such as cows that find their daily meals among the wastes. It means Cows are our current "wastes refineries" in the world, that eat our wastes and then we eat their beef!!


(A wondering tiny cow that looked at me when I got her photo)

Inauguration of fruit wastes to electricity plant

On the last Thursday (10 Feb. 2011), we had a great day in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In this day, a biogas plant located in a fruit market had kick-off. In this plant, the wastes of the fruit, which is about 4 tons/day is fed the the two digesters (each one 100 m3) and the produced biogas is convetered to electricity (about 500 KWh/day). The electricity is used for the market and also the residents aroud it. It is the first concrete result of our international work "waste recovery" in which our university, polititions, Borås Energy and Environment and SP are working together with the Indonesian partners, Gadjah Mada University, Sleman Municipality and Bionat company. It is a concrete example of "waste biorefinery". Read more about it at wasterecovery.se (in English) and hb.se (in Swedish)!


(The fruit wastes and the final preparations by the Swedish and Indonesian companies before starting of the micro-generators)