If you’ve been searching for an environmentally friendly excuse to head to the pub for a pint, a group of scientists from Cornell University may be able to help. The scientists looked at over 400,000 gene sequences from brewery wastewater. Uncovered, were the genes of the microbes best suited to converting the wastewater into biofuel. (more…)

As we look for ways to reduce our dependence on finite oil reserves that emit greenhouse gases and cause climate change, the solutions will come in varied forms.

One company that is researching a novel way to turn waste into electricity is Plasma2Energy, a Texas-based technology (more…)

Using a bio-digester, the plant will derive energy from waste products including milk, cream, proteins, syrups and pieces of fruit.

Now, there’s another reason to scream for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream: one of the company’s plants in Holland will soon supplement a significant portion of its energy needs with power generated from (more…)

U.S. researchers say they have created a material that can generate electricity from waste heat with greater efficiency than other technologies. Scientists at Northwestern University placed nanocrystals of rock salt into lead telluride to create a material with the potential to capture waste heat from factory equipment, vehicle exhaust, and other industrial (more…)

At this year’s West Coast Green conference in San Francisco, Bill McDonough gave a rousing call–to-action keynote speech in which he proclaimed that we do not have an energy problem, but what we do have is a materials problem. He went on to say that the carbon in the environment is in the wrong place. Instead of leaving it in the ground, we have mined (more…)

As part of Scotland’s drive to get its energy from 100% renewable sources, authorities have granted planning permission to a new facility.

Owned and operated by Covanta Energy, the Airdrie North Facility will be constructed in Drumshangie, North Lanarkshire and will be the first of its kind in the region, (more…)

(Reuters) – The Toronto Zoo has a solution to global warming: elephant dung.

Canada’s biggest zoo is inviting bids for a gasification plant that will turn its elephant, rhino and other large animal manure into clean electricity and heat.

“No other zoo in the world is doing this,” zoo conservation program head Dave Ireland said on Wednesday.

The zoo produces about 1,000 tonnes of manure and other organic waste each year. This will be fed into the biogas plant, to be built on land adjoining the zoo, where bacteria will munch through the waste and excrete methane gas.

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Emefcy, a microbial fuel cell startup based in Caesarea, Israel, has raised $5 million at a company value of more than $10 million, post-money.

UK investment fund Pond Venture Partners led the round, joined by current Emefcy investors Israel Cleantech Ventures Funds and Plan B Ventures, according to Globes and IVC Online.

Emefcy, co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Eytan Levy and Ronen Shechter, is developing the MEGAWATTER™ technology. This technology produces low cost electricity (at $0.10/kWhr) and hydrogen in a bio-electro-chemical process from wastewater treatment by leveraging Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology.

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The Plastiki, a sailing boat made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled waste products, has been sailing in the Pacific Ocean for more than 30 days.

Plastiki started its journey March 20 from San Francisco, with the intention to create public awareness about the effects of plastic usage on marine pollution and consequently sea life.

The Plastiki crew aims to explore a number of environmental hotspots, such as soon-to-be-flooded island nations, damaged coral reefs and the challenge faced by acidifying oceans and marine debris, in particular plastic pollution.

Plastiki’s journey is also scheduled to go through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a zone of trash one suspended on the water’s surface, twice the size of Texas, and stretching from the shores of California to the Sea of Japan.

The boat crew consists of six scientists, environmentalists and artists, led by the British adventurer David de Rothschild. The 60-foot boat is sailing with an average speed of five nautical miles per hour and the voyage is set end in Sydney in about three months. (more…)

In Africa and elsewhere, burgeoning population growth threatens to overwhelm already over-stretched food supply systems. But the next agricultural revolution needs to get local — and must start to see rising populations as potentially part of the solution.

I bring good news from Machakos, a rural district of Kenya, a couple of hours drive from Nairobi. Seventy years ago, British colonial scientists dismissed the treeless eroding hillsides of Machakos as “an appalling example” of environmental degradation that they blamed on the “multiplication” of the “natives.” The Akamba had exceeded the carrying capacity of their land and were “rapidly drifting to a state of hopeless and miserable poverty and their land to a parched desert of rocks, stones and sand.”

Since independence in 1963, the Akamba’s population has more than doubled. Meanwhile, farm output has risen tenfold. Yet there are also more trees, and soil erosion is much reduced. The Akamba still use simple farming techniques on their small family plots. But today they are producing so much food that when I visited, they were selling vegetables and milk in Nairobi, mangoes and oranges to the Middle East, avocados to France, and green beans to Britain.

What made the difference? People. (more…)