Biggest in palm oil?

Sometimes the strain to go greener just gets plain ridiculous.

Changing from green house gas producing energy sources to more green and renewable energy source alternatives seems to be just moving the global problem from one country to another as big corporations always just are big corporations and that even in the Finland.

The major Finnish oil company plans to open two new bio-diesel refineries abroad and is also currently negotiating in several countries on palm oil and might soon become the world's biggest buyer of palm oil. This according to one of the major newspapers here in Finland.

Okay, palm oil for sure is a renewable source of energy so where lies the problem?

It is better to use bio diesel yes, but this bio diesel in question is made of palm oil, palms that more often than you would like to know about, is grown on land that used to be rain forests. Rain forests are felled for the palms to grow with the obliteration of the forests making about a fifth of the green house emissions.

Is this what they call globalization, shuffling the problem around?

Soap bubbles

Probably we all are aware of what soap is, that you use it for washing but hoe many of us do know what soap is made of and how it is made?

Fortunately I do have a curious friend who likes to try everything out and is actually following a family tradition in making their own soap, her great grandmother used to make their own during the wars so I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to see oils and fat combined with lye turn into soap under my eyes. Did you know that soap actually is the salt of the fats and oils?

Depending on the properties of the fats and oils combined in the soap it turns out differently. One oil for big luscious bubbles of the lather, another for it to turn into a hard bar, a third for it to lather even in salt water a fourth one to made the soap more emollient to the skin and so on. The soap can be tailor made to each person’s skin condition with the oils and fats used and also with additives, some to cleanse the skin, others to pamper the skin, revitalize mature skin and so on not forgetting the scenting of your soap bars.

But the soap is not ready when you have mixed the soap mixture with your additives you have to pour it into moulds to cure for at least 3 weeks before all the lye has been neutralized and it is ready for safe use on the skin.

Anyway, I think making your own soap is a good idea, now you can be sure what has been used in it no strange unknown ingredients and even if it is hard work getting husbands, children and pets out of the way as a safety precaution, getting all things needed lined up and ready to go, the tedious cleaning up afterwards, you still can brag about having made your own luxurious soap. And what can me more environmentally friendly than making as much as you need without any excessive waste of anything? You really get what you see here.

So now I have to wait for three weeks to find out how the soap she made turned out, at least the scent was absolutely fantastic even at this early stage.

Useful bacteria

I was watching a science program on the TV the other day and was amazed at how much we can benefit from such small creatures as bacteria. Mostly they have been considered harmful as they cause disease, but we would not have any wine or lovely, smelly cheese or even yoghurt without bacteria.

I was baffled to discover that bacteria are used to restore the façade of limestone of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France. The bacteria is first sprayed on to the limestone, and then feed by spraying nutrients onto the surface several additional times in order for the bacteria to form new limestone crystals.

And the Chinese apparently are into the use of bio-gas. Sounds funny when “clean energy” is made out of ordinary manure and turning it into fashionable, like it has been done in China is even more hilarious. But one thing though, as long as there is life on earth there is always going to be a fresh supply of manure to use for energy. Fresh manure means fresh energy for cooking, heating of the house and water and even for electricity to light your light bulbs.

There are even bacteria that have genetically been modified into resist radioactivity. The bacteria called Super Conan are kept isolated as it is alien to avoid contamination with other bacteria. As Super Conan is resistant to radioactivity it will come in handy when needed to neutralize radioactive waste sites as it feeds on the radioactivity making it neutral in faster time than it would do on its' own. But I still hope there never will be any need for Super Conan bacteria anywhere.

Power shortages?

If the coming winter is a cold one there might have to be power cuts even in households and not just in the industry.

A very cold winter might stretch Finland's energy resources past the breaking point as Finland does not produce enough power of its own. There is a risk for power cuts especially during the peak season of Christmas when the traditional Xmas sauna is heated up at the same time with the traditional Xmas ham cooked in the ovens. At present power is imported from Russia accounting up to ten percent of Finland's energy needs and the Finnish power supply company Fingrid now says that with Russia turning down its output in order to meet its own power needs there might not be any power left to sell to Finland.

The worst case scenario is that even household power would have to be rationed, this meaning cut of for some time, and the power supply company now hopes that the households will economize the amount of power used during a cold winter. Some electricity is also imported from Sweden but with a cold snap there at the same time as here in Finland, there would be no additional electricity resulting in shortages. As last winter was an exceptionally mild one apart from a couple of short cold snaps Finland didn't experience any power shortages although they were already then expected to happen.

An electricity shortage or rationing of the same will surely make the electricity prices sky rocket.

As I am no sports fan I to my great surprise yesterday found out that The FIS Ski Cross Country Worldcup began its’ season 2007/2008 in Düsseldorf, again, and this for the 4^th time.

Snow in Dusseldorf at this time of the year?!?

End of October a mild autumn, in the middle of the Old town down by the river Rhine? When the leaves still are green? Becoming curious I googled the event and found the official site and read on.

What a waste of energy and resources!

The event was proud to on their official site announce that they are the only event of the cross country season to have a 100% guarantee for snow. The needed 3000 cubic metres of snow for the track is made out of 1500 cubic metres pure drinking-water without any chemical additives. The same amount of water to fill a common 50m swimming pool and the manufacturing of the snow is begun 100 days ahead of the World Cup and the track itself is handmade.

Okay, cleaning the water, making it freeze, storing it cold in order to have the needed amount, moving the snow into place of the track, hand making the track, how much does this cost in energy resources?
Or money for that matter?

And there is lack of pure drinking water in many areas of the world!

I have been feeling bad about it as there is no alternative when showering living in apartment in Finland as the municipalities supply you with water and it is all pure drinking water but this unbelievable wast of resources.

One thing comes to mind though, they are absolutely right, good that the water used is pure and does not pollute the river Rhine in any way as it is quite polluted already. No more additional pollution of the water except for maybe some substances washed down by the melting snow on its’ way down the banks into the river below.

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You can check out the facts out yourself at the provided link to the official cite of The FIS Ski Cross Country Worldcup in Düsseldorf at: http://www.worldcup-duesseldorf.de/index.php?id=35&L=1

Recycling is not easy

To be able to follow up your electricity consumption, a dozen of households in the capital area have been able to get the meter readings real time by their home computers on the net and as the pilot project try out has turned out so well this is soon going to be reality for all Finnish homes in order to save electricity.

I am looking forward to be able to see in real time what turning off some home appliance will do to the electricity consumption, maybe this would spur even the offspring into doing something about their lights being turned on even when nobody’s in the room.

A lot of TV programs today in Finland are about the issues of how to become more environmentally conscientious. We are taught how to choose the clean form of electricity, how to shop making the proper choices, what produce are environmentally good, what produce have been manufactured in ways thinking of the environment and we are also made believe that recycling is good. Well it would be good if there were enough capacity to recycle all the household waste in an easy way sorting all your waste instead of just chucking it all in the dustbin, which seems to be the general way of treating your garbage.

Sorting your own metal scraps, paper, cardboard, glass, plastics and so fort is hard at present as there are no separate containers in each building, you always have to take the car to do the sorting somewhere centrally, like by the local supermarket.

How hard can it be to have more containers available for the households to do the sorting ourselves at every house?

At present there normally is just is the ordinary bin, one for composting materials, another for recycling of paper and a third one for cardboards. All glass bottles and jars, old batteries have to be taken else where and the hardly exist any recycling of plastic materials or metal from households today. And the left over medicines are to be taken to the pharmacists for extinction.

I am quite confident that in due time people will range their own waste, if provided with the proper facilities in for recycling and the municipalities can stop complaining about not having enough resources. Collecting the garbage several times per week, or maybe even keeping it in separate containers on the trucks could do the trick. As it is now the paper and the household garbage is collected on separate trucks.

I guess it might be time for all of us to begin to act in environmentally good ways on all areas of our life.

Don't forget to shower

Greenpeace have for a couple of days had an action against the working conditions and security at Olkiluoto at the construction site of the newest nuclear power plant in Finland. Greenpeace is concerned about the tight timetables of getting the plant built on the cost of the security for the workers and the activists have been hanging up in a crane on the building site in order to protest.

Apart from global warming and climate change there is great concern about the situation of the Baltic Sea becoming more and more polluted with the sea life threatening to disappear completely. Especially bad is the situation of the Finnish Gulf with a lot of waste and sewage water from big cities in non-EU countries being let out into the sea and the southern Baltic Sea with the newly joined but heavily industrialized but less environmentally aware EU countries.

All the countries around the Baltic Sea add more or less to the pollution of the water with artificial fertilizers and pesticides used in the agriculture and the presence of the poisonous blue algae is here to stay. In the most recent gathering by specialist concerned about the condition of the Baltic Sea if the waste water from big cities first were cleaned instead of just poured out into the sea. For many years this has been a great nuisance and nowadays there are algae blooming in many lakes as well being a health hazard if you are not aware of it.

The water temperatures in many lakes here in Finland are unusually warm for being this time of the summer and we might be having the record year of algae blooming at hand this summer so make sure you have a shower after you have been for a swim in the Baltic Sea or in the lakes.

Breaking ice

A great controversy has been raised by the eastern neighbour when a nuclear icebreaker was tested in the Baltic Sea without the consent of neighbouring countries, what if anything would have gone wrong?

The same neighbour also has huge resources of gas and oil and of course wants to make money on them; they are planning to construct a gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea passing close to several neighbouring countries all the way to Germany.

As the export of gas and oil through the Finnish gulf and the Baltic Sea is expanding, the concerns of polluting the sea and coastal areas should any accidents happen to tankers or the planned pipeline, and several countries are now trying to figure out what is going on.

Anyway, the sun is shining, and heat records have been broken in Finland. It has never been this warm before in the month of March, last record was from 1945 with a 16 degrees Celsius, and yesterday we had 17,5 degrees and the ices of the lakes are just melting away.

I can’t help thinking about it as a friend of my dear spouse announced at a dinner last weekend that he was going fishing on the ice next Saturday. Is this really Russian roulette the Finnish way?

What a waste

The electricity companies want to build more reservoirs up in northern Finland to regulate the water flow in some rivers.

The reason is that today at high rising waters and flooding occurring every spring at snow melting time, a third of the water is just let through without passing the power generators at the plants. That means that a third of the optimal electricity goes to a waste.

The building of reservoirs would also be good from the greenhouse effect’s point of view being a renewable, non-polluting energy source. But what would it do with the environment from the fish’s point of view? The salmons would no longer be able to swim to their origins somewhere up the rivers to breed and we would have no more salmon to eat, nor would the bears have any to eat either for that matter.

Another thing that worries me, if foreign companies begin to mine uranium in Finland they can according to law, dispose of their used nuclear waste in Finland. To my surprise uranium seems to be counted as a non-polluting energy source, but that must be only seen from the carbon oxide point of view. Things always seem to be left out of their real context, just taking in concern what is convenient to know and not all the facts, guess this is what statistics is all about.

There is big money in uranium, coal, gas and oil for the suppliers of them, no wonder they are lobbying for the use of the to car manufacturers for example and work against development and innovations on alternative energy sources.

I just heard that they have found a planet 20 light years distance away outside our own solar system where it seems like probable that life could exist. The planet is believed to be very similar to our own planet earth, and that kind of feels good, maybe there is a chance for the human life to continue even after this planet has been exploited to the limits for our selfish purposes.

Water

Have you ever thought about the water that comes out of your tap at home?

What kind of water is it, is it potable or not? And what do you do with it? You drink it of course, cook with it, wash your clothes, do your dishes and you bathe and shower in it, in pure drinking water. Hey, we even flush it down the loo! Then we buy fancy bottles with foreign water as "they taste better" and are "healthier" for you.

What a waste of energy and resources!

A great part of the world's population has problems daily in getting decent potable water, and now with the greenhouse effect and the arctic ice melting, the weather changing and more floods predicted and the sealevels rising the shortage of drinking water is going to increase even more. What do you drink when your tap-water is contaminated by your own sewage water?

Is this something we should begin to take in concern in the western world?
Now? Before it is too late to do anything anymore like with the global warming?

Saving the environment

We actually just had a discussion about what we in our family can do to do our bit for saving the environment.
As the experts point out, global warming is a fact, the question now is how we can minimize its’ effects.

So we sat down all of us, and guess what, teenagers are not that concerned about doing anything for them to have an earth to live on, the two things they thought of to save on is the one thing they will not do less of!

There was a unanimous no to shorter showers than half an hour to save hot-water.

Okay was to turn off electric appliances from their stand-by power, or to take the bus instead of making mum drive them and buy more local produce or Finnish products to reduce wasted energy on transports. Another thing was to switch off electricity that was not needed, turning off lights and even to use more candle light, as if making candles would not need any heating at all.

And to do my bit I avoided to washing and heating up the sauna during the cold, even though we also have picked up the custom to have a sauna on Saturdays as most Finns.

If everybody did small things they would all add up to a bigger saving of power and electricity, but hey, how many more apart from us even thinks about it? I mean even here in Finland, which is one of the highest educated countries in the world and also doing quite well economically and also considered to be environmentally counscious?

Anyway, now with the temperatures rising to only about -10 degrees instead of the -30 degrees last week, at last I now can get back to my normal household chores with good consciousness, as they tended to pile up during last week.