Consumers' use of pharmaceuticals, personal care products polluting rivers and oceans with toxic chemicals

Our water supply is becoming increasingly contaminated -- and not just by big factories dumping pollutants into the rivers. It is consumers, often unwittingly, who are poisoning rivers and oceans by sending potentially toxic chemicals down the drain. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated its researchers have found pharmaceuticals and personal care products -- or PPCPs -- in nearly every water supply they have tested.

The issue is not new. In the United Kingdom, the dangers of PPCPs were first recognized in the 1970s. In the U.S., however, it was another twenty years before the scientific community began to take notice, largely in response to the efforts of one scientist, Christian Daughton. Chief of the environmental chemistry branch of the EPA's Environmental Sciences Division, Daughton began reporting on the dangers of PPCPs in the water supply during the mid-1990s.

In 1999, Daughton co-wrote, with Thomas A. Ternes of the Institute for Water Research and Water Technology in Germany, the first comprehensive article on PPCPs in the U.S. water supply. The article "Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment: Agents of Subtle Change?" appeared in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

This landmark article discussed how "priority pollutants," such as agrochemicals, were "only one piece of the larger puzzle" of human-made environmental risk factors. Daughton and Ternes wrote:

"One large class of chemicals receiving comparatively little attention comprises the pharmaceuticals and active ingredients in personal care products (PPCPs), which are used in large amounts throughout the world; quantities of many are on par with agrochemicals. Escalating introduction to the marketplace of new pharmaceuticals is adding exponentially to the already large array of chemical classes, each with distinct modes of biochemical action, many of which are poorly understood."

The authors went on to write that exposure to PPCPs, especially for aquatic organisms, may be more chronic than exposure to pesticides and other industrial chemicals "because PPCPS are constantly infused into the environment wherever humans live or visit." Daughton and Ternes warned in 1999 that prolonged exposure "could lead to cumulative, insidious, adverse impacts" that may not appear until it is too late to intervene.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs contaminate the environment with 30,000 pounds of mercury each year

A compact fluorescent light is a type of energy-saving bulb that fits into a standard light bulb socket or plugs into a small lighting fixture, and right now, compact fluorescents seem to be gaining in popularity. But did you know they can also be toxic to your home and the environment?

Fluorescent lights are filled with a gas containing low-pressure mercury vapor and argon, or sometimes even krypton. The inner surface of the bulb is coated with a fluorescent coating made of varying blends of metallic and rare earth phosphor salts. Fluorescent light bulbs are more energy efficient than incandescent light bulbs of an equivalent brightness, and the efficiency of fluorescent lighting owes much to low-pressure mercury photon discharges. But fluorescents don't produce a steady light, and they burn out more quickly when cycled frequently; they also contain items such as fluorine, neon, and lead powder as well as mercury.

Measuring the environmental impact of mercury use in a particular product is more complicated than you might think. Mercury is an essential element in millions of fluorescent lamps throughout the world, and as those lamps are thrown into landfill, the mercury can escape and contribute to air and water pollution. (It can easily leach into groundwater supplies.)

According to www.lightbulbrecycling.com, each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. Astonishingly, that's almost half the amount of mercury emitted into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants each year. It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans).

84% of sunscreen products are harmful to health, says alarming EWG study

For 29 years, the FDA has refused to publish safety standards for sunscreen products. That's nearly three decades of keeping the public in the dark about the extremely harmful, cancer-causing chemicals found in sunscreen products. Any idea why the Food and Drug Administration has taken so long to set safety standards for a product used by over 100 million Americans? If you guessed, "Because the greedy corporations selling the toxic sunscreen products don't want the FDA to study the safety of their products," give yourself golden star sticker. You got it! The FDA has no interest in protecting the public from cancer-causing personal care products, and that simple fact is made abundantly clear by the FDA's 29-year delay to establish basic safety guidelines.

As is increasingly the case, non-profit groups are now doing the job the FDA should be doing but refuses to do. In this case, the Environmental Working Group (www.EWG.org), one of my top recommended non-profit organizations, has compiled a list of 700 name-brand sunscreens along with the toxic chemicals they contain. You'll find the list at http://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/

As the EWG reports, many sunscreen products contain cancer-causing chemicals that get absorbed right through the skin:

Some sunscreens absorb into the blood and raise safety concerns. Our review of the technical literature shows that some sunscreen ingredients absorb into the blood, and some are linked to toxic effects. Some release skin-damaging free radicals in sunlight, some act like estrogen and could disrupt hormone systems, several are strongly linked to allergic reactions, and still others may build up in the body or the environment. FDA has not established rigorous safety standards for sunscreen ingredients.

After 29 years of debate, the government has failed to set mandatory sunscreen safety standards. Companies are free to make their own decisions on everything from advertising claims to product quality. In lieu of setting final standards, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advises people to stay out of the sun from 10 am to 4 pm. FDA now stands in direct violation a Congressional mandate requiring the agency to finalize sunscreen safety standards by May 2006, flouting not only Congress but also consumers, who are reliant on sunscreen to protect their health.

Bisphenol A chemical commonly found in canned soup and food storage plastics

Before you decide to chew on the cap of your water bottle because you're nervous, make sure the plastic you are chewing on isn't full of carcinogens and chemicals -- even though lobbyists for the plastics industry argue that any traces of the toxic substance bisphenol A are low and therefore, insubstantial.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is found most commonly in polycarbonate plastics. According to the Bisphenol-A.org website, "Bisphenol A is an industrial chemical used primarily to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, both of which are used in countless applications that make our lives easier, healthier and safer, each and every day."

But the Environmental Working Group states, "BPA is an ingredient in plastics and the epoxy resins that line food cans. Low doses of BPA lead to a range of health problems, including birth defects of the male and female reproductive systems in laboratory animals. Despite the growing evidence of risk to human health, there are no limits on the amount of BPA allowed in canned food.

The tests found that pregnant women and infants who eat even a single serving of some canned foods are exposed to unsafe doses of BPA. Of the foods [recently tested for BPA contamination] -- which included many of the canned foods eaten most often by women of childbearing age -- BPA levels were highest in canned pasta and soup. Canned infant formula also had high levels. Just one to three servings of food with these BPA levels could expose a pregnant woman or infant to harmful doses of the chemical."

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit organization that uses the power of information to protect public health and the environment. They recently completed a study of the toxic chemical and its presence in name-brand canned goods, finding that 50% of those canned goods contained bisphenol A. To make matters worse, the FDA states about 20 percent of the U.S. diet comes from this form of food packaging. Even so, there are no current government safety standards that regulate how much BPA is allowed in canned foods. The burden of proof lies with government and lobbyists, who say the doses found in canned goods and plastics are very low. But what dose of this toxic chemical is really safe? No one seems to know.

Common crop herbicide Atrazine linked to reproductive mutations in amphibians

Pollutants such as pesticides and toxins damage the ecosystem and cause a variety of damaging ailments in humans. One particular herbicide, Atrazine, has now been found to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites, rendering them impotent by causing their gonads to produce eggs.

A subject of great scientific and political controversy, Atrazine was first introduced in 1958 and today is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. It is a potential carcinogen and has a half-life in soil of anywhere from 15 to 100 days. This time allows for Atrazine biodegration, during which the chemical is dechlorinated until it produces a an end product of cyanuric acid, a toxic compound.

Atrazine is also used throughout the world in the production of maize, sorghum, sugar cane, pineapples, chemical fallows, grassland, macadamia nuts, conifers forestry, roses and grassland. Its most common application is for use in conservation tillage systems to prevent soil erosion and runoff, and to prevent weeds from growing in major crops. As a result, a good deal of the Atrazine applied to crops is washed into rivers, streams, lakes and municipal drinking water supplies.

Half a million loads of laundry will now be chemical free thanks to availability of eco-friendly "soap nuts" laundry detergent

(NewsTarget) American consumers are increasingly aware that plastics contain bisphenol-A, air fresheners contain phthalates, and antibacterial soaps contain a chemical called Triclosan, but few people realize that laundry detergent products often contain synthetic chemicals that pose a hazard to human health as well as the environment. Consumer health website NewsTarget has now teamed up with Maggie's Soap Nuts to acquire enough natural, eco-friendly laundry detergent to wash 500,000 loads of laundry in an environmentally friendly way, and it is distributing the product to readers in an effort to replace chemical laundry detergents with a safer, more natural alternative.

The solution to toxic laundry detergents? Soap nuts! Grown by Mother Nature and harvested from the sapindus mukorrosi tree, soap nuts contain a natural laundry soap in the skin of their shells. When washed with water, they release their natural saponins which act as surfactants, helping water bind with dirt and grime, lifting particles away from clothing in the same way that laundry detergent does, but without resorting to the use of synthetic chemicals.

A previously-published article on NewsTarget describes these soap nuts (also called "soap berries") in more detail: http://www.newstarget.com/021875.html

Soap nuts replace all commercial laundry detergents with a 100% natural laundry soap grown by Mother Nature. They contain absolutely no synthetic chemicals or additives, and they're sustainably harvested in countries like Indonesia, India and Taiwan. The soap contained in the shell of the soap berry is highly concentrated: Just two or three soap nut shells cleans an entire load of laundry. The saponins also naturally exhibit antibacterial and antifungal properties, leading to fresh, clean smelling clothes without the need for artificial fragrance chemicals.

Biofuels worse for the environment than fossil fuels, study warns

(NewsTarget) Far from being a solution to the global ecological crisis induced by fossil fuels, biofuels may "offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to cure," a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has concluded.

"When acidification, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss and toxicity of agricultural pesticides are taken into account, the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel," the report read.

A biofuel is any fuel made directly from a biological source (as opposed to fossil fuels, which are made from long-since-deceased organisms that have undergone radical chemical changes), including sugars, oilseeds or grains.

The OECD warned that beyond their ecological costs, biofuels force food production to compete with fuel production over the world's dwindling and limited supply of arable land. For all these reasons, the report said that "the current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits."

The report speculated that the European Union and the United States may be offering market incentives for biofuel production less out of ecological concern and more as "an easy way to support domestic agriculture against the backdrop of international negotiations to liberalize agricultural trade" by eliminating subsidies.

Instead of supporting biofuels expansion, the OECD report urged governments to "cease to create new mandates for biofuels and investigate ways to phase them out." It encouraged a focus on decreasing use of fossil fuels rather than replacing them with "alternative" fuels.

"A liter of gasoline or diesel conserved because a person walks, rides a bicycles, carpools or tunes up his or her vehicle's engine more often is a full liter of gasoline or diesel saved at a much lower cost to the economy than subsidizing inefficient new sources of supply," the report said.

City's Parks Contributing to Global Warming

As you sit on a bench at South Street Seaport and take in the grand view of the Brooklyn Bridge, Tim Keating might like you to think for a second about all of that wood. The wood you sit on, walk on, even the subway ties the trains ride on. Where does all that wood come from?

Keating is the director of Rainforest Relief, and his organization says that all that wood just might make the New York City government the largest consumer of tropical hardwood outside of the tropics themselves.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made cutting the city’s contributions to global warming a signature issue. But while the United Nations estimates that deforestation (which occurs almost entirely in the tropics) causes up to 30 percent of global warming, no attempt has been made to change the city’s policy on the wood it uses in a decade. Gifford Miller introduced a bill in 1997 that would have banned the city or its contractors from using tropical hardwood, and in 1998 a resolution was introduced calling on the Parks Department to use plastic lumber. But neither of those went anywhere and nothing has happened since.

“Mother Nature has made this wonderful wood that cannot yet be duplicated artificially,” Henry Stern, then the parks commissioner, told the New York Times in 1998. ”Science hasn’t developed a substitute for wood for boardwalks any more than it has for newsprint.”

While the current commissioner told AlterNet, a liberal magazine that published an article on the issue last week, that the Parks Department is looking into the use of renewable materials, the City Council has turned to the state for help. A resolution introduced in March by Bronx Councilmember Oliver Koppell asks the state to mandate the use of recycled plastic lumber where economically feasible. But with things the way they are in Albany now, the plea is unlikely to be noticed - if the resolution is even passed.

Online Shopping And Its Impact On The Environment

For New Yorkers, shopping online means less travel time and, on occasion, lower costs. It also means more trash to put out at the curbside. Because most online retailers rely on major private carriers such as UPS and FedEx to deliver their goods, this holiday season saw not only a sharp rise in local deliveries but a similar rise in the amount of paper, cardboard and plastic pushed into the city waste stream.

According to the Department of Sanitation, New Yorkers left more than 8,300 tons of cardboard and mixed paper at the curbside in the first full collection week after the Christmas holiday, a 21 percent jump over the same period last year.

This year’s post-holiday numbers were inflated somewhat. Sanitation spokesman Matthew Lipani notes that an awkward alignment of Monday holidays that forced many residents to hold onto their recyclables an extra week. Still, immediate pre-Christmas tonnage -- 7,258 tons this year vs. 6,033 tons last year -- showed a 20 percent increase in paper recyclables and paralleled a national 25 percent surge in holiday online sales according to the Internet research firm comScore.
Positive Or Negative Effect?

Such numbers indicate a cultural sea change not only in how New Yorkers are shopping but also in how much trash and recyclables the city will have to process in the years to come. Given the lack of studies on the overall online shopping “life cycle” -- the total net effect on the environment once products have made their way from raw material all the way to consumer’s wastebasket -- environmentalists, for the moment, see only a collection of positives and negatives adding up to a giant question mark.

“There is no guarantee that the Internet’s net environmental impact will be positive,” writes Nevin Cohen, a professor of environmental science at The New School. “For decades, technology watchers predicted that the personal computer would result in the ‘paperless office,’ but U.S. shipments of office paper actually jumped 33 percent between 1986 and 1997. E-commerce could have similarly negative effects.”
Boost To Recycling

From a short-term perspective, the cultural shift away from brick and mortar retail seems to offer a net boost to the city’s recycling program. Of the city’s two major recycling contracts, the cardboard and mixed paper contract with Visy Paper is the one that actually pays the city for what it recycles (in pdf format), roughly $7 a ton according to the city’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse & Recyling.

Because the Department of Sanitation also tends to divide per-route costs by the number of tons collected, extra cardboard at the curb in December and January means a better bottom line for the overall recycling program over the long term.

Harvesting the Rain

In 2002, when a severe decline in winter snow and spring rainfall forced the city to declare a drought emergency, gardeners throughout New York City faced a new twist on an age-old dilemma.

Unable to tap city fire hydrants -- the traditional irrigation source for community gardens -- garden managers looked to the skies for respite. Taking a cue from early farmers, they gathered as many jars, barrels and cisterns as they could find and set them out to capture and store a portion of every summer downpour that passed over the city. By the end of the year, at least seven gardens had created elaborate rainwater harvesting systems channeling water from neighboring rooftops and downspouts to 55-gallon drums and underground cisterns.

Four years later, the pressure to capture each precious drop of water may not be as high, but the rainwater harvesting continues. A loose-knit coalition of environmental groups calling itself Water Resources Group has helped community gardeners install water retention systems in 25 local gardens. The group has even secured a $45,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to finance systems in at least four community gardens, starting with the Bedford Avenue Block Association Garden in Brooklyn near the corner of Bedford and De Kalb avenues.

Some of the larger sites use 1,000 gallon tanks, says project coordinator Lenny Librizzi of the Council on the Environment of New York City, a group member. But others use 55-gallon olive barrels donated by a Queens olive distributor.

As assistant director of the Council on the Environment’s open space greening project, Librizzi sees rainwater collection as an easy way to fulfill that project’s agenda to expand and enhance comunity gardens. For now, most community gardens rely on free city water from fire hydrants. This makes the gardens beholden to the whims of a city government that, for at least the last 10 years, has taken note of the value of the land underlying most community gardens and considered putting the acreage to more financially profitable use. For security's sake, many of the green spaces would prefer to have their own back-up water supply, free of city control.

But there are additional environmental benefits. Last year’s grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, came about because the group was able to show that recycling rainwater reduces demand on the city’s storm sewers and so can help cut water pollution. Although the city is overhauling its aging combined sewer overflow system, many neighborhoods still send storm water runoff and household waste into the same sewers. Catching rainwater reduces the demand on the sewers, giving city pumps in these neighborhoods more time to work before the sewers reach the overflow stage and send untreated sewage into local waterways.

“It’s a win-win for the environment and for gardeners,” says Robin Simmen, manager of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s GreenBridge horticulture program. “First of all, rainwater is better for plants than chlorinated tap water so you’ll get bigger, healthier plants. Also, by harvesting rainwater, we reduce the amount of storm water that we are currently flooding into our sewer system.”

Or as Librizzi puts it, “In collecting rainwater, we’re not only making the city greener, we’re making it bluer.”

Granted, it takes more than a few dozen community gardens to put a dent in the city’s storm water runoff problem. The Water Resources Group estimates that its 25-garden network currently captures a little more than 250,000 gallons of rainwater annually. Compare that to the average family’s use of an estimated 100,000 gallons a year and it’s hard to resist the punning drop-in-a-bucket metaphor.

But rainwater harvesting can also produce a change in the way New Yorkers think about water. Once New Yorkers stop seeing water as something they can take for granted, they start appreciating what it truly is: a fickle resource that takes time to capture.

Noise In New York

Though it will not take effect until next July, the city’s new noise code seems to have few champions. Passed last December, the first revision to the code in 30 years was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to silence everything from dog barking to Mr. Softee trucks. But businesses, noise awareness groups and others find fault with the new law. They are especially doubtful it will be able to do much about the noise emitted by nightclubs, bars, and car alarms.

Meanwhile, both the noise in New York, and New Yorkers’ intolerance of it, seem to have increased. According to a poll of community leaders conducted by Baruch College's eTownPanel and released in July by the nonprofit Citizens for NYC, street noise is seen as the biggest infringement on the quality of life in New York City, rising from number three on last year's poll. And noise is the number one complaint phoned into the 311 hotline. In a recent month, there were 24,191 noise complaints, which was some 200 more than the same month two years earlier, which was around the time Bloomberg announced his anti-noise legislation.

By many measures, noise has become New Yorkers’ biggest concern.

Stream Energy Sets A High Standard For Energy DeRegulation

With many states ending the previously allowed monopoly that natural gas and electrical companies had on their customers, the market has never been more full of opportunities for enterprising individuals! Energy deregulation was an enormous issue that affected everyone it touched, but now with the playing field leveled, those who know what to look for are realizing that the field is ready for business.

In the wake of energy deregulation, many new small power companies, both for natural gas and electricity have sprung up, and with the larger companies facing competition for the first time in history, many of the small companies are doing very well. This is a new era of personalized service, one that runs much more effectively and much more cheaply.

There are many ways that you stand to benefit from the energy deregulation. If you find the right company, you could end up paying significantly less on your power bill. If you live in a climate and requires the persistent use of a furnace or an air conditioner, this can save you hundreds of dollars on your utility bills every year.

More immediately though, the market has opened up for business entrepreneurs who have seen an industry that literally everyone in America participates in open up. One way that many people become part of this boom is to find work with one of these new companies; many people have found out that working for one of these companies not only helps them pay the bills, but also puts them on the ground floor of an expanding business with vast potential for promotion.

Some industry experts are referring to this as the "last frontier" for entrepreneurs.

Similarly, many entrepreneurs have found that the deregulated industry has left behind many people who are accustomed to one fixed price and no options; this is a field that is very ready for change. Many new companies find that they do not have to do much to win the loyalty of the people who previously felt that they had no choices when it came to something as essential as their power services.

Currently, one of the big pushes in this industry is towards customer service. How many times have you had to deal with the power company? Was it an experience that you remember with a shudder? With the push towards customer service, many people from many different backgrounds are getting involved; currently, the action is geared towards giving the customer in search of new service an excellent experience with the company representatives.

Green Construction

When Paul Stein pushed for thick windows and fancy air filters for his new office in lower Manhattan soon after 9/11, it was mainly because he was worried about lingering contaminants from the collapse of the Twin Towers.

But these measures have also wound up protecting him against a different kind of pollution -- pollution that Stein, who works on safety issues for his union, says his office at 90 Church Street is "surrounded by": pollution from construction. It is a problem that goes far beyond lower Manhattan.

From the proposed Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn to the water filtration plant in the northern Bronx, critics almost always complain not just about the project itself, but about the inconvenience, pollution, noise and dangerous accidents they will face during its construction.

The construction downtown is unique in that the contaminants from Ground Zero are still an issue. In late September, the Environmental Protection Agency finally approved a plan to demolish the Deutsche Bank Building adjacent to the site, after a long debate over how best to ensure that the asbestos and other dangerous chemicals in the building are not released into the air; the building will come down over the next year. Similar issues must be resolved for other buildings that are either known or suspected to be contaminated. The huge scale of the development downtown also ensures that there will be more pollution than in a project of conventional size.

But, in varying degrees, the same problems face construction sites throughout the city. And, increasingly, those involved are finding solutions in the movement being called green construction -- a nationwide effort to build in a way that is sensitive to the environment. Within the last several weeks both the City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have been bringing more focus to policies that will encourage the city to build greener.

Asian Coal-Bed Methane Brews As a Potential Hot Energy Play

Trillions of cubic meters of clean-burning methane are trapped in Asia's coal deposits. The gas -- which produces lower levels of air pollution and carbon emissions than oil or coal -- could be used to meet some of the region's huge power needs. Merrill Lynch says China alone holds nearly 30 trillion cubic meters of methane gas, about three times the U.S. amount.

Coal-bed methane, already widely used in North America, accounts for about 10% of U.S. natural-gas production. But Asia's methane stores have been largely untapped because of logistics and extraction costs.

Now, high-energy prices are making Asia's methane more attractive. New technology and government incentives in China and India aimed at reducing carbon emissions are also bringing down costs. And concerns about falling supplies of traditional energy sources continue to boost the search for other ones: Last week, both Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported declining oil production.

"The basic fact is we're running out of conventional sources of oil and natural gas," says Eric Nuttall, an analyst at Sprott Asset Management of Toronto. "As companies seek out unconventional sources of natural gas, coal-bed methane is the most viable."

The hedge-fund and mutual-fund manager holds more than $5 billion in assets and owns shares of a Canadian-based methane company, Pacific Asia China Energy. The Toronto-traded company has signed two production-sharing contracts with the Chinese government and is negotiating others.

Major oil companies including Chevron and ConcocoPhilips have already locked in exploration rights to methane projects in China. Numerous smaller companies specializing in coal-bed-methane extraction have been forming partnerships in China and India. Since many of these companies don't yet have commercial gas sales, their share prices haven't run up the way those of many companies producing other forms of alternative energy have.

Investing in methane carries plenty of risk. Some of the companies are small, with thinly traded and volatile stocks. Also, China's highly regulated, fragmented energy industry can create uncertainties. To participate in it, foreign companies must partner with state-owned China United Coal Bed Methane.

It is unclear if plans to tap Asia's methane-gas stores will pan out. Companies face fewer exploration risks than those looking for oil, as methane usually is found where it is expected to be. But extracting the gas means overcoming technical challenges that can raise costs and reduce the recoverable volume.

"It's an educated gamble," says Sprott's Mr. Nuttall about companies' efforts. "The question is, will they be able to extract methane at an economical rate?"

Some coal-bed-methane projects will have another revenue stream as the global carbon market matures. Energy produced from methane gas generates lower carbon emissions than coal. Analysts say that means companies may be able to sell carbon credits, boosting revenue by up to 20%. Many European nations place caps on the greenhouse gases companies can produce. Companies can offset their emissions by buying carbon credits from developing-world projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

"The carbon credits provide that extra incentive and can make these projects commercially viable," says Shane Spurway, director of Asian carbon markets for Fortis bank in Hong Kong.

Pacific Asia China Energy, or PACE, is still in the pilot phase of its first project in Guizhou. Their geological and petroleum engineering consultant, Sproule International of Calgary, has estimated that the company's first block contains a "most likely case" methane-gas resource of 5.2 trillion cubic feet "We know the gas is there," says Craig Christy, PACE spokesman. "Now we've got to determine whether we can produce it commercially."

Mr. Nuttall estimates PACE could potentially produce about 1.8 trillion cubic feet of methane from its first project. At today's prices, he says, that is a value of close to $1 billion for a company whose market capitalization is about $47 million. He is bullish on the prospects PACE, whose shares trade at about 47 U.S. cents.

PACE also hopes to develop a business to extract methane from coal mines before miners go in. Methane the gas which famously kills canaries -- is the source of dozens of fatal explosions in Chinese coal mines every year.

Hong Kong-based Green Dragon Gas, which listed on London's AIM stock exchange a year ago, is one of the companies closest to commercial production. Merrill Lynch says among foreign companies in China, Green Dragon has the largest coal-bed-methane deposit and it has five production-sharing contracts providing access to 18 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Energy-research firm Netherland, Sewell & Associates estimates the value of Green Dragon's initial recoverable methane deposits at about $4.7 billion. The company's market capitalization is about $600 million. So far in 2007, Green Dragon's shares have been roughly flat, though they have risen about 17% since the end of April. Some analysts think there is room for growth. In London trading yesterday, its stock traded at $6.34. Shares of Green Dragon are "relatively undervalued, because the market hasn't factored what will happen when they start production," says David Yip, a utilities analyst at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. "It represents the purest clean-energy play in China."

Last week, London-listed Great Eastern Energy became the first company to extract and sell coal-bed methane commercially in India. It is investing $150 million to drill a total of 103 wells in the state of Bengal. By some estimates, India has the world's fourth-largest coal reserves. Analysts say the Gurgaon, India-based firm has already moved beyond the riskiest phase of exploration and pilot drilling and is moving into production.
Arden Partners, a London securities firm, has a "buy" on the stock. James Elston, a director of the energy research firm Palladian Energy -- who has analyzed Great Eastern Energy on behalf of Arden -- estimates that the company's net asset value is about 218 pence ($4.41) a share, based on analysis of their recoverable methane reserves. The shares traded yesterday around 150 pence.
About GEECL:
Great Eastern Energy Corporation Ltd(GEECL) is the first Private Sector Company in India that entered this field. It is a part of the YKM Holdings Group. In December 2005, GEECL became the first Indian Company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM). The company is run by Yogendra Kumar Modi, the Executive Chairman and Managing Director. The senior management of GEECL include Mr. Prashant Modi, President & Chief Operating Officer.

BLOOMBERG’S GREEN DREAM

On Earth Day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented list of 127 proposals, called PlaNYC, aimed at making a “greener, greater New York.” Dozens of the ideas involve making new construction more environmentally friendly – and even helping New Yorkers upgrade their existing homes to be more energy efficient.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection has already allocated $34 million dollars toward a water conservation effort that aims at a 5 percent reduction in water use. The program would provide rebates to replace toilets, urinals and washing machines with more efficient models starting in 2008.

In an effort to make green building more affordable, the new building code - which is expected to be adopted this summer - will provide rebates for many environmentally friendly features such as improved ventilation and white roofs, which reflect heat rather than absorbing it and so reduce energy needed for air conditioning. In a similar vein, the city plans to offer a property tax abatement for solar installations.

To indicate that the features normally associated with green construction are not limited to the affluent, some of the 55,000 units fundedunder the mayor’s plan to create or preserve 165,000 homes by 2013 were built to meet sustainability standards.

And from now on, the Bloomberg administration says, all of the new apartments and houses will adhere to more stringent standards.

Still, it will take some radical new approaches to ensure that New York can be environmentally sustainable and affordable.

While the Via Verde apartment complex in the Bronx has been hailed as eco-conscious model for features like the ability to rainwater, spaces to grow vegetables and fruit, solar panels, and even a Christmas tree farm, it began with a substantial commitment from the city: the land, which was valued at more than $4.5 million, was donated free of charge.

THE COSTOF GOING GREEN

Through a variety of techniques, such as energy saving appliances, improved ventilation, recycling rainwater, green buildings use less energy than conventional homes, emit less of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and often provide safer and more pleasant environments for residents who are not subject to harmful chemicals and compounds.

But one of the biggest obstacles is cost.

Estimates on the up-front costs of building green and the time it takes to recoup that investment vary. The city’s Department of Design and Construction has figured that green buildings cost 2 to 3 percent more to construct, and the U.S. Green Building Council, a coalition of building industry leaders, estimates that, on average, it can increase initial costs by between 2 and 7 percent.

Proponents point out that these costs can be recovered in lower operating costs over the life of the building – particularly reduced energy and water bills. And those expenses pose an increasing burden for many homeowners and rents.

The cost of energy in US cities increased on average 11 percent last year, accordingto the US Conference of Mayors._New York City is considering an increase of 11.5 percent in water rates, which would add an estimated $72 to the average water and sewer bill for a single-family home in the city._

Despite this, many developers are reluctant to put more money into upfront construction costs.

To help developers and builders defer the costs of building green, the state and city have offered a series of tax incentives and financing.

The state began offering the first tax credit for developers of green buildings in the country in 2000. It has distributed the total $25 million allocated to the program among seven projects. The New York State Energy Research and Development Agency also offers a variety of help with different aspects of green building.

Some money is also coming from the non-profit sector.

The Enterprise > Community Partners has invested $130 million dollars to finance the development of 1,800 homes in the city over the last two years.

Yet many say this is still not enough, and so government has begun to require, not just encourage, environmentally friendly construction.

The state mandates that the buildings housing many state government agencies improve their energy efficiency by between 10 and 35 percent, and that they purchase up to 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources, such as wind or solar.

And the city enacted Local Law 86 at the beginning of this year, which requires that most new, non-residential developments using at least $10 million of city financing reduce their energy costs by between 20 and 35 percent, among other environmental requirements. The law is estimated to affect $12 billion in construction.

GREEN BUILDING AND OUR FUTURE

Some experts believe that New York City cannot afford to neglect the environment in its push to provide more moderately priced housing. They argue that constructing buildings that use less water and energy and contain fewer toxic substances is not just an innovative idea but also a necessity.

The city is expecting demand for electricity to outpace current capacity by 2012, and a major portion of that demand comes from buildings. New York City buildings emit 79 percent of the global warming gases in the city, which in turn, accounts for 1 percent of emissions nationwide, according to a recent study from the mayor’s office. New York City alone emits as much as these gases than all of Portugal or Ireland.

And unless something is done, the pollution is bound to increase. More than a million people are expected to move into the city by the year 2030, according to the Department of City Planning.

This will “pose challenges that – if left unmet – could be paralyzing,” Bloomberg said in a recent speech.

Going Green, Saving Green

A new state-of-the-art apartment complex called Via Verde boasts a series of terraced rooftop lawns and gardens, an outdoor amphitheater and stunning views of the Manhattan skyline. The building -- as its Spanish name suggests -- is also dedicated to the “green way,” meaning it meets the highest standards of environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient construction.

But unlike some other eco-conscious apartment buildings in New York City like the Solaire in Battery Park City, or the Tribeca Green in lower Manhattan, Via Verde is located in the South Bronx. And unlike these other luxury condos, it is built with middle-class New Yorkers in mind: Many of the 202 apartments in Via Verde are intended for families for four that earn less $56,700 a year. “We hope that [the Via Verde] proposal will serve as a prototype for future affordable housing developments built nationally and internationally,” said Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Shaun Donovan.

Via Verde is not alone. A smattering of low-cost environmentally friendly projects housing projects are being built across the country, according to a recent article in the Next American City. In Duluth, Minnesota, for example, a project for 70 formerly addicted or homeless people will be convenient to public transportation and boast such features as a high-efficiency steam heating and hot water system, energy-efficient lighting and controls, ceiling fans and landscaping that requires no irrigation.

If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, there will be more buildings using such technologies in New York City’s future. On April 22, as part of a plan to make New York more sustainable, the mayor called for a series of new projects and initiatives aimed at reducing harmful emissions and energy usage.

But accomplishing such changes in the city could be a major challenge, with high demand, a scarcity of land combining to create a critical shortage of low- and middle-income housing - let alone apartments that are energy efficient , environmentally friendly and still available to less affluent New Yorkers.

Latest Round in the Garbage Wars

Raising signs calling for "environmental justice" and shouting "NIMBY no, justice yes," residents of the Bronx and Brooklyn circled the office of State Assemblymember Deborah Glick last week.

The protestors, members of the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods said they are tired of getting dumped on, quite literally, and want the state to clear the way for a recycling station in downtown Manhattan.

The station is intended to ease the burden on the Bronx and Brooklyn, which now take most of the city's trash, and is part of an effort to make the city's solid waste management system fairer and more environmentally friendly. But in the latest development in the city's garbage wars, several Manhattan Assembly members and parks groups want to block the station. Glick, whose district abuts the site, and others said the peninsula simply is not a good place for the recycling station largely because it would impinge on Hudson River Park. Their critics, however, have accused of NIMBYism (not in my backyard) sentiments.

"It's Manhattan using its privilege," said Elizabeth Yeampierre , chair of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and executive director of UPROSE, a Latino community group based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. "We want to let Glick know she is in the way. She is in the way of borough equity."

As the hours in the current state legislative session dwindle, some organizations and politicians still hope to get this final piece of the Solid Waste Management Plan approved in Albany. Although the City Council approved the plan last summer -- a decision mired in years of debate -- the state must still vote to allow construction of the recycling facility and education center on the Gansevoort peninsula in the Hudson River near 14th Street.

How Clean (or Dirty) Is Our Air?

During the spring, buried in the thickets of the debate over congestion pricing, was a great nugget in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030. Deep in the document was a promise: if PlaNYC 2030 was implemented, New York City would become the “cleanest big city in America.”

That got me thinking.

How clean is the air in New York City?

The short answer is that the nation’s air is cleaner than it’s been in decades, and so is New York’s. But New York City air is still polluted enough to send thousands of people to emergency rooms every summer and to send some of those people to early graves every year.

The longer answer is more complicated, and it goes like this:

Since 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyhas set standards for the maximum amount of air pollution that is safe to breathe. In a city like New York, ozone (a principal ingredient of smog) and particulate matter (or soot) are the key pollutants—and the city has never met EPA’s standards for either pollutant. In each case, we are in the second-worst category (Los Angeles tops the "most polluted list" for both smog and soot). By this measure, the city seems to be in pretty bad pollution shape—especially because many environmental groups think that the current EPA standards are too weak.

Soot particles are the biggest pollution concern. A decade ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council (where I worked then, and now) estimated that 64,000 Americans died prematurely every year at then-current levels of particulate air pollution. More than 4,000 people of those premature deaths were in the New York metropolitan region.

In New York, diesel engines have long been at the heart of our local soot problem. When walking up Madison Avenue, most of the soot we breathe comes from a relatively small number of diesel engines—buses, trucks, and construction equipment. In more residential neighborhoods, home heating oil is diesel’s close—and even dirtier—cousin.

Ten Things You Can Do to Help Save the Earth

Ten Things You Can Do to Help Save the Earth

Going green is easier than you think. There are little things you can do every day to help reduce greenhouse gases and make a less harmful impact on the environment. Taking care of the Earth is not just a responsibility -- it's a privilege.The ten things are :

1. Pay attention to how you use water. The little things can make a big difference. Every time you turn off the water while you're brushing your teeth, you're doing something good. Got a leaky toilet? You might be wasting 200 gallons of water a day [Source: EPA]. Try drinking tap water instead of bottled water, so you aren't wasting all that packaging as well. Wash your clothes in cold water when you can.

2. Leave your car at home. If you can stay off the road just two days a week, you'll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 1,590 pounds per year [Source: EPA]. Combine your errands -- hit the post office, grocery store and shoe repair place in one trip. It will save you gas and time.

3. Walk or ride your bike to work, school and anywhere you can. You can reduce greenhouse gases while burning some calories and improving your health. If you can't walk or bike, use mass transit or carpool. Every car not on the road makes a difference.

4. Recycle.You can help reduce pollution just by putting that soda can in a different bin. If you're trying to choose between two products, pick the one with the least packaging. If an office building of 7,000 workers recycled all of its office paper waste for a year, it would be the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road [Source: EPA].

5. Compost. Think about how much trash you make in a year. Reducing the amount of solid waste you produce in a year means taking up less space in landfills, so your tax dollars can work somewhere else. Plus, compost makes a great natural fertilizer. Composting is easier than you think.

6. Change your light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) last 10 times longer than a standard bulb and use at least two-thirds less energy. If you're shopping for new appliances or even home electronics, look for ENERGY STAR products, which have met EPA and U.S. Department of Energy guidelines for energy efficiency. In 2006, the ENERGY STAR program saved energy equivalent to taking 25 million cars off the road and saved Americans $14 billion in utility costs [Source: ENERGY STAR]. (Learn more about proper disposal of CFLs.)

7. Make your home more energy efficient (and save money). Clean your air filters so your system doesn't have to work overtime. Get a programmable thermostat so you aren't wasting energy when you aren't home. When you go to bed, reduce the thermostat setting -- you won't miss those extra degrees of heat or air conditioning while you're asleep.

8. Maintain your car. Underinflated tires decrease fuel economy by up to three percent and lead to increased pollution and higher greenhouse gas emissions [Source: EPA]. Underinflation also increases tire wear, so it will save you money in the long run if you're good about checking your tire pressure.

9. Drive smarter. Slow down -- driving 60 miles per hour instead of 70 mph on the highway will save you up 4 miles per gallon. [Source: Consumer Guide Automotive]. Accelerating and braking too hard can actually reduce your fuel economy, so take it easy on the brakes and gas pedal.

10.Turn off lights when you're not in the room and unplug appliances when you're not using them. It only takes a second to be environmentally conscious.