How stuff works: Episode 2 Turkeys!

The How stuff works series is great fun for anyone weird like me and interested in loads of stuff!


This episode focuses on the Turkey industry, it is a good watch! Please do! There are 3 parts... ENJOY :D!!!

POO POWER! Part 4: Pigs farting Power!

Even though assessment for this blog is over... I know I did this not for my environmental conscience, but because I was FORCED to... I feel the need to carry on posting because I love the many uses of poo...and here is another example of POO POWER!

So the video shows a great way to sustainably develop.... income from pig farming, waste management, and energy production on a decentralised scale... tick tick tick for the World Bank's Rural development initiatives!


This technology is being rolled out at a global level, it is happening in India and China where rural populations are increasing and require energy and income like anyone else.


More on this to come!! Hopefully! :D


Disclaimer.... I do not want any marks for these posts after the deadline of submission, I would just kind of like to carry on if possible??? Is that bad?

A personal message... and conclusion...ish?

I hope in the recent posts that I have at least hinted to the fact that I believe that through personal choice we can change the current path we are on through simple yet hard lifestyle changes. 

This is a funny video of my hero Peter Griffin... lol Random... anyways... in fact it conveys perfectly what I want to say in this post... denial of the facts just won't solve the problem (shouting yeah when you are doomed to fail regardless of what you think the science is showing you or not) doesn't change the course you are on and the destination you will finish at.... deep I know right? :D)

Believe me, I can appreciate how hard it is to drastically change your consumption habits.

Today is my 21st birthday!!! YAY ME! Thanks to all the messages... wait... this isn't facebook... anywho, unsurprisingly, this time last year I had just turned 20....

*FLASHBACKS*.... 

Oh wait... I can't do a flashback, well I guess I have been watching far too much family guy, and not enough time working hard!

On my 20th Birthday I realised on thing that dawned on me... I was consuming far too much; not just for someone my age (a nearly fully grown man) but for a human in general. I was an obese child, and I only grew larger with time. When I am talking about obese, I mean, hey, I'm not on the biggest loser because I was too big!

So, like I said, I turned 20, and weighed so much I couldn't even get on a Wii fit *product placement*... yes that's right, I got on the scale and it literally said one at a time... FAIL.

Just to give you an idea, the maximum weight was 150 kg (23.6 stone). I know I weighed a lot more than that, 24 stone or about 152 kg. I am honestly not lying.

So as you can see, from an obese child to a morbidly obese young man it didn't look to well for me... I mean, I weighed more stone than years to my life!

I was a large child, I weighed 70 kg (11 stone) at the age of 11. That is a full grown man's weight if not more.

So I said to myself: "In 10 years I have more than doubled in weight. What about the next 10? Will I be 300kg (47 stone)? Or will I gain another 70 kg, coming up to 220 kg (34 stone)?"

The point is, was I really going to continue on this unsustainable trajectory; a poor life of pain and misery and death. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, too many obesity related diseases to mention.

I said no... not this time, so I made a choice, a simple yet hard choice to lose weight. It was simple in the sense that all I needed to do was reduce the amount I eat and be more active. However, breaking an eating habit that I have had all my life is not easy. I have always loved pasta, nutella, chocolate, sugar, bread, anything fatty/starchy/sweet I would eat, and  a large amount as well!

Changing my consumption habits was not easy, but day by day I learned to not add sugar in my tea, drink sugar free drinks, give up pasta and white bread and diversify my diet (Pasta is my favourite food... I would have literally killed for a plate a year ago lol!).

I began to watch what I ate, calorie counting thanks to labels; watching sugar in my diet, never exceeding the recommended daily calorie intake of 2500 for a man my age (although for someone my size it was more than double, 4-5000 just because I was SOO BIG!).

Spoonful by spoonful, meal by meal, day by day and month by month I stuck to (not my diet) my lifestyle change. Not eating after 6 pm. No added sugar in anything. Reduced salt in my foods. No pasta. No bread. No chocolate. No sweets. 

Instead, lovely vegetable soups, eggs and oily fish, occasional lean meat (I know!! I ate far less than I did before though!!!) in sauces and stews, cous cous and rice. I know love Chinese, Singaporean and Indian foods (albeit slowly slowly lol!). Italian: gnocci and polenta; Moroccan: tagines and harira. I diversified my consumption, I became healthier and over time I shed my weight.

I know exercise a bit, I like to walk...(hey one step at a time I am still no Olympian!) and move around as much as possible.

So the other day I weighed myself... and from 24 stone, I now weigh 15 (I got down to 14 stone 13 lbs but gained 1 pound over 4 days!! dammit! lol). 

Over the course of one year I have lost 9 stone exactly. I like to think I look better than I did, I sure feel do. 

I have never in my life weighed so little, I just wished my wardrobe shrunk too... I have tents for t-shirts and sleeping bags for trouser legs. I can fit into a 36 inch waist... not incredibly comfortably, but zip up and button the trousers nonetheless, just wouldn't go out in them at the moment! I only used to be able to wear jogging bottoms, now I can wear jeans!!! I am sorry but when you have never been able to, throughout your late teenage life, it is amazing to finally wear them!

The reason I am embarrassing myself by telling you I used to be really big is to show you that it may be hard but fundamentally, if it is unsustainable, it will be the eventual death of us all unless we do something about it. I know it is difficult and so easy to pass the buck but if we all just made little choices, we could make a massive difference. I had to change my unsustainable consumption because it finally dawned on me that I was on the wrong track; I am no better than any one else on this planet for that, but by trying to make a difference, sure I am no Brad Pitt, I am sure as hell healthier than I was before.

If I can do it, then anyone else can because as cheesy as it sounds, I have hopefully shown that it can be done. Seeing is believing and if we do take care of ourselves, and we do become aware of the impact that our actions are having on the planet, then we will begin to change our ways, innovate out of it or change our consumption patterns. Whatever we do, the replacement has to be sustainable. Being selfish and not changing consumption patterns would result in a poor quality environment for our kids to grow up in, or in my case no life at all.

Everything you could ever want to know is just a click away. There is no excuse and I am one to make up excuses I tell YOU!!!

All the best and keep watching the posts... maybe? :D

Nearly There Conclusion!! SEAPUK!

This blog was started to try and highlight the role that livestock plays in climate change and how our consumption has resulted in us drastically changing the earth's climate; land cover and productivity. We have introduced new species to places where they have caused so much damage (please look at Gem's blog for an in depth look at the palm oil industry; Jonnys's blog on Arctic environmental change; Wei's blog on the home of the polar bears and other arctic wildlife; Jess's blog on species migration) and we are causing the destruction of the homes, habitats and ecosystems of other species that inhabit an increasingly smaller niche on an ever homogenised planet due to our requirements from the environment around us.

By no means I am wagging my finger and blaming everyone under the sun for everything negative that's wrong with the world; that would be tiring and hypocritical lol! 

What is needed are solutions. 

Whether it is bio-technology and increased use of GM technologies to produce less GHG producing cows and other ruminants, or the utilisation of efficient feed and better storage, disposal and use of manure and other excrement produced as a livestock by-product (all in this IPCC report) and suggested by Popp et al., 2010.

Greater efficiencies in the production of livestock is integral to its sustainability, its been done to a certain extent in the transport industry, so why should what we eat be ring-fenced whilst we are all streamlining transportation (greater fuel efficient cars) energy production (renewable energy/ long life light bulbs), waste disposal (recycling); yet we still dump a lot of unnecessary fertiliser on a over irrigated field all in the name of reducing starvation?

Like in every single one of the example I have highlighted (and many more I have forgotten lol) there are some common traits; public support and interest; consumer attitude changes; cost of implementation; accessibility and availability of products. 

I am not asking/telling people to be vegetarian, it isn't necessary if agriculture was more sustainable. Greater GHG sinks (afforestation); less intensive agricultural practices; the real cost of meat (reduction in production subsidies Bruges, 2008) they would all curb emissions one way or another.

But by far the biggest source of agricultural expansion and GHG emissions is through demand. Unsustainable and inappropriate consumption is creating a problem that shouldn't even exist. The most significant way, as all the literature points to, whether modelled or not, is through consumer habits changing. Not eating meat every day is a start. Buying a non-meat alternative is also good. Margarine over butter is a positive, however depending on where the source of ingredients come from , palm oil could be one. 

Whatever you choose to do, just be aware of the choice you are making. Be a concious consumer and try act in an environmental, in a sustainable way. This is not easy. I am no expert on all products and their sources, but finding this information out has never been easier. Google it! 

Maybe soon there will be some kind of certification that address how environmentally sustainable meat products are (like those for tuna and dolphins, recycled paper from sustainable forests and recyclable plastics)? If there is already please let me know!!! Maybe that's one thing we could do, start a social movement for Sustainable and Environmental Agricultural Production in the United Kingdom... SEAPUK!

SEAPUK...we could get Paul McCartney to talk at an event... hmm.... Planet organic... get a few farmers involved... we could start something great!

I am managing director..... no.. vice president.... no.... King of SEAPUK! Who wants to join me? We can do it!

Replying to comments!....AGAIN and AGAIN!!

This is what Wei wrote:

It's so difficult even trying to read this post not because it's dull (it's actually quite funny) but because I really really really really don't want to stop eating meat :( I mean, I can go without meat for maybe a day or two (I love veg) but not my entire life! And I think I'm not alone in my reluctance to change. Love of meat is what's stopping many people who do know that their meat-eating lifestyle produces much more greenhouse gases to just eating veg. 

What then would you suggest to help persuade more people to stop eating meat (or eat significantly less meat)? 

Well Wei I hope this blog has tried to help persuade people of the environmental cost of meat at least, even though to be honest it was originally created just to investigate the role livestock agriculture and in particular the poo and pee aspect of it all has on our planet. I don't think I can go without meat forever, but as I am to emphasise everything in moderation is acceptable. The amount of meat we eat is purely unsustainable, not individually but as a collective; if we all individually reduce our consumption, the collective will reduce aptly. This video really got to me, but it is mostly focused on the animal cruelty side (it has some very disturbing images so please only watch if you are not easily offended, it is called 'If slaughterhouses had glass walls' by PETA.... the environmental aspect is admittedly small, but as we can see from not just this blog, but every other on the 'anthropocene' it is all interlinked.

On a much lighter note! Food is delicious, rice, pasta, pizza are all non-meat based foods (just because meat can be eaten with them, it does not mean it has to be eaten with them). Like Yulia has suggested pulses are a great source of protein like tofu, even though it fails in comparison to east asian tofu! 

Buying meat from a sustainable farm, the practicalities are hard, but it is a possibility. The cheapest way to make a difference is to probably lobby policy makers (and I said cheap lol!). Again this is not easy in london, but if there is market, a product will soon fill it!

And these three are from Yulia:

Thanks for your reply! So depressing about the battery hens! However, from my life as a student and from being aware of the lifestyle of the rural poor in Russia (compared to whom the British poor are ‘wealthy’, which is why they can afford meat), I don't agree with you that meat is the cheapest source of protein: pulses like chickpeas are cheaper (if you buy the dry ones and then boil). Now we don't theoretically have an excuse for unsustainable consumption! THEORETICALLY! I really hope your blog can convince more of us to change our habits. Though the way it is going, it seems that the 'innovative technology' will have to be the answer. Please check out my blog for innovative land sources, which I will post soon! 

Firstly poverty is relative... there isn't a competition about who is poorer, but I will gladly cede the win to you. Anything is possible, it's hard but one less sausage a day or the vegetarian option at lunch is a step in the right direction. Fruit is a healthy snack alternative... but not really great for meat? vegetable soups are great for this time of year, and minestrone soup is perfect!

No Meat!

Your posts really make me laugh, DanDan! And you are actually starting to convince me to want to eat less meat. 

Nonetheless, I do have the same question as Wei, though: I tried becoming a vegetarian before and as soon as I made that decision, I realized that I can't live without meat! It seems many environmentally-conscious consumers are in the same boat. What do we do? Would getting recipes for the delicious vegetarian Moroccan dishes I once tried help? DanDan? 

As I said in a comment on my blog, you may find this relevant to using biofuels and bacteria to simultaneously tackle eutrophication:

http://www.oilgae.com/energy/nn/b/2009/06/microbial-process-turns-urban-waste.html 

Thanks for this link! It is really relevant to poo! I hope whoever reads this post directs their attention to the link provided above!!

I hope I have answered all the questions... if not MYBAD!!

All the best! :D

Livestock in Food Security: the debate widens...

With all the talk about environmentalism, and when we are all too busy hugging trees, we do forget other things that are happening on the planet. 

Sustainable development is not just some buzz-phrase cooked up in the nineties to gives us 15 year olds in the naughties to learn about in geography... well there is some truth in that too.

It is easy to forget that livestock, farming, is a valuable source of income for some of the poorest families in the world. A new report by the UN FAO on the importance of livestock to food security is a great summary of what kind of role livestock plays in developing nations in particular:

"livestock make a vital contribution as generators of cash flow and economic buffers, provided that market chains are organised to provide openings for small scale producers and traders and those in remote areas." (Forward, ix, FAO 2011: Livestock in Food Security)

The fundamental point is that livestock is not just a source of emissions, pollution, ethical controversy but at the end of the day is a source of food and income. Highlighting Sub-Saharan Africa, the expansion of agriculture (like that seen in China and India in the late 20th Century, Green Revolution) is pegged as a lifeline to reduce poverty and improve on the health problems.

The report highlights the changes in livestock production numbers and per capita consumption (Table 4) and also shows specific region and national scale changes and predictions (figures 1, 2 and table 16). I could bore you describing what they say... alternatively you could read? read isn't a good word to use, you don't 'read' a graph do you? observe the graphs yourselves.

As you can see, the numbers only increase...

Pastoralists number 120 million, and they depend on their livestock for food, income, transport and fuel; would it be fair to force them to stop stocking animals because climate change is getting out of hand? After all it is the 'developed' who have truly mechanised GHG emissions; should we tarnish everyone with the same brush? I don't think so.

This coupled with the need to maximise profits and reduce cost to open the market to everyone, livestock intensification is needed, and these agricultural systems are the worst environmentally, ethically and for small business competition which just does not have the finance to compete.

The report (FAO, 2011) goes onto stress that the dichotomy for environmental mitigation and sustainable economic development doesn't necessarily result in changes in the way development is going but rather the point that:

"suggest that the average global consumption of meat should be approximately 90 g a day, compared with the current 100 g, and that not more than 50 g should come from red meat from ruminants. If this target were achieved, it would lower the peak demand for meat. However, government-sponsored nutritional and healthy eating programmes have had limited success in changing dietary preference." (page 82)

The root of all evil it seems is not money but consumption, and a lot of it at that!

Inequality in food distribution is widely known. Last year I had the opportunity to sit in on a UN Young Ambassador Society events held at the Institute of Education and none other than the Executive Director of the World Food Programme gave a keynote speech. There, Josette Sheeran spoke quite bluntly about the inequality of food distribution worldwide. There is enough food but a billion remain undernourished and a billion over. That means there is still a lot of waste, and through waste reduction we can 'offset' carbon emissions and save the environment!

It is a very long read and I would bet there are gems that I haven't mentioned that I haven't read in the report... it's 100 pages long! What do you expect me to do???

Keep watching the posts!!

Alternatives to Meat? Watch this!

Video from the infamous One Show! Please Watch!!

This video sums up the arguments for and against meat alternatives. It is an easy and fun watch... in fact I remember watching this when it first aired on tv... how sad am I!?!?!

Next up... a reply to another comment! I would love to see more! :D

And remember, if we can send a man to the moon any thing is possible, even reducing our consumption!

Replying to a comment!

I felt this deserved a whole post because I wrote too much to respond in a comment; the comment too (by Emily Smith who has a great blog called Treading on thin ice; about glacial melt and it's consequences - its great please take a look, I am not doing it justice!) highlights some issues that we face in the coming decades.

Her original comment was: 

"You're right it is a really provocative video. I hadn't even heard of the riots in 2008, let alone known they were partially due to phosphorus shortages. It really makes you think about our priorities, especially if the peak could be reached by 2035. Even if the peak is in 300-400 years like the Fertiliser Agency stated, its the wrong attitude to pass it off to future generations to deal with. Saying that, I'm not sure how many people, me included would be willing to give up meat. And even if they did, if it's a finite resource, I wonder what proportion of the population can be sustained when the phosphorus resource has run out? Not 7 billion I expect."

My Response:

It is very true, I personally love to eat meat occasionally, but how much meat we eat I feel is the question. Humans have always eaten meat, and in some parts of the world, meat is reared without the use of extensive amounts of resources, for instance well within the ‘carrying capacity’ of certain countries; especially subsistence farming.

Intensive agriculture has resulted in massive amounts of fertiliser being used when it is not even required (Europe for instance; I have read this in a journal article but fail to remember at the moment!). We eat a lot of meat, but by just looking at any reduced aisle in any supermarket we can see huge amounts of meat wasted; no one buys every meat product. Just think, how many times have you walked past a butchers or a deli counter in a supermarket and thought about buying meat a few days to expiration and left it? Or even thrown out some left over gone off meat? Please do not think I am accusing you personally of this (lol!) but society is wasteful, regardless of how conscious we are individually.

By reducing waste in the consumption of meat, I’m guessing (not very academic here!) that we will naturally produce less meat, or meat per capita. The alternatives of a low-meat high-protein diet result in either large shifts in diets to legumes/beans/soya (which the cows generally eat as feed now) or fish. Fish is one of the most consistently exhausted and depended upon food sources we have, adding more pressure could cause greater depletion of an already controversial ‘commons’ resource.

The fact that meat production will almost certainly increase in line with demographic change requires a renewable source of P, that’s where natural fertilisers come in. Like the video material has shown, P is not really absorbed by our body, so most of it passes straight out; the P used to make the meal for one person is now available to be used to make food for another person. We just need to roll this out on a large scale, thanks to urbanisation; the feasibility of capturing P from human waste is easier from cities. There is a great potential in harnessing P; and there are just as interesting ways of utilising this resource which I hope to explore in greater depth soon!!!

Sorry for the long reply! :D And I hope you do not mind me using your comment!

Add a little P, get a load more Poo! Part 2: Video time!

This video summarises the main arguments around P, and it's in green (my favourite colour!). I particularly like the part about doing your part whilst sitting...just one letter away from what you're actually doing!

Add a little P, get a load more Poo! Part 1: The whole debate around fertiliser.

Livestock feed on animal feed which is produced from some main ingredients which include: corn, soybeans, sorghum, oats and barley. The more cows you want to milk, the more plants you need to grow to turn into feed for the cows.

Plants, like every other living creature, needs nutrients to live, grow and reproduce. This is where the whole debate around food security comes in, and an element we call Phosphorous (P).

P is necessary for living organisms, in the case of plants, phosphorous is used not just energy pathways (respiration) but also growth and most constrainedly, root growth and so uptake of other vital nutrients.

Now agriculture is a business...a very big agri-business. To maximise crop production and yield, you do not want the amount of P in the soil to limit growth, this is the same for the other vital nutrients (Nitrogen and Potassium). NPK fertiliser is added to soils to allow plants to grow. But where does this fertiliser come from... we have known for millennia that poo is just as good a fertiliser as anything else, once more it's natural and we have loads of the stuff!

The mining of P for decades has started to make people wonder... we have had a peak in oil production...will the same happen for phosphorous? Short answer yes. With any finite resource, which P is one, there will always be a peak, and a downward trend following it.

So as I begin to shed light on the nutrient side of things, here is an article calling peak phosphorous into the light, and the implications it might have on foreign policy and food security... who'd 'a thought it... cow poo is related to international relations eh?!?

POO POWER! Part 3: Thames Water using our crap!

Thames Water are harnessing the power of sewage waste that comes from our toilets... that's right one man's waste is another companies fuel.

The article, from the guardian, explores the potential for energy production at the plant:

"The company estimates that 16% of its electricity needs will be covered in the current financial year by so-called poo power – enough to run about 40,000 average family homes – from a total energy requirement of 1,300 gigawatt hours."

Expanding this technology to all waste treatment works will save a lot of unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions from either producing energy from conventional combustion processes or letting the waste decompose anaerobically producing methane.

Meat the truth! Documentary Time!

This documentary, presented by a Dutch MP (Dutch Party for the Animals - might be a little biased) explores the role livestock plays in GHG emissions; pretty much what this blog is designed for!

The whole documentary is a great watch, please do!

To eat or not to eat meat… That is the question! Part 1: is it all demand?

When people debate the issue around livestock and the negatives of increasing production of meat and livestock associated products many say we should reduce meat consumption.

REALLY?!?

Now sure, one way we COULD reduce emissions from livestock is to cut down on our sausages, chicken legs and kebabs; after all, less cows and sheep farting, less direct methane emissions. But there are other issues around more animals on the planet that feed our hunger for meat. This paper by McApline et al. 2009 looks at environmental degradation in Colombia, Brazil and Australia due to expanding beef production and the deforestation it causes.

A big issue around emissions from livestock is the fact that there are large indirect GHG emissions from forest clearance and land use changes. The paper looks at factors that have increased beef production and surprisingly, in some countries like Brazil, it is not supply and demand which dictate beef production and emissions; its land prices. Land policy in Brazil has made it more profitable to clear once natural rainforest and keep it clear than let it be. The cheapest way to keep vegetation from establishing again is to regularly cut regrowth… cows are surprisingly good at turning grass into milk, meat, leather and other useful products for human consumption. This not only has a dramatic effect on local ecosystem services and physiography; the global consequences include depletion of the capacity for natural carbon sequestration.

Meat is big business. Curtailing meat production will directly affect the economies which rely mainly on agriculture and the primary sector. This is a controversial topic as if a country is able to utilise its natural resources within its territory for economic means and development ‘at the expense’ of the environment, who are we to judge? We chopped down our ‘oak’ forests centuries ago to fight wars with continental Europe. With the specific driver of meat production in this context being land management, economical profitability and natural lawn mowers; there is an assumption that if the main driver of livestock (beef) expansion being the one stated, then whether you eat the meat or not, there still will be emissions from it, albeit highly inefficient per capita of digestion. In the case of Australia, land management reform in the favour of protecting old growth forests has reduced the profitability in expanding cheap, subsidised (through tax incentives) cattle ranches. This protection has worked, again regardless of whether Sheila or Russell eat steak or love veggie burgers.

However, with all business, it is fundamentally based on a market; therefore demand. If demand for meat (whatever the reason) decreases; then production and emissions would – economically speaking – decrease too.

I will explore more arguments around decreasing dependence on livestock as a food source. However, I am guessing it isn’t as straight forward as I think it’s going to be!

POO POWER! Part 1: Cars powered by poo!

For those of you who like to drive but are concerned about the rising costs of fuel and environmental issues around its production, this is for you!

This video and this news article in the Guardian explains all!

A water treatment plant in Bristol, part of the Wessex Water group of companies, is producing methane from human waste flushed down the loo! The biogas could resolve some sustainability issues around fuel for cars, as the man at the end of the video says:

 "As long as there are people, cows and chickens, they'll be methane."

I agree...

However! Even though biogas is sustainable and is beneficial in terms of dealing with increasing amounts of waste that we will produce, the fundamental problem is the fact that it is still a form of combustion; combustion = CO₂. 

So, on the one hand it's sustainable and uses the methane that would otherwise contribute a more to global warming in the short term. On the other, it doesn't address the underlying dependence on carbon dioxide producing processes which will inevitably exacerbate climate change.