In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful

June 26, 2008

How Green Are You

How green are you?
How do we sustain economic growth while preserving the planet? Every day, we can see people who have thought of a solution and are putting it into practice.
How eco-friendly are you? What changes have you made to your life to become a more environmentally-conscious person? What tips can you offer to the rest of us? This is my story and share to you on how to go green.

Here is what I’m doing in my house. There’s no food waste, that is the way that I always say to my children. No plastics when we’re shopping, because I always take my huge bags that I sew it myself. We have some beautiful orchids and some plants that can make my house look greener.

All About: Food waste
Food biodegrades, so where is the problem?
When food rots, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says is 20 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide (CO2).
The developed world chucks out a lot of food.
The U.N. World Food Programme offers another way of looking at it: It says the total surplus of the U.S. alone could satisfy "every empty stomach" in Africa (France's leftovers could feed the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished).

It is the environmental concerns around food waste that is driving the push for reform on how to treat the problem of leftovers. Methane, the gas food waste produces, traps 23 times as much heat in the atmosphere as the same amount of CO2, the EPA says. And landfills are the place you will find most of it -- they account for 34 percent of all methane emissions in the U.S.
But ironically, one of the solutions to dealing with food waste actually results in a product that could keep cars on the road: Biogas.
Biogas is a by-product of a process called anaerobic digestion (AD). AD is a process where organic matter -- such as food waste -- breaks down in an environment with little or no oxygen, generating a natural gas made up of 60 percent methane and 40 percent CO2. It is the exact process, in fact, which goes on in landfills. But there is a difference.
Whereas methane can be harmful to the environment in an open setting, such as a landfill, in controlled and closed settings such as a combined heat and power plant, it can be harnessed and converted into biogas, a renewable energy. And that energy can be used to provide heat, light and fuel. Most organic matter can be processed with AD.
According to the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health, gas from sewage waste and landfills is already being used to provide 650 MW of electricity to the UK's national grid, representing between 60 and 75 percent of the country's green energy (the UK is Europe's biggest producer of biogas).
The country that is leading the way in putting its biodegradable waste mountains to good use -- particularly in the world of biogas-powered cars -- is Sweden.
Then…how about us in Indonesia? We still remember 2-3 years ago not so far from Jakarta, people in Bekasi refused wastes from Jakarta being sent to landfills traditional sewage treatment.
until now there is no solution to solve the problem. Thus we can change the waste to become energy

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