Greater Porto: who Recycle will get discounts on goods and services

Lipor, the company that manages the collection and recycling of waste in eight municipalities of the Grand Harbour, will reward users of Ant recycling centers (Ermesinde) and Cal (Gondomar) with a trading card deposit of waste by points that entitle to discounts on goods and services.

According to the newspaper Público, the project is called Ecoshop and will be extended to companies that use the Ecofone Line for collection, domicile, of material for recycling.

This pilot project has as a partner the company green dot and may also include discounts on fuel. However, and according to the initiative's Manager, Emanuel Monteiro, commercial partnerships are not yet closed.

The card will start to be delivered later this month and works in a simple way: who put three pounds of paper in an EcoCentre will have eight points on the card, for example. The value of each deposit is specified in regulation, here. The document is also specified the type of material that can be deposited: batteries, contaminated packaging, rubble, styrofoam, wood, lamps, cooking oils and minerals, paper and cardboard, batteries, plastics, clothing, electrical equipment, scrap waste, ink jet cartridges and toners, glass and scraps of Greens.

In Exchange for points, several companies have agreed to give benefits to the best recyclers. There are four categories, according to environmental awareness: up to 250, 500, 1000 and above 5,000 points. The best recyclers can win a tablet or smartphone.

According to Emanuel Monteiro, these partnerships can include the area of retail and services such as auto repair shops.

For now, the project will last a year. After this trial period, will evaluate their relevance and continuity. The idea for this project was born from an internal competition.

Photo: Younger Blog

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Supplier of Coca-Cola accused of "stealing land" the Guarani

The indigenous Guarani people asked Coca-Cola to stop buying sugar from Bunge, American power multinational implicated in a case of theft of land, in Brazil.

According to a recent report by Oxfam, quoted by Survival International, Coca-Cola is buying sugar to Bunge, which in turn acquires sugar cane in "stolen lands" the Guarani to produce biofuel.

"While these companies profit, we are doomed to continue with hunger, misery and death," said a spokesman of the Guarani to Survival International. The Guarani community of Jata Yvary, Mato Grosso do Sul, is composed of 370 people. Already lost most of their ancestral homeland â€" the one that sells sugarcane to Bunge â€" and is forced to live in a small piece of land, completely surrounded by plantation.

According to Survival International, the Aboriginal tribe suffers from serious health problems as a result of toxic pesticides of plantations. Now, she "cries" lost forest, from which derives part of its medicines, health and shelter.

"Farmers already have destroyed almost all the forests, our medicinal plants, fruits and resource. They spread pesticide from planes, our children are headache and begin to vomit, "said Arlindo, leader of the Jata Yvary.

The land formerly occupied by the Guarani are now used to raise livestock, plant soybeans and sugarcane. "The Guarani are [to pay] by the growing world demand for biofuels", concludes the Survival International.

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Bike-sharing system in London is in crisis

Released in the summer of 2010, the Boris Bikes were received with great enthusiasm by the Londoners. Two-wheeled vehicles, which are part of the bike sharing system of London, are supposed to start a new phase of sustainable mobility in greater London, leaving more and more cars for second place and interweaving in its importance, with public transport.

In November 2012, about 726,893 trips were made by Boris Bikes â€" so-called because of its great booster, London mayor Boris Johnson. Last month, however, this number dropped to 514,146 â€" almost a third.

To make matters worse, the Transport for London, which runs the British capital's transport, announced that Barclays, main sponsor, will no longer finance this system in 2015. At the same time, the recent wave of deadly road kills of cyclists is upset the local authorities.

According to Grist, the crisis of the Boris Bikes can be summed up to three factors: cost, danger and maintenance. In January 2013, prices per hour doubled, from €1,2 to €2,4 ($ 3.8 pair $ 7.6). "Although the old prices were a pittance, the new ones are too close to the cost of public transport, and many began wondering whether it is worthwhile to look for a bike and getting sweaty pedaling", explains the Grist.

Then there's the safety factor. Cycling in London, as we've been talking about for the last year, is increasingly dangerous.

Finally, it is hard to find a station with the right number of bicycles. Normally, or are empty â€" and it is impossible to lift a bike â€" or completely filled â€" and it is impossible to deliver it. I.e. the Boris Bikes have a serious problem of logistics and distribution.

The system is also too expensive. With just 4,000 bicycles, it would cost the city's taxpayers, on average, about € 1,670/year by bicycle ($ 5,320). On the other hand, Barclays has invested about half of the € 60 million ($ 190 million) pledged.

Next spring, the system will be reinforced with 2,000 bicycles and expand collection stations to the South-West of London. "Although the idea be the predecessor, the bike-sharing system is too associated with Boris Johnson to drop it without a fight," explains the Grist.

Foto:  [Duncan] / Creative Commons

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The Asian folk beliefs that try to combat pollution

The high levels of pollution in major Asian cities are not news to anyone. However, this winter seems to have air quality worsened and the waves of smog have increased, preventing people in the streets or making the day-to-day activities.

In the absence of a definitive solution to the problem of pollution, many citizens try to minimize its effects on health, trying to protect their lungs from harmful agents. However, the methods they use to protect themselves are ineffective, at best, or harmful at worst. Get to know which are:

Cigarette filters in the nose

"A magical solution to deal with the pollution. Take two cigarette filters and insert them into your nostrils, "says a popular message on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social network, referring to the Quartz.

Health authorities quickly belied the fact, stressing that the filters can impair breathing and even send small filaments to the lungs. In addition, cigarette filters fail to neutralize the harmful effects of tobacco, so also unable to neutralize the harmful effects of pollution.

Grilled Bacon

In South Korea, where pollution from China came through the wind and covered Seoul and other cities, sales of grilled bacon, known locally as Sam Gyeop Sal, more than tripled. The Koreans believe that the dish can absorb the environmental toxins.

Anti-pollution martial arts

An elementary school of Hebei, an industrial town in the southwest of Beijing, has implemented a program of anti-pollution martial arts. The institution believes that the martial arts will help strengthen the lungs of children and help them withstand better the polluted air from China.

The truth is that physical activity, even indoors, leads to an increase of breathing, which causes people inhale more toxins.

Foto:  tpayne99 / Creative Commons

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Scientists try to convert CO2 into solid magnesite

Researchers at Stanford University, in the United States, believes his latest study, conducted in an abandoned mine in California, can help create solutions to a very important issue: how to store the carbon emitted by human activities?

The team spent two years trying to unravel a mystery in the mine geological Red Mountain, located about 100 km from Palo Alto, California. In it, are some of the largest veins of pure magnesium carbonate, a mineral made of carbon dioxide (CO2) and magnesium. The big question was trying to find out how these veins were formed, millions of years ago.

Researchers have proposed a solution that could lead to a new technique to convert carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, in solid magnesite. In fact, the conventional geological armazamento involves the capture of CO2 from industrial chimneys â€" and its injection as subsurface fluid. But there's a big concern: prevent CO2 leak back into the atmosphere. So, the solution found through convert CO2 into a stable mineral.

According to the sustainable planet, one of the most difficult parts of the task goes through from the rock to accommodate the C02. "And this may require brute force. This type of violent rupture happened in the region studied, with the intense geological activity millions of years ago in coastal California mountain chain, near the famous San Andreas fault. The idea is to replicate this process, "explains the site.

The mine had 140 thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent, before the magensita were mineralized in the early 20th century. The whole area could contain 13 gigatonnes of carbon.

Human activity put in the atmosphere more than 500 gigatons of carbon. According to scientists, an irreversible change of climate is expected to happen around 1000 gigatons, a threshold for which humanity walks up to the middle of this century.

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The coldest place on the planet

The coldest place on the planet is located in the eastern plateau of Antarctica, on a high ridge, where temperatures can fall to minus 92 C in various caves during a clean night of winter.

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center made the discovery while analysed detailed maps of the Earth's surface, which have been drawn up with data from remote sensing satellites, including the MODIS sensor, allocated in NASA's Aqua satellite, and the TIR, placed in Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the US Geologial Survey.



This new value is several degrees lower than the old lowest temperature recorded, about minus 89.2° c. This value was recorded in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station, in Eastern Antarctica.

Although these have been lower temperatures of the planet recorded by satellites sensors, permanently inhabited sites with the lowest temperatures recorded are located in northwestern Siberia, where the values down to about less 67.8 degrees Celsius in the towns of Verkhoyansk, in 1892, and in Oimekon, in 1933.

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Perfluorotributilamina: the greenhouse gas that is 7,100 times worse than CO2

Every year the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are increasing, as well as the list of greenhouse gases. The latest addition to this list is the Perfluorotributilamina (PFTBA), a chemical used in the industry that has the potential for global warming 7,100 times greater than CO2, the main gas responsible for climate change. The conclusion was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Although only a small amount of PFTBA being present in the Earth's atmosphere, the lifespan of this substance is hundreds of years old, which means it is also present in the atmosphere during these hundreds of years. This chemical, odorless and colorless, is widely available in online sale sites and their sale is not regulated. "There are no policies to control their production, use or issue," said Angela Hong, one of the researchers at the University of Toronto who participated in the study, cites the Quartz.

The industrial conglomerate 3 m, which sold for more than 40 years several PFTBA related chemical, called fluorinertos, says in his online portal that these chemicals "have high global warming potentials and atmospheric life for long periods. As such, they must be carefully managed to minimize the emissions ".

The chemical properties of PFTBA â€" and other perfluorocarbons (PFCs) â€" makes it perfect for cooling lasers and electrical circuits. Google, for example, has registered several patents with PFTBA to use the chemical cooling systems of their servers. The PFC can still be used, in theory, by astronauts and by divers, as a replacement for liquid oxygen.

The PFC can still be used as artificial blood (even if its implementation is still being studied). The molecular structure and the nature of the intramolecular chemical bonds of these substances allow the existence of empty spaces in the structure of the liquid, which causes the PFC dissolve oxygen and CO2 like no other substance. The PFTBA can also be used for frying potatoes.

Laboratory tests have been done with mice, and found that the animals managed to survive several weeks after breathing perfluorocarbons, albeit with some lung damage.

Researchers from the University of Toronto just discovered 0.18 PFTBA parts per billion in the atmosphere, compared with the 400 parts per million of CO2. However, the researchers argue that the use of this substance should be carefully monitored, as well as other potential greenhouse gases which have not yet been studied.

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