Biomass Can Come from a Great Variety of Interesting Sources

Biomass energy and biomass fuel are becoming more and more viable options for a sustainable future. But Biomass is a lot more fascinating than most people realize, with fuel sources ranging from chicken excrement to human fat and even stranger substances you might never have guessed. The many, many different possibilities for biomass materials makes it one of the most fascinating forms of alternative energy - especially when you consider these unusual methods of biomass production:

Chicken Poop

Over 800 thousand tons of chicken poop is available for biomass energy production in the Netherlands each year. Photo by mauledbyjesus via Flickr

Chicken manure, like cow byproducts, emits methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and is a growing environmental concern in the Netherlands. Instead of exporting the problem as they’ve done in the past, at least 440,000 tons of chicken poop will produce biomass energy in a new production plant.

Garbage

More than 130 million tons of garbage enter landfills each year, contaminating the air, the soil, and the water supply. Photo by Andarilho Belem via Flickr

Scheduled to be in operation by the end of 2009, America’s first garbage to ethanol plant will be located in Los Angeles County, California. These plants could offer a more sustainable option for alternative fuel while eliminating several tons of waste from landfills.

Human Fat

This futuristic speed boat is powered completely by biomass fuels, including fuel produced by the owners body fat.

Earthrace is an eco-friendly boat operated on 100% biomass fuel and proves that it is possible to produce biofuel from human fat, obtained by liposuction. Read more on human fat and biomass energy.

Farm Waste

Many farmers PAY to have farm waste, wood chips, and other potential biomass materials removed from their land. Photo by pdam2

While wood and farm waste are not unusual materials for biomass fuel, Show Me Energy’s biomass wood pellets and cooperative community energy projects are intriguing. Local farmers provide (and profit from) the biomass plant’s materials and then use the pellets to heat their homes and barns. These locally produced biomass pellets are also being tested as a viable solution for generating clean energy.

Hazardous Materials

Could toxic waste power the world? Photo by greefus groink

Otherwise difficult to dispose of hazardous waste, including medical, industrial, and chemical garbage, will become materials for a new energy plant planned in Indiana. A combination of gasification and waste-heat-to-energy processes is proposed to convert the hazardous materials into energy.

Algae

More than 65,000 species and unbelievable reproduction rates make algae an ideal candidate for sustainable fuel. Photo by Grendelkhan

The potential of algae as an alternative fuel option has been experimented with throughout history but is now receiving more attention as oil prices continue to soar. Nearly half of an algae plant’s total weight is oil, meaning an acre of this abundant pond scum could produce about 20,000 times the amount of oil for biofuel than a soybean crop produces!

Wheat Stubble

Leftover stubble from wheat and grain crops could replace at least 20% of fossil-fuel based energy without interfering with the land or food supply. Photo by Andrew Stawarz

While some of the waste left behind after harvesting is important to maintain the soil, a large portion of it is simply wasted. This stubble has the potential to be a truly sustainable biomass option - it doesn’t require the introduction of a new species, will not detract from the food supply, and doesn’t create any disruptions in the current environment like most biomass crops.

Slaughterhouse Waste

Could leftover animal parts generate our energy? Photo by szaqii

While many people are reducing or eliminating their meat consumption, the human race still consumes a lot of meat.  Slaughterhouses and farms that prepare these foods have quite an impact on the environment.  The Cows to Kilowatts initiative in Nigeria plans to eliminate the pollution slaughterhouses create while producing a clean and affordable fuel option.

Human Waste

Human waste is something we cant control - why not turn it into something useful? Photo by Mark Sebastian

The methane gases emited by human waste will soon turn on the lights in San Antonio, TX.  Plans for the first commercial US processing plant of this type are already underway and should harvest methane from about 90% of the city’s sewage.

What could be more harmless than nice-smelling scented candles, right? No problem and no harm. Light one, let it flicker away, and allow the aroma to set the mood, right? There are dangers and risks associated with scented candles that may have you scrambling for greener alternatives to these apparently neutral everyday products.

Scented Candles – Risks You May Not Know

The average commercially produced candles contain substances, such as paraffin wax, which when burned release toxins into the air and can lead to health problems. Such scented candles may have been made using methods that are linked to refining crude oil and are comprised of fossil-fuel generating hydrocarbons. Carcinogenic toxins that may be released could even cause cancer over an extended period of time, and additional pollutants such as acetone (an ingredient in nail polish remover and paint thinner!), soot, lead, and benzene may all leave their mark, as well. Are your aromatic candles as attractive now?

According to the US Consumer Public Safety Commission, candles are producing more soot than ever before, and lead wicks still remain a problem in imported products up until the last couple years. So how does a discerning consumer avoid harmful candles and toxins?

Scented and Unscented - Healthy Candle Alternatives

Aside from devotedly reading labels and avoiding products made with perfumes and artificial dyes (found in most mass produced candles and fresheners), turning to soy-based candles or beeswax candles may be the best option. Beeswax candles are a fantastic natural alternative, and soy-based candles emit less soot than their paraffin-based cousins and are made from plant waste. If unscented candles won’t do however, make sure your aromatherapy/scented candles avoid synthetic mess and instead utilize plant essential oils. Some names to keep in mind: Vermont Soy Candles, Aveda, Blue Corn Naturals and Honeyflow Farm.

Also, for those that store their candles and may have purchased some before 2003, you may want to check your wicks for lead. There may be a small, thin wire in the center of your wick, and while this may not be lead due to the 2003 Consumer Public Safety ban, there may be zinc or tin elements that you may find undesirable, too. Make a thorough pass over your stored candles to ensure you’re not burning something that may contribute to compromising your health – or the environment.

For those looking for a little more information, here are a couple handy links to lead you on the right path towards healthier and greener candle choices: Pristine Planet and Soy Candles

What is FlatPak?

FlatPak homes combine the luxury of a custom designed house with the environmental benefits of a sustainable lifestyle to create unique and beautiful homes, hotels, and townhouses that are friendly to the planet. Each 8′ by 8′ component is custom built according to your specifications - choose glass types, windows, and a variety of eco-friendly finishes and accents to design your dream home.

Prefab homes minimize environmental hazards that typically accompany on-site construction. FlatPak designs begin with the foundation to prevent damage to the earth even further. Options are available to safely construct your FlatPak on the side of a mountain or by the rolling sea and the homes are suitable for any climate. This sustainability, coupled with the endless possibilities of combining components to create a home, make FlatPak an intriguing housing option to consider.

What Can You Create with FlatPak?

A cozy one bedroom cottage with a view, complete with a custom kitchen and just the right amount of storage, may be your idea of a sustainable home.

Looking for something with more space? Your FlatPak home can be as long and wide as you desire and can be up to 4 levels tall. Designate space for a playroom, a private office, or even a guest house - build the 5 bedroom, 6 bath home of your dreams - create a sustainable home for entertaining with multiple dining rooms and just the right amount of cabinet space.

Sustainable office buildings are also a possibility with FlatPak. These include work space, client waiting areas, private offices, bathrooms, and employee lounges with large, open windows that decrease lighting costs.

If a custom floor plan sounds like too much trouble, FlatPak has a selection of designs you can use to get started. Choose from a spacious 2600 square foot 3 bedroom plan with a garage and courtyard or keep it simple with a quaint 600 square foot studio apartment.

How to Get Your Own FlatPak Home

Since the first FlatPak construction in Minnesota by company owner and architect Charles Lazor, FlatPak homes have began to pop up across the nation and are now available in Canada as well. Like any custom built home, the price of a FlatPak house varies depending on a number of factors but are comparable to other custom homes - averaging between $200 to $300 per square foot.

Visit FlatPak for more information on these intriguing sustainable homes. Feel free to share your dream FlatPak ideas or thoughts on prefab homes in the comments!

(Photos courtesy of FlatPakHouse)

It’s not down on the farm these days, alas. The healthy, natural beef of years gone by is almost extinct. It has been driven out by cheap beef, raised on gigantic feedlots, fattened on corn. The problem is: corn isn’t healthy for cows, and raising beef this way ultimately isn’t healthy for us either. Here are some things to watch out for and ways to be more healthy when it comes to your beef-related choices.

If you ask children, “What do cows eat?”, they’ll tell you: “Cows eat grass!” Not corn – grass. Kids are smart; smarter, it seems, than the barons of agribusiness, who haven’t figured that part out yet.

Why do farmers feed cows on corn? First, because it’s cheap, thanks to massive federal subsidies. Second, because  starchy corn forces cows to fatten up faster. Cattle evolved a complex digestive system to derive nutrition from rangeland grasses; feed them on corn and their digestion goes haywire, causing flatulence, acid stomach, and massive weight gain.

This isn’t healthy for cows: with their immune systems damaged, the cows get sick – an amazing array of illnesses, ranging from liver abscesses and infections to dust-inspired  respiratory disease. So agribusiness loads them up with antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to get them to the slaughterhouse – and your plates.

This also isn’t healthy for people: this beef ends up lower in nutrients (everything from vitamin A to vitamin E) and higher in fat – the bad kind, cholesterol-boosting fat. And the rampant use of antibiotics in crowded conditions has led to the rise of a new breed of super-bugs that are sickening thousands and possibly millions.

You heard about the spinach infected with E. coli 157? There’s no way to prove anything, but it’s likely the infection came from animal waste. Agribusiness likes to say “It could come from over-flying birds or foxes running through the fields,” but the most probable cause is the lakes of animal waste on nearby cattle farms. Remember the acid indigestion the cows get from corn? E. coli 157 doesn’t live in the guts of normal, grass-fed cattle, but it thrives in the acid environment of corn-fed cows.

This is a growing problem – 199 people got sick during the spinach outbreak and three died, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the 20,000 people a year who are infected with E. coli 157 ,and 200 who die. It’s mostly the very young and the very old who are vulnerable; infection from E. coli 157 is the biggest cause of kidney failure in children.

The biggest irony: none of this makes any economic sense at all! Nobody would bother feeding corn to cattle if we weren’t all paying billions of dollars in subsidies to make corn cheap. And consider this: Cornell’s David Pimentel points out that growing that corn takes vast amounts of petroleum-based chemical fertilizer.

Because of this dependence on petroleum, Pimentel says, a typical steer will in effect consume 284 gallons of oil in his lifetime. Comments Michael Pollan,

“We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.”

Giant agriculture distorts everything. In real agriculture, poop is fertilizer. But we use petroleum products to fertilize the corn, send the corn to giant cattle operations, which churn out massive lagoons of dammed-up poop. It should go back to fertilizer, but it’s such an antibiotic and chemical-laced concoction that is nothing but a toxic waste-product.

So now you know more of the facts, but what can you do to improve your diet and make a global difference as well? Vegetarians would like you to cut out beef completely, but that’s not really necessary.

• Cut back on beef (and meat). One or two days a week without meat is the equivalent of switching from a gas-powered sedan to a hybrid. (It’ll also save you money, and is good for your heart).
• When you do eat beef, go for free-range or grass-fed. Organic is best – it’s more expensive, true, but remember, you just cut out a day or two of beef, so you can afford to eat better. Better for you, and better the planet - there’s some evidence that grass-fed cows actually helps sequester carbon in the soil as they graze.
• Watch your dairy intake, too. Most big dairy producers are as bad as the beef feedlots. Cut back on dairy, or switch to organic for lower impact.
• Watch out for corn in your veggie products! Once you start reading ingredient labels, you’ll be shocked and appalled to see how American processed food is loaded up with corn and corn derivatives (loaded with dairy derivatives, too!). It is a good idea to cut back on processed foods anyway, as they are loaded with all kinds of weird chemicals and additives (many of which are manufactured in bulk in China with minimal safety standards).

• Corn is energy intensive to grow, gobbling up fossil-fuels at every stage of production, from transporting seeds to fertilizing the fields (with petrochemical fertilizers) to final harvest.
• Corn is also a spectacularly water-intensive crop.
• The ethanol production stage consumes more fossil fuels and water.
• Once it finally reaches your gas tank, ethanol burns around 30% less efficiently than gasoline (meaning your per-mile cost is actually 30% more than you think it is).
• Estimates of how much actual energy we get out of the process range from barely breaking even to around 20 percent more than the input energy.
• And of course, every step of the process spews CO2 into the atmosphere.

It’s been almost a year since The New York Times editorialized on the subject:

The economics of corn ethanol have never made much sense. Rather than importing cheap Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane, the United States slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol from Brazil. Then the government provides a tax break of 51 cents a gallon to American ethanol producers — on top of the generous subsidies that corn growers already receive under the farm program.

And unlike our inefficient corn-based ethanol, that Brazilian product actually yields 370% of the energy put into it.

So, why are we doing this? What possible calculus could convince us to even consider corn ethanol?

Corn is big business - and big agribusiness hires the best lobbyists.

Here, the return on investment is spectacular: plant a few tens of millions of dollars in seed money in the form of campaign contributions to senators and members of Congress, and reap billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies.

And for agribusiness, corn is king.

Cheap corn - kept cheap through an insanely generous subsidy system - has distorted nearly every facet of American life:

• Energy: Subsidies fueled the ethanol boom
• Meat: Subsidies push cheap corn into the feed of cattle, encouraging huge feedlot factory farms, with all the problems they entail
• Health: Twenty thousand people in the US are infected with E coli 157 bacteria every year, and 200 die of it; this strain of E coli developed in corn-fed cows and is spread by bovine waste
• Food: Subsidies (and tariffs on sugar) push high-fructose corn syrup into just about everything you eat, contributing to the US obesity epidemic
• Immigration: Subsidized US corn is dumped on the Mexican market, driving small farmers out of business and off the land, driving them to seek jobs in the US.

Yes, even the immigration problem is fueled by cheap corn.

Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia has put together a great graphic on what happens to all the heavily-subsidized corn the US produces every year (via Ezra Klein).

As you can see, it’s not about Corn Flakes. The stuff you eat (”Cereals and other products”) barely shows. Keep that in mind as you ponder our farm policy, and the farm subsidy choices being made in Washington.

The graph… shows the end use of US corn over the past six years (all data that follows is from the Foreign Agriculture Service and the Economic Research Service of the USDA). The big pink block in the middle is domestic feed use (~60%, down to 47% last year). The top category is exports, most of which is also used as feed (19%). The dreaded high-fructose corn syrup has been around 7% (5% last year) of the corn crop, glucose / dextrose around 2-3%, beverage alcohol (yep, there’s corn in that Bud Light) around 1-2%. Cereals and other foods? 2%.

The one area of growth (in blue) is fuel alcohol, or ethanol. Last year, 24% of all US corn production (29% of non-export corn) was used for ethanol.

We’ve known for years now that ethanol makes no economic sense, but we’re dumping a quarter of our corn crop into it.

Ethanol is just the latest in a string of boondoggles.

Next, we’ll see how King Corn has left thousands of Americans living next to lakes of poo, driven tens of thousands of farmers off the land, and left millions of us with clogged arteries from questionable beef.