Tonnes of space garbage is orbiting the Earth and posing serious threats to active satellites and manned space missions, and to astronauts when they conduct space walks outside of their ships.

Where space garbage comes from Credit:

Humans have generated an estimated 6,000 tonnes of space garbage, including the proven existence of 13,000 objects larger than 10 centimetres, nearly all left to the universe by the former Soviet Union, the United States, China, France, Japan and India.

More than 300 experts from 21 countries discussed these matters at the fifth European Conference on Space Debris, held by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany from Mar. 30-Apr. 2.

According to the latest ESA estimates, some 600,000 objects larger than one centimetre are swarming in the Earth’s orbit. These include inactive satellites, old rockets, fragments of spaceships, and paint chips, left after more than 50 years of human activity in outer space.

The main inventory of space debris comes from the U.S. Defence Department’s Space Surveillance Network. The rest of the countries rely heavily on that system for their knowledge of the situation.

But the Teide Observatory, located on Spain’s Canary Islands, has also been systematically scrutinising space debris for a decade, with ESA oversight.

“We have already found more than 5,000 objects,” astronomer Miquel Serra, head of the Canary Islands’ Astrophysics Institute’s space debris project, told Tierramérica.

“In a few years, Europe may have catalogued the space debris and won’t have to rely on anyone else for information on it,” he said.

Since the lift-off of the Soviet Union’s legendary Sputnik in 1957, there have been more than 4,600 space launches and some 6,000 satellites put into orbit. But just 800 continue to function with a mission.

Most of the debris comes from explosions, of which there have been about 200, because a majority of the devices sent into space still have fuel left over after they complete their useful lives.

Furthermore, the number of pieces of debris orbiting the planet continues to grow due to collisions.

“The situation is serious. The increase in these objects in space is not regulated,” Holger Krag, an expert with ESA’s space operations centre, told Tierramérica.

“We fear that there will be more and more collisions that generate innumerable fragments, which in turn impact other satellites,” said Krag. “And at some point, space at distances of up to 2,000 kilometres (the area with most satellite paths) from Earth will no longer be usable for space travel.”

These collisions are the main threat to the satellites that are in orbit for purposes that include telecommunications, weather forecasting, navigation, Earth observation and aerospace science, as well as for ships and missions like the International Space Station.

At speeds of 40,000 km per hour, even tiny fragments of space debris can cause serious damage to spaceships.

The danger was driven home on Feb. 10, when the U.S. satellite Iridium 33 ran into the Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite, which was out of service. Both were reduced to hundreds of shards, joining the ranks of space garbage.

However, experts consider much more serious the intentional destruction of the Chinese satellite Fengyun 1C with a missile launched from Earth by Chinese authorities in January 2007.

“That one action increased the presence of space debris by 25 percent. It was dramatic, and we are still dealing with the consequences today,” Krag said.

On Mar. 12, the crew of the International Space Station had to seek refuge in the Soyuz space capsule for 10 minutes due to the possibility of their vessel’s collision with space debris.

There are no binding laws or agreements governing these space activities or stipulating penalties for noncompliance with standards, only calls for self-regulation by governments and for compliance with the directives of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

The scientific community has been recommending for more than a decade the controlled re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere of satellites that have lived out their useful lives, so that they can be decommissioned and prevent further collisions and explosions. But the consensus at the recent space debris conference went beyond that proposal for the first time.

The conference conclusions state that it is necessary to plan and implement active measures to remedy the space debris situation, and that there is no other alternative to protect space as a valuable resource for the operation of the indispensable satellite infrastructure.

One of the proposals calls for “the controlled removal of objects from orbit with robotised missions that gather the debris and pull them to an ‘orbital cemetery’, or even force their fall to Earth in a controlled way,” one of the conference presenters, Carsten Wiedemann, of Brunswick, Germany’s Institute of Aerospace Systems, told Tierramérica.

The recovery of each of the several thousand satellites in disuse would cost 10 to 20 million euros (between 13 and 26 million dollars).

But in the end, the conference conclusions state, the costs of losing satellite infrastructure due to collisions would be far higher than the costs of reparative actions.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

European scientists are proposing the controlled removal of thousands of dangerous pieces of space debris in the Earth's orbit by sending up robotized missions.

Where space garbage comes from. - ESA

It is estimated that humans have generated 6,000 tons of space garbage, including the proven existence of 13,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters, nearly all left to the universe by the former Soviet republics, United States, China, France, Japan and India.

The fifth European Conference on Space Debris, organized by the European Space Agency, discussed these matters in the German city of Darmstadt, Mar. 30-Apr. 2, including more than 300 experts from 21 countries.

According to the latest ESA estimates, some 600,000 objects larger than one centimeter are swarming in the Earth's orbit. These include inactive satellites, old rockets, fragments of spaceships, and paint chips, left after more than 50 years of human activity in outer space.

The main inventory of space debris comes from the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network. The rest of the countries rely heavily on that system for their knowledge of the situation.

Though the Teide Observatory, located on Spain's Canary Islands, and with oversight from the ESA, has been systematically scrutinizing space for debris for a decade.

“We have already found more than 5,000 objects,” astronomer Miquel Serra, head of the Canary Islands' Astrophysics Institute's space debris project, told Tierramérica.

“In a few years, Europe may have catalogued the space debris and won't have to rely on anyone else for information on it,” he said.

Since the lift-off of the Soviet Union's legendary Sputnik in 1957 there have been more than 4,600 space launches and some 6,000 satellite put into orbit. But just 800 continue to function with a mission.

Most of the debris comes from explosions, of which there have been about 200, because most of the devices sent to space continue to have fuel remaining after they complete their useful period, and remain that way for a long time.

Furthermore, the number of pieces of debris orbiting the planet continues to grow due to collisions.

“The situation is serious. The increase in these objects in space is not regulated,” Holger Krag, expert with ESA's space operations center, told Tierramérica.

“We fear that there are more and more collisions that generate innumerable fragments, which in turn impact other satellites, and an endless number of collisions are produced in a shorter period. And at some point, space at distances of up to 2,000 kilometers (the area with most satellite paths) will no longer be usable for space travel,” said Krag.

Those clashes are the principal threat to the functioning satellites that are in orbit for purposes that include telecommunications, weather forecasting, navigation, Earth observation and aerospace science. And also for the ships and missions like the International Space Station.

At velocities that usually reach 40,000 km per hour, even tiny fragments of space debris can cause serious damage to spaceships.

The proof of this danger was the Feb. 10 accident, when the U.S. satellite Iridium 33 ran into the Russian Cosmos 2251, which was out of service. Both were reduced to hundreds of shards, joining the ranks of space garbage.

However, experts consider much more serious the intentional destruction of the Chinese satellite Fengyun 1C with a missile launched from Earth by Chinese authorities in January 2007.

“That one action increased the presence of space debris 25 percent. It was dramatic, and we are still dealing with the consequences today,” Krag said.

On Mar. 12, the crew of the International Space Station had to seek refuge in the Soyuz space capsule for 10 minutes due to the possibility of their vessel's collision with space debris.

There are no binding laws or agreements governing these space activities or that stipulate punishment for noncompliance with standards.

There are calls for self-regulation by the governments, and compliance with the directives of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

The scientific community has been recommending for more than a decade the controlled re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere of satellites that have lived out their useful lives, so that they can be decommissioned and prevent further collisions and explosions.

But the consensus at the recent space debris conference for the first time went beyond that proposal.

The conference conclusions state that it is necessary to plan and implement active measures to remedy the space debris situation, and that there is no other alternative to protect space as a valuable resource for the operation of the indispensable satellite infrastructure.

One of the proposals calls for “the controlled removal of objects from orbit with robotized missions that gather the debris and pull them to an 'orbital cemetery', or even force their fall to Earth in a controlled way,” one of the conference presenters, Carsten Wiedemann, of Brunswick, Germany's Institute of Aerospace Systems, told Tierramérica.

The recovery of each of the several thousand satellites in disuse would cost 10 to 20 million euros (between 13 and 26 million dollars).

In the end, states the conference's conclusions, the costs of losing satellite infrastructure due to collisions would be far higher than the costs of reparative actions.

The prestigious German oceanography ship Polarstern is conducting a major experiment of seeding the oceans with iron in order to absorb carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse-effect gas.

The Polarstern in action. Credit: Alfred Wegener Institute

The experiment, under way to the northeast of the South Georgia Islands in the southern Atlantic, is intended to promote the growth of phytoplankton and consequent absorption of carbon by dumping 20 tonnes of iron sulphate over an area of 300 square kilometres.

The iron induces a proliferation of algae, which absorb more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the water during photosynthesis. Because the CO2 dissolved in the ocean’s surface water is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, a deficit of the gas in the water is compensated by taking more CO2 from the air.

The idea is that enriching the water with iron could become a way to fight global climate change, say the experts running the experiment.

But some environmentalists disagree, and warn about the experiment’s unknown consequences. The study is now immersed in an international-scale debate.

“The absorption of carbon dioxide through the activation of algae growth in the sea does not constitute an effective method to fight climate change and, furthermore, it involves great environmental risks. The sea cannot be turned into a bio-reactor,” Stephan Lutter, of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), told Tierramérica.

They also question efforts focussed on absorbing CO2 instead of reducing production of this greenhouse gas in the first place.

“One consequence of this kind of risky project could be that it can take away financial resources in other places for reasonable research in energy efficiency, for renewable energy and for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Lutter.

Meanwhile, the researchers involved in the study have been surprised by the “intensity” of the criticism.

“The objective of our experiment is to manipulate one point of the ocean in its natural context in order to understand and quantify the processes that characterise the ocean ecosystems,” said Professor Ulrich Bathmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, entrusted with the project alongside the National Oceanography Institute of India.

The test “will show how plankton reacts to the addition of iron, what quantity of phytoplankton forms, how much CO2 is fixed – absorbed -, what percentage of carbon remains in the system, and how much carbon is sunk in the depths of the ocean,” Bathmann explained to Tierramérica.

Based on what has happened so far, the Argentine Foreign Ministry has expressed concern about the experiment and asked for explanations from the German delegation in that country, given that, although conducted in international waters, the results could affect the seas off the coast of Argentina.

Environmental groups argue that the study runs up against international law.

In fact, the 9th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held May 19-30, 2008 in Bonn, laid out critical statements about this type of initiative.

Germany’s Environment Ministry web site states that the Conference took a clear position against activities like artificial fertilisation of maritime areas for the purpose of CO2 absorption, because scientists fear serious negative consequences for the marine environment.

But on Jan. 26 the German authorities gave the green light to the experiment, dubbed “Lohafex” (“loha” means iron in Hindi).

And so 49 scientists, mostly from India and Germany, but also from Italy, Spain, Britain, France and Chile, began the planned iron enrichment of the Atlantic waters. They had already been aboard the icebreaker Polarstern for 20 days, awaiting authorisation.

“The experiment is going well. Fertilisation was carried out in a closed oceanic eddy. The phytoplankton are growing and the biomass has more than doubled,” Bathmann, in charge of monitoring the experiment from land, told Tierramérica.

In the last 15 years, oceanic carbon capture has been tested scientifically in a dozen small experiments, five in the Antarctic Ocean.

In 2007, however, the U.S.-based Planktos company had to halt its plans to disseminate iron in Ecuadorian waters near the Galápagos Islands, in the Pacific, due to strong opposition from environmental activists and officials in the region.

Planktos had hoped to negotiate carbon credits on the global market, as proposed in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The heads of Lohafex, however, have ruled out any commercial motivations.

Nevertheless, environmentalists see serious risks in the effort. “There is the danger that interested companies will try to sell iron fertilisation as a measure against global warming, and include it in the global emissions market,” states the North Sea Action Conference.

“It is a megalomaniac plan of the researchers. The background is the economic interest to find a low-cost solution for the global problem of CO2,” says the environmental group in a pubic statement.

Regardless, and according to the original plan, the Polarstern will wrap up its experiment Mar. 17, when it reaches the coast of Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, with the ongoing debate as its cargo.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Stimulating the growth of phytoplankton by adding iron to the sea could be another way to absorb excess carbon that causes climate change, say the scientists involved in a controversial study in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Polarstern in action. - Alfred Wegener Institute

The experiment, under way to the northeast of the South Georgia Islands in the southern Atlantic, is intended to promote the growth of phytoplankton and consequent absorption of carbon by dumping 20 tons of iron sulfate over an area of 300 square kilometers.

The iron induces a proliferation of algae, which absorb more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the water during photosynthesis. Because the CO2 dissolved in the ocean's surface water is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, a deficit of the gas in the water is compensated by taking more CO2 from the air.

Thus enriching the water with iron could become a way to fight global climate change, say the experts running the experiment.

But some environmentalists disagree, and warn about the experiment's unknown consequences. The study is now immersed in an international-scale debate.

“The absorption of carbon dioxide through the activation of algae growth in the sea does not constitute an effective method to fight climate change and, furthermore, it involves great environmental risks. The sea cannot be turned into a bio-reactor,” Stephan Lutter, of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), told Tierramérica.

They also question efforts aimed at absorbing CO2 and not reducing its production in the first place.

“One consequence of this kind of risky project could be that there is a lack of financial resources in other places for reasonable research in energy efficiency, for renewable energy and for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Lutter.

Meanwhile, the researchers involved in the study have been surprised by the “intensity” of the criticism.

“The objective of our experiment is to manipulate one point of the ocean in its natural context in order to understand and quantify the processes that characterize the ocean ecosystems,” said professor Ulrich Bathmann, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, entrusted with the project alongside the National Oceanography Institute of India.

The test “will show how plankton reacts to the addition of iron, what quantity of phytoplankton forms, how much CO2 is fixed — absorbed –, what percentage of carbon remains in the system, and how much carbon is sunk in the depths of the ocean,” Bathmann explained to Tierramérica.

Based on what has happened so far, the Argentine Foreign Ministry has expressed concern about the experiment and asked for explanations from the German delegation in that country, given that, although conducted in international waters, the results could affect the seas off the coast of Argentina.

The environmental groups argue that the study runs up against international law.

In fact, the 9th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held May 19-30, 2008 in Bonn, laid out critical statements about this type of initiative.

Germany's Environment Ministry web site states that the Conference took a clear position against activities like artificial fertilization of maritime areas for the purpose of CO2 absorption, because scientists fear serious negative consequences for the marine environment.

But on Jan. 26 the German authorities gave the green light to the experiment, dubbed “Lohafex” (“loha” means iron in Hindi).

And so 49 scientists, mostly Indian and German, but also Italian, Spanish, British, and one French and one Chilean began the planned iron fertilization of the Atlantic waters. They had already been aboard the icebreaker Polarstern 20 days, awaiting authorization.

“The experiment is going well. Fertilization was carried out in a closed oceanic eddy. The phytoplankton are growing and the biomass has more than doubled,” Bathmann, in charge of monitoring the experiment from land, told Tierramérica.

In the last 15 years, oceanic carbon capture has been tested scientifically in a dozen small experiments, five in the Antarctic Ocean.

In 2007, however, the U.S.-based Planktos company had to halt its plans to disseminate iron in Ecuadorian waters near the Galápagos Islands, in the Pacific, due to strong opposition from environmental activists and officials in the region.

Planktos had hoped to negotiate carbon credits on the global market, as proposed in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The heads of Lohafex, however, have ruled out any commercial motivations.

Nevertheless, environmentalists see serious risks in the effort. “There is the danger that interested companies will try to sell iron fertilization as a measure against global warming, and include it in the global emissions market,” states the North Sea Action Conference.

“It is a megalomaniac plan of the researchers. The background is the economic interest to find a low-cost solution for the global problem of CO2,” says the environmental group in a pubic statement.

Regardless, and according to the original plan, the Polarstern will wrap up its experiment Mar. 17, when it reaches the coast of Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, with the heated debate as cargo.

They say that faith can move mountains. Now, faith in the wind has led to a new way to move ships. The technique, developed in Germany, is powerful enough to move today’s deep-draught cargo vessels and can reduce fuel consumption by 50 percent.

On the high seas with parasails. Credit: SkySails

An adapted parasail is attached to the ship by cables that can be adjusted according to the direction and intensity of the winds. It is activated automatically, guided by an on-board computer.

A 160-square-metre parasail can use the wind to create a traction force of up to eight tonnes, nearly the same push produced by an engine of an Airbus A318 aircraft.

With the parasail system, ships can cut their annual fuel use by 10 to 30 percent, reaching 50 percent under optimal wind conditions.

In a way it is a return to navigation’s origins, prior to the development of steam or diesel powered engines, when sails dominated the seascape.

But now, instead of a tall mast with a mainsail attached to it, the large parasail – like a giant parachute – can move in all directions. Its function does not replace, but rather complements the power produced by the engines.

The mind behind this return to the wind is Stephan Wrage, born in the northern German port city of Hamburg. He is an engineer and an aficionado of sailing and paragliding.

“The idea came to me 15 years ago. I was paragliding on the beach and I wondered if this enormous drag force couldn’t be used also to move boats,” Wrage told Tierramérica.

In 2001, the SkySails company opened its doors, and began manufacturing this new parasail for ships. In 2007 it began its pilot testing on international routes aboard two cargo ships.

The use of wind as a driving force for navigation has met modern technology, notes Peter Schenzle, an advisor for the HSVA, a maritime industries research and development group in Hamburg.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the project is that the parasails are pollution free: wind is a clean energy source – and abundant on the high seas.

There would be great advantages to its widespread use, given that 90 percent of the goods traded in the world is transported by boat along at least one portion of its path from producer to consumer.

Currently, there are more than 100,000 ships on the world’s seas. The global fleet is predicted to increase 75 percent by 2020. Average fuel consumption of a 100,000-horsepower ship is 12 to 15 tonnes per hour.

According to industry estimates, global maritime traffic is thus responsible for some 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Although maritime transport is comparatively less polluting than other modes of transport, new regulations are being considered in order to monitor and limit greenhouse gas emissions from ships.

In fact, the International Maritime Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, is drafting standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from ship traffic, after doing the same in 2008 for sulphur dioxide emissions.

Furthermore, one of the most enticing questions about the parasail technology is how it can reduce a ship’s operating costs, 90 percent of which is fuel.

“We decided to use the SkySails system to preserve the environment, to save resources and, in the long term with gas and oil prices, to continue being competitive,” said Gerd Wessels, director of the Wessels shipping company and owner of one of the ships already using the parasail.

Depending on the size, the price of the system varies from 500,000 to 3.5 million dollars. According to SkySails, the investment is recovered in three to five years.

In the second half of 2009, the company will begin assembly-line manufacture of the product. With orders already in place from Germany, Norway and other European countries, it has already surpassed production capacity for the first year.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Wind propulsion returns to the seas as in times of yore, but don't look for the traditional mainsail.

On the high seas with parasails. - SkySails

A 160-square-meter parasail can use the wind to create a traction force of up to eight tons, nearly the same push produced by an engine of an Airbus A318 aircraft.

With the parasail system, ships can cut their annual fuel use by 10 to 30 percent, reaching 50 percent under optimal wind conditions.

In a way it is a return to navigation's origins, prior to the development of steam or diesel powered engines, when sails dominated the seascape.

But now, instead of a tall mast with a mainsail attached to it, the large parasail — like a giant parachute — can move in all directions. Its function does not replace, but rather complements the power produced by the engines.

The mind behind this return to the wind is Stephan Wrage, born in the northern German port city of Hamburg. He is an engineer and an aficionado of sailing and paragliding.

“The idea came to me 15 years ago. I was paragliding on the beach and I wondered if this enormous drag force couldn't be used also to move boats,” Wrage told Tierramérica.

In 2001, the SkySails company opened its doors, and began manufacturing this new parasail for ships. In 2007 it began its pilot testing on international routes aboard two cargo ships.

The use of wind as a driving force for navigation has met modern technology, notes Peter Schenzle, an advisor for the HSVA, a maritime industries research and development group in Hamburg.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the project is that the parasails are pollution free: wind is a clean energy source — and abundant on the high seas.

There would be great advantages to its widespread use, given that 90 percent of the goods traded in the world is transported by boat along at least one portion of its path from producer to consumer. Currently, there are more than 100,000 ships on the world's seas. The global fleet is predicted to increase 75 percent by 2020. Average fuel consumption of a 100,000-horsepower ship is 12 to 15 tons per hour.

According to industry estimates, global maritime traffic is thus responsible for some 800 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Although maritime transport is comparatively less polluting than other modes of transport, new regulations are being considered in order to monitor and limit greenhouse gas emissions from ships.

In fact, the International Maritime Organization, an agency of the United Nations, is drafting standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from ship traffic, after doing the same in 2008 for sulfur dioxide emissions.

Furthermore, one of the most enticing questions about the parasail technology is how it can reduce a ship's operating costs, 90 percent of which is fuel.

“We decided to use the SkySails system to preserve the environment, to save resources and, in the long term with gas and oil prices, to continue being competitive,” said Gerd Wessels, director of the Wessels shipping company and owner of one of the ships already using the parasail.

Depending on the size, the price of the system varies from 500,000 to 3.5 million dollars. According to SkySails, the investment is recovered in three to five years.

In the second half of 2009, the company will begin assembly-line manufacture of the product. With orders already in place from Germany, Norway and other European countries, it has already surpassed production capacity for the first year.

“To change the world doesn't mean you can't have fun,” says the entrepreneur who sells dance floors that generate electricity from the movement of the dancers' feet.

Detail of the Watt dance floor - Lotte Stekelenburg

That has been happening for the past few weeks at the Watt dance club in Rotterdam, in western Netherlands.

The dancers move to the rhythm of the music on a dance floor made from panels that also move up and down — no more than one centimeter — depending on the movement and weight of the dancer.

The motion of the surface activates a system of specially designed dynamos, located under the floor, which transform the mechanical energy of the dancers' movements into electrical energy.

That electricity is used to illuminate the panels of the dance floor and a column that indicates the level of energy produced by the people dancing.

“Our objective was to create something that would really work, and would be perceived as such, and which would show the dynamic relationship between the body of the person dancing, the floor and the other dancers,” Daan Roosegaarde, one of the floor designers, told Tierramérica.

One person dancing generates an estimated 10 watts. The floor at Watt has a capacity for 150 dancers.

“This is not just talking and talking about protecting the environment, (but) doing something about it,” says one regular at Watt, a man with glasses, long hair and dressed in green.

Around 70 percent of the people who regularly go to dance clubs expressed willingness to support initiatives to protect the environment, according to a survey by the Sustainable Dance Club company (SDC), which has participated in development the product and is responsible for sales.

Every weekend, some 10,000 young people head to the dance clubs in Rotterdam, considered “the Dutch capital of discos.”

The original idea for an electricity-generating dance floor came from a group of students, who were later joined by architects, designers, entrepreneurs and engineers from the universities of Delft and Eindhoven.

After two years of work and private investment of nearly 7.4 million dollars, and some 402,000 dollars from the city of Rotterdam, the project made its debut in September.

The dance club with the electrical name was the first to install the floor, but the SDC says it has received requests from all around the world. “Probably our next destinations will be New York and Berlin. It's the technology of the future,” enthusiastic company director Michel Smit told Tierramérica.

A similar project — but on a smaller scale — was launched in a London dance club.

Watt claims to be “the first sustainable disco” and is aiming to reduce its other energy consumption 30 percent and water consumption by 50 percent, as well as cutting its garbage production in half, based on the average of similar establishments.

The proposals include restrooms that use rainwater, urinals that use an oily film instead of water, a bar that offers drinks in glasses made from recyclable materials and wine from casks instead of bottles, and low-energy LED lighting.

“It's the first time that sustainability and lifestyle are combined in this way,” said Smit.

“We believe that changing the world doesn't mean you can't have fun,” he added, summarizing the company's philosophy.

The initiative has been generally welcomed by environmental activists, because beyond the marketing goals these technologies can have, they help increase ecological awareness in a sector that is traditionally a voracious consumer of electricity. A dance club uses an estimated 150 times more energy than an average household.

“If one is strict about it, the discos shouldn't even exist, but it is also true that because young people get together, have fun and dance, this is the best way to do it,” Carsten Jasner, of the environmental group Greenpeace, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

“This initiative could be compared with the situation of photovoltaic solar energy 30 years ago: few believed in it, and it didn't generate much electricity, but today it's importance is clear,” added Jasner, who visited Rotterdam to see Watt for himself.

In the future, the technology could be used for surfaces where there is a high volume of foot traffic, such as shopping centers, train stations or airports. Beginning next year the “sustainable floor” will be on sale — for about 4,000 dollars per square meter.

German scientists have developed an interior paint that, through a process that imitates photosynthesis, breaks down and eliminates toxic materials from the air.

- Courtesy of Sto AG

This pioneering discovery is already being utilized with success in building interiors, and can also be used on exterior surfaces.

“It is about imitating the marvelous process of photosynthesis and, in a similar way to how a plant does it, causes a reaction based on sunlight that eliminates harmful substances,” Horst Kisch, professor of chemistry and head of the inorganic chemistry team at Germany's University of Erlangen, told Tierramérica.

The paint is able to break down compounds like carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, dichloroethylene, benzene and nitrogen oxides. And it does so in a way that does not produce contaminants.

The discovery is based on the pigment titanium dioxide, which for some time has been used in dental products and in paints, but which in this case acts as a photocatalyst: it triggers certain chemical reactions stimulated by light.

The reactions of this pigment, which are normally blocked when used in products like toothpaste, are seen as positive factors and served as the beginning point for research.

Without manipulation, the pigment absorbs energy from ultraviolet rays, making the surface active and, in contact with the air, produces oxygen links that trigger reactions which break down toxic molecules into completely harmless particles.

The achievement of Kisch and his team of scientists was to modify the structure of the titanium dioxide pigment so that it reacts even in low light, such as on cloudy days and or under artificial light.

“It is a very important development that the materials react with daylight and thus can degrade particles present in the air. And professor Kisch has really been the first to achieve it,” chemistry doctorate Detlef Bahnemann, of the Institute of Technical Chemistry at the University of Hanover, told Tierramérica.

“It is a matter of health, especially if we think that (paint) can disintegrate the toxic particles created by cigarettes, or by emissions of gases like formaldehyde, which can come from some furniture,” said Bahnemann.

Credit: Courtesy of Sto AG &nbsp

According to the researchers, in a test conducted in an office, the application of this paint to the interior walls achieved an 80-percent reduction in the concentration of harmful substances.

The paint is already available for sale, under the name StoClimasan (for interiors) and StoPhotosan (for exteriors). The price can be up to five times that of conventional paints.

A 15-litre can of interior paint in Germany costs the equivalent of about 280 dollars, and covers about 100 square meters. Exterior paint costs 320 dollars and is enough to cover just 80 square meters.

The high prices appear to be the main obstacle to its widespread use, especially in public places.

In Bahnemann's opinion, this problem could be tackled with appropriate government intervention: “It should be realized how important it is to use this type of pain in public spaces. Its higher cost is absolutely justified.”

“Think about its environmental contribution, that it breaks down substances like nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, or different gases that come from combustion processes, whether from electrical power plants, automobiles or chimneys,” he said.

Research to achieve these results took just five years. “We are particularly proud that in so short a time we could apply an advance in basic research in a technical product,” said Kisch.

As for the use of the product on exteriors, the scientists themselves recognize that it remains difficult to measure its effectiveness.

But there are already more than a hundred German companies researching ways, using the same principle, to achieve products that can be applied to other surfaces, such as furniture, tiles or carpets, and which can purify not only the air but the surfaces themselves.

For their original contribution, the invention was recognized with the latest Innovation Prize, sponsored by the German Ministry of Economy.

Buenos Aires is confident that by 2020 the “cartoneros” will ensure that not a single recyclable waste item ends up in landfills. “Cartoneros” — informal garbage collectors — were the pioneers in recycling waste in the Argentine capital, an activity that helped them escape indigence. Now they are an essential piece towards meeting the ambitious goal of “zero garbage” in the city by 2020.

Enacted earlier this month, the Zero Garbage Law sets quotas for the government and the three million residents of Buenos Aires to reduce the production of waste and to promote separating out different materials and recycling.

Under the law's timeframe, in 14 years recyclable materials will no longer end up in landfills, which environmentalists see as a source of contamination and a symbol of a model that squanders natural resources — because the materials cannot be recovered once they are buried.

The cartoneros, the only ones who currently work to recycle waste in Buenos Aires, are the core of that objective. Because of their efforts around 10 percent of all recyclable waste generated in the city is reused.

According to the latest estimates, 4,500 tons of garbage are produced in Buenos Aires each day.

A leader in this endeavor is El Ceibo cooperative, named after Argentina's national flower. The 40 families in the cooperative have been collecting waste in the residential Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo for the past six years.

“We explain to the residents how they should separate their garbage. And we decide with them when they want us to come by and pick it up,” El Ceibo member Alfredo Ojeda, 21, told Tierramérica.

The group carries out its work “door to door”: they systematically collect the recyclable material from the resident, and take it to a collection center, where the different materials are selected and sold. They recover five tons of reusable material each week between paper, cardboard, glass and plastic.

The members perform different functions: promoters, collectors, selectors. Their wages — ranging from 130 to 300 dollars a month — depend on what their duties are in the process. Although these are still considered low wages, it allows them to avoid the indigent situation they faced before.

“We didn't have anything,” El Ceibo founder and coordinator Cristina Lescano said in a Tierramérica interview. When the cooperative began operating six years ago it was a couple dozen families who were going through the rubbish in order to subsist.

“I will never forget when I went out to 'cirujear' for the first time: I was completely covered up, because I was ashamed,” she said.

In 2001, amidst the country's worst economic crisis, the group established the cooperative.

“It is a cultural change, but we are achieving it. Because, for example, if a resident gives you 10 bottles, those bottles don't belong to you, they belong to the cooperative. And sometimes that's hard to understand,” said Lecano.

Minors don't take part in the work, she added, because “one shouldn't take the kids out on the street.” And the cooperative only works during the day, not at night like most other cartoneros.

The members wear blue vests to identify them as part of the cooperative. “It's better because this way the residents recognize us and don't distrust us. Otherwise, before, they wouldn't open the door,” said the young collector Ojeda.

According to official estimates, around 7,000 cartoneros work in Buenos Aires. Although about 9,000 people are registered as cartoneros, it is believed that with the country's economic recovery many have left the activity for other work.

The new law covers “the promotion of the participation of cooperatives and non-governmental organizations in the collection and recycling of waste.” It is hoped that the legislation, which fills the legal void on this issue, will facilitate regulations and controls for the sector.

“We are going to help formalize this work,” Marcelo Vensentini, undersecretary of environment for the city government, told Tierramérica, noting that regulation is essential to protect the right of the cartoneros to decent, well-paid work.

“There are mafias that are very difficult to control. They are middlemen who buy the material from the cartoneros at a miserable price, they store it in clandestine locations, and later sell it,” says Juan Manuel Velasco, president of the ecology commission of the Legislative Congress and author, along with Greenpeace, of the Zero Garbage Law.

The members of the cooperative know their share of discrimination, abusive practices and injustices. But they know perseverance better.

“People ask us if we find a job will we leave this. But we say no, because this is a job, and it's decent,” said Lescano.