Our Green Streets Blog

It is high time to begin learning more about the benefits biochar might provide to all of us living on this planet, especially when considering the agricultural practice from South America is over twenty centuries old.

According to the Internationasl Biochar Initiative, sustainable biochar is a “powerfully simple tool fight global warming.”

“Sustainable biochar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. IBI focuses on the need for quality and sustainability standards and assurances in the emerging biochar industry,” the website reports.

South America: students with biochar stoves Source: Biochar Initiative

For those wondering what kind of new invention bichar might be,  it is not new at all. The practice has been around for almost 2,000 years, where it was practiced in South America. The product, called terra preta, or “dark earth” that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer, or fertilizing agent.  But beyond acting as a soil enhancer, proponents claim biochar has the capacity to hold carbon. It is being produced in the United States, South America, and Australia, to name a few producing locations.

Biochar is a charcoal produced under high temperatures, using crop waste, animal manure, and other organic waste.

According to Kelsi Bracmort, an analyst in agricultural conservation and natural resources policy, “The combined production and use of biochar is considered a carbon-negative process, meaning that it removes carbon from the atmosphere.”

Take a thorough look, we shall be reporting far more on this product.

Praise for Ghanaian micro business

Weeds rarely are welcome in the garden soil. Getting rid of them is normally an arduous procedure with more bad sides than good sides, including blisters, aching backs, and time passed, which might have been better spent elsewhere. The one good side from weeding is probably the dead-tired, ‘sweat on your brow’ reward of seeing your garden rid of the unwelcome invasion.

Ghanaian villagers strip bark from invasive weed tree so it can be used for erosion control. Photo: G. Meyers

But if you’re an itinerant farmer in Ghana, living near the Brong Ahafo gold mine of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, one weed features another good side: it is being converted into a cash crop.

This weed, called Broussonetia papyrifera, or York, can consume arable land in a short time, growing 25-meter trees and a system of seeds and shoots that turns food-producing areas into wastelands.  Ghanaians may once have called it Devil’s Teak, now they see it as a raw material that can bring income to the villagers of Techeyre, who operate a micro business making biodegradable matting that is used for erosion control and slope stabilization at the nearby mining operation.

This micro business jute mat operation was conceived by Muhammad Bin Abubakar, an outspoken Newmont nursery manager who has left behind a large trail of good work, including growing a shaded forest where once there were only mining tailings. Bin, as he is known, says he learned of a way to use the tree when he worked at Newmont’s Indonesian operations.  According to Bin, one farmer, Amoafo Darkwah had to abandon his family’s two-acre cassava farm because of York infestation.

Project developer, Bin Abubakar, works with village members. Photo: G. Meyers

In the village of Techeyre, some 800 people, including Darkwah, join in stripping bark from these trees.  Bark stripped, the trees die within two weeks and will stop producing seeds. The dead timber can be used for minor construction needs or for cooking fuel, and much of the sawdust is used for growing at Bin’s nursery.

Then it’s time to treat the moneymaker, the bark. The fibrous material, taken from the bottom part of the tree, measures an average of one meter by five meters. This solid piece is first hammered flat so the fibrous structure can be pulled out, or woven into a continuous net material. The hammering process, where large hand-hewn mallets are used, resonates throughout the village with the sound of drums.

As Bin describes it, “ The mat is then woven into a mesh, just like chicken mesh, thus giving it the ability to trap eroded soil particles during storm periods.”

Beyond the environmental functionality of the jute mats, there is the micro business that has provided income for some 800 people where money or paying work are as scarce as the York is plentiful.

The difficulties posed by the York have been transformed into a solution, says Bin.

“So the jute mats are used for controlling erosion in our mining areas. Which now accounts for 800 people – ladies, men, and students in this area. And they are getting their livelihood from this work.”

We hope more micro businesses such as this one Bin has started begin popping up across Africa and other developing areas of the planet.

Reported today on DallasNews through Climate Progress:

“U.S. companies are getting squeezed out of the big Chinese wind-power market even as Dallas investors are bringing Chinese firms here via a big wind farm in Texas, according to a new industry report.

““They’ve used every measure you could possibly think of to enhance production of renewable energy equipment in China,” said report author Alan Wolff of the trade law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP.

“U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk won a pledge from the Chinese last fall to drop rules giving preference to Chinese makers of wind-power equipment. But Kirk’s office hasn’t seen any evidence that the pledge has been carried out, said spokeswoman Carol Guthrie.

“Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers are entering the U.S. wind market under a joint venture led by Dallas investor Cappy McGarr.

“McGarr’s U.S. Renewable Energy Group, with Cielo Wind Power LP of Austin and China’s Shenyang Power Group, is planning a $1.5 billion, 600-megawatt wind farm on 36,000 acres in West Texas.

“Dewey & LeBoeuf’s report on China’s renewable energy equipment market was done for a U.S. industry group, the National Foreign Trade Council, where concern about China’s market restrictions and treatment of foreign firms is growing.”

News from Environmental Leader:

Safeway has become a founding member of the Sustainability Consortium, the group launched in support of Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Index.

The goal of the consortium is to develop guidelines and promote innovations as the supply chain seeks to reduce its energy use, emissions and packaging. The consortium made headlines in January when Wal-Mart and Best Buy, together with electronics suppliers Dell, HP, Intel and Toshiba, officially launched the effort.

The consortium is administered by Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas, with financial support from Wal-Mart.

The consortium has courted Safeway, in hopes that it would become involved in what could be an industry wide sustainability metric system.

Safeway made its involvement in the initiative public March 1, reports Supermarket News. Safeway is the first grocer to join the group, according to a press release.

The retailer will use life cycle assessment data to create a company-wide supply chain policy encouraging sustainable purchasing and manufacturing practices throughout the organization’s direct and indirect buying.