The Costs of Illegal Logging

Illegal loggers undermine the competitive advantage of legal producers by selling unlawfully cut or stolen wood at artificially low prices. This practice creates trade distortions that decrease the global price of legal wood by about 16 percent.

Climate Change Freshwater Management and Science

An event on climate change, freshwater management, and the role of science
will take place on Tuesday March 13th between 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM at the Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. The reception will begin at 8:30 am, followed by the panel discussion at 9:30 am.

World Water Forum 2012: Time for Solutions!

The World Water Forum is the largest world water event. The World Water Forum 2012 will take place in Marseille, France on 12-17 March, 2012. The Forum will be open to the general public on Saturday the 17th of March 2012.Every three years since 1997, the World Water Council, with a host country and city, organises a forum that mobilises creativity, innovation, competence and know-how in favour of water.

World Water Week 2011: The Business of Water Management Requires Collaboration

World Water Week is the annual meeting place for the planet’s most urgent water-related issues. Organized by Stockholm International Water Institute, it brings together the world’s experts, practitioners, decision makers and leaders to exchange ideas, foster new thinking and develop solutions.

World Water Week opened in Stockholm on Monday August 22nd with calls for better urban water management to ensure food and water security. Around 2,500 experts from some 130 countries are attending the 21st edition of World Water Week in Stockholm. They are working on preparations for the United Nation’s conference on sustainable development set to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. The group expects to publish a declaration at the end of this week (August 26).

Banana Peels and Water Purification

Banana peels can be used to purify drinking water contaminated with toxic heavy metals such as copper and lead. According to a February 2011 study published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, researchers from the Bioscience Institute at Botucatu, Brazil, indicates that banana skins are better than conventional purification agents. Traditionally water purifiers like aluminium oxide, cellulose and silica are used but these are expensive and have potentially toxic side effects.

The team's method follows previous work that showed that plant parts, such as cane husks, coconut fibres and peanut shells, can also remove toxins from water. All of these natural materials contain chemicals that attract and collect heavy metals.

In a laboratory experiment, Gustavo Rocha de Castro, a researcher at the institute and co-author of this study, along with his colleagues, dried banana peels in the sun for a week, ground them and added them to river water containing known concentrations of copper and lead. They found that the peels absorbed 97 per cent of the metals after just one hour.

The metals can then be removed from the skins so that they can be safely disposed of. According to Castro the material could also work on cadmium, nickel and zinc.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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