Natural Environment Blog

Being someone who is passionate about the natural environment, it makes sense that I prefer to eat natural foods. By ‘natural’ I mean whole foods, or non-processed foods.

As passionate as I am about eating natural foods, it’s all too easy to find myself eating processed foods without thinking about it. In today’s society, it’s difficult to escape processed food. Even when I think I’m buying a natural ingredient, I later find out that it has actually been processed to some degree!

There are definite benefits to be had from eating whole, non-processed, foods. In eating natural foods, you’re letting nature take care of you as intended. Natural foods are full of nutrients to help keep you healthy. On the other hand, by eating processed foods, you’re injecting stuff into your body that nature hadn’t intended!

Anyway, if you prefer to include natural foods within your diet, check out these natural foods nutrition facts. I recently created this to help readers make informed decisions about the food they eat.

If you’re someone who fills your body with processed foods, try switching to a diet rich in whole, natural foods. I guarantee you’ll start to feel much healthier.

A attempt by the Australian government to revive coral trout numbers in the Great Barrier Reef appears to be doing the trick.

More than 100,000 km² of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was rezoned to be a ‘no-take’ zone. In other words, a third of the Great Barrier Marine Park had a total fishing ban. This represented the world’s largest network of marine no-take zones and was very controversial when it was introduced four years ago. Not surprisingly, the fishing industry in particular had a huge problem with the fishing ban.

Despite the controversy of this fishing ban, it has proved to be very effective at reviving coral trout numbers. Since the ban was implemented, coral trout numbers have increased by over 60 percent in the no-take zones. This is an amazing result considering that, in other areas where no ban has been implemented, trout numbers have remained the same.

On a less-positive note, the population of other species of fish don’t appear to have changed since the ban - only coral trout numbers have increased. Also, it will take up to 15 years before coral trout numbers have had a full recovery.

Source: New Scientist

You may have read my article about hempcrete and its various implementations (such as Hemcrete, Canobiote, Canosmose, Isochanvre).

Hempcrete is basically an eco-friendly alternative to concrete. Not only is hempcrete more environmentally friendly, but it is stronger than concrete, less prone to cracking, and about half the weight of concrete. Using hempcrete in buildings makes sense in more ways than one.

Hempcrete is usually mixed on site, then sprayed directly onto the building frame.

The following video shows hempcrete being sprayed onto a building frame. I decided that, since I’ve already written about hempcrete, I may as well link to this You Tube video.

OK, so we all know about the environmental benefits of recycling. Compared to throwing our trash into a landfill, recycling can have a significantly positive impact to the environment.

But how much trash are we actually throwing into landfills each year?

Here are some figures from the United States and the United Kingdom.

United States Landfill Usage

According to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2006, Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash. Of this, 82 million tons (32.5 percent) was recycled. A further 31 million tons (12.5 percent) was combusted (burned) with energy recovery. That means that 138 million tons (55 percent) was discarded in landfills.

The report also shows that the amount of garbage produced each year is increasing quite rapidly. In 1960, when EPA first started monitoring waste usage, the US produced 88.1 million tons of garbage. This worked out to be 2.68 pounds per day for each American. Now, with the nation producing 251.3 million tons of garbage per year, the average American produces 4.6 pounds of garbage each day!

Here’s a chart showing the increase in garbage since 1960. The blue line represents the total garbage generation each year (in millions of tons). The orange line represents per-capita generation (pounds/per person/per day).

Here’s the full report: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2006 [PDF file]

United Kingdom Landfill Usage

Meanwhile in the UK, the Environmental Services Association (ESA) has found that 434 tonnes of waste is produced in the UK each year. Of this, 30 tonnes come from households. 73 percent of this waste goes to landfill.

ESA point out that of the 73 percent that ends up in landfill, 90 percent could actually have been recoverable. This means that instead of being dumped in a landfill, it could have been recycled, composted, or combusted to generate energy.

Source: Waste Facts - Environmental Services Association

Eight years ago in India, cows were found to be dying on the streets from what was initially thought to be a mystery disease. Closer inspection revealed that the cows were dying from plastic bags. They were mistakenly ingesting the plastic bags while eating food at the side of the roads.

At the time, it was estimated that over 3,000 cows were dying each month from plastic bags. According to the audio story attached to this article by the National Public Radio, between 15,000 and 20,000 cows die each month from plastic bags.

Unfortunately, although a plastic bag ban was pushed for, the plastic bag industry managed to persuade against it. In the end, only ultra-thin plastic bags were banned. But it appears that these ultra-thin plastic bags are continuing to be manufactured and distributed in India.

So the result is that more and more cows are continuing to die an excruciatingly painful death from ingesting unused plastic bags.

Seeing as this website is about the natural environment, I thought it would be somewhat fitting to write about building a natural shelter - a shelter made from natural resources. This is also referred to as a wilderness shelter or a survival shelter.

Knowing how to build a natural shelter can be essential to survival in the wilderness. This is especially true if you venture out in cooler climates.

Of course, if you are planning an overnight trip, you should already have your accommodation arranged (i.e. a tent, cabin, hotel…) . But if you find yourself lost on a one-day walk, then knowing how to build a shelter from natural resources could save your life.

Here are the high level steps for building a shelter:

1. Find a suitable location - such as an uprooted tree at the edge of a forest. There should be plenty of branches, leaves, and forest debris lying around on the ground. The location shouldn’t be too exposed, but at the same time, it shouldn’t be at the bottom of a valley. Close to a water supply is great.
2. Start building the shelter by placing strong, straight branches at a 45 degree angle (so that the rain can run off). If you’re using an uprooted tree, you can place them against the root. Use the thickest/strongest branches first, followed by the smaller/weaker ones. Ensure there’s a small hole that you can use to gain access.
3. Once you’ve created the framework for your natural shelter, it’s time to insulate it. To do this, place leaves and other debris on top of the branches. You’ll need plenty of leaves for this. The leaves should be at least 30 centimeters thick. This will ensure your shelter is well insulated and will keep you warm. This is one of the reasons location is important - you’ll need a location where you can find plenty of leaves and forest debris.

That’s all there is to building a wilderness shelter using natural resources.

Now, if you are somebody who loves to get out in the wilderness, I recommend that you practice building your own survival shelter. You might find that it’s more difficult than it appears. Here’s one man’s first attempt at building a natural shelter!

And if you really are interested in learning more about building natural shelters, check out this video on building a shelter in a forest. Also, here are different types of survival shelters.

I recently wrote about Peter Lik’s amazing photos of the natural environment. After writing that article, I realized that I couldn’t write about Peter Lik without writing about Craig Potton!

So here goes…

Craig Potton is a well known New Zealand photographer and conservationist.

I first came across his photos when doing a Google image search for New Zealand nature photos. Every now and then I would see an absolutely stunning photo and click through to see who took the photo. It seemed that every time this happened, the photographer was Craig Potton!

Since then, I’ve explored the Craig Potton Gallery website and seen some amazing photos. I encourage you to take a look too.

Here’s what Craig once said about photography and nature:

A good photo can sometimes be an arrow to the heart of things, alluding to or eliciting an immediate encounter. It is the nature of art and the way of nature to push us beyond the narrow realities we often become trapped in, to new or forgotten realms of pleasure.

Craig is co-founder and co-owner of Craig Potton Publishing. He has written and published a range of books featuring his own photography. He has also done photography work on movies such as Lord of the Rings, Peter Pan and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Having been born in New Zealand myself, I know how beautiful the scenery can be. It’s certainly a great environment to get a wide range of different landscape shots. It’s always a pleasure to see photos of that environment taken by a master such as Craig.

To see more of Craig’s photos, check out the Craig Potton Gallery.

Project Tiger is the name given to an initiative dedicated to helping save the tiger from extinction. More specifically, Project Tiger is based in India and is therefore generally aimed towards maintaining a healthy population of Bengal tigers in India.

Since its inception in 1973, Project Tiger has been credited with a major increase in Bengal tiger numbers. Project Tiger claimed to have tripled the Bengal tiger population from its 1973 count of around 1,200, to 3,642 tigers in 2001/2002. Unfortunately, a more recent report indicates that the Bengal tiger population has been reduced back to 1,411 due to poaching. The report, published in February 2008, is based on a census carried out in 2007.

Project Tiger carries out their work using the following approach:

• Elimination of all forms of human exploitation and disturbance from the core and rationalisation of such activities in the buffer.
• Limitation of the habitat management to repair damage done by man.
• Researching facts about habitat and wild animals and carefully monitoring changes in flora and fauna.

According to the official website, Project Tiger’s main objective is:

…to ensure a viable population of tiger in India for scientific , economic , aesthetic , cultural and ecological values and to preserve for all time, areas of biological importance as a natural heritage for the benefit, education and enjoyment of the people. Main objectives under the scheme include wildlife management, protection measures and site specific ecodevelopment to reduce the dependency of local communities on tiger reserve resources.

The website also says:

Tiger is symbol of wilderness and well-being of the ecosystem. By conserving and saving tigers the entire wilderness ecosystem is conserved…

When you consider that India’s tiger population dropped from more than 40,000 to around 1,200 in 70 years, and is now only around 1,400, I sure hope Project Tiger can get those tiger numbers back up!

To learn more about Project Tiger, check out the official website.

We all know that plastic bags are bad for the environment. And we all know why it’s important to do something about the plastic bag problem. Most plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to degrade. Until now that is.

Daniel Burd, a Canadian high school student has discovered a method for degrading polyethylene plastic bags. He made this exciting discovery during a science project. He wanted to prove that a procedure could be developed to degrade plastic bags.

The discovery won Burd first place prize of $9,800 in the Canada-Wide Science Fair, the Waterloo, Ontario. Burd has also received almost $34,000 in college scholarship offers.

During the project, Burd was able to degrade 43 percent of a plastic bag within six weeks. Burd plans to refine his process so that he can degrade the polyethylene in a much shorter timeframe.

Burd achieved the degradation by isolating microorganisms from soil, then using them to facilitate the degradation process.

This discovery sounds like it has a lot of potential. Of course, it’s early days yet, but wouldn’t it be great if a process could be developed to degrade all the plastic bags already scattered throughout the natural environment? And what if a process could be developed to degrade all the plastic lying in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

Source: Red Orbit

I recently wrote about the Crew Earth Observations experiment, where crew of the International Space Station photograph the Earth.

Although photographing Earth only takes up a small portion of their time - between 10 to 15 minutes per day - these photos are a crucial part of analyzing our ever changing planet.

So, every day there are astronauts up there in the sky taking photos of us here on Earth. But before you get all paranoid, did you know that the International Space Station can actually be seen from Earth?

The International Space Station can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It orbits the Earth at an average speed of 27,700 km (17,210 statute miles) per hour, completing 15.77 orbits per day. And, because it orbits at approximately 350 kilometers above the Earth, it is close enough to see as it zooms past your region.

To find out when the International Space Station is next traveling past your town, check out the Heavens Above website.