[biofuel] No Waste Economy: Gunter Pauli
http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/articles/pauli.htm Resurgence Magazine No Waste Economy Gunter Pauli Don't expect the Earth to produce more. Expect humans to do more with what the Earth produces. This is the second Green revolution. AT THIS MOMENT in time the world of industry is not responding to the basic needs of our society. Some people may say, oh, yes, we just need to have population control and everything will be all right. Other people say, we just have to become more productive. Whatever options they may favour, everyone agrees that with 5.5 billion people in the world, with 1 billion people looking for jobs, with 800 million living in absolute poverty, the present system is not right. Within industry, there is a lot of fascination with the first Green revolution. Through the mechanisms of irrigation, of massive water use, through seed selection, through fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, we were able to achieve seven times more output of rice per acre than we had forty years ago. This is not a bad result! Yet it's not sustainable. It is not possible to continue with such use of water. We're depleting the aquifers. Scientists around the world agree that we're never going to succeed in doubling or tripling the output of grain, let alone increasing it five-fold. At the present stage, with all the fascination with the manipulation of genes, all the biotechnology scientists say that we may be able to improve output by a factor of 20% to 50%. No one today dares to advance the figure that we could have another five-fold increase of output. We know that we had a dramatic increase of industrial and agricultural output, but with 94 million people being added to the planet every year, we can't keep up. THERE IS A FIGURE that is much more important than the 94 million people who are added to the world every year. In Asia we now have 400 million people who are going to join the middle class by the year 2000. Middle class means simply that 400 million people will be drinking a pint of beer a day. They will read a newspaper. Just by having 400 million new people with the purchasing power to buy a beer a day will force the Green revolution into bankruptcy. Not the 94 million new people, because they don't have enough purchasing power. But the 400 million new middle-class consumers entering the market will have purchasing power comparable to the United States and Canada. This is really where the pressure will be. Today, we already have 400 million middle class consumers, so this will effectively be doubled, having a much more dramatic impact than the 94 million new people every year. Therefore, we need a second Green revolution. But this does not require the Earth to produce more. It requires humans to do more with whatever it produces. For example, there is a plant in Mexico called the sisal plant. It looks like a cactus. The sisal plant is the number one crop in Tanzania. It's a main crop in Mexico, in Colombia and in Brazil. The sisal plant is used for its fibre, mostly to make ropes. Ships still have sisal rope. No synthetic rope has the strength of a sisal rope. But the sisal fibre is only 2% of the plant. 98% is waste. This means that Tanzania has 11.8 million tons of biomass waste a year dumped into the river. As long as you think in linear ways, you can't do anything with that waste. My colleagues and I have been studying what else you can do with sisal fibres. We learned that you can ferment citric acid and lactic acid out of the bole of the sisal plant. I looked at the market and saw that citric acid is $3,000 a ton. This is a very valuable product. Sisal fibre will get you only about $200 a ton. Citric acid is a main product in the food industry. It's an excellent component, a natural one, as is lactic acid. So, when you can get 10% out of the weight of the sisal plant converted into citric acid, I'm telling Tanzanians that they can become the world's leading producer of citric acid. I ask them, why do you struggle and try to get subsidies from the Commission of the European Union to subsidize your fibre production, when you should be producing citric acid? Of course, the European Union is not interested, because Austria is the largest producer of citric acid in Europe, and Pfizer, an American company, is the second largest producer. They have no interest in seeing Tanzania being able to put citric acid on the market. But the reality today is that we have a linear production system for sisal plants, which makes the industry uncompetitive. If we were able to apply systems thinking to sisal plants and extract all the great things the plant is making, including the wax (it has an excellent wax), then we could make this into a very sustainable industry. There is also more to the sisal fibre. We use only the long fibres; the shorter fibres are not used. Now, who can use the short fibres? Which enzymes can use lignin cellulose?
Re: [biofuel] No Waste Economy: Gunter Pauli
Keith, thank you for posting the Gunter Pauli article, No Waste Economy. Very much in alignment with my econogics philosophy. Amusing to see the phrase lust-in-time, which I expect is a misprint for just-in- time. Perhaps a bit ironic for a posting on St. Valentine's Day, at least here in the commercialized west. Or a commentary on the lust for profits. But most likely just a scanning issue, converting the [j] to ['l] as it was consistent in three cases, and in each case the phrase is shown starting with a single quote and ending with a double quote. Today's project is to finish up some new fluorescent lighting for our recently- acquired quilting machine, to provide my wife with a home-based income source. My first project on the machine will be to make a window quilt from leftover fabrics from other projects. A modern version of a traditional re-use technique (patchwork quilting) and use (fabrics for insulation and draft control and decoration, e.g tapestries). Darryl McMahon To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com From: Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:26:43 +0900 Subject:[biofuel] No Waste Economy: Gunter Pauli Send reply to: biofuel@yahoogroups.com http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/articles/pauli.htm Resurgence Magazine No Waste Economy Gunter Pauli Don't expect the Earth to produce more. Expect humans to do more with what the Earth produces. This is the second Green revolution. AT THIS MOMENT in time the world of industry is not responding to the basic needs of our society. Some people may say, oh, yes, we just need to have population control and everything will be all right. Other people say, we just have to become more productive. Whatever options they may favour, everyone agrees that with 5.5 billion people in the world, with 1 billion people looking for jobs, with 800 million living in absolute poverty, the present system is not right. Within industry, there is a lot of fascination with the first Green revolution. Through the mechanisms of irrigation, of massive water use, through seed selection, through fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, we were able to achieve seven times more output of rice per acre than we had forty years ago. This is not a bad result! Yet it's not sustainable. It is not possible to continue with such use of water. We're depleting the aquifers. Scientists around the world agree that we're never going to succeed in doubling or tripling the output of grain, let alone increasing it five-fold. At the present stage, with all the fascination with the manipulation of genes, all the biotechnology scientists say that we may be able to improve output by a factor of 20% to 50%. No one today dares to advance the figure that we could have another five-fold increase of output. We know that we had a dramatic increase of industrial and agricultural output, but with 94 million people being added to the planet every year, we can't keep up. THERE IS A FIGURE that is much more important than the 94 million people who are added to the world every year. In Asia we now have 400 million people who are going to join the middle class by the year 2000. Middle class means simply that 400 million people will be drinking a pint of beer a day. They will read a newspaper. Just by having 400 million new people with the purchasing power to buy a beer a day will force the Green revolution into bankruptcy. Not the 94 million new people, because they don't have enough purchasing power. But the 400 million new middle-class consumers entering the market will have purchasing power comparable to the United States and Canada. This is really where the pressure will be. Today, we already have 400 million middle class consumers, so this will effectively be doubled, having a much more dramatic impact than the 94 million new people every year. Therefore, we need a second Green revolution. But this does not require the Earth to produce more. It requires humans to do more with whatever it produces. For example, there is a plant in Mexico called the sisal plant. It looks like a cactus. The sisal plant is the number one crop in Tanzania. It's a main crop in Mexico, in Colombia and in Brazil. The sisal plant is used for its fibre, mostly to make ropes. Ships still have sisal rope. No synthetic rope has the strength of a sisal rope. But the sisal fibre is only 2% of the plant. 98% is waste. This means that Tanzania has 11.8 million tons of biomass waste a year dumped into the river. As long as you think in linear ways, you can't do anything with that waste. My colleagues and I have been studying what else you can do with sisal fibres. We learned that you can ferment citric acid and lactic acid out of the bole of the sisal plant. I looked at the market and saw that citric acid
Re: [biofuel] No Waste Economy: Gunter Pauli
Hi Darryl Keith, thank you for posting the Gunter Pauli article, No Waste Economy. You're welcome. Very much in alignment with my econogics philosophy. And with what we do here at Journey to Forever. Also with what I keep proposing when I say that an integrated farm can produce enough fuel for its own use plus some from an ever-changing succession of by-products, without the dedicated use of any land at all. But then so many people get fixated on the best crop, the best technology, the single-solution approach, and it just doesn't work, though they often remain unaware of that somehow, despite the rash of unforeseen side-effects. I sometimes wonder if it's even possible for someone who thinks like that to learn an integrated approach like Pauli's (or yours or mine), something similar in the Amory Lovins article I posted on Natural Economy. Maybe a bit like the difference between competitive and cooperative people - it's said they're basically incompatable: competitive people think cooperation is weak, and cooperative people think competition is immoral. I don't quite agree with that, but there's something in it. Amusing to see the phrase lust-in-time, which I expect is a misprint for just-in- time. Perhaps a bit ironic for a posting on St. Valentine's Day, at least here in the commercialized west. Or a commentary on the lust for profits. But most likely just a scanning issue, converting the [j] to ['l] as it was consistent in three cases, and in each case the phrase is shown starting with a single quote and ending with a double quote. :-) Ironic. I'm always a bit puzzled by such evidence of scanning in articles like this - how come it wasn't already digitized? Bit unintegrated, eh? Today's project is to finish up some new fluorescent lighting for our recently- acquired quilting machine, to provide my wife with a home-based income source. My first project on the machine will be to make a window quilt from leftover fabrics from other projects. A modern version of a traditional re-use technique (patchwork quilting) and use (fabrics for insulation and draft control and decoration, e.g tapestries). Nice work Darryl. Best wishes Keith Darryl McMahon To:biofuel@yahoogroups.com From: Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:26:43 +0900 Subject: [biofuel] No Waste Economy: Gunter Pauli Send reply to: biofuel@yahoogroups.com http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/articles/pauli.htm Resurgence Magazine No Waste Economy Gunter Pauli Don't expect the Earth to produce more. Expect humans to do more with what the Earth produces. This is the second Green revolution. snip Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
