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Tag: Agrochemicals manufacturing

  • Hard-working Colombian beetles clean garbage, retire as pets

    Hard-working Colombian beetles clean garbage, retire as pets

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    TUNJA, Colombia — Three yellow-and-black beetles clung to the shirt of Germán Viasus Tibamoso, a Colombian environmental engineer who uses beetle larvae to transform food waste into fertilizers.

    As he encouraged them to move along, he murmured to them in Japanese — trying to get them accustomed, he said, to the sounds of their future homes.

    The not-so-little bugs — which can grow up to 17 centimeters (6.5 inches) long — have a remarkably productive and complicated life among the humans who breed and collect them.

    Viasus operates a company called Tierra Viva in a rural area around the city of Tunja, a city some 150 kilometers (95 miles) northwest of the Colombian capital of Bogota.

    An attempt as a postgraduate student to produce organic fertilizer with worms failed, Viasus said, but he found beetle larvae in the bags of earth that remained. He tried using them instead. And it worked.

    Tons of food scraps collected from nearby communities are spread in concrete ditches and covered with earth. Then beetle larvae — the stage between egg and adulthood — are introduced.

    They chew through the refuse and their digestive microorganisms transform it into a fertilizer rich in nitrogen and phosphorous.

    After four months or so, the product passes through a filter that separates the fertilizer from the larvae, who are at the point of becoming adult beetles.

    They mate, and their eggs are used to start the process anew. The adults, however, go on very different journeys. Some are headed for scientific labs. And a lucky few embark on a future across the Pacific in Japan, where beetles are popular as pets, and are even sold over online emporiums such as Amazon.

    Tierra Viva has been exporting the bugs — largely Hercules beetles — since 2004, and Viasus said they can bring as much as $150 each.

    This year the company sent 100 beetles to Tokyo — down from 300 last year — held in little plastic cases with air holes and food.

    The sales are often in the company’s variant of cryptocurrency, called “Kmushicoin” — a variant on a Japanese word for beetle.

    Viasus, 52, said he hopes the project can grow and prosper for another century — perhaps with its fertilizer used in reforestation projects.

    “It’s very difficult in Colombia … because we do it without any help from the state or any other entity. In any other country of the world, a project like this would get a lot of help,” he said.

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    Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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  • Sanctioned tycoon says Russia wants to engage on climate

    Sanctioned tycoon says Russia wants to engage on climate

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — A Russian billionaire under sanctions by the United States and Europe over his alleged ties to the Kremlin said Wednesday that he was not surprised by protests against his country at this year’s U.N. climate talks, but insisted that Russia wants to remain engaged on the issue of global warming because it deeply affects the nation.

    Andrey Melnichenko, who heads the climate policy panel of Russian business lobby group RSPP, told The Associated Press that “regardless of the very terrible moment which we all experience now, we will participate, we will observe” at the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    Pro-Ukraine activists disrupted the start of an event hosted by the Russian delegation at the climate talks Tuesday before being escorted out by security staff.

    “I wasn’t surprised,” said Melnichenko, who was speaking on the panel alongside Russian delegates. “What’s so surprising? That there are people who are deeply concerned about what’s happening in Ukraine and want to make their opinion known?”

    “I completely 100% understand that,” he said.

    His comments, while not directly critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, indicate a more nuanced view of the bloody conflict than the official Kremlin line, which describes the war as a “special military operation.”

    Since late February the war has devastated Ukraine, with bombs and shelling decimating towns and cities and killing thousands.

    The war has resulted in a raft of sanctions being imposed on Russian officials and prominent businesspeople linked to the Kremlin.

    Melnichenko — who now lives in Dubai — criticized Western sanctions on Russia, which he said were applied without regard for possible consequences, such as the effect restrictions on fertilizer exports would have on global food prices and Russia’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers.

    “Sanctions were put like a blanket on the Russian economy,” said Melnichenko, who once ran the fertilizer producer Eurochem and SUEK, one the the world’s largest coal companies. “It affects everything. Take for example food and fertilizer supply.”

    He claimed the sanctions had affected food supply for “hundreds of millions” of people worldwide.

    “Of course, this decision affects Russia’s possibility to move faster on the way of the decarbonization of its economy,” added Melnichenko.

    Russian participants at the climate talks in Egypt have kept a low public profile, with no top government officials attending. Although the Russian delegation is half the size of last year’s, it is still larger than that of the United States, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief.

    According to Melnichenko, Russia is particularly focused on efforts to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, along with rules for international carbon markets and carbon offsets — an issue where the Russian government sees great potential due to the country’s huge forests.

    Melnichenko said that Russia will continue to export fossil fuels to fulfill demand, and it should be left to markets to decide which forms of energy are the most competitive. Russia is a top exporter of oil and natural gas although it has faced sanctions from EU trading partners. Other countries, like India and China, continue to import Russian oil.

    “I believe that Russia’s fossil fuel production (is) very competitive globally in terms of the total cost, externalities included,” he said. “That’s why Russia will be able for a reasonably long period of time, a very long period of time, to maintain quite (a) big share of the fossil fuel market and … benefit from it also.”

    Melnichenko, who according to Forbes is worth some $23.5 billion, said the world community should pay more attention to the large share of greenhouse gas emissions that aren’t caused by human activity, such as respiration, decomposition and even volcanoes. Scientists say the global warming measured in recent decades is mainly caused by the large-scale burning of fossil fuels since industrialization.

    Asked what role concerns about climate change play in Russian civil society, he said that environmental issues such as air pollution had become more prominent in bigger cities over the past six to seven years

    Peaceful protests on the issue were possible, he insisted. “And the government really responds.”

    “That’s one of the area where you can have freedom of expression,” he said. “And that’s understandable because it’s pretty safe in terms of the political environment.”

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    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • DC sues chemical manufacturer over pesticide pollution

    DC sues chemical manufacturer over pesticide pollution

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    The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday against Velsicol, claiming it violated the city’s environmental laws by polluting a major waterway, the Anacostia River, and its surrounding environment for decades

    WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court Thursday against chemical manufacturer Velsicol Chemical, LLC, claiming it violated city environmental laws by polluting a major waterway, the Anacostia River and the surrounding area for decades.

    In a complaint filed by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, the city alleges that Velsicol produced a pesticide that contained chlordane and marketed it to low-income homeowners in the city from 1945 to 1988. That was the year the chemical was banned for sale in the U.S. by the Environmental Protection Agency over health effects in humans, including tremors, convulsions and cancer.

    But Racine claimed at a press conference that Velsicol knew long before that that chlordane could cause cancer, as far back as 1959, yet still sold products that contained the chemical.

    Velsicol did not immediately return calls for comment.

    As recently as the 1960s, D.C. residents used the Anacostia River for recreation and food, but years of pollution from a variety of sources — sewage, chemical runoff and litter — made the river unusable.

    The lawsuit developed out of a decades-long effort to clean up the river, Racine said. Local environmentalists, like Matt Gravatt, chair of the D.C. chapter of the Sierra Club, said the river is almost back to being safe for public use, but not yet.

    City departments and environmental researchers have known about the potential harm of chlordane in the Anacostia for decades. The year after the EPA ban, the district put out an advisory warning residents against eating fish caught from the river, in part because levels of chlordane in aquatic life exceeded limits suggested by the Food and Drug Administration.

    In the lawsuit, the attorney general’s office said it anticipates the city will spend $35 million remediating sediment contaminated with chlordane and other toxic chemicals. The hope is the award will help pay for the river cleanup.

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    Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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