Teru Talk - 2012 Newsletter V-II-37

Our country's got such a Mother Hen over-protective attitude, not just in our laws, but in our whole social approach to governing. That certainly extends into blocking common sense for resource recovery from waste. To our own detriment, we collectively have constructed this entire complex of rules and policies based on a distrust of Industry and Science, bolstered by this idea that it is appropriate to protect everybody from everything. So … look around: how's that been working for you? Ever wonder what happens when people decide to d...n the torpedoes, and just build the systems needed?

There's this well-healed science-based humanitarian foundation called SNV Netherlands (check em' out in our News item) that's been very busy for many years, showing Third World folks how to convert their own wastes from liabilities to assets. We're not talking about a few show-case projects to make them look good to their own backers. In the first half of this year alone, they've supported and directed the local construction and installation of over 46,000 small-scale anaerobic digestion systems for production of biogas in Asia and Africa.

They've been setting up local programs, teaching how the units are built, how to run them on people poop, critter manure, food waste and green waste, how to use the biogas for heating, cooking and distributed power generation, then how to use the sterilized residual safely as a fertilizer. The pictures are great: four or five people standing in hole they dug by hand, using hand-made adobe bricks and whatever mortar they can concoct to build these oven-like dome shaped digesters. Add a few pipes for putting stuff in and taking stuff out, and you've got a system that cleans up the environment, makes fuel and fertilizer, and teaches local people hands-on skills they can then build small businesses on, spreading those tools and skills.

What gets me is that these same skills and systems are literally unknown in the US, in our "civilized" society. It is hard to even imagine bucking all the well-intentioned rules and regs to establish even a scattered few localized waste conversion and distributed energy systems like these simple, elegant solutions provide. But FORTY-SIX THOUSAND, since January of this year? Wow.

Hey Rube!

We here at Teru Talk with our Cat Bird view, are indeed starting to see indications that Money wants to get back involved in what we've all been doing, but doesn't quite know how, or maybe it's who. We've all been designing, developing and dreaming about some very cool approaches to making Waste into Goods for the past five years, so there's this serious pent-up energy (no pun intended) that needs to Get Busy. But we need to get out there and do the "Hey, Look at Me!" thing. Putting out formal Press Releases is great, but so is the less-costly step of catching up your own website (you do have a website by now, right?) Find and attend conferences that make sense for you, but resist simply singing to your own choir: find the people who might actually NEED the stuff you've been developing, and tell THEM about it. If there is anything that is different from five years ago, it is how visible Everything is now, thanks to vast improvements in how we do Everything on-line. That goes for our industrial sector, too. Get out there, and get known.

The Week's News

Georgia based Hydro Dynamics Inc, has announced that a teaming agreement has been reached with Massachusetts' biodiesel firm World Energy through its subsidiary WMG Services, LLC to expand commercialization of Hydro Dynamic's ShockWave Power Biodiesel Reactor (SPR). 09/09/2012

British Columbia based Lignol Energy Corporation has announced that its collaboration with Novozymes has now completed optimization trials for production of cellulosic ethanol. 09/09/2012

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has announced a two day Alternatives Analysis workshop scheduled for October 9 and 10, 2012 from 9 am to 4 am in the CalEPA Building, downtown Sacramento. 09/07/2012

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has announced a workshop on September 27, 2012 to seek input on a draft of the first triennial investment plan for the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC; Docket #12-EPIC-01) Program covering 2012 through 2014. 09/07/2012

Kentucky based Patriot Bioenergy Corporation has announced that it has submitted a Letter of Intent to Whitley County, Kentucky officials to develop an integrated energy park for production of bioenergy, biofuels and bioproducts. 09/07/2012

The United Kingdom based multi-tech energy company Eco Sustainable Solutions Ltd. (Eco) has announced a September 15, 2012 Open House to showcase plans for its proposed renewable energy park in Dorset. 09/06/2012

Arkansas based Infinite Enzymes has announced an award of $450,000 from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II program. 09/06/2012

United Kingdom's (UK) TEG Group plc has announced that significant funding has been secured to develop a 49,000 tonne per year organic waste conversion facility in the northeastern London borough of Dagenham. 09/05/2012

The Maryland / Israel Development Center has called attention to a local Israeli report of a Caterpillar, Inc agreement to provide $21 million in financing to the Israeli anaerobic digestion (AD) specialist firm Blue Sphere Corporation for its first two projects in the United States. 09/05/2012

The philanthropic organization SNV Netherlands has released its September 2012 Newsletter, leading with a report of installation of more than 46,000 small-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) systems in rural Asia and Africa in the first half of 2012. 09/05/2012

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has posted a number of official decisions and opinions associated with the agency's August meeting and including a summary of that meeting. 09/04/2012

California based Codexis has announced negotiated global rights to develop and market its CodeXyme^TM cellulase enzyme, developed under a previous 2006 Collaborative Research Agreement with Royal Dutch Shell (the "Shell Research Agreement"). 09/04/2012

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