The Benefit Of Water Treatment

If you wish to understand concerning water treatment plant, then you have come to the suitable place. This article will tell you all that you want to know. A water treatment plant basically goes through all the processes that produce water be more acceptable for use. Water is required for industrial purposes, drinking, medical purposes, and many others. Hence awater treatment plant filter existing contaminants in the water, or brings about a reduction of the concentration of those contaminants, therefore the water is more appropriate for its end-use. In fact, the water that has earlier been used may be returned back to the actual environment without hampering the environment or the ecological system.

A water treatment uses a variety of processes to purify the water. For instance, for treating it to make it suitable for drinking, the plant would do solids separation with physical methods like settling, filtration, and chemical ways like disinfection and coagulation. The water treatment plant would also treat the wastewater with biological procedures – example slow sand filters, aerated lagoons, plus activated sludge.

Water is normally required for drinking reasons – water that’s being drunk should be pure for human consumption. Hence a water treatment plant should perform efficiently and properly, to get rid of the contaminants from the water properly. The plant would be removing substances from the water like bacteria, minerals (sulphur, iron and manganese), suspended solids, algae, viruses, and fungi. Even chemical pollutants like fertilizers sometimes find their way into water; the plant ought to get rid of these as well.

There are a number of water treatment plants, that function effectively and efficiently to supply clean and harmless water to the public. For example, sometimes they put residual disinfectantsin the water that has been treated; this kills any bacteriological contamination post the water-treatment. The WHO body has set down rule regarding the requirements of excellence drinking water, and these are followed all over the world, particularlyin the water treatment Malaysia plants – that leave no stone unturned to ensure that only the best water is provided to the residents of Malaysia.

In most of the water treatment plants available, 1 or a combination of the subsequent procedures been using to make the water suitable for consumption: coagulation (for flocculation), pre-chlorination (for controlling algae and stopping any biological growth), coagulation aids (that are also called polyelectrolytes – these improve the coagulation and bring about thicker floc formation), aeration (this can be done with pre-chlorination, to get rid of the dissolved manganese and iron), disinfection (to kill the bacteria contained), filtration (to remove the floc that has been brought over), and sedimentation (this is often done to separate the suspended solids).

The thing that you must keep in mind is that when it involves any water treatment plant, there’s no unique solution that’s used. An answer can’t be standardized as such. All kind of water needs to be tested individually, then the appropriate technique of treatment is decided according to the season, this makes the water fit for human consumption.

Pristine Waters Sdn Bhd was operated in year 2000 and its core business is in supplying, designing, installing and commissioning of water and wastewater treatment plants. In the previous years, Pristine Waters Sdn Bhd has undertaken numerous projects and contracts in building and operating Water and Waste Water Treatment plants in Malaysia and abroad.

Article Source: http://www.a.mooladays.com/business/the-benefit-of-water-treatment

Can the economy recover? And, for that matter, should it?

Can the economy recover?
And, for that matter, should it?

By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / December 4, 2009

[Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy] was my boss. He knows all about peak oil, but he can't talk about it. If the government announced that peak oil was threatening our economy, Wall Street would crash. He just can't say anything about it." -- David Fridley, scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Can the U.S., or indeed the global economy, ever recover? Concerning this issue, and it is an issue likely to effect most people now living, there is both bad news and good news.

First the bad news. There has been a growing awareness within the scientific community for more than a decade, that if the inherently expansive global capitalist economy as we have known it does recover, it will probably continue to disrupt nature and inflict human misery on a massive global scale.

The global economy has been increasingly bumping into the natural limits of all the human beings the planet can support, assuming they are to live under tolerable civilized conditions. Peak oil, global warming, water shortages, deforestation, polluted oceans, species extinction. You name it, we are now bumping into many kinds of natural limits.

If we do not somehow turn away from exponential growth as usual, and shift toward a more localized, sustainable economy, then wars over limited resources will become increasingly likely. A growing global population can easily overshoot the long term food limits of the environment. Famine has happened locally throughout history, but with a global economy, global hunger becomes possible. When food runs short, tempers flare.

Here's Walter Youngquist from The Oil Drum:

In various contexts throughout this volume [GeoDestinies] it is pointed out that we now live in unique times, unlike any in the past, and unlike what any will be in the future. Yet many people in developed countries do not realize the unique years we have had since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This fact, as a framework to understand the present and what lies ahead cannot be overemphasized.

We have developed technology by which we have exploited the Earth’s resources to a degree never before seen and which, in the case of non-renewable resources – fossil fuels, and metals as well as nonmetals, can never be repeated. We have drawn both from the past, and also mortgaged the next few centuries at least by degrading the vital renewable resources of soil and freshwater, which are not renewable within the span of several lifetimes. This is in contrast to many centuries of history when, lacking technology of today, things changed very slowly...

Top climate scientists like NASA head James Hansen are now pleading with us to tax the carbon we burn, and then to use the tax revenue to help restructure the economy on a wiser, sounder basis.

...Governments must place a uniform rising price on carbon, collected at the fossil fuel source -- the mine or port of entry. The fee should be given to the public in toto, as a uniform dividend, payroll tax deduction or both. Such a tax is progressive -- the dividend exceeds added energy costs for 60% of the public...

So what about the good news? The good news is that neither the U.S. economy, nor the global economy, will recover, because they can't. (Read on to learn why this is good news.) They cannot keep expanding in the profitably rapacious way that until recently was considered quite normal. The immediate problem is that nobody has figured out a way to have the global economy, as presently configured, expand without a corresponding increase in the supply of liquid fuel, and for a long time to come.

All things considered, where does this lead?

It is a major challenge to try to rationally convince most people that their total pile of material goods, and that accessible to their children, will by necessity have to shrink, no matter what. The way humans tend to think, selling bad news through intellectual persuasion is never easy. Not easy as compared to selling optimistic snake oil approaches that promise a relatively painless alternative to facing hard choices.

The USA now has a conspicuously dysfunctional political system. A system which allows the banker class to force the (previously) U.S. working class to assume the economic burden of somehow paying off their global finance gambling debts, including the gloriously reckless sub-prime loans made by the world's giant investment banks up to mid-2007. Think Dubai. (Some of us aware of peak oil have been trying to warn the world for over a decade that global investment trends were unsustainable from an oil perspective alone.)

From current trends, the U.S. public consciousness, in its political and economic perspective, is being forced to shift from the Clinton-Bush-era standard of reasonably assured economic well-being, toward an economic perspective of basic survival. The numbers of those concerned with basic survival, like the jobless and homeless, are already intolerably high by recent U.S. standards. These numbers will probably have to increase further before now-unemployed labor shifts toward local manufacture, agriculture, etc.

In the face of crisis, the public elected Obama to revive a troubled economy. If FDR made the Great Depression go away (with the help of WWII), then the right president acting in the right way should be able to make that happen again, right?

The bottom line is that the current production and the depletion numbers associated with peak oil are, by themselves, enough to indicate that we are headed toward an economic crisis. Getting the global economy back on its old expansionist track is likely to prove impossible, no matter how hard we try. We are now faced with the challenge of restructuring our economy in a way that would normally take decades. Yet we face other additional handicaps. We have an industrially hollowed-out U.S. economy, an aging U.S. population, and a conspicuously dysfunctional political system.

Tom Tomorrow on Peak Oil.
The cheap liquid fuel-based energy needed to transport the goods of global commerce on the previous scale is not there anymore. It is now cheaper to make steel in the USA than to try to ship it here from China. Conventional oil production on land probably peaked in 2005. We are now using expensive conventional oil alternatives like heavy oil, oil sands, and deep-water oil as a cushion to try to buy time before oil production, and thus the global economy, starts shrinking, and fast. The previously silent oil industry itself is now starting to admit as much:

Groups and individuals speaking out about forthcoming world oil supply challenges are frequently stereotyped as a fringe element with little knowledge about the oil industry. But their warnings are increasingly supported by some surprising allies: senior petroleum industry officials, consultants and analysts. Call these serious-minded critics the HarshRealists...

The bad news related to the peak oil situation is especially hard for politicians to publicly acknowledge, but even among such leaders, the word is spreading.

What would it take for average Americans to cut back drastically on their total oil use? I suspect that many readers would be amazed to hear that this has already happened! Without most folks paying too much attention, U.S. oil consumption dropped from about 21.7 million barrels a day in August 2005 to about 18.8 million barrels in recent months. An almost 3 million barrels a day decrease on a base of about 20 million is about a 15% percent decrease over the past four years, with 9% of that being in just the last two years.

These last four years were the years when we made the relatively easy cuts in excess driving, etc., in response to rising oil price and a depressed economy. Now it will get harder, because it looks like we are facing an oil-less recovery.

From Steven R. Kopits:

...Consumption is not much changed since the end of the recession. And before the recession, demand in the United States was falling at around $75/barrel. Therefore, based on the most recent observed period, we would expect US consumption to stagnate around recent prices approaching $80...

Overall, then, U.S. consumption is unlikely to ever recover levels seen in 2007. In the best of cases, consumption could close half the last years’ decline and increase by about 5%, or 1 mbpd. As likely is the possibility that consumption will stagnate at or near current levels, and may be significantly sensitive to prices at or near those seen recently. U.S. consumption is perhaps most likely to increase modestly by perhaps 0.5 mbpd, reaching approximately 19.0-19.5 mbpd.

As the country looks to recovery, policy makers must face the very real possibility that economic growth cannot depend on very much extra oil, and perhaps none at all. It may well prove an oil-less recovery, with all the implications that brings for employment and the economic outlook.

Given the current situation, the world's major economies might encourage easy credit and steer the global economy in such a way that it is successfully stimulated, meaning that aggregate demand for traded goods and commodities revives sooner. But this only means that we in the U.S. will try to bid against China for a global daily supply of oil falling somewhere short of 90 million barrels per day. Aggressive oil bidding is likely to be soon followed by another oil price spike,

Thereafter, we would likely see a return to the sort of stalling-out of the U.S. economy and rapid deflation that we saw after gasoline hit $4 a gallon in mid-2008, when GM went broke, etc. There is probably now less than five million barrels a day of global reserve oil capacity, mostly with OPEC, to cushion the system from another oil price spike, and this cushion is shrinking.

The current global recession combined with stagnant oil production can postpone the return of a tight market for the global oil supply, but not for a lot longer. A smart guess is that by 2012, global oil depletion in excess of five percent a year will cause serious economic problems through falling oil production -- no matter what we do.

Regarding this unhappy situation, here is what a distinguished retired CIA analyst, Tom Whipple, who writes a weekly (and also daily) column on the ASPO-USA website, has to say about the potential for recovery of the global economy. He points out the the numbers indicate that we are now apparently in a sort of economic trap.

...We can't have it both ways. It will either be a really deep global recession and cheap gas or some sort of start at recovery and spiking oil prices. Discussions have already started as to what level of oil prices causes serious damage. In the past an inflation adjusted $80 a barrel was a favored recession inducing number as this was the price that seemed to cause recessions back in the 1970s and 80s when Middle Eastern wars and embargos restricted supplies.

The trouble with $80 oil, of course, is that we are already there and no analyst that draws a paycheck from Wall Street wants to say flat out that another leg of a recessionary downturn is inevitable unless oil prices decline soon. A typical example was a Dow Jones story earlier this week entitled "Oil Price Rise Poses Little Threat, Yet, To Economic Recovery." The article points out that the danger to economic recovery won't start until we get to $90 or $100 a barrel or $3 a gallon gasoline... The current situation is clearly unsustainable. If the dollar continues to sink, oil is going to move so high that all sorts of economic consequences are inevitable. OPEC is already in a dilemma for no matter how much they like the increasing revenues, the smarter governments realize that if prices move much higher, it will trigger off even worse economic times...

At this point, many environmentally conscious readers are quite likely to suggest that alternative energy will come to the rescue, offering a relatively painless landing. But alternative energy probably won't be there in the needed quantity and on time; this outlook echoes the "Hirsch Report." Alternative energy is without question an important step in the right direction, but we need to understand the possible limits.

These limits are related to the time required and the scale of (now treasury deficit) financing needed to make the tons of steel, copper, and aluminum that would be required in another five years. Currently, we can't manage GM very well because we don't know the proper industrial production targets, or even whether it makes any sense to subsidize the building of cars instead of rail. The devil is very much in such details. How fast it is possible to shift the inputs and outputs of an industrial economy to meet new needs are already known to good economists.

An alarming new study jointly released by two prominent California-based environmental/economic think tanks, concludes that unrelenting energy limits, even among alternative energy systems, will make it impossible for the industrial system to continue operating at its present scale, beyond the next few decades. The report finds that the current race by industries and governments to develop new sustainable energy technologies that can replace ecologically harmful and rapidly depleting fossil fuel and nuclear technologies, will not prove sufficient, and that this will require substantial adjustments in many operating assumptions of modern society.

The new study (“Searching for a Miracle: Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society”) is the first major analysis to utilize the new research tools of “full life cycle assessment” and “net energy ratios” (Energy Returned on Energy Invested, EROEI), to compare all currently proposed future scenarios for how industrial society can face its long term future..

After oil peaks, which is likely already, per capita metal extraction will also have to shrink soon thereafter.

Per capita food will also have to shrink soon, as the Worldwatch Institute's Lester Brown's latest book documents in detail:

End Game?

Things are not so bad at the moment. At least for the short run, and from appearances, the U.S. economy is restructuring itself in an environmentally healthy direction. Consumer spending on waste is contracting to a new mode based on meeting minimal but essential needs. People faced with foreclosure and high credit card debt have cut back their spending and credit obligations as much as possible. The arrival of hard times means people giving up many kinds of culturally induced needs that Thorton Weblen once classified as conspicuous consumption status symbols; travel to business conventions, vacation homes, big SUVs, the alluring ephemera sold in malls, etc. People are making do and hoping for relief.

A key issue now on the minds of many U.S. citizens is whether the U.S. economy can be put back on track through Obama's use of Keynesian deficit spending to stimulate the economy. In effect a shot of economic speed to get the stalled U.S. economy activated again, after which it is imagined that this stimulus can gradually be withdrawn without the economy relapsing into its previous state of stagnation.

Assuming that the U.S. finance system is required to stay solvent, and that it must be kept from falling victim to a sudden, panicky dollar devaluation, the obvious way the economy can be stimulated at the same time that the hidden mountain of bad debt the banks owe can be paid off is by printing up lots of money. Lacking an adequate supply of willing foreign lenders, this is done through mutual cooperation of the Treasury and the Fed, resulting in bond debt to be paid back later.

The Fed printing lots of money. Drawing from Cervantes.
But trying to revive the economy by means of printing up enough fiat currency to revive spending plus balance the books is akin to running up a big bar tab which eventually must be repaid. Think paper debts paid back with devalued dollars. This risky process is clearly underway, as famous investor Warren Buffett notes, although Buffett does endorse the use of temporary Keynesian economic stimulation to avert an immediate crisis:

...Buffett details his ongoing warning that the "enormous dosages of monetary medicine" being used to rescue the U.S. economy will eventually produce a dangerous "side effect." He worries there won't be enough lenders ready and able to absorb the nation's growing debt relative to its economic output over the years, forcing Washington's "printing presses" to work overtime churning out paper money. All those "greenback emissions" will, he fears, feed potentially "banana-republic" style rates of inflation...

We can see signs of inflation already if we know where to look. Economic demand, reflected in prices, for real commodities like important industrial metals, oil, and food has been steadily rising since early 2009. We can see this bumpy but steady average commodity price inflation by looking at this chart of Bloomberg's commodities indexes. This steady increase can easily encourage other commodity speculation. Consider what the price of gold is doing right now, as a relatively inflation-proof asset that historically preserves wealth well during troubled times.

Currently, among average consumers, we see an interesting economic split. There is a discretionary spending sector in a state of relative deflation and decline as compared to spending on basic needs. Satisfying basic needs takes real stuff like food and energy. In other words, we now have sort of a dual economy in which the unnecessary spending is shrinking. The "real stuff" sector tied to things people really need is seeing price inflation, while the other discretionary spending sector is severely depressed and seeing price deflation.

However, we have a CPI (inflation) index that averages the real basic needs together with the arbitrary and artificial consumerist needs. These two consumer spending categories can sometimes cancel out and appear to indicate zero inflation. Thus we get "apples and oranges" economic nonsense that is blind to the underlying structure and causes of inflation. No inflation index that arbitrarily excludes food and energy, like our CPI does, can be very realistic. (It would be better to have an index based on ONLY these two items, because when the economy is in real trouble, these spending categories will tend to prevail).

Referring back to the troubling choice that Tom Whipple outlined above, the choice between global deflation and a start at recovery with another debilitating oil price spike, the fact is that nobody can accurately predict the economic outcome very well, and this is now leading to an ongoing debate between the deflationists and inflationists. But as we have seen, it is possible to have deflation in one important sector of the economy and simultaneous inflation in another, due to quite different factors.

"Stagflation" was the term they used for this nearly impossible-for-economists-to-remedy situation during the energy crisis of the 1970s. As the price of a limited supply of oil was bid up, it pushed up the price of everything economically tied to oil, meaning nearly all commodities, which is termed cost-push inflation.

It is likely that with the U.S. and other countries trying to restimulate their economies through deficit spending, they will succeed at some point. In a situation where they are trying to use monetary expansion to stimulate otherwise unresponsive economies, there is a real but unpredictable risk of economic disaster through hyperinflation, as Buffet observes.

There is now a lot of fresh new money sitting idle on the sidelines. Banks are managing to appear more sound by borrowing at near zero interest and then using the cash to buy interest-bearing U.S. treasury bonds; what a racket! When there is a lot of idle money around, they start looking for profitable investments. Where there is a lot of money but a deficiency of important commodities that everyone needs or wants, you get self-perpetuating speculative bubbles. Given the apparent tendency of the U.S. political system to take the easy way out, as indicated by the federal government's inability to reinstate basic banking reform, the odds look good that we will see the continuation of inflation in the commodity sector.

When you have rising commodity prices, the markets soon notice. Soon rising prices stimulate the public willingness to buy and invest. This means the "velocity of circulation of money" increases. As soon as the public starts spending more freely, it becomes apparent how easy it is for the creation of printed money to exceed the availability of real goods.

This increased willingness for average consumers to spend in the face of rising prices has a self-perpetuating effect; money chasing goods leads to hyperinflation, finally, in general, ending in a collapse of some sort. Since this is based on something as unpredictable as consumer and investor psychology on a global scale, it is almost impossible to time or predict.

My own forecast is for continuing dollar devaluation, worsening stagflation, and finally an oil price spike that ushers in a permanently downsized economy. I would like to predict better, but the facts are stubborn.

In a sense, these details are academic. The facts by themselves seem to argue that before long we will have to accept a continuing downsizing of our average U.S. lifestyle and economic footprint. The sooner we face these jarring economic transitions, and assuming we remember our sense of humanity, the transition to a sustainable future will be all the easier and more tolerable.

[Roger Baker is a long time transportation-oriented environmental activist, an amateur energy-oriented economist, an amateur scientist and science writer, and a founding member of and an advisor to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is active in the Green Party and the ACLU, and is a director of the Save Our Springs Association and the Save Barton Creek Association. Mostly he enjoys being an irreverent policy wonk and writing irreverent wonkish articles for The Rag Blog.]

Pelbagai inisiatif kembangkan teknologi hijau

Date : 26/11/09

Source : Utusan Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR 25 Nov. - Kerajaan mengambil pelbagai inisiatif memacu perkembangan teknologi hijau termasuk menubuhkan Majlis Penasihat Teknologi Hijau Kebangsaan yang dipengerusikan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

Timbalan Perdana Menteri, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin berkata, kerajaan juga akan menumpukan kepada usaha membangkitkan kesedaran peluang perniagaan dalam bidang teknologi itu.

Di samping itu, kata beliau, kerajaan turut menimbangkan pemberian insentif kepada syarikat-syarikat yang menggunakan teknologi hijau.

"Inisiatif permulaan untuk projek teknologi hijau telah diumumkan dalam Bajet 2010 yang dibentangkan baru-baru ini.

"Kerajaan juga akan menubuhkan dana berjumlah RM1.5 bilion untuk menyediakan pinjaman mudah kepada syarikat yang membekal dan memanfaatkan teknologi hijau," katanya.

Beliau berucap pada majlis Anugerah Bunga Raya Perdana Menteri di sini malam ini.

Turut hadir Menteri Sumber Asli dan Alam Sekitar, Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas dan Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Pengelola anugerah berkenaan, Datuk Kok Wee Keat.

Anugerah Bunga Raya Perdana Menteri mengiktiraf pencapaian syarikat yang beroperasi di negara ini dalam bidang alam sekitar.

Sementara itu, Muhyiddin menegaskan, kerajaan amat komited untuk mengurangkan dan mengimbangi pelepasan karbon untuk bagi menangani pemanasan global.

Malah, katanya, Malaysia diiktiraf sebagai negara paling aktif di Asia Tenggara dalam usaha mengurangkan pelepasan gas rumah hijau melalui keanggotaannya dalam Mekanisme Pembangunan Bersih (CDM).

"Kerajaan telah mewujudkan Jawatankuasa Kabinet Mengenai Perubahan Iklim dipengerusikan sendiri Perdana Menteri dan polisi mengenai perubahan cuaca juga telah dirumus.

"Selaku negara yang menandatangani Protokol Kyoto, kita harap sidang kemuncak di Copenhagen, Denmark pada Disember ini mampu menggambarkan komitmen global menyelesaikan masalah perubahan iklim," katanya.

Dalam perkembangan berkaitan, Muhyiddin berkata, kerajaan menyasarkan 25 peratus kadar kitar semula barang buangan pada 2010.

Katanya, pihak berkuasa tempatan (PBT) berperanan penting memastikan persekitaran bersih dan mesra alam bagi membolehkan rakyat bekerja dan menjalani kehidupan dalam suasana yang kondusif.

Melt-away plastics

Date : June 2 2009
Source : The Star
Title : Melt-away plastics

By WONG LI ZA

Here’s something to look forward to – plastic bags that dissolve in water. IF YOU have been feeling guilty using all those plastic bags for your groceries, a green solution is at hand. A team of seven researchers from Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) has invented an award-winning material called Greenphylic Water-Soluble Degradable Plastic, a polymer similar to plastic that dilutes in water.

Led by electrical and electronic engineering lecturer Prof Dr Ramiah Jegatheesan, the team comprised Hossam Mahmoud Gamal Eldin, Mohammad Faizal Che Daud, Nor Hidayah Usop, Noordiana Khalil, Mohd Anuar Sulaiman and Ahmad Ridhwan Hassan.

The project was awarded the Gold Medal at the 19th International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition last May. It also received three special awards – Best Invention for Universities/Research Institutes, World Intellectual Property Organisation Best Invention Award and KASS International (a Malaysian intellectual property firm) Best Invention Award.
In November, the project garnered international glory by winning the Gold Medal at the Belgian and International Trade Fair for Technological Innovation in Brussels.

The project was exhibited under the name Eco Plast, short for “eco-friendly plastic-like material”. Winning the latest award has heightened the material’s potential for commercialisation, according to Ramiah, 68.

Plastic bags are harmful as they take a long time to degrade. And once broken into molecular materials, they can contaminate the soil and water tables. Ramiah said when burnt, plastics produce hazardous gases which can cause serious health problems. In addition, discarded plastics can clog water and sewerage pipes.

“Bearing these in mind, usage of plastic bags is banned in several countries,” he said. Eco Plast consists of a synthetic polymer material made from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, polyvinyl alcohol is a colourless, water-soluble, flammable resin belonging to the family of organic polymers. It is derived from a vinyl polymer.

The resin is used in sizing agents that confer resistance to oils and greases upon paper and textiles, to make films resistant to attack by solvents or oxygen, as a component of adhesives and emulsifiers, and as a starting material for the preparation of other resins.

“Polyvinyl alcohol is a water-soluble synthetic polymer which has excellent film forming, emulsifying and adhesive properties. It is odourless and non-toxic, has high tensile strength and flexibility as well as high oxygen and aroma barrier. However, these properties are dependent on humidity. With higher humidity, more water is absorbed. The water, which acts as a plasticiser, will then reduce its tensile strength, but increase its elongation and tear strength,” explained Ramiah.

Eco Plast can dissolve in water at normal room temperatures of between 25°C and 35°C. If the water is heated, the dissolving time reduces considerably.

In normal thickness, Eco Plast dissolves in water in 60 minutes when the water temperature is around 25°C. It will dissolve in 15 minutes if the water temperature is 40°C. If the water temperature is increased to 50°C, the dissolving time will be around five minutes.

According to Ramiah, water that is used to dissolve Eco Plast will not contain any toxic eleme

nts and thus no harmful effect to living beings or the environment will occur. This water can be disposed of via the kitchen sink as normal waste water.

He added that Eco Plast can be used to manufacture carrier bags that are useful for grocery items, to pack medical pills, produce gloves and for packaging of other substances.

At present, Eco Plast is two to three times costlier to produce compared to plastic.

“Once it is commercialised and manufactured on a large scale, the cost will reduce substantially. Furthermore, (it must be highlighted that) no cost is involved in disposing of this material. We have filed for patent and are currently in the process of commerciali­sing the product,” he said.

Loss of world's seagrass beds accelerating - study

By : Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) - The world's seagrass meadows, a critical habitat for marine life and profit-maker for the fishing industry, are in decline due to coastal development and the losses are accelerating, according to a new study.Billed as the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass losses, the study found 58 percent of seagrass meadows are declining and the rate of annual loss has accelerated from about 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990.

Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, based on more than 200 surveys and 1,800 observations dating back to 1879, found that seagrasses are disappearing at rates similar to coral reefs and tropical rainforests. "Seagrasses are disappearing because they live in the same kind of environments that attract people," James Fourqurean, a professor at Florida International University and a co-author of the study, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

"They live in shallow areas protected from large storm waves, and they are especially prevalent in bays and around river mouths."Scientists say seagrass processes waste dumped into the sea, helps stabilize ocean-bottom sediments in coastal areas to reduce erosion, provide nurseries for fish and shellfish and feeding grounds for larger marine creatures, including those that live in coral reefs.

But the grasses can be damaged by polluted water from coastal development, decreasing water clarity, and by dredging and filling of meadows. The scientists also said global climate change "is predicted to have deleterious effects on seagrasses." Many scientists believe greenhouse gases are causing the world to warm, leading to a host of environmental effects including warming and rising oceans.

'ECONOMICALLY AND ECOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT'

Seagrass meadows are important food fisheries and host gamefish like tarpon, permit and bonefish. A recent study estimated the annual economic value of seagrass at $3,500 per hectare (2.5 acres), Fourqurean said. "Seagrass beds are at least as economically and ecologically important as tropical forests or coral reefs," he said.

The study, by a team of scientists from the United States, Australia and Spain, found that 29 percent of known seagrass meadows have disappeared since 1879. Over the entire 130-year period, seagrass was lost at a rate of 1.5 percent per year. An estimated 19,690 square miles (51,000 square km) of seagrass has been lost since 1879 of a total estimated area of 68,350 square miles (177,000 square km), the researchers said.

"Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes," said co-author William Dennison of the University of Maryland. The scientists said 45 percent of the world's population lives on 5 percent of its land adjacent to the coast.

In the early 20th century, heavy seagrass losses were noted in North America and Europe, where the industrial revolution led to rapid coastal development. Today, population growth in the regions bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans are likely leading to the heaviest losses of seagrass, but those regions lack the scientific infrastructure to assess the loss, Fourqurean said.

He said mitigation efforts have had some success in saving and restoring seagrass. For example, in Florida, where treated sewage water is often dumped in the ocean, water managers in Tampa changed their method of treating wastewater and failing seagrasses rebounded.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters