Sustainable Tourism: Partnering to Improve Environmental Management

Last Wednesday marked BirdLife Europe’s ‘Biodiversity is our Business’ event held at the Museum for Natural Sciences in Brussels.  One of the goals of the event was to highlight new collaborations between BirdLife Europe and its partners in the recreational, retail and manufacturing sectors.  One such partnership, the ‘Committed to Birds’ programme between Birdlife Netherlands and the Dutch Golf Federation, has interesting potential for sustainability.

Reestablishing Trust in the Food Industry

Source: www.aei-ideas.org

Communications issues and regaining trust in the food industry were hot topics at Hungry for Change 2, a conference organised by the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA), which we attended last week. 

Amazon fungus is able to feed on "indestructible" plastic

Source: Microbiology (2000) 146:2079-2089    

Biodiversity in the Amazonian jungle could help find solutions to our modern-day problems.  Researchers have found microscopic fungus in the Amazon which can eat plastic in zero oxygen (anaerobic) conditions.  This means that plastics like polyurethanes which are prized for their durability (and which are virtually indestructible in the waste phase of life) could potentially be biodegraded by this fungus.