Year: 2008

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“The U.S. generates 136 million tons of
construction- and demolition-related wastes every
day. Demolition debris alone can contribute to up
to 40% of the country’s waste.”

“When a buildings’ energy and water requirements
are added in, it becomes clear that their
environmental impact is huge. Buildings swallow
up to 30-40% of the world’s energy and 16% of the
planet’s water requirement …”
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Environmental Science & Technology
<http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/may/science/rc_buildings.html>

May 21, 2008
Built to demolish, demolish to build

All things must come to the end of their lives,
and buildings are no exception. When buildings
die, they end up in heaps of rubble that make
their way into landfills. Only some parts-the
metals and some of the concrete-get recycled.
Consequently, dead and demolished buildings can
contribute up to 40% of a country’s waste
materials.

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Nature
21 May 2008
453, – (2008) | doi:10.1038/453432a

News

Polar bear numbers set to fall
Climate-change icon gains ‘threatened’ status from United States.

Rachel Courtland

In a long-anticipated decision hailed as a
victory by environmental groups, the United
States last week declared the polar bear (Ursus
maritimus) a ‘threatened’ species. But this
heightened protection status may have little
bearing on the animals’ ultimate fate.

The listing, announced by secretary of the
interior Dirk Kempthorne on 14 May, connects the
continuing retreat in Artic sea ice due to global
warming with large potential reductions in the
polar-bear population. Last autumn, the US
Geological Survey concluded that the animals are
likely to lose 42% of their summer sea ice
habitat by mid-century, cutting the world’s
polar-bear population – estimated at 25,000 – by
two-thirds.

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“With seven years of data, it is not possible to
determine if there is an increasing trends in the
occurrence of fire, but we have significant
year-to-year differences, of the order of 20%, in
the area that is burnt.”

“Probably 95% of all vegetation fires have a human source…”

” … grass regenerates very quickly during the
wet season. From a carbon perspective, there is a
net balance due to the regenerating vegetation
acting as a carbon sink. Fires in forests are
more important as the affected area becomes a
carbon source for a number of years.”

“Fire has been a feature of the planet in the
past and under a scenario of a warmer environment
will certainly be a feature in the future”.
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EurekAlert  AAAS

University of Leicester
Public release date: 22-May-2008

Scorched Earth map shows ‘fire scars’

Dr Kevin Tansey, of the Department of Geography,
a leading scientist in an international team,
created a visual impression of the fire scars on
our planet between 2000 and 2007. The work was
funded by the Joint Research Centre of the
European Commission.

The map reveals that between 3.5 and 4.5 million
km2 of vegetation burns on an annual basis. This
is an area equivalent to the European Union
(EU27) and larger than the country of India that
is burnt every year.

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