Sustainability

Carob glazed vegetable Yakitori

Carob glazed vegetable Yakitori, Bechamel & burned pepper purée

Carob glazed vegetable Yakitori, Bechamel & burned pepper purée You probably think it’s an egg yolk and a glazed pork belly Yakitori. Well… it’s not. It’s actually just vegetables. Let me explain. This dish was inspired by 2021 S.Pellegrino Young Chefs competition, where the winner presented a totally vegetable focused dish. It’s about time, right? You can watch the full video of me making vegetable Yakitori here Part 1 – Vegan yolk 2 Orange bell peppers 1/4 tsp Turmeric powder 1/2 tsp MSG Calcium Lactate (3% of the final puree volume) 1g Sodium Alginate 200g Water Ingredients, you’ll need Directions Burn bell peppers on open fire. Peel the skin off and remove seeds. Discard.  Use the hand blender to puree the burned bell peppers flash. Add in Turmeric powder and MSG and puree to smooth consistency. Measure the final puree amount, add in Calcium Lactate and blend for another 1-2 minutes.  Use a piping bag or a basting syringe to transfer the puree into half-circle shaped silicon molds. Freeze. Meanwhile, prepare a Sodium Alginate bath by blending Sodium Alginate into water and letting it rest for 5-10 min.  Prepare 2 more clear water baths. Perform reverse spherification by placing the frozen pepper puree into the Sodium Alginate bath.  Transfer the spherified vegan yolk into a water bath to clean off any extra Sodium Alginate and finally transfer to the final water bath for keeping purposes. Part 2 – Plant-based Bechamel sauce 1L unsweetened Plant-based milk of your choice 1 Onion 4 Cloves 2 Bay leafs 30g AP flour 30g Vegetable oil Ingredients Directions Infuse milk with onion, cloves and bay leafs and strain through a cheesecloth. Make a white roux with flour and oil. Incorporate infused milk into the roux 1 ladle at a time. Simmer for about 20 min, until the Nappe consistency. Strain through the cheese cloth again and season.  Part 3 – Vegetable Yakitori small Pumpkin Large carrots Large parsnip 30g Carob syrup 30g Scotch 50g Brown sugar 50g Dark miso paste 20g Soy sauce 100g Water 10g Mustard 3 large fresh Rosemary sprig Ingredients Directions Burn the above vegetables (or other vegetables of your choice) on open fire. Remove the burned skins and seeds. Discard them. Cut the vegetables into precise and equal size rectangles. Blend all the other ingredients (except for Rosemary). Put a frying pan on heat, pour in the carob glaze liquid. When the glaze gets hot, add in 1 sprig of Rosemary, carrots and parsnips (the harder vegetables).  Cook and baste vegetables, until they are nearly done. Add in the pumpkin cuts. Repeat the procedure until all the veggies are done. Remove the glazed veggies from the pan. Plant the charred and glazed vegetables on 2 fresh Rosemary sprigs. Vegetable Yakitori is ready. Part 4 – Vegetable Yakitory assembly Pour 2 tbsp plant-based Bechamel sauce on a warm plate.  Place a vegan egg yolk inside the Bechamel sauce. Place the vegetable Yakitory on the side of the vegan “fried eggs”, a.k.a. Bechamel sauce and charred bell pepper puree. Enjoy!

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Toilet's dirty secret

Toilet’s dirty secret

Toilet. A simple, straight-forward necessity or an evil system that undermines the global warning? You’ll be surprised how much you didn’t know about toilets. For example, did you know that an average man spends 1 hour and 45 min a week on a toilet and an average woman – 85 minutes!? That comes up to about 92 days over a lifetime! No, you didn’t know that, so as I thought. No worries, stay tuned, and I’ll reveal more shocking facts about toilets soon! So… When it comes to individual toilet behaviour, there are pretty much, 2 areas of concern: water and paper. [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Video”][/siteorigin_widget] Water problem: Did you know that the vast majority of the water that is being used indoors by the average North American household goes to toilet usage? Yes! 24% of all our water usage goes down the toilet, quite literally in this case. 24% is somewhat about 33 gallons, or 125 L. More than that, that is a DAILY water usage! That is a huge amount of water being flushed down the tubes. Especially, taking into account the ongoing and pressing issue of the climate change. The climate change brings natural disasters all around the world: in some states hurricanes and floods cause clogging and pollution of the local sewage systems, making the water supply problematic. In other places, life South Africa, regular droughts question the possibility of the water supply in general and many are looking for alternative options to regular water toilets now. Paper: Paper side of the toilet problem on the other hand, does not concede to the water waste disaster. Toilet paper was invented in America in 1857, but really took off in 1930. Now it is a more than $6 billion industry. According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, the average American uses about 60 pounds of tissue per year, which comes to around 27 kg. In comparison, the average German uses only 33 pounds. For another metric, that’s around 120 paper rolls a year. At that rate a household of people will go through a whole tree worth of toilet paper in 365 days. The other not so obvious and rather crucial problem with toilet paper is that most of it is bleached. Yes! Toilet paper is not naturally white. Tones of water and chemicals is used for the production of white toilet paper. So next time you sit comfortably on your toilet, look at your toilet paper roll and think of: Deforestation, Water waste and Environmental pollution! That’s all that it really is. Alternatives: Toilet usage issue is critical nowadays for that whole world’s population: some of us overexploit it, others do not have any excess to toilets at all. 1 in 3 people around the world, or 2.3 billion people, don’t have access to a toilet. In fact, more people have a mobile phone than a toilet. Let’s just let that sink in. Many groups have recognized the need for toilets that can withstand extreme weather conditions and natural disasters and mitigate the climate change. The Toilet Board Coalition’s Accelerator (business-led coalition co-founded by Unilever)  and Re-invent the Toilet Challenge, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are investing in innovation in toilets and sanitation systems that are sustainable, recover valuable resources and can be scaled up. The Indian government also conducts periodic “toilet hackathons” for inventors to generate resilient and sustainable solutions. Fear not, conscious citizen! More eco-friendly and sustainable toilets are coming! But do use your own initiative and research alternative solutions for your new toilet, whenever the time comes! During World Water Week 2017, the Toilet Board Coalition and its partners explored the business case for turning human waste into valuable resources such as fertilizer, animal feed and high-value proteins. They concluded that “there is a clear business case for building toilets and keeping them secure and well-maintained … there is an economic incentive for creating a sanitation economy”. At the same time, The VUNA Project at Eawag in Switzerland has developed an affordable dry sanitation system that produces a valuable fertilizer, promotes entrepreneurship and reduces pollution of water resources. The fertilizer, which is made from human urine, is branded as Aurin and is authorized by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture to be used as a fertilizer for every type of plant. [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Image”][/siteorigin_widget] Solution: In case, if you are not ready yet to change your toilet to a new more eco-friendly one, there are a couple of easy solutions for you as well to reduce your eco-footprint. First, things first, Using a bit of water to clean your backside will help to save trees and maybe water, too (since papermaking itself can be very water-intensive). Second, look for paper with the highest post-consumer recycled content that your bum can take, and whenever possible buy larger rolls (fewer cardboard tubes) and bulk packages (less plastic overwrap). Make sure you check regularly for leaks using a dye test. According to the EPA, a leaky toilet can waste about 200 gallons or 780 L a day. For the more daring among you, there’s always the time-honoured “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” strategy—endorsed by Cameron Diaz, and the “pee in the shower” strategy, endorsed by  a Brazilian environmental group. We highly recommend to check out their catchy commercial video. Conclusion: To conclude, yes, toilets do cause climate change, and yes, they are vital for the humanity to keep the hygiene levels up. It’s a kind of a love-hate relationship between us, toilets and the environment. So, what is left to be done is to improve our toilet behaviour through alternative toilet systems, less or more eco-friendly toilet paper usage and simply less flushing. Whatever you are doing to save the environment, keep on doing it and always look forward to step-up your sustainability game. Yes, nowadays, we cannot afford even to take a crap without being conscious about the environment. That’s how far we led ourselves into with the global progress. The above

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Are waxworms the solution to global plastic problem?

What is the solution to global plastic problem? This week we are starting a conversation with you about plastics. Yes, yes, there’s so much already said about plastic. It is no doubt bad for the environment and sometimes for us. But what is it and how much of it is in the eco-system exactly? If it was just pure evil, wouldn’t someone had already banned it or came up with a solution to eliminate it? Don’t you think?… We are going to discuss all of these and also talk about the Super Wax Worms and Mutant Microbes that can rid the Earth of all those billion of tones of plastic waste. What is plastic? The word plastic derives from the Greek word πλαστικός [plastikos] meaning “capable of being shaped or molded”. The simple definition of plastic is that it is a synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers. When we think of plastic, we usually imagine something manufactured, human made, but did you know that there is naturally occurring plastic? Oh, yes! Humanity had been using plastic from rubber trees as way back as 3.5k years ago. Nowadays, though, we mostly use plastic made from fossil fuels… Did you know that 8% of the global oil industry serves plastic production? Brief history of plastic As it is with everything, plastic did not start its journey in the world as a pure evil, as it is being portrayed now. Before 50s, plastic was used mostly for the industrial and military purposes: it made aircrafts lighter and safer to fly for the pilots.  Just imagine, our grandparents might still remember the time when not everything around them was made from plastic! All had changed, of course, with the end of the war, when plastic was used and abused as a fuel to grow our consumerism sickness to the levels it had never reached before. Plastic went into the consumer market. During 60s global plastic production went up over 400% and by 1979 we were producing more plastic than steel! “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic” (quote from Aqua song “Barbie Girl”). [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Video”][/siteorigin_widget] Plastic market In 2017 the global plastic market size was valued at USD 522.66 billion, and despite all the controversy and hype about going ‘plastic free’, it is expected to reach USD 721.14 billion by 2025. In comparison, the value of the global movies and entertainment market in 2016 was USD 80.89 bn , size of the contraceptive market is USD 24.12 bn and global wine industry is worth USD 302.02 bn … So yeah, plastic is actually more important to us than entertainment, booze and sex combined… Are there types of plastic and is any 1 worse than the other? Yes, there are lots of different types of plastic and that is the reason recycling gets so complicated sometimes, but more of than later. The number inside the little arrowed triangles at the back of the plastic item is what actually tells us, the consumers, that type of plastic was used in production of this particular item. 1 – Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) 2 – High-density Polyethylene (HDPE) 3 – Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) 4 – Low-density Polyethylene (LDPE) 5 – Polypropylene (PP) 6 – Polystyrene (PS) 7 – Other plastics Plastic is generally lightweight with significant degrees of strength. It can be molded, extruded and cast; it can even be drawn into fibers for textiles – Nylon it is. Many types of coatings, glues and even your chewing gum is plastic too! So next time, you are chewing a gum or putting on a nylon shirt, don’t forget that it’s plastic… Life is indeed plastic. [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Image”][/siteorigin_widget] Where is plastic used? To no one’s surprise, the vast majority, about 40% of the plastics is used in packaging – beverage bottles, coffee cups, plastic bags, six-pack rings, etc. Then goes construction – yes, although they look concrete, you won’t believe how much in our houses is made from plastic: cables, pipes, windows, doors, shutters, acrylic paint, floor covering, wall linings, ceiling panels, roof coverings, sinks, basins, insulation… and that’s not even the full list. And only after goes plastic consumer goods, automobiles, electricals, agriculture, medical devices and furniture. Just think – virtually everything that surrounds you right now is either made solely from plastic or has a plastic component. Is plastic bad? Why? Plastic is so versatile, it has just so many good qualities: it enabled us to do things that were simply impossible before, made our lives so much more convenient! It did even help us to travel more by making airplanes lighter and cheaper to operate. But everything has a dark side, and plastic’s dark side is hard to ignore. All we hear right now is the global plastic pollution, the North-Atlantic garbage patch and the plastic-free movement. But it’s not just that… Plastic effects human health. Toxic chemicals leach out of plastic and are found in the blood and tissue of nearly all of us. Exposure to them is linked to cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption and other ailments. In 1977 Coca-Cola & Monsanto plastic bottles that were used for 30 years for food and beverage containers had been banned, as proved to be harmful for humans. Guess in collaboration with whom did Coca-Cola produce those bottles? Yes, Monsanto! I know, it seems like this corporation made a footprint into anything that has to do with harming people’s health or the environment. That’s not it! Plastic is made from fossil fuels, right? So it kinda makes sense when we tell you that plastic spoils our groundwaters. There are thousands of landfills where plastic waste is dumped. Toxic chemicals from plastics drain out and seep into groundwater, flowing downstream into lakes and rivers. You already know what happens next… Part of it destroys the natural habitat of wildlife, part poisons this wildlife and the remaining gets drunk or eaten by us – circle of life. How much plastic is there? Each year we are producing roughly 400

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Amazon forest disaster

Amazon rainforest disaster

This week many of us woke up to the social media outcry about the record-breaking numbers of Amazon forest fires. Celebrities, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato and many others had spoken out, sharing and re-sharing pictures of fires and satellite shots of the deforestation of Amazon, with news channels picking up the trend in a few days. So, what is really happening in Amazon? Are the fires this year any worse than annual forest fires? And if so, should we really worry about it? What is Amazon forest? Amazon forest is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, covering the area of approximately 5.5 million km2 or 2.1 million miles2, which is a bit more in size than half of all the United States. [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Video”][/siteorigin_widget] Why is Amazon forest important? First of all, it is a home to about 3 million species of plants and animals, and 1 million indigenous people. We, humans, should support the biodiversity on our planet. It boosts ecosystem productivity. Each life specie plays a role in the ‘circle of life’. Greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all the life forms. To simplify this, we know that sadly some kids grow up believing that apples grow on supermarket shelves and not on the tree branches, but this does not make it true. And we as adults, should understand that the single crop varieties that the big corporations offer us for consumption, surreally make food more accessible to the population right now, but are not the answer for the long-term longevity of the planet. Single crops mean basically to put all the eggs in 1 basket. We do need the biodiversity to survive as the humankind in the long-term. Secondly, Amazon forest is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming. But how? Well, we’ve all learned in school about photosynthesis, a process that happens in plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. And that is exactly what all those trees and bushes in Amazon are busy doing for all of us. That’s why Amazon is often referred to as the ‘lungs of the Earth’, since more than 20% of the world’s oxygen is produced there. So, it does produce oxygen, fine… but how does it help with climate change, you may ask?… That’s a fair question and the answer lies in all this carbon dioxide that it absorbs from the air and stores safely inside. Hopefully, we all know by now about the dangers of the global warming. Well, the greenhouse gases emitted though human activity, such as combustion of fossil fuels in cars, buildings, factories, and power plants, hang in the air, let the sunlight through, but trap the heat that radiates from the surface and prevent it from escaping back to the atmosphere. This is called the ‘greenhouse’ effect.  Carbon dioxide has the greatest potential to trapping the heat and also exists in the highest proportion in our air, in comparison to other greenhouse gases, that’s why it is responsible for the most part of the warming on our planet. Keeping this in mind, consider that the Amazon trees had pulled in carbon dioxide equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of most of the 9 South American countries that own or border the forest between 1980-2010. In other words, all the environmental damage that humans in that region had done to the planet in 30 years had been fully compensated by the sole activity of the rainforest. How cool is that? Wouldn’t you think that knowing that everyone would want to plant a tree to compensate for all the harm we do to our planet? Well, it turns out that not all are aware and even less care… [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Image”][/siteorigin_widget] Deforestation stats throughout history and now The truth is that between 2004 and 2012 deforestation rates actually went done about 84% (PRODES), thanks to the efforts of present at those times Brazilian governments, who had enforced punishments for the illegal logging in the forest. So, we are good, right? The short answer is ‘No’. Even since 2012 the deforestation rates had been going up, breaking records each year. And what makes it even more terrifying is that 2019 is believed to become the worst year for the Amazon. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that more than a quarter of the Amazon will be without trees by 2030 if the current rate of deforestation continues. The majority of the Amazon rainforest (about 60%) is contained within Brazil, and Mr Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, had openly suggested opening the world’s largest tropical rainforest to mining, farming and dam building. Ever since he had taken his office in January, he had pushed though policies harming the Amazon. For one, he had changed the governance structure of the Amazon protection Fund and closed down the steering committee that selects the projects to back. This caused one of the major donors, Norway, to pull out its payment of USD 33m this year and Germany to follow the suit with its USD 39m donation cancelled, due to concerns over the increasing deforestation. The other thing that Bolsonaro’s government had done is moving forestry commission of IBAMA (Brazil’s environmental protection agency) to the Agriculture Ministry, which is run by farm industry allies, which, for a second, is the main contributor to the deforestation in Amazon! The major causes of legal deforestation are cattle ranching (65-70%) and agriculture (25-30%). This Bolsonaro’s move is equivalent to giving your security alarm code to the burglars yourself. [siteorigin_widget class=”WP_Widget_Media_Image”][/siteorigin_widget] DATA controversy So why do people support such policies you may rightfully wonder. Well, the problem is the varying and thus, considered by the masses not reliable deforestation data. Since Amazon rainforest represents a complete ecosystem, it normally acts as a firefighter to itself, and we have to emphasize “normally” here, since the increased deforestation rates had clearly contributed negatively to forest’s fire-proof capabilities. The rain season in Amazon lasts for most part of the year from

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