Previously on OTZMA 25...

So, I typed out an entire blog post last night, thought I hit save, but apparently did not.  Oops.  I will try again.  It's been a while since I posted last so I will start with the recent stuff and work my way back.


On Monday we had an education day.  It was the 2nd education day since we came to Ashkelon, but unfortunately I had to miss the first one due to the issues with my arm.  This Monday's topic was about environmental issues in Israel.


We boarded the bus at 7:00 am (after a lovely 4 hours of sleep for me the night before) and promptly all fell asleep.  When we woke up we were in Rehovot at the Agricultural campus of the Hebrew University based in Jerusalem.  When we got to the University, we were greeted by Professor Ronnie Friedman, the Dean at the University.  They gave us some much needed coffee, tea and snacks and we sat down in the lecture hall.



Prof. Friedman had two other speakers with him.  S. Wolf, the Vice Dean for Research and M. Doll, the Vice Dean for Curricular Affairs.  Prof. Friedman started the conversation off with a discussion about the definition of agriculture and what problems we, as a world, face in the future.  He asked us a difficult question.  Given that you have no more land to grow food, how do you increase productivity to feed an ever growing world population?

The Hebrew University - Rehovot Campus 

The 3 Prof's discussed the various implications of genetic modification of plants and how to increase yield while decreasing water consumption by plants. It was right up my alley (bio background). They discussed taking the genes that code for larger aquaporines (sidebar - aquaporines are the spaces in between the cell walls in plants that allow for water and nutrient transport) in certain plants and adding them to plants that typically have smaller aquaporines.  The productivity of the crops has a direct linear correlation with the amount of water that the plants receive.  Water is a big problem in Israel and a growing problem throughout the world.  I was really surprised to hear how many gallons of water it takes to grow a single ear of corn.  Something like 50 gallons (don't quote me on that but I know it was in that ballpark)!


Then we discussed control of pests through means other than chemicals. This part of the discussion was led by M. Koll.  He had put together a slide show and we learned that 50% of the fruits and vegetables that are produced never make it to the consumer.  There is loss incurred due to pests on the farm, loss incurred due to diseases and viruses and loss incurred due to pests in the stores that sell the products.  If the number of losses can be decreased, it will make a huge difference!  So, how can we decrease these losses? Many places uses pesticides to control pests that prey on the crops.  Eventually the conversation turned into an argument about the way that things are done in the US in terms of organic versus inorganic fruits an veggies. To be certified as Organically grown food in the states the company can not use chemicals created by scientists/people. This does not mean that they can't use pesticides... They just have to be natural ones (the example given to us was cyanide which is natural but still very toxic).  The issue reminds me a bit of the DDT example were the mice were eating products that had pesticides on them and although they were not greatly affected by it, the owls that rely on mice as a staple in their diet were dying due to poisoning.  I imagine something similar could happen to people who ingest a large amount of pesticides.


Here they are working on pest control through predatory insects. It was pretty fascinating.  I think its wonderful that they are working on moving away from chemical means of control and moving towards more natural means.  Some of the things that they have done include investigating predatory insects which can control the population of the pest insects, many of which are invasive species.  There are several ways in which they can do this, one of which is bringing in invasive species from the same origin (which are referred to henceforth as the predatory species) as the pest species to control the populations.  I understand the intention behind this idea and although we were told that many tests are done to make sure the populations of the predatory species will not get out of control and to make sure that the predatory insects only feed on the pest, I still do not think this is the best method.  Animals change and adapt and there is no guarantee that the predatory species will not adapt or evolve to find new prey.

Another method that is being investigated is placement of plants that are natural habitats to predatory insects.  This has been done with several different kinds of crops, including strawberries (תותים) and pears (I think?).  Through years of research they have discovered that there are certain plants with high populations of predatory insects.  When these plants are  planted in close proximity to the desired crop, the loss due to pests is much lower and thus the yield per plant is much higher.  

Then we moved on to how do you deal with increasing yield when it comes to animals and the ethics surrounding it. I think that when you crowd animals you will get much higher levels of stress hormones in your food (but I don't actually have any direct knowledge of that). They talked about raising salmon in densely packed closed systems and whether or not that was ethical. I do not think it's ethical nor would it be most effective. Stop eating salmon. Duh. If you pack the salmon densely in closed systems they will not grow as quickly and will be much more susceptible to disease related to stress from cramped conditions. All very interesting. Then someone asked about chickens and in a roundabout way said that they did not think it is wrong to cram fish in tanks but it is wrong to cram chickens in a coop. I don't understand how fish are not considered living organisms in the same way that chickens are but I have a special place in my heart for fish, even fish like salmon that are pretty ugly.   

Next stop: better place!

The electric car - cut in 1/2!

So, after we left the university, we went to "betterplace". They are working on developing an electric car that will "revolutionize the globe." We watched a cool movie about the car in recycled car seats (pretty comfy). I will say that when we first walked into the "theater" we thought that the seats would move and it was some kind of awesome disney type ride.  It wasn't, but it was still awesome.  So, better place is planning on installing charging stations all throughout the country and hope to have their cars on the road by the end of 2011, which in Israel probably means more like 2015.  :)  It sounds like a pretty neat business plan and I hope that it works out.  They have developed solutions for many of the problems that other companies have encountered when trying to tackle the electric car issue.  

Arielle in her recycled
car seat

With each car you get 2 charging stations (1 at work and 1 at home or whatever location you choose) and they will also have charging stations distributed throughout the country.  Inside the car there is a navigation system that will guide you to the nearest available charging station, which I believe costs nothing to use.  The downside is that the Lithium battery that runs the car can only go about 160 km, or about 100 miles.  However, they have come up with a solution for this too.  They have battery changing stations that you can also located via the navigation system in the car.  Once you arrive at a changing station, in about 5 minutes they can remove your drained battery and replace it with a new battery, free of charge.  They showed us the whole process and it really only took about 90 seconds to change the battery.  Pretty amazing.  

Why did they let me drive?
Not sure...

I can see how this will work in a small country like Israel but I am sure it would be impossible to implement in a place like the United States.  While I could see them testing it in some cities, you would still have to rely on a regular car if you wanted to take trips outside of the city to places that did not have charging stations or battery replacement centers.  According to the website there is a trial program being set-up in both Hawaii and California.  I am curious to see how that goes.  

The better place electric car!

So, the coolest part of that trip was that we got to test drive the electric cars.  We didn't get to drive very far (basically down a track one way and around a small circle and back) but it was still cool.  The car itself is virtually silent and rides very smoothly.  Madeleine and Elissa and I were all in the car together and took turns going around the track.  I think we all scared each other and I know that we scared the guide who was with us.  He was pretty funny though and we had a good time in our 10 minutes in the car with him.  He was our spaceship navigator and I think we convinced him that american women really can't drive (at least some american women...).  They even gave us badges with our names on it that allowed us to drive the cars.  Yay driving!!

TO THE DUMP!

See, I'm not joking.  But at least Whitney is still smiling!

So, after we left better place we went on to what will eventually be Ariel Sharon Park.  However, right now it is a dump.  Now, when I say dump you are probably thinking that I mean it was not a nice place.  It was not... but that is because it is literally a garbage dumping facility called Hiriya.  Hiriya is right outside of Tel-Aviv and up until '98 it was the main dumping facility in Tel-Aviv.  It was closed in 1998 due to a number of issues.  First of all, it is located in close proximity to rt. 4, which is the road between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.  It tends to be a busy road and the odor from the garbage was easily detected while stuck in traffic on that road, so it was highly unpleasant for commuters.  Another issue that was becoming a problem was the presence of large numbers of birds at the dump site.  Along 

with being close to route 4, Ben Gurion Airport is nearby (it can actually be seen from the top of the "hill" - AKA former dump pile).  This became a problem when birds started occasionally getting sucked into the engines of planes and causing damage that is expensive to repair and can be dangerous.  



The end result of these problems was the closing of the dump in '98, however the dump is still used as a main sorting facility in Tel-Aviv.  Currently, the local garbage trucks do their rounds in the city and surrounding areas and bring the trash to Hiriya.  There it is dumped, sorted (some of it) and compacted and packed into larger vehicles for transport to the newer landfill in the Negev.  This is still not a good solution... as now the trash is further from the city but still not being dealt with properly.  When we visited, we got a tour of the facility (mostly by bus, thank goodness!!!) and spent some time in the education center where literally every item is made from recycled or repurposed junk.  

We were told this was artwork?

I should also mention some of the cool innovations that they are working on at Hiriya in terms of recycling and garbage sorting.  In Israel, recycling is not as common as it is at home.  The tour guide was genuinely excited and said that she would be altering the tour for us a bit as we already have a good knowledge base about recycling.  There is one building on the site where they are working on developing technology to sort garbage to help create less waste.  I think the name of the company is Arrow something or other.  They take the garbage and put it in a tank of water.  This separates out the heavier matter to the bottom, the compostable food type items to the center and the lighter items to the top.  Once that is done there is a separate sorting method for each type of item.  One of the things that the tour guide mentioned was with the lightweight plastic items they put them in sort of a wind-tunnel and this opens and removes the plastic shopping bags for re-use.  

Even the bathroom mirrors are repurposed materials!

I think that the same company also has a composting type chamber where they use the water that was used to sort the garbage.  They add bacteria that helps digest organic matter thus diminishing the amount of solid waste that is being put in the dump.  Oh, garbage.  Yay.  It is nice to see that they are working on solutions though.  However, for the time being these are small scale experiments and can't even handle the complete load that goes through Hiriya every day.  

So, it was decided recently that Hiriya would be best served as part of a large park that is being planned.  It is going to be larger than central park and feature a man-made lake, cafe's, walkways, bike paths and native plants that do not need a lot of water to survive and flourish.  We saw a short video about it and it does look pretty cool, but it is not going to be completed until 2020 (which in Israeli time means it will be done by 2035).  The park is going to be named Ariel Sharon Park as Sharon was a big supporter of the repurposing of the dump.  As the tour guide said to us, "we created this problem, we have to create a solution and give something back."  

So, that was OTZMA environmental education day in a nutshell!!  We did have one activity at the dump after we had the tour discussing the ethics of a train that is planned from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem as well but I was so out of it and don't want to make this post any longer!