Brazil

Brazil beginning to sell 30 million gallons of SUSTAINABLE ethanol to Sweden.

Brazilian researchers have developed a new cost-saving and energy-saving way to recycle construction and demolition (C&D) waste. While innovative enough for a patent application, it's also so simple that some waste engineers and managers will slap their foreheads and exclaim why didn't I think of that!

According to a study focusing on the Brazilian Atlantic forest, certain aspects can return surprisingly quickly – within 65 years. But for the landscape to truly regain its native identity takes a lot longer – up to 4000 years.

Recent photographs have proven the existance of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon Rain Forest. Modern man could upset the delicate balance of their lives.

Check out pics of some of the 14 new species discovered in the Serra Geral in Brazil's Cerrado region, which is a conservation hotspot.

How to preserve your forests and make money in the process.

Good news from Brazil - the Brazilian government inaugurated a condom factory that will help both poor Brazilian rubber tappers to make a living and to preserve the Amazon rain forest. Sounds like a win-win deal to me!

“We cannot ignore deforestation by loggers who violate the country’s laws and … threaten tribal Indians and others who depend on (the Amazon),” he said.

President Bush promised to expand American biofuel production but the result seems to be causing more harmthan good. Some believe that corn is a poor source for energy - growing it and other staples as fuel has caused food pricesworldwide to explode, even as the scarcity of flex-fuel vehicles means no significant increase in U.S. biofuel use. Now the U.N.is worried about rising food costs, while environmentalists see entire regions torn up to grow fuel crops. The great ethanol boomof 2007 goes bust on Global Pulse.

Representatives from Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Student Trade Justice Campaign, Food First and Grassroots International held a press conference today to call for a moratorium on all incentives and renewable fuels targets for agrofuels in federal energy legislation until standards can be developed to ensure that plant-based fuels such as biodiesel show significant environmental benefits over fossil fuels, and that they do not contribute to world hunger or human rights abuses.

Raz Godelnik of Eco-Libris writes on the bad news from Brazil about the increasing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest, the measures taken to fight it, and what he thinks should be added to these measures to make sure these precious trees will be kept alive.

The mistreatment of people and the environment is the normal state of affairs in Brazil, where production of ethanol from sugar cane is wreaking havoc on rural inhabitants and their surroundings.

A Brazilian anti-GM campaigner has been murdered at a Syngenta GM crop trial in Paraná, Brazil. Via Campesina (The International Peasants Movement)’s camp at the experimental farm was shot at by security, killing Valmir Mota de Oliveira, a Movimento Sem Terra (the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement) activist.

We’re so happy about this, we might have to move to Brazil!. The American Beverage Company (or, AmBev), recently opened a 1,500 square meter (that translates to over 16,000 square feet) recycling facility near Rio de Janiero. AmBev is the largest drink and bottling business in Latin America.

"Do you have Brazilian teakwood floors in your luxury home? How about Brazilian cherry cabinets? Any Brazilian mahogany items? Well, I certainly hope you are enjoying them. They might have come to you at a huge cost… well beyond what you paid for them."