Heating Homes With Human Waste Is Saving Lives And Tigers In Nepal

BY FC Expert Blogger Carter RobertsThu Aug 4, 2011

 

One man's waste can quite literally be another's gold. Biogas is a clean, odorless, and life-changing source of energy that saves women from spending all day looking for firewood, and thus saves the forests that are home to tigers.

Dirt gets a bad rap. I'm sitting on a dirt floor in Badreni, Nepal, in a home built largely of dirt (waddle and daub) and there's nothing dirty at all about this place. I'm a guest in a biogas home--one of 7,500 the WWF has helped build to date and one of 40,000 that will dot this Nepalese landscape five years from now.

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Air Force Works to Improve Energy Efficency

The vice chief of staff of the Air Force outlined service energy priorities during a keynote address at the 2011 Army-Air Force Energy Forum here July 20.

"The Air Force has developed an energy plan which concentrates on three pillars," Gen. Phil Breedlove said. "We are reducing demand, increasing supply and, probably as important as the first two, changing our usage culture."

General Breedlove said the Air Force is seeking ways to gain assured access to efficient and sufficient supplies of energy, as well as reliable ways to deliver enough operational energy to meet needs in a secure manner.

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Healthcare law has saved seniors $460M on drugs, HHS says

Seniors have saved more than $460 million on prescription drugs because of healthcare reform, the Health and Human Services Department said Thursday.

As part of the Affordable Care law, the pharmaceutical industry agreed to offer a 50 percent discount for brand-name prescription drugs in the Medicare “doughnut hole” — the coverage gap in which seniors pay for their drugs out of pocket.

Nearly 900,000 seniors have received that discount, at a total savings of $461 million, according to HHS.

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