Donie's Ireland daily BLOG Wednesday

Ireland fifth worst country for wasting food  ‘Now a big global concern’

   

IRELAND IS EUROPE’S FIFTH-WORST OFFENDER WITH 280KG WASTED PER HEAD EACH YEAR

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Ireland produces one million tonnes of food waste each year
Up to 30 per cent of food produced for human consumption is wasted by being either lost out of the supply chain or wasted in various ways across the world food system.

The problem affects every step of the food chain from farmers being forced to discard ugly looking produce to supermarkets dumping short-dated stock.

Food waste has become one of the hottest global issues, not least because it exists alongside chronic levels of food poverty, even in first-world countries such as Ireland.

Research commissioned by the Department of Social Protection in 2010 indicated that 10 per cent of people in Ireland were living in food poverty, up from 7 per cent at the height of the boom. Other surveys suggest it may be as high as 15 per cent.
Million tonnes
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that Ireland produces one million tonnes of food waste each year, comprising 500,000 tonnes of agricultural waste or surplus, with the remaining 500,000 tonnes split evenly between commercial and household waste.

On a per capita basis, the average Irish person generates about 280kg of food waste each year, the fifth highest in Europe.

“There’s no one solution to this problem. There’s going to have to be a major rethink at all phases of the food chain,” said Odile Le Bolloch, head of the EPA’s Stop Food Waste programme.

She says throwing away uneaten food is an unnecessary waste of money especially in these straitened times.

Every kilogramme of food waste costs the economy €3, which adds up to €3 billion annually. The problem costs the average household between €700 and €1,000 per year.

Producing food that is not consumed also leads to unnecessary CO2 emissions, in addition to the lost economic value of the food produced.

Ugly fruit  

Ms Le Bolloch is sceptical of claims by supermarkets that consumers won’t buy unattractive looking fruit and vegetables, believing shoppers to be less fussy. Indeed, a recent poll in the UK found that 80 per cent of shoppers claimed not to be put off by irregularly shaped produce.

By ignoring sell-by dates and using their common sense, in other words their eyes and noses to vet food, consumers can significantly reduce their waste footprints, says Ms Le Bolloch.

One organisation trying to bridge the gap is the Bia Foodbank. The group wants to set up a national food recovery system that will store and maintain surplus produce resulting from overproduction or shipment delays, which can then be accessed by charities.

Charities and voluntary groups in the Republic currently spend €12 million on food support services every year.

The IMF wants Ireland to speed up home repossessions

    

THE IMF HAS CALLED FOR SPECIALIST JUDGES TO BE USED TO SPEED UP THE REPOSSESSION OF HOMES BY BANKS.

In its latest staff report, it said the overall number of repossessions in Ireland was very low, with just 0.3pc of those in arrears losing their homes compared to rates of 3pc to 5pc in Britain and the USA.

The IMF noted that the Government had committed to closing a loophole in the law which has effectively prevented most house repossessions for the past two years.

But it also called for changes to the courts process so that banks would be able to reposses houses faster.

“Banks report Circuit Court proceedings take a number of years due to adjournments and subsequent appeals. By comparison, the process is faster in the U.K. with many cases completed in one to two years,” it said,

The IMF staff report said that specialist judges could be used in the High Court and the Circuit Court to handle “a potentially larger volume of repossession cases in an expedited manner”.

The comments are likely to heap further pressure on Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his Government, who have repeatedly insisted that repossession of houses will only happen as a “last resort”.

The IMF is one of the three bodies funding Ireland’s bailout programme, which is due to expire at the end of this year. Its staff reports are prepared by its own officials, following discussions with the Government during their visit to Dublin.

The IMF has said that the views are those of the staff and do not “necessarily reflect” the views of the IMF Executive Board.

Glitch hits on-line banking yet again

  

Customers of the two major Irish banks were unable to access their accounts online yesterday.

People seeking to log on to their accounts at AIB and Permanent TSB were faced with notices from the banks warning them of technical problems.

Customers were unable to make money transfers or to pay bills.

AIB later issued a statement apologising for the problems and for the inconvenience caused to its customers.

The statement said that internet, mobile banking and iBB services were back up and running later.

A spokeswoman said the problem lasted “for a short period… over an hour” but was resolved.

The glitch that hit Permanent TSB knocked out online banking and the banks’ telephone services.

“It lasted for an hour but the problems were resolved and all services are back as normal,” said a spokesman.

The spokesman said all the network’s ATM cash machines were ‘fully functional’.

The bank also apologised for the inconvenience to its customers.

Big hopes for oil strike off west of Ireland coast

      

The ExxonMobil company just started its test drilling programme about 200km off the west coast of Ireland, and it’s no wonder then that the oil ‘minnows’ are hopping with anticipation.

John Teeling is never one to let the grass grow under his feet and the announcement yesterday by his Petrel Resources that it has just acquired additional data on its licence area in the Porcupine Basin came hot on the heels of ExxonMobil’s move.

The oil giant is forking out about $160m on its drilling programme in the Dunquin licence areas, in which another Irish oil firm, Providence Resources has a 16pc stake. That Dunquin prospect is only about 35km from where Petrel Resources is probing.

Needless to say, should ExxonMobil find commercial and extractable oil, expect shares in Petrel to rocket.

Likewise, should the oil major find nothing, you can expect a journey down south to follow. Last year Teeling sold his Kilbeggan whiskey business to US outfit Jim Beam for €72m.

The payday from striking oil or gas could be a multiple of that. But of course there is always the harsh reality: close to 200 wells have been drilled off Irish waters but only two of them have yielded commercially active operations – Kinsale and Corrib. The wait for riches could be long.

Cholesterol drugs may save sight for people with Macular degeneration 

   

Eye drops designed to lower cholesterol may be able to prevent one of the most common forms of blindness, according to US researchers.

They showed how high cholesterol levels could affect the immune system and lead to macular degeneration.

Tests on mice and humans, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that immune cells became destructive when they were clogged with fats.

Others cautioned that the research was still at an early stage.

The macula is the sweet spot in the eye which is responsible for fine detail. It is essential for reading, driving and recognising people’s faces.

Macular degeneration is more common in old age. It starts in a “dry” form in which the light-sensing cells in the eye become damaged, but can progress into the far more threatening “wet” version, when newly formed blood vessels can rapidly cause blindness.

Fatty clues

Doctors at the Washington University School of Medicine investigated the role of macrophages, a part of the immune system, in the transition from the dry to the wet form of the disease.

One of the researchers, Dr Rajendra Apte, said the role of macrophages changed and they triggered the production of new blood vessels.

“Instead of being protective, they accelerate the disease, but we didn’t understand why they switched to become the bad cells,” he told the BBC.

Normally the cells can “eat” fatty deposits and send them back into the blood.

However, their research showed that older macrophages struggle. They could still eat the fats, but they could not expel them. So they became “bloated”, causing inflammation which in turn led to the creation of new blood vessels.

Dr Apte said: “Based on our findings, we need to investigate whether vision loss caused by macular degeneration could be prevented with cholesterol-lowering eye drops or other medications that might prevent the build-up of lipids beneath the retina.”

Clara Eaglen, from the charity RNIB for the visually impaired, said: “This new research is very interesting as it shows that cholesterol-lowering drugs could be used to prevent thousands of people losing their sight unnecessarily from conditions such as AMD [age-related macular degeneration] – the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK.

“The more aggressive of the two forms, wet AMD, can take your central vision in as little as three months if left untreated.

“Clearly this research is still at an early stage but it will be exciting to watch how it progresses and at some point cholesterol-lowering eye drops may become part of a growing army of treatments for sight-threatening eye conditions.”

Irish nano-scientist Prof John Boland awarded €2.5m ERC grant to pursue nanowire research

   

Irish nanoscientist awarded €2.5m ERC grant to pursue nanowire research

Prof John Boland, above director of the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN)

Prof John Boland, the director of the nanoscience institute CRANN, has been awarded €2.5m from the European Research Council (ERC), to continue pursuing research into how nanowire networks can lead to new smart materials, sensors, digital memory applications and potentially the next generation of computers.

Boland, who heads up CRANN, which is based at Trinity College Dublin, has secured the second only advanced ERC grant that’s ever been awarded for physical sciences research in Ireland.

The ERC funding is the maximum amount of funding that can be awarded to an individual.

Boland and his team at CRANN will use the funding to continue their research into nanowires, with the aim of creating computer networks that can mimic the functions of the human brain and improve on computer capabilities such as facial recognition.

Nanowires themselves are spaghetti-like structures that are made of materials such as copper or silicon. They are just a few atoms thick and can be engineered into tangled networks of nanowires. Researchers around the globe are investigating the potential for nanowires to be used in solar power generating technologies and to create next-generation computers.

NEXT-GENERATION OF COMPUTING

Boland said that he has discovered that exposing a random network of nanowires to stimuli such as electricity, light and chemicals generates chemical reaction at the junctions where the nanowires cross.

By controlling the stimuli, it could then be possible to harness these reactions to manipulate the connectivity within the network, according to Boland. He said this breakthrough could eventually allow computations that mimic the functions of the nerves in the human brain.

“The human brain is neurologically advanced and exploits connectivity that is controlled by electrical and chemical signals. My research will create nanowire networks that have the potential to mimic aspects of the neurological functions of the human brain, which may revolutionise the performance of current day computers,” he explained.