forestry

In a practice I can hardly fathom, the Turkish government has been giving 155 million new textbooks each year to students, most of which are thrown into the trash at the end of the year rather than simply requiring they return them for use by next year’s crop of students.

Of course there’s not only an environmental cost to this enormous waste of resources, but an economic cost as well, with the books costing the Turkish public more than $800 million annually.
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(Picture: the Brazilian Senate in session. Credit: Agencia Senado Brazil.) The Brazilian Senate approved last week a modification to the law that establishes the amount of land the government can concede for rural use in the Legal Amazon without the need for a tender process. The previous limit was 500 hectares and now it's gone up to 15 fiscal modules: each municipality establishes the extension of the modules, and in some places they reach 100 hectares, which sets the maximum to 1500 hectares.

Robert "Chip" Beam built his own wood-powered pickup truck. The wood-burning, or rather wood-gas burning truck is now a sort of mascot for Beaver Energy, the Williamsport, Pennsylvania based startup company Beam and partners Larry Shilling and Aron Lantz have formed.

If he did it, you could too. Read on for tips and links to learn how to make your own Wood-powered Pickup Truck, with videos of the wood-powered pickup truck in action and a video guide to building your own wood-gas generator....