Microbes — saving lawns and creating dung power
CNET’s News.com has a couple of great stories as part of a special ”agritech” report, or what I would classify as cleantech. The first takes a look at converting barnyard waste — ahem, cow dung — into high-grade fertilizer and methane gas that’s used to create electricity. Not new, but reporter Michael Kanellos explores the growing investment in this space and looks at some companies making a good go at it against the backdrop of skyrocketing fossil-fuel prices.
The second is a story about how biopesticide companies are experiencing tremendous growth as a replacement for chemical pesticides, which are banned in many communities or restricted by regulation. The market is growing by an estimated 22 per cent a year in the United States and could be a billion-dollar industry by 2010. Kanellos takes a look at a few U.S. companies doing work in this important area, though he doesn’t mention botanical approaches (i.e. EcoSmart) and other alternatives.
For a primer on the biopesticide market in Canada, check out this Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada executive summary, which is a couple of years old unfortunately. If anybody knows of any Canadian companies focusing on this area please pass along the names.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
