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The Headlines:
Oil trader fined for illegal dumping
Protesters travel 8,000 miles to protest plastic pollution
UNICEF unleashes “dirty water” vending machine
Norwegian couple protests rail restrictions
Massey CEO has no regrets about mine explosion
Tiny cows could help sustainable beef farming

The Details:

Oil trader fined for illegal dumping

Oil trading company Trafigura was fined 1 million Euros Friday for dumping tons of hazardous waste in west Africa in 2006. A Netherlands court convicted the firm on criminal charges, also saying that the company had concealed the dangerous nature of the waste when it was initially unloaded from a ship in Amsterdam.

Over 30,000 Africans became ill after the toxic waste was dumped on the Ivory Coast. The fine is only half the amount sought by the Dutch prosecutors.

Trafigura has been steadily paying for this incident. Three years ago, Trafigura paid 100 million pounds to the Ivorian government to help clean up the waste. And last year, Trafigura was forced to pay compensation totaling 30 million pounds to the thousands of Africans who needed medical treatment following the dump.

In a statement from the firm, Trafigura officials say they are considering appealing Friday’s verdict.

Protesters travel 8,000 miles to protest plastic pollution

It started with a sailboat made from 12,500 plastic bottles and dubbed “Plastiki“. It ended with a successful trip 8,000 miles long.

Sailors aboard the Plastiki started their journey in April 2010 and traveled for 130 days, a trip that began in San Francisco and ended on Monday in Sydney, Australia.

David de Rothschild began the project as a way to protest humanity’s wastefulness with plastic, citing environmental havoc it causes, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other floating trash patches. Volunteers on the project hope their trip will inspire people to use less plastic, and to reuse it in innovative ways, such as they did with the Plastiki.

UNICEF unleashes “dirty water” vending machine

UNICEF, as part of their “Tap Project”, has unveiled a stunt vending machine serving dirty water for $1 a bottle in Manhattan. Flavors include malaria, typhoid, hepatitis and cholera.

The $1 doesn’t go to waste, though. Each dollar fed to the vending machine will go toward safe drinking water for 40 children for a day. Sadly, 4200 children die of water-related diseases every day. And over a billion people across the world don’t have access to clean drinking water.

The Tap Project started in 2007 when UNICEF got 300 restaurants to charge patrons $1 for their tap water which was donated to UNICEF to bring safe drinking water to those in need. The project now boasts thousands of participating restaurants.

Norwegian couple protests rail restrictions

Don’t upset the Norwegians, or they’ll take it to the streets! That’s what a couple named Ole-Jørgen and Torill did when they were denied access to a train because their electric wheelchairs are 34cm too long.

They were just trying to go from Trondheim to Oslo on the train. But when they weren’t allowed to board, they decided to make the 300 mile journey, using nothing but their electric wheelchairs.

The trip took them nine days and the couple had to periodically charge their wheelchairs at campsites along the way, but they finally got to their destination. No word yet on how they plan to get back.

Massey CEO has no regrets about mine explosion

The Massey Upper Big Branch, Virginia coal mine blew up in April, killing 29 workers. The company had been cited several times for safety violations before this tragedy occurred.

But the CEO of Massey, Don Blankenship, says he has no regrets about how the company deals with safety issues.

Last week, Blankenship decided to speak to the Washington press corps about the incident. But instead of apologizing, he went on a tirade, subjecting the press to a long-winded diatribe about global poverty, preventable disease, the national debt, highway deaths, physics, the relationship between facts and happiness and his need for the federal government to leave him alone.

Blankenship is suing the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) for disapproving Massey’s use of scrubbers to take coal dust out of the air. And that, apparently, is Blankenship’s only regret: “What I could have done is be more like I normally am, and sued MSHA the first time they turned off a scrubber, instead of waiting until they turned off 43,” Blankenship said.

Tiny cows could help sustainable beef farming

A Seattle professor could be changing the way America farms. Professor Richard Gradwohl owns a cow farm in Seattle and he was being swallowed by financial trouble. Eventually he was forced to sell off 60 acres of land.

In an effort to maximize his output while minimizing his space, Gradwohl figured out that it’s possible to raise 10 miniature cows on five acres, rather than just two full-sized cows, so the land could yield up to three times as much beef – but the cows only need one third of the feed.

Not only are they smaller and easier to manage, but it takes 10 mini cows to produce the amount of methane of one full-sized cow. Also, the meat from smaller cows actually tastes better. The bigger the cow, the longer the cells in the muscle are. A shorter cell means more tender beef, so smaller breeds have naturally better flavor.

Gradwohl now ships semen, embryos and cattle all over the world, and there are now over 20,000 mini cows in the US.