Two weeks ago, I broke the news of a new FDA report that estimated for the first time the amount of antibiotics sold in the United States every year for use in agriculture: 28.8 million pounds.

That long-awaited report didn’t answer a crucial question: What volume of antibiotics are sold in the United States each year for human use. It’s a crucial question because, in answer to concerns about antibiotic resistance arising on farms, the answer has always been that human medicine is equally culpable because it uses similar volumes of antibiotics.

The only research that has attempted to answer that question is contained in a decade-old report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that put the proportion of antibiotics going to animals at 70 percent of the U.S. total.

That UCS report and estimate are a decade old not because no one has cared about the topic, but because accurate updated figures have been so hard to get. So we owe a special holiday thank-you to the researchers at the Center for a Livable Future, who decided the release of the FDA report justified another attempt to get the numbers straight. They succeeded.

The proportion of antibiotics sold in the United States each year that go to animals turns out to be not 70 percent, but rather 80 percent. Here’s CLF’s Ralph Loglisci, who got the confirmatory numbers from the FDA:

In accordance with a 2008 amendment to the Animal Drug User Fee Act, for the first time the FDA released last week an annual amount of antimicrobial drugs sold and distributed for use in food animals. The grand total for 2009 is 13.1 million kilograms or 28.8 million pounds. I … contacted the FDA for an estimate of the volume of antibiotics sold for human use in 2009. This is what a spokesperson told me:

“Our Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology just finished an analysis based on IMS Health data. Sales data in kilograms sold for selected antibacterial drugs were obtained as a surrogate of human antibacterial drug use in the U.S. market. Approximately 3.3 million kilograms of antibacterial drugs were sold in year 2009. OSE states that all data in this analysis have been cleared for public use by IMS Health, IMS National Sales Perspectives™.”

3.3 million kilograms is a little over 7 million pounds. As far as I can determine, this is the first time the FDA has made data on estimates of human usage public.

At its blog, CLF lays out the math for each major drug class as sold for animal use and human use, with a long discussion of the significance of the different drug classes. Here’s the CLF table summing up the math, but please go over to CLF’s blog for its discussion.

Most important to note: Most of the drugs used in animal agriculture and in human medicine are functionally identical. That’s one reason why the overuse of antibiotics in animals is such a concern: When organisms become resistant on the farm to drugs used on livestock, they are becoming resistant to the exact same drugs used in humans. (One major drug category used in animals, ionophores, do not have a direct human analog. But use of them on farms is still a concern, because resistance factors can move freely between species of bacteria. That’s a discussion for another day.)

Loglisci’s conclusion is also worth underlining:

The next battle, which industry has already begun, is defining what non-therapeutic use will constitute. Producers are already claiming that the use of antibiotics for growth promotion has decreased, maintaining current low-dose usage is aimed at disease prevention. Regardless, all low-dose usage of antibiotics can lead to a significant increase in antibiotic resistance.

The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined--electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.

The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, shows that the EPA has ignored warnings about the use of clothianidin, a pesticide produced by Bayer that mainly is used to pre-treat corn seeds. The pesticide scooped up $262 million in sales in 2009 by farmers, who also use the substance on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat, according to Grist.

The leaked document (PDF) was put out in response to Bayer's request to approve use of the pesticide on cotton and mustard. The document invalidates a prior Bayer study that justified the registration of clothianidin on the basis of its safety to honeybees:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

The entire 101-page memo is damning (and worth a read). But the opinion of EPA scientists apparently isn't enough for the agency, which is allowing clothianidin to keep its registration.

Suspicions about clothianidin aren't new; the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFAD) first expressed concern when the pesticide was introduced, in 2003, about the "possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators [e.g., honeybees] through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment." Clothianidin was still allowed on the market while Bayer worked on a botched toxicity study [PDF], in which test and control fields were planted as close as 968 feet apart.

Clothianidin has already been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects. So why won't the EPA follow? The answer probably has something to do with the American affinity for corn products. But without honey bees, our entire food supply is in trouble.

While the global market for ever more sophisticated tech gadgets grows, the metals and minerals that make them go are controlled by a handful of countries.

To see a list of the raw materials that comprise a cell phone or a computer is to burrow to the planet's core. Some of the names are familiar -- gold, tin -- while others sound as exotic as the places from which they come -- tantalum, indium. As our gadget dependency grows, so does our appetite for these bits of Earth. In fact, demand for the 14 most-critical minerals for today's electronic technologies may as much as triple over the next 20 years, according to the European Commission.

Myriad factors -- volatile markets, low substitution rates, export restrictions -- make some materials more precious than others. "The era of access to easy resources is over," says mining analyst Paul Bugala of Calvert Investments. And while governments may be eager to cash in on their mineral wealth, "the track record for developing countries taking advantage of natural-resource wealth in a sustainable way is really short," he says. "There's often a race to the bottom in terms of regulation and development cost. Any means necessary is used to make sure we have the coltan in our cell phones." Here, a look at these in-demand materials and the nations that produce them.

Charts reflect each country's officially reported share of global production, based on latest available data compiled by the European Commission. Only market share of 10% or higher is shown.

Canada: Lithium batteries account for roughly 20% of the cobalt used today, but portable battery usage is expected to rise sharply over the next decade, especially with the emergence of electric vehicles.

U.S.: Beryllium -- a toxic, light metal with high melting point and strength -- is used in computer and telecom products, as well as home appliances, automotive electronics, and medical equipment. The bulk of the world's beryllium is mined in Utah and Alaska.

Mexico: Geologists laud fluorspar both for its beauty -- it's a rainbow of dazzling crystals, ranging from fluorescent white to deep black -- and for its versatility. It's commonly used in steel, paints, floor insulation, high-performance optics (in place of glass), and even chimney linings.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: After protests against Intel and Apple for their opaque supply chains, President Barack Obama signed a law in July that requires firms to report to the SEC whether their products contain "conflict minerals," including the tin, gold, and cobalt that have helped fuel years of warfare in the D.R.C. Counting both black-market and official output, the D.R.C. also produces an estimated one-fifth of the world's tantalum, a coltan extract that helps energy storage in devices such as the iPod. "This law is going to affect virtually the entire U.S. manufacturing sector," says Rick Goss, VP of environment at the Information Technology Industry Council.

Brazil: The majority of niobium makes its way into structural steel. It's also used in medical tech (MRI scanners, pacemakers) and electronics (microcapacitors). From 1995 to 2005, production of the lustrous gray metal more than doubled. The big beneficiary: the Brazilian company CBMM, which controls 70% of the global market.

Russia: Vehicle manufacturers currently account for roughly half of global platinum and palladium consumption. Though automotive air-pollution-reduction technology in automobiles provides the hottest demand for the six platinum-group metals (iridium, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhodium, and ruthenium), these minerals can also be found up and down the electronics aisle, in hard disks, integrated circuits, and LCD panels.

Turkey: As recently as 1995, nearly half of the world's magnesium came from the U.S., but Uncle Sam has since lost its lead in the market for this commonly used structural metal. New production out of Turkey and China has lowered prices.

The US is closely monitoring China's expanding role in Africa, the latest secret US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks reveal. A cable from February quotes a senior US official in Nigeria's main city, Lagos, describing China as "aggressive and pernicious".

US diplomatic cables from Africa also reveal claims by oil giant Shell that it infiltrated Nigerian ministries.

Wikileaks has so far released more than 1,100 of 251,000 secret US cables. The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the latest documents provide a fascinating insight into Washington's rivalry with Beijing in Africa.

China has massively expanded its economic ties to countries across Africa in recent years, sparking criticism from human rights groups, who accuse Beijing of helping some of Africa's worst governments stay in power.

China adopts a policy of not interfering in domestic politics, while Western countries sometimes make aid conditional on "good governance".

The cable, published by the Guardian newspaper, quotes Johnnie Carson, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, who had been meeting oil company representatives in Lagos.

He describes China as "a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals".

The Chinese are dealing with the Mugabe's and Bashir's of the world, which is a contrarian political model”

Close relations: Chinese President Hu Jintao accompanies Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.

Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.

The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.

The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.

New horizons? Mugabe has said: 'We must turn from the West and face the East'

The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.

Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.

Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.

All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.

From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.

'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.

China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.

President Robert Mugabe leaving the eleventh ordinary session of the assembly of the African Union heads of State and government in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been holding a mock filibuster today (mock, because he's not actually blocking a measure scheduled for a vote on the floor), with welcome help from Sens. Sherrod Brown and Mary Landrieu. It might not be the real thing, but it's been powerful in laying out the progressive case against this tax deal. He's particularly strong when he's talking about income inequality, points he made in this video:

"Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income," Sanders said. "The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income--more than the entire bottom 50 percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent."

PolitiFact got requests to fact-check Sander's claim. They did, and found it's true.

So, we're left with three studies that vary slightly but which all point in the same general direction -- showing the top 1 percent earning between 21.4 and 23.5 percent of the national income in 2007. The studies also show that this share exceeds what the entire bottom 50 percent of the United States earns. So we rate Sanders' statement True.

Whether it's 21.4 or 23.5 percent is of much less importance than the fact that the top one percent earns more than the entire bottom 50 percent. That's obscene, and Democrats should not be lining up to perpetuate that status quo.

Senator Bernie Sanders spent 8.5 hours today schooling us by, “reminding the world that lack of jobs and declining incomes are bad things.”

“I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides.” Technically, this isn’t a filibuster but his point is well taken.

A WikiLeaks cable details the behind-the-scenes diplomacy before Cardinal Seán Brady met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, after which the pope said he shared the 'outrage, betrayal and shame' of Irish Catholics. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal.

Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy "offended many in the Vatican" who felt that the Irish government had "failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations", a cable says.

Despite the lack of co-operation from the Vatican, the commission was able to substantiate many of the claims and concluded that some bishops had tried to cover up abuse, putting the interests of the Catholic church ahead of those of the victims. Its report identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese.

A cable entitled "Sex abuse scandal strains Irish-Vatican relations, shakes up Irish church, and poses challenges for the Holy See" claimed that Vatican officials also believed Irish opposition politicians were "making political hay" from the situation by publicly urging the government to demand a reply from the Vatican.

Ultimately, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (equivalent to a prime minister), wrote to the Irish embassy, ordering that any requests related to the investigation must come through diplomatic channels.

In the cable Noel Fahey, the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, told the US diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the Irish clergy sex abuse scandal was the most difficult crisis he had ever managed.

The Irish government wanted "to be seen as co-operating with the investigation" because its own education department was implicated, but politicians were reluctant to press Vatican officials to answer the investigators' queries.

According to Fahey's deputy, Helena Keleher, the government acceded to Vatican pressure and granted them immunity from testifying. Officials understood that "foreign ambassadors are not required or expected to appear before national commissions", but Keleher's opinion was that by ignoring the commission's requests the clergy had made the situation worse.

The cable reveals the behind-the-scenes diplomacy in which politicians in the Irish government attempted to persuade an imperious Vatican to engage with the investigation.

The foreign minister, Michael Martin, "was forced to call in the papal nuncio (representative)" to discuss the situation. The ambassador reported that resentment towards the church in Rome remained very high in Ireland, largely because of the institutionalised cover-up of abuse by the Catholic church hierarchy.

Finally the Vatican changed tactics and on 11 December 2009 the ambassador stated that the pope had held a meeting with senior Irish clerics. The Irish cardinal Seán Brady and the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, went to Rome and met the pontiff, who was flanked by Bertone and four other cardinals.

At the end of the meeting, the Vatican issued a statement saying that the pope shared the "outrage, betrayal, and shame" of Irish Catholics, that he was praying for the victims, and that the church would take steps to prevent recurrences.

On 21 March this year, Benedict issued a letter savaging the Irish bishops for their earlier handling of the crisis: "Grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."

He also apologised to the victims: "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."

In a section entitled "Some Lessons Learned, but Crisis Will Play Out for Years", the ambassador related that his contacts at the Vatican and in Ireland expected the crisis in the Irish Catholic church to be protracted over several years, as the Murphy commission dealt only with allegations from the Dublin archdiocese.

They believed further investigations into other archdioceses would lead, "officials in both states lament, to additional painful revelations".

This chart is from a paper called "Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton.

The top row shows the actual distribution of wealth in America. The richest 20 percent, represented by that blue line, has about 85 percent of the wealth. The next richest 20 percent, represented by that red line, has about 10 percent of the wealth. And the remaining three-fifths of America shares a tiny sliver of the country's wealth.

Below that, the "Estimated" rows show how different groups think wealth is distributed. As you can see, in people's misinformed minds things are much more equitable.

Matt Yglesias explains what's interesting here:

What’s interesting here is the extent to which the public vastly overestimates the prosperity of lower-income Americans. The public thinks the 4th quintile has more money than the median quintile actually has. And the public thinks the 5th quintile has vastly more wealth than it really has.

You can easily see how this could have a giant distorting effect on our politics. Poor Americans are simply much, much, much needier than people realize and this is naturally going to lead to an undue slighting of their interests.

Indeed. It's fine if reasonable people have different ideas about whether we should extend the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. Or think estate taxes are unfair. But when we have those debates, it's critical that everyone has a clear understanding of how things really are. We're becoming a plutocracy.

Today is World AIDS Day. Yesterday, HP announced that it has teamed up with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to help bring adequate treatment to infants infected with HIV in Kenya. By building five data centers in Kenya, two of which are already operational, HP and CHAI have set themselves the goal of cutting down diagnosis response times from several months to just one or two days.

"Almost 10% of women in Kenya have HIV," Gabi Zedlmayer, HP's Vice President of its Office of Global Social Innovation, tells Fast Company, adding that that means 120,000 Kenyan infants are exposed to HIV annually either by contracting it from their mother or breastfeeding. Timely and appropriate medical attention is crucial for infants infected with HIV: "If they don't get treatment in time," says Zedlmayer, "half of HIV patients will not see their second birthday."

HP's and CHAI's initiative joins others, including a similar collaboration between UNICEF and Frog Design in Zambia and Malawi. HP, for its part, has set itself the goal of reaching 70,000 of the infants infected within the first year of the program, and then almost half again as many within the following year. "I'm pleased HP's technology and expertise will enable the partnership with CHAI to save the lives of more than 100,000 infants in Kenya each year," said Bill Clinton in a release.

The data centers HP and CHAI have been helping to build can be scaled up to support other health initiatives in the future. "This is something that hasn't existed in Kenya," says Zedlmayer. "They're starting to build up an IT infrastructure in the health space." HP spent $1 million in the effort, on things like servers, PCs, and local IT training. It also supported an project by students at Nairobi's Strathmore University, who developed an application that uses cloud computing to make results available to health workers in the field with SMS-enabled printers.

A pro-bono spirit is increasingly a part of the culture at HP, claims Zedlmayer, saying that the company allows employees to spend four hours on such projects each month. She says of young employees, in particular, that "a lot wouldn't even come to companies" like HP unless a spirit of volunteerism existed in the corporation: "they see that as a core value."

In President Clinton's assessment, the new collaboration helps "demonstrate how the private sector can and should operate in the developing world."

Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates has announced that his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is launching a $20 million grant designed to get entrepreneurs to develop new technologies to help students obtain their college degrees.

The Gates Foundation is seeking to get entrepreneurs involved in tackling the issues surrounding America’s struggling education system. The foundation has already put billions toward education-related grants, and Bill Gates was a prominent character in Waiting for Superman, a new documentary that analyzes the failures of the American education system.

The Next Generation Learning Challenges fund will be divided into grants ranging from $250,000 to $750,000, focused on technologies that emphasize blended learning models, deepen student engagement and learning through interactive application, high-quality open courseware and learning analytics for monitoring student progress.

The deadline for the program is November 17; grants will be announced in March 2011. While the Gates Foundation will provide funds for the project, the nonprofit organization EDUCAUSE will run the program. It will award grants every six to 12 months.

According to Gates, it isn’t limiting the grants to any specific type of organization. He believes that non-profits will primarily apply for grants related to blended learning models, but that he hopes there will be a mix of private companies and startups for grants related to deepening student engagement and learning.

The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition introduces a new “double” food pyramid designed to aid consumers with selecting foods that contribute to a balanced diet and are sustainable for the environment.

The Double Food Pyramid was released more than fifteen years after the US Department of Agriculture developed and released the first Food Pyramid to illustrate how to achieve a nutritionally balanced diet.

As seen in the infographic above, the left diagram illustrates the suggested intake for each respective food group in increasing order as the reader moves down the pyramid, while the right diagram shows the corresponding ecological impact.

According to the Barilla Center,

From “Double Pyramid” can be observed that the food which is recommended more frequent consumption, are also those with minor environmental impacts. Conversely, foods for which consumption is recommended less frequent, are also those that have most impact. In other words, this developing new food pyramid shows the coincidence, in one model, two different but equally important goals:health and environmental protection.

View the full interactive infographic here.

Barilla Center

Having noticed that people seldom walk straight through regular pedestrian crossings, Korean designer Jae Min Lim designed the ‘Ergo Crosswalk’ that features an arc shape to help the pedestrians take a much faster shortcut.

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The following information is from the designer:

“When people cross roads, they tend to take the fastest shortcut. They sometimes do it intentionally, but mostly it is an unconscious act. This kind of action violates the traffic regulations and sometimes threatens the safety of the pedestrians. The ‘ergo crosswalk’ is a design that makes people follow the law, as well as consider their habits or unconscious actions. It will encourage pedestrians to follow the lines of the cross walk and protect them from any potential danger. If regulations cannot force people to follow the law, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to change the law and fulfill the main purpose of keeping the safety and convenience of the pedestrian?”

Designer: Jae Min Lim

The UK’s first people-powered VW Beetle has taken to the streets of Bristol in what has been hailed as a breakthrough in the drive to encourage sustainable power.

The Bio-Bug runs on methane gas generated during the sewage treatment process.

Waste flushed down the toilets of just 70 homes in Bristol is enough to power the Bio-Bug for a year, based on an annual mileage of 10,000 miles.

With support from the South West Regional Development Agency, GENeco, a Wessex Water-owned company, imported specialist equipment to treat gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works in Avonmouth to power the VW Beetle in a way that doesn’t affect its performance.

Mohammed Saddiq, GENeco’s general manager, said he was confident that methane from sewage sludge could be used as an alternative energy source and was an innovative way of powering company vehicles.

He said: “Our site at Avonmouth has been producing biogas for many years which we use to generate electricity to power the site and export to the National Grid.

“With the surplus gas we had available we wanted to put it to good use in a sustainable and efficient way.

“We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK.

“If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.”

Countries including India and China use compressed natural gas (CNG) to power vehicles and a number of companies in the UK are now using CNG mainly to fuel buses and commercial vehicles. In Sweden, more than 11,500 vehicles already run on biomethane produced from sewage plants.

But using biogas from sewage sludge is yet to take off in the UK despite a significant amount being produced everyday at sewage plants around the country.

To use biogas as vehicle fuel without affecting vehicle performance or reliability the gas needs to be treated – a process called biogas upgrading. It involves carbon dioxide being separated from the biogas using specialist equipment.

If all the biogas produced at Avonmouth was converted to run cars it would avoid around 19,000 tonnes of CO₂.

GENeco believes that more gas will be produced at its Avonmouth site when the company embarks on its latest green venture to recycle food waste.

Mr Saddiq said: “Waste flushed down the toilets in homes in the city provides power for the Bio-Bug, but it won’t be long before further energy is produced when food waste is recycled at our sewage works.

“It will mean that both human waste and food waste will be put to good use in a sustainable way that diverts waste from going to landfill.”

Around 18 million cubic metres of biogas is produced at Bristol sewage treatment works a year.

It is generated through anaerobic digestion – a process in which bugs in the absence of oxygen break down biodegradable material to produce methane.

Bath-based Greenfuel Company converted the Beetle so it could run on biogas while bosses from GENeco ran a workshop at a University of Bath event for teenagers from schools in Bath and North East Somerset to come up with ideas for the car’s design.

Mr Saddiq added: “The choice of car was inspired by students who took part in a workshop. They thought it would be appropriate that the poo-powered car should be the classic VW Beetle Bug because bugs naturally breakdown waste at sewage works to start the treatment process which goes on to produce the energy.”

The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) said the launch of the Bio-Bug proved that biomethane from sewage sludge could be used as an alternative fuel for vehicles.

ADBA chairman Lord Rupert Redesdale said: “This is a very exciting and forward-thinking project demonstrating the myriad benefits of anaerobic digestion (AD).

“Biomethane cars could be just as important as electric cars, and the water regulator Ofwat should promote the generation of as much biogas as possible through sewage works in the fight against climate change.”

ADBA chief executive Charlotte Morton added: “We are delighted to see such ingenuity and commitment to maximising the potential of AD from the water industry.”

GENeco said if the trial involving the Bio-Bug proved successful it would look to convert some of the company’s fleet of vehicles to run on biogas.

Claire Gibson, director of sustainable resources at the South West RDA, said: “I am really pleased that we have been able to support GENeco to demonstrate this alternative transport fuel.

“We have invested in a range of emerging low carbon technologies and renewable energy fuel types such as this to ensure the South West is well positioned to take advantage of this growing market.

“It is vital that the knowledge from initiatives such as this biogas project is shared so we can move more quickly towards a low carbon, resource efficient economy. I look forward to continuing to work with GENeco to achieve this."

Bio-Bug is a modified Volkswagen Beetle that runs on human waste and is the UK’s first car to be powered by sewage byproducts. The car was made by Wessex Water, a sewage utility company based in Bristol, that used excess methane gas produced in one of its treatment plants as fuel for the car. The company claims that the Bio-Bug is extremely efficient and needs waste from just 70 local homes to keep it running for a year.

Quandary: You live in a place so beautifully sunny that you could probably power your home with solar-energy, but it is so beautifully sunny that you spend the whole day lazing in a hammock sipping iced-tea. The answer, my idle friend, is the Sunfish, solar-power that is literally plug-and-play. It’s so easy to install that even you could do it.

Sunfish works like this: You lay out a solar-panel and hook it up to the power-module. Plug this into any power-socket in your house. Then, plug in the accompanying circuit-monitor, a controller box which connects to the power-module via Wi-Fi and lets you keep an eye on things (via any web-connected device). That’s it. As long as the sun is shining, the setup pumps electricity into you mains circuit.

There are two models. The 200-watt version will power your lights (although why you would run lights with the sun shining outside is a mystery). The 1kW version will take care of washing machines and the like. If you need more power, you can just plug in more boxes.

It’s ingenious, and because its so easy to install it is pretty much portable: a boon for those in rented accommodation. The Sunfish will be available next year, at planned prices of $600 to $900 for the smaller model and $3,000 to $4,500 for the bigger one. Clarian, the company behind the device, says that a unit will pay for itself in a couple years.

I’m sold. I have been considering solar power ever since moving to Spain, but it has always seemed so complicated to set up. This plug-and-go option isn’t exactly cheap, but it sure is easy.

Sunfish: Revolutionizing Renewable Energy

The Solar Roadways project is working to pave roads with solar panels that you can drive on. Co-founder Scott Brusaw has made some major steps forward since our first visit back in 2007, so we visited him again earlier this year for an exclusive update on the project, including the first ever video recorded of the Solar Roadways prototype! For more information visit http://www.solarroadways.com . This Solar Roadway project will be featured in the upcoming feature film by YERT - Your Environmental Road Trip. To learn more about YERT, visit http://yert.com .