Posted by rji | Filed under
Equestrian News,
General Info Olympic Horse Manure Management Going Green in Hong Kong
A recent press release is emphasising Chinas green credentials in the work-up to the 2008 Olympics .
The Hong Kong Jockey Club recently demonstrated its manure management program, illustrating one way in which the club will observe the "Green Olympics" theme of the 2008 Olympic Games. Stable waste and manure from the Olympic equestrian venues at Sha Tin and Beas River will be recycled to produce organic fertilizer via an earthworm vermicomposting method.
But does this sit well with the moral majority considering the current and usual state of Chinese pollution levels :
Hong Kong grapples with chronic air pollution, partly from industrial smog blown in from Guangdong, but also from coal-fired power stations. The city's picturesque harbour is now regularly shrouded in a thick smog, particularly during the winter months.
China's coastal waters remain severely polluted and excessive discharge of industrial waste is the main culprit, a government report said. A total of 145,000 square km (55,985 sq miles) of Chinese coastal waters did not meet environmental standards, according to the 2007 China Oceanic Environment Report by the State Oceanic Administration.
Pollution in China has reached worrying heights. Sixteen of the world's 20 most-polluted cities are in China, and pollution from China is reaching the U.S
A village in Shanxi province survives on trucked-in water because underground explosions for coal mining have drained the lakes and wells. The coal keeps electric plants humming, but the mining generates pollution that has left farmers fields toxic.
The density of Chinese pollution has amazed researchers. Hans Friedli, a chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., recalls flying through plumes off the Chinese coast near Shanghai two years ago that contained pollutants in the "highest concentration that I have ever seen from an aircraft, except when I've flown into forest fires."
China has become not just the world's manufacturer but also its despoiler, on a scale as monumental as its economic expansion. Chinese ecosystems were already dreadfully compromised before the Communist Party took power in 1949, but Mao managed to accelerate their destruction. With one stroke he launched the "backyard furnace" campaign, in which some 90 million peasants became grassroots steel smelters; to fuel the furnaces, villagers cut down a 10th of China's trees in a few months. The steel ultimately proved unusable. With another stroke, Mao perpetrated the "Kill the Four Pests" campaign, inducing the mass slaughter of millions of sparrows and a subsequent explosion in the locust population. The destruction of forests led to erosion and the spread of deserts, and the locust resurgence prompted a collapse of the nation's grain crop. The result was history's greatest famine, in which 30 to 50 million Chinese died.
The facts and figures are astonishing, the numbers astounding and the likelihood of change nonexistent.
China will run a well organised Olympic Games. Horses will be well looked after and the whole extravaganza will amaze the televised world.
BUT;
Government estimates state that 400,000 people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses each year, and health care costs for premature death and disability related to air pollution is estimated at up to 4 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
Four-fifths of the length of China's rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population—600 or 700 million people drink water contaminated with animal and human waste. The nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated waste into Asia's longest river, the Yangtze; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years. Drained by cities and factories all over northern China, the Yellow River, whose cataclysmic floods earned it a reputation as the world's most dangerous natural feature, now flows feebly, if at all.
China generates a third of the world's garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world's discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.
MAYBE;
Recycling some horse-shit is a good start.
Maybe the Chinese People will wake up to the fact that they have to live in it; a little bit quicker than we did in the West. I hear there's now fish in the Glasgow Clyde and in the Thames !!
One item details the story of a 22 yr old 16.2hh, ID x TB called Ghost, who jumps barefoot despite being formerly diagnosed with navicular... 
While we UK horse owners and riders tough it out through torrential rain, fields full of mud, chapped lips, chilblains and freezing toes;......
Where Ireland's Shane Sweetnam won the $6,000 1.40-meter competition, beating 54 other entries and riding Sienna. Even that competition name 'Suncast Opener' makes you long for hot sunny days.
It seems the UK Sale of Goods Act is starting to bite, with horse dealers having to take extreme precautions to ensure there are no comebacks six months after a horse has been sold.
The three charities currently homing the horses rescued from Spindles Farm in Amersham have expressed their gratitude on the public's generosity. Redwings, the ILPH and the Horst Trust all rely on donations to fund their work, and now need different things to help the horses, ponies and donkeys that are staying with them.
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