Every morning almost 7 billion inhabitants in the world wakes up to start its daily routine such as showering, feeding and consuming all kind of products, clothing, food, gas and technology that will require taking natural resources from the earth to be returned as waste, leaving an indelible foot print that in one way or another affects the planet.

 

At breakfast a significant part of these inhabitants consume eggs, milk and its derivatives and in their life time, each one of them will consume around 9000 liters of milk. What not all of them know is that milk production leaves in the planet an important foot print due to the energy consumed for fertilizer production, the 14 millions hectares of forests deforested every year for pasture and agriculture, and the methane discharges from cattle and all ruminants excretions and burps, which totals between 17 to 18% of greenhouse gases discharged to the atmosphere.. As a matter of fact, each cow burps between 200 to 250 liters of methane per day.

 

On the other hand, to obtain one kilogram of bovine cattle meat, fifteen thousand (15,000) liters of water is required between the one used to grow pastures, the one drunk by the animal and the one uses in the value added products, production chain after the animal is sacrified.

 

The vegetable oil that we uses to fry eggs and a significant part of our food, pollutes our clean water reservoirs when dumped in the drain to the sewage system at a rate of 1000 liters of clean water per each liter of vegetable oil. However if we knew that vegetable oil can be recycled in to bio diesel and with little more than a liter of vegetable oil, one liter of eco-fuel can be produced, the damage to the environment would be significantly reduced.

 

When preparing our food and once we finish eating, the garbage that we produce is estimated in one kilogram of solid waste per person per day and in our life time 24.6 tons. In Mexico alone over 100.000 tons of garbage is generated every day, and in Bogotá another 6.500 tons would have been made the most of it, if the paper, plastic, aluminum, glass and organic matter would have been separated for recycling. However only between 10 to 12% of all this garbage is been use for this purpose, generating environmental damage when methane gas is released in the atmosphere at landfills do to the organic matter decomposed or when stuff like alkaline batteries, use in remote control for televisions, electronic devices and air conditioning are disposed with its highly toxic mercury content and only one of this can contaminate 167.000 liters of water. However if we would change our habits and replace these batteries for rechargeable ones we could substitute 300 alkaline batteries for each rechargeable one, reducing its consumption 300 times.

 

In addition to the above, each one of us consumes about 800Kw/h of electric power a day and 60.000Kw/h in  our   life  time.  We   must  consider  that   producing

energy and its use in industries, homes, offices and transportation is responsible for most of the CO2 emissions cause by man when using the denominated fossil energy (natural gas, petroleum and carbon). On the other hand, the alternative of using nuclear plants for electric power generating doesn’t produces CO2 but it does produce expensive and difficult to treat radioactive residues.

 

There is no doubt that by the end of the day we would have implanted an important ecological foot print that will grow even more as we dispose all the waste generated in our entire day of consumption. Only when the humans sleeps is when they are not consuming without taking conscience of the waste generated and the non-renewable natural resources consumed with each of their actions, each hour of each day of their existence leaving a deep foot print in the planet.

 

All of this issues represents just a fraction of the consequences generated by our consumerism. The information, mainly obtained from an extraordinary documentary by National Geographic, reflects the need to solve this environmental problems that coincide with the principles and guide lines that have been ruling the research and development of the Aquaponias de Venezuela Foundation to produce large quantities of organic food without leaving a destructive foot print in the planet. We have increase the superficial production of the aquaponics technology and conceive the world’s biggest, most productive and totally eco-friendly Aquaponics Agroindustry Complex.

 

Aquaponics is the most efficient food production technology in terms of the rational use of water. It saves more than 98% of the water required in traditional farming with greater production by hectare. The agrondustry complex designed by the Aquaponias de Venezuela Foundation include livestock production systems in a close, controlled environment and an organic green forage production system adapted to the aquaponics technology, that can eliminate the need for deforestation for pastures and agriculture fields and stops methane discharges from ruminants before been released into the environment. This capacity promotes reforestation to reestablish the original forest biodiversity in order to stop and revert climate change.

 

At the same time, a bio digester for swage water and organic waste treatment syste produces biogas, clean water and an organic mud. With the biogas and the combination of biogas power generating plants and ther ones that works with compress air, we can generate all the electric power needed without using fossil fuels and local networks. With the clean water exiting the bio-digester we can obtain potable water when circulated through an artificial wetland and a potable water treatment plant and the organic mud left in the process undergoes a pyrolysis incineration to obtain biocarbon capable to sequester greenhouse gases and turn depleted agriculture lands into highly fertile. And most important, all this can be achived with conomic  feasibility and  sustainability.