Hello the and a woman welcome to this edition of eco africa you favorite eco szell my name is joy during vera and in their o. B. E. Were coming to you from the moma village which is quite an eco place as you can see from my background my colleague n. T. Is on the other side of africa and see how youre doing. To get i would bring exciting environmental stories from all over africa and your solutions to save climate good ideas environment and tips and tricks to keep nature safe like this Animal Rescue god we are taking the lead but heres what we have lined up on the show today. We visit one of nigerias pony as who tries to push along a cleaner and greener city of lagos. With the help of german scientists i would pose a reveals the secret of plants. In the soil. And we visit biologist steve boyce who runs a project to save the cape part the misting in south africa. Now driving in Lagos Nigeria is commercial capital is tasking they fact of fumes of thousands of vehicles on the road hasnt described as a major cause of pollution and that is not likely to change that about twenty Million People in lagos who need to move family are. Trying to change the status quo they have invested in green electric two and three wheelers that are being assembled in the us. The road to a cleaner and greener nigeria is very arduous every day hundreds of thousands of cars trying to make their way through lagos africas biggest city and the Traffic Congestion comes with a heavy cost the c o two emissions contribute to Global Warming and rising sea levels and the talks are fuming over a Serious Health hazard. A Small Company in lagos decided to take a first step. The owners have invested in environmentally friendly electric three wheelers. Which are currently being assembled in lagos the vehicles are suitable for taxi entrepreneurs Delivery Services and use for haulage. The beautiful teeth cleaned and. Its very cool so no. Cost to even know because you know what the cost of delivering your services its very limited team potter that you need to read a piece when a mode is bad then you kind. One sunni please see hes back on the world famous says the vehicles can drive up to two hundred kilometers with a fully charged battery customers can rent the vehicles one hour will cost about the equivalent of two and a half euros their Company CarbonCredit Network is currently building a network of solar charging stations along all major highways in nigeria even so evil billet he faces a lot of challenges in nigeria the power grid in the west african country is still unreliable many people here depend on generators but using them to charge an electric car would be senseless. And addition theres no public support for the technology in nigeria. Despite those challenges the team says its undeterred the government has deep thinking take two years backwards when we need to begin to look at how we want to get the advantage is just the need to push that is needed for nigeria to meet again to achieve. Off all of this innovation on the changes that will want to see Carbon Credit Network plans to launch its services at the end of twenty eighteen so far about fifty of the e. P. A. Calls have been built. The Company Wants to disrupt the expensive and dirty Transportation System in africa by offering a cleaner and cheaper alternative if the federal government builds a stable power supply and devises policies to encourage investment chances of success are good. If theres one product that spreads to every corner of the world its the flip flops they are colorful comfortable and cheap im sure most of us on a path what do you think joy you own one thats right and t im pretty sure the flip flop is one of our favorite shoes here on the african continent but this pair is old discarded in millions on land and in sea but theres a company nairobi that recycles them cleaning up the environment and turning ocean trash into cash for its employees. Flip flops are among the most popular issue is world wide but did you know your colorful shoes could have a second life as a rock. All around the world discarded flipflops litter the beaches. So conservationists julie Church Founded the Company Ocean so. She went to the communities along the kenyan coast every year locals collect four hundred thousand flip flops on the beaches. Just turn them into a wide range of products including toys animals coaches and jewelry. The lives of us are sold by then kenya and abroad. These beds cultures cost around fifty euros don is each. Locals are happy to earn an income from the trust and the project has helped clean up the beaches. We like that. If you are also doing your bit tell us about it. Visit our website or send us a tweet. Cash tag doing your bit we share your stories. We had to germany where nowadays many youngsters are committed to climate protection and concerned about eco Friendly Energy sources pills organize care free trips to school and Energy Saving weeks in the classroom and they plan trees yes indeed joy really keen to make a different we met we. And his friends who build an eco friendly classroom yes they did and even persuaded their school to switch to solar energy for all the efforts they want to prize in a climate competition they are part of us who needs kids for climate. These kids are cutting a shallow channel to lay a cable around the one which they call their green classroom and theyve installed solar panels on the roof of the carport to power an emissions free lawnmower. To be asked luca and his schoolmates make up the Environmental Action group at their high school in the town of pi him. The cable in the ground acts as a boundary for the robot lawnmower. When it reaches the cable it turns around and then it most or more. Teachers are also involved in the project babble look at teachers biology and chemistry she wants her students to appreciate the importance of protecting the environment she works in the green classroom even during her free time. I want to see my students do things at home that we teach them here like not throwing things away where they shouldnt like bonfires in their gardens or driving cars that are inefficient and pollution loss need to learn how to conserve resources. A former student is now an Energy Consultant to the local authorities hes helping design the school solar power system. Theres a whole array on the roof its environmentally friendly and cuts energy costs it provides more than enough electricity for the schools own use the rest it feeds into the grid. This display tracks the operation of the solar plant not every school is so engaged in Environmental Activism this is pleased to see so much commitment here. Its really important that the people in our school take a project like this seriously and appreciate its significance its not just about money here they get it and its led to more Small Projects like the one with a lawn mower. Or the energy game which is about to be launched. It involves an app designed to encourage pupils and teachers to turn off the lights when theyre not needed and. Yes more of them every time you scan one of these q. R. Code to get a point whoever gets the most is the Champion Energy saver spam i said this was. The champ will get a prize the idea is for youngsters to learn to think ecologically and to care about the future of the planet. Geography is one subject where many of the key themes come together. When the. Global warming means the polar bears of the north pole and the penguins are losing their habitat. In just a few we learnt that the aral sea is shrinking and its going to disappear one day when the pressurized gotten by got this mess. Out in the green classroom the kids have been working for two hours now. The lawn mower is going to figure in a physics class. The kids can monitor the level of the battery that stores the electricity generated in the three solar panels on the carport ruth. Also the range of the lawn mower so. If they have a lawn to mow it home they might suggest their parents install solar panels too so they dont have to get the power out of the sockets. And. The cable is almost laid a score of pupils and former pupils have been working hard here soon the system will be ready and the robot can get to work so everyone can see that Eco Friendly Technology is worthwhile and even fun. Did you know that mash rooms can be beneficial to the environment they grow and go birds and they dont even need a lot of space and there are yummy two in zimbabwe we met a young lady who started mushroom from being at the age of just eleven this is her story. Agricultural waste like these com kobes can be used in the production of organic mushrooms into the governors future of the farm young girls receive training to become self sustainable mushroom farmers that one year old has a passion for helping young office who was one house elf i really learned the importance of empowering young goes with these skills so they can be able to take care of themselves their young girls who are often close old mothers who are we doing this they are the ones who carry the responsibility of the family and most of the times they have limited opportunities they have limited access to land they have access to resources and with mushrooms you are utilizing agricultural waste that is the line of all in abandon holes are placed in the bags so that the mushrooms can grow out of the sides the biomass in the plastic sacks is a mixture of soil conquer powder and mushroom seeds that are stored in a dark room two weeks later the mushroom can be harvested Young Farmers have to carefully handle the delicate our stomachs rooms only high quality products suitable for commercial sell so far she has trained one thousand women in communities across and other parts of africa so this is a coalition room and the mushrooms are growing here so women after the been there been made on the other side they go to the incubation room when they become wife and mushroom the frothing they approach here with more light and better air flow and what is sprayed on the bed every day and then it took a week became we do it twenty two years ago she does mushroom projects help. Today she grows her own mushrooms and can feed her kids and pay their school fees she still pays half almost student a visit and gives useful advise for selling how much shrooms on the market. I was helped to be self sustainable through this training and. This is what we are doing farming mushrooms. This is a knowledge so we stopped hard for so many years when i was used to seeing in musharrafs. Because one day she. Has almost two million children with their parents the environmentally friendly mushroom project is helping to transform many lives into this Community One in three girls who runs in berkeley is married off before the age of fifteen but you do not have changed their feet by teaching them useful lifelong skills this is what i work to achieve to see people learning something and actually making something out of it a lot of people get a training from and you know and they think ok i will not do anything until they come and build but were really empowering people to think for themselves and to let if we have a skill it is up to us to use it works tirelessly to train women in order to help set them up for a better life she has a Business Plan for these girls she wants to create a new business called hope food to help our mushroom Farming Community secure sustainable market for their produce which will allow them to have a stable income. Many expensive chemical elements go into making smartphones such as this one and lots of metals and rear elements are mined in asia and africa and inhumane working conditions but there are efforts underway to try to gain these valuable substances using other means exactly joyce some scientists are working on plants that are able to reason materials out of the ground and store them in the early years its a brand new way of extracting metals would be no need to rip up the ground destroy land and exploit workers lets take a look at how these new super plants would work. This is reed canary grass it might not look spectacular but it has very useful features. Oliver vision from the fryeburg university of mining and technology wants to make use of them. The plant absorbs rare earth elements and germanium from the soil these are Precious Metals that are used in a variety of high Tech Products including smartphones ninety strains of reed canary grass are growing here on different kinds of soil the aim is to see which strains under which conditions absorb the largest amount of valuable metals. And if. Kylies are not mitterrands that influence a plant growth. But the plants mistake these elements for nutrients such as silicon and calcium. The process they want to optimize is called fight or mining and it could be used anywhere. Jemaine e m and rare earth elements are found inside around the world in roughly the same concentrations whether its european or african soils. And we can make these elements accessible with this extraction process. Or do you condemn it isnt going to. The reed canary grass is harvested then its taking to the lab. The plants are fermented in a small facility the grass demonstrates another useful feature during the fermentation the grass produces bio gas which can be used for electricity and heat generated and the material that remains after the fermentation process contains the desired metals this process is also interesting for project partners in kenya. The. Fight in mining could play a role in africa because of this combination with bio gas. We work with the title of a to university envoy its a Mining University that has an agricultural component. So that they could combine by a Gas Production with mining. For fifty grand and this is how it works bio Gas Production is the first step in the process. The second step is metal extraction in the lab high temperatures High Pressure and acids break down the fermentation remains into their essential elements. Researchers examine the extracted metals in a mass spectrometer. We see concentrations of two milligrams per kilogram for germanium and for all the rare earth metals we find a combined some of it around fifty milligrams per kilogram of. Extracting metals from plants is not yet profitable but if all of a vision is successful yields will increase mining with super plants could eventually solve many of todays resource and energy problems. A south african cape powered is one of the most endangered is bird species and. Experts believe that there are just less than a thousand adults left in the wild this is because constant industrial deforestation has destroyed their habitat many of them left find it hard to have to find another area to leave the care parrots that stay behind and have tried to adapt but in living in constant battle for survival for years biologist dubois has been involved in saving this rare part. One. Once this wild kate bush is back to full health shell be released shes been suffering from sitting in fed the disease conservation biologist steve boyce runs a project to save the khepera from extinction and rebuild its populations there are only a thousand left in the wild beak and feather disease is highly contagious and represents a mortal danger to the species when this bird was first brought in she was in a very bad way she was very thin she was in an awful condition im surprised that she said that she survived and that shes purvis is very she has said to me its absolute. Ruination. Its reversed strong the virus makes the feathers fall off and the big developed lesions this patient could no longer fly and was stuck on the branch of a tree when boys and his team came to the rescue she remained in poor health for a year and a half then boy started to feed her and some other sick birds the species favorite traditional food the fruit of the yellow wood tree. As soon as we started feeding them yellow with fruits after trying everything. We started to see the virus go down in their blood so far that we couldnt even find it until we used a new technique and found it at very low levels so this is the medicine for parents that is missing from their diet so its not just wonderful nutrition it is a medicine for them. Researchers here in cape town are also considering what effects Climate Change is having or could have on bird populations how will vegetation in animal populations react if temperatures rise and rainfall drops. What. Germanys Development Agency is supporting the research. You would need i would say at least another two degrees of temperature change and in the region of five to ten percent reduction in rainfall you know if youre looking at that kind of a scenario that i would think is going to start having an adverse effect on on on everyone ten for us if there forest habitats of further reduced the cape parrots might be wiped out. Their food of choice is already hard to find because countless yellow wood trees once very abundant have been felled. This fine specimen is one thousand years old the forest was full of mature yellow wood until the commercial logs came in. Yellow woods were part of the Industrial Revolution and so africa millions of these trees were removed for Railway Sleepers and mining timber descended underground but today yellow wood because of its beautiful color is one of the most valuable timbers on earth. A mature tree fetches twenty five to thirty thousand euros although the government has set limits on the number of trees that may be felled illegal logging continues. Three as you can see with this sort of story here this is very recently logged the leaves are still alive everything in a canopy still alive so this was in the last week we have now lost another two hundred