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100% compostable coffee balls bid to take on Nespresso

6 Sep 2022 7 Sep 2022

Switzerland’s biggest retailer launched a new coffee machine invention on Tuesday — fully compostable coffee balls which it hopes will shake up the global market and take on Nespresso’s global dominance.

The Migros supermarket chain hopes its innovation will cash in on consumers’ environmental concerns by eliminating the aluminium and plastic waste of regular coffee capsules.

Rather than capsules, the new pods are balls of compressed coffee covered with a thin film made from algae.

With its new system, which took five years to develop, Migros is parking its tanks on the lawns of its Swiss compatriot Nestle, the giant in the coffee pod sector with its Nespresso brand.

The machines and coffee balls went on sale in Switzerland and France from Tuesday, but interest in other countries is “already huge”, chief executive Fabrice Zumbrunnen said at the launch in Zurich, eyeing a wider rollout.

There are other compostable coffee pods on the market but Migros believes that this is the first system to use biodegradable balls.

The balls have to be used in the Migros CoffeeB system and are not compatible with other coffee machines.

Switzerland’s largest employer said the new development was in response to the growing environmental consciousness of consumers, saying that some 63 billion coffee capsules are sold each year around the world, generating around 100,000 tonnes of waste.

Migros is currently a small player in the market.

According to market researchers Euromonitor International, the market share of its Cafe Royal brand was limited to 0.3 percent in western Europe in 2021, compared to 12.1 percent for Nespresso alone, while Nestle also owns the Nescafe and Dolce Gusto labels.

But Migros is hoping its compostable coffee system will gain it some market share.

It points out that the coffee beans used to make the biodegradale balls are sourced from sustainable crops, with fair trade and organic certification.

The cases the balls come in look like egg cartons and are made of recyclable materials. The coffee machines themselves are largely made from recycled materials, Migros said.

100% compostable coffee balls bid to take on Nespresso

6 Sep 2022 7 Sep 2022

The Migros supermarket chain hopes its innovation will cash in on consumers’ environmental concerns by eliminating the aluminium and plastic waste of regular coffee capsules.

Rather than capsules, the new pods are balls of compressed coffee covered with a thin film made from algae.

With its new system, which took five years to develop, Migros is parking its tanks on the lawns of its Swiss compatriot Nestle, the giant in the coffee pod sector with its Nespresso brand.

There are other compostable coffee pods on the market but Migros believes that this is the first system to use biodegradable balls.

The balls have to be used in the Migros CoffeeB system and are not compatible with other coffee machines.

Migros is currently a small player in the market.

But Migros is hoping its compostable coffee system will gain it some market share.

It points out that the coffee beans used to make the biodegradale balls are sourced from sustainable crops, with fair trade and organic certification.

The cases the balls come in look like egg cartons and are made of recyclable materials. The coffee machines themselves are largely made from recycled materials, Migros said.

Roots rock: Chimpanzees drum to their own signature beats

6 Sep 2022 6 Sep 2022

The drummers puff out their chests, let out a guttural yell, then step up to their kits and furiously pound out their signature beat so that everyone within earshot can tell who is playing.

The drum kit is the giant gnarled root of a tree in the Ugandan rainforest — and the drummer is a chimpanzee.

A new study published Tuesday found that not only do chimpanzees have their own styles — some preferring straightforward rock beats while others groove to more freeform jazz — they can also hide their signature sound if they do not want to reveal their location.

The researchers followed the Waibira chimpanzee group in western Uganda’s Budongo Forest, recording the drum sessions of seven male chimps and analysing the intervals between beats.

The chimps mostly use their feet, but also their hands to make the sound, which carries more than a kilometre through the dense rainforest.

The drumming serves as a kind of social media, allowing travelling chimpanzees to communicate with each other, said Vesta Eleuteri, the lead author of the study published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

The PhD student said that after just a few weeks in the rainforest she was able to recognise exactly who was drumming.

“Tristan — the John Bonham of the forest — makes very fast drums with many evenly separated beats,” she said, referring to the legendarily hard-hitting drummer of rock band Led Zeppelin.

Tristan’s drumming “is so fast that you can barely see his hands”, Eleuteri said.

– Hiding their style –

But other chimps like Alf or Ila make a more syncopated rhythm using a technique in which both their feet hit a root at almost the same time, said British primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, the study’s senior author.

The research team was lead by scientists from Scotland’s University of St Andrews, and several of the chimpanzees are named after Scottish single malt whiskies, including Ila — for Caol Ila — and fellow chimp Talisker.

Hobaiter, who started the habituation of the Waibira group in 2011, said it long been known that chimpanzees drummed.

“But it wasn’t until this study that we understood they’re using these signature styles when they’re potentially looking for other individuals — when they’re travelling, when they’re on their own or in a small group,” she told AFP.

The researchers also discovered that the chimps sometimes choose not to drum in their signature beat, to avoid revealing their location or identity.

“They have this wonderful flexibility to express their identity and their style, but also to sometimes keep that hidden,” Hobaiter said.

– ‘A sense of music’ –

While plenty of animals produce sounds we think of as music — such as birdsong — the research could open the door to the possibility that chimpanzees enjoy music on a level generally thought to only be possible for humans.

“I do think that chimpanzees, like us, potentially have a sense of rhythmicity, a sense of music, something that touches them on an almost emotional level, in the way that we might have a sense of awe when we hear an amazing drum solo or another kind of dramatic musical sound,” Hobaiter said.

Most research on the culture of chimpanzees has looked at their tools or food, she said.

“But if we think about human culture we don’t think about the tools we use — we think about how we dress, the music we listen to,” she added.

Next the researchers plan to investigate how neighbouring and far-off communities of chimpanzees drum in their own differing styles.

Hobaiter has already been looking at chimpanzees in Guinea, where there are very few trees to drum in the open savannah.

“We’ve got early hints that they might be throwing rocks against rocks” to make sound, she said.

“Literal rock music in this case.”

'I am innocent', mining magnate says at end of Swiss appeal

6 Sep 2022 7 Sep 2022

A French-Israeli businessman appealing against his conviction in one of the mining sector’s biggest-ever corruption cases insisted Tuesday on his innocence and hoped the Swiss court would give him justice.

Mining tycoon Beny Steinmetz was found guilty in 2021 of setting up a complex financial web to pay bribes to ensure his company could obtain permits in Guinea’s southeastern Simandou region, which is estimated to contain the world’s biggest untapped iron ore deposits.

“I am innocent,” the 66-year-old told AFP at the end of seven days of intense hearings.

The businessman, who made his fortune in diamonds, was sentenced by a Geneva court to five years in prison and ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation.

But he insisted during the appeals court hearings that that verdict was deeply unfair, with his lawyers arguing the prosecution’s case was “very weak”.

“I have done nothing wrong,” Steinmetz said shortly before the court adjourned, telling the judges he had been “devastated” to hear how he was being portrayed.

Steinmetz — who lives in Israel and was granted a free-passage to attend the trial — is free to leave Switzerland but will be asked to return to serve his sentence if he loses.

He has not served any prison time due to the appeal process, with the judges expected to take weeks or even months to render their verdict.

The prosecutors doubled down on the picture painted during the original trial, of Steinmetz leading the charge to bribe a wife of then-Guinean president Lansana Conte and others in order to win lucrative mining rights in Simandou.

Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) obtained the rights — which had been stripped from mining giant Rio Tinto — shortly before Conte died in 2008, after about $10 million was allegedly paid in bribes over a number of years through different channels.

BSGR received the rights against an investment of $160 million, but 18 months later sold 51 percent of its stake in the concession to Vale of Brazil for $2.5 billion.

In 2013, Guinean president Alpha Conde reviewed the permits allotted under Conte and stripped the VBG consortium formed by BSGR and Vale of its permit.

Prosecutors claim Steinmetz and his associates entered a “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth wife Mamadie Toure to obtain the exploration rights — a charge he flatly rejects.

Toure, who has admitted to having received payments, has protected status in the United States as a state witness.

Steinmetz’s lawyer repeatedly complained that the defence had no access to Toure or insight into her US deal, and decried Tuesday that the prosecutor’s case relied heavily on “a witness who is not credible.”

The defence maintained there was nothing inappropriate about how BSGR obtained the permits, and that Rio Tinto lost half the concessions for failing to develop them.

Filtered ferry engines hailed for tackling air pollution

6 Sep 2022 7 Sep 2022

A French ferry company has launched what it claims is the first vessel that uses filters to capture almost all air pollutants from the boat’s exhaust fumes, sparking praise from campaigners and local authorities.

La Meridionale, based in the southern French port of Marseille, showed off its innovative ship on Monday to the media.

“It’s an unprecedented solution, a world first,” company chairman Marc Reverchon told reporters on board the blue-and white Piana which sails between Marseille and the French island of Corsica.

The company said the filters captured 99 percent of sulphur oxides emitted by the ferry’s four engines, as well as 99.9 percent of particulate matter created from the burning of its heavy fuel.

The filters use technology already found in power stations or incineration plants in which sodium bicarbonate is injected into the exhaust fumes, causing a chemical reaction with the tiny particles produced during the combustion process.

The pollutants can then be captured by a type of industrial air filter that has been around for more than 30 years, company technical director Christophe Seguinot told reporters.

“We didn’t have to look too far. We didn’t invent anything,” Seguinot explained. “The challenge for us was to make it suitable for a marine setting.”

The ferry group has an agreement with chemicals supplier Solvay, which will dispose of the toxic filter residue — with a view to recycling it in the future, Seguinot said.

Heavy fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel, is one of the cheapest but most polluting transportation fuels, resulting in the thick plumes of dirty brown smoke seen above most ships.

It is also high in sulphur which can cause respiratory problems and acid rain.

– Regulation –

Regulations on the amount of sulphur authorised vary, with ultra-clean fuel mandated in areas such as the North Sea and Baltic Sea in Europe, as well as around North American ports.

Marseille, which hosts cruise and container ships as well as ferries, has struggled with increased smog in recent years and the shipping sector is thought to be responsible for a large part of the problem.

“Let’s hope that the big polluters follow the example of La Meridionale,” Marseille’s Socialist mayor Benoit Payan tweeted on Monday after attending the company event.

He has been battling ship operators over the summer with a petition calling for the dirtiest vessels to be barred during peak pollution times.

Shipping companies are under pressure from regulators and tightening industry standards to tackle their emissions of greenhouse gases as well as atmospheric pollutants, but campaigners want faster action.

La Meridionale “is going much further than current regulations require by treating all of their particulate matter,” Damien Piga from Atmosud, a regional air quality surveillance group, told AFP.

Some ship owners favour the use of so-called “scrubbing” technology which sees water sprayed into the exhaust fumes, which captures some of the pollutants.

Environmentalists point out that in many cases the water is then discharged into the sea, however.

Other groups are experimenting with engines that run on cleaner liquefied natural gas (LNG) or methanol, while electric and sail powered vessels are also being developed.