Sustainability within Natural Environmental Cycles: Featuring 2 Successful Initiatives
Sustainability was once the norm, living in harmony with the original, natural cycles of our environment. Sustainability without disturbing the natural flow of things, implemented through supporting natural environmental cycles, is an essential way forward.
Coming together as individuals, businesses, institutions and governments to safeguard the health of our planet, and in turn, our health as well. To harness the gifts of nature to secure our needs. To assist nature in becoming harmonious with us once again.
What Do You Mean “Within Natural Environmental Cycles”?
“Don’t all sustainability efforts work within the environment?” you might ask.
There are sustainability efforts that create safer products that help the environment flourish. For example, ECOncrete, created by scientists and ecologist to provide an environmentally-friendly concrete mix that addresses the erosion of coastal concrete barriers and texturally cultivates underwater habitats for sea life.
Or like eco-friendly paint production and waste management that reduce harmful paint toxins for both humans and the environment.
In contrast, here we are discussing things and cycles already existing in the environment and how to work with them.
We need clean energy sources and we need to assist our environment’s natural cycles that aid and protect all creations.
In this article, we are highlighting two innovative initiatives that are both successful and providing a success blueprint for others to follow.
Exciting New Renewable Energy
It’s amazing how a woman, once a Chernobyl survivor brought back from the dead at two weeks old, who immigrated to Israel at the age of four, is now at the cutting edge of a new renewable energy source that has just premiered in Israel.
Inna Braverman is the co-founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power (NASDAQ; Wave) which has been cultivating a new renewable energy source based in wave energy technology since 2011. “Turning ocean waves into clean energy” as she coins it.
On December 5, 2024. Inna and her cofounder, David Leb, along with their team, inaugurated Israel’s first ever wave energy station which is now on Israel’s electric grid.
Since 2014, they have worked with EDF Renewables IL, in conjunction with The Tel Aviv Yafo Municipality and the municipal company Atarim, and now wave energy is being produced at The Jaffa Port!
The Benefits of Wave Energy
In a recent interview with Inna, during a winter storm when the waves were rolling in, her excitement was palpable as she witnessed the Jaffa Port power station producing non-stop energy.
Energy is a big deal in today’s world. Often much needed energy is sourced in a way where the environment has to suffer and our health has to suffer; where there has to be a trade-off to fulfill the ever growing energy needs of the modern world. Yet, here is a renewable energy source provided from the environment and doing no harm. It’s exciting!
Inna explained the benefits and advantages:
“Wave energy is the least intermittent energy. Solar energy produces only during the day, and not when there is cloud cover, not when there is pollution, not in the winter; it is a great energy source but it has a lot of limitations.
Wave energy can produce in multiple locations around the globe. So, I do believe that once wave energy will commercialize, it will meet a big percentage of the world’s energy needs, and will be used also to stabilize solar and wind energy.
It is 100% environmentally friendly because, unlike the competition, it doesn’t connect to the seabed but only to existing man-made structures such as breakwaters. While breakwater construction can be taxing on the environment, they are built as a necessity by municipalities anyway, and our mechanisms are simply attached to these structures. As such, the mechanism itself causes no damage to the environment.
It is much more cost-efficient than previous technologies, as it uses man-made structures, thus avoiding all the extra costs associated with offshore equipment. So we’re connecting a station off Gibraltar for $400,000, something that would cost competitors $150 million [to build an offshore platform].”
Inna and her team are actively sharing the success of implementing wave power technology. This year, she experienced her first visit to the Davos World Economic Forum. Her biggest takeaway came from a speech by the U.S. President; and she noted how, though he is typically against renewable energy, he would support geo thermal projects. There are some key similarities with wave power.
It gave her hope that the current administration might support wave energy, and that the U.S. could even become a leader in wave energy, as China is a leader in solar energy and Europe a leader in wind energy.
“We can produce 24/7, we are cheaper than geo-thermal . . . we have no visual impact, we are not killing birds, we are not using prime real estate, and we are only connected to marine structures.“
A Bright Future
The successful project took ten years to bring into fruition, even with support and funding from the government. Future projects are lined up, and could take only take six months to implement, although it could take nearly two years for them to be approved.
With wave energy being new, legislation, policies and regulations come into play. Future projects are thus being chosen relative to the location’s regulatory systems and the wave climate.
Eco Wave Power is presently working on a project in Los Angeles in conjunction with the Shell Company, while also in construction on a project in Portugal that will include a 360 degree, underwater wave energy/power station museum designed to educate visitors. They are also initiating projects in Taiwan and India.
The value of wave energy technology is being realized and sought after. It looks like a bright future ahead for this clean, renewable energy source; with no backlash for people or the environment.
Facilitating Nature
Equally as amazing, Noam Weiss has worked to protect migrating birds and endear support for them for 21 years now. Noam is the Director of the International Birding and Research Center in the city of Eilat, which is affectionately referred to as, “The Bird Sanctuary”.
A “Sanctuary” because he elevated the center from just research to action and interaction; a place where visitors can come see birds, learn about birds and interact with birds. A place where the center’s efforts to work within natural environmental cycles to protect migrating birds is on full display.
It isn’t just a job for him, it’s a calling. He has loved birds since he was ten years old. As a young man he watched the gradual destruction of the habitat that supports migratory birds.
Many bird species migrate to have access to much needed resources, especially food. Every autumn and spring they instinctively migrate to assure breeding and survival.
Implementing Nature-Friendly Solutions
A large part of Noam’s work is collaborating with land owners to repair the continual habitat damage. The aim is to provide safe havens for the migrating birds; inclusive of safe water to drink, fields to rest in, access to the insects and vegetation they eat, and protection from predators and hazards. This is done in partnership with city planners and architects.
Migrating birds face modern day hazards such as powerlines, towers, high rises, wind mills. fences, and roads. They have predators like the Indian House Crows that were imported into Israel in the mid 1970’s.
There are always a large diversity of migrating birds with ever changing needs. The Sanctuary’s staff uses nets to gently catch a few birds every time they migrate in. Their ringing station helps them monitor the birds’ movements and health status, to implement the appropriate solutions.
In our recent interview, Noam stressed the fact that nature can take care of itself. It naturally doesn’t need assistance. However, because the habitat migrating birds are accustomed to is eroding, him and his partners have stepped in to assure their safety and survival.
Historically, Eilat was a big salt marsh, perfect for migrating birds to nest in. Over the years, the salt marsh vanished and birds struggle to find a place to be.
Working in conjunction with the Sewage plant in Eilat, over the past four years, they have created a lake with islands in the center of the lake where the birds can land and rest. Noam credits the water company for doing the lion’s share of the work.
In addition to the landscaping at the sewage plant, work is being done at small farms, date plantations, and at Kibbutz Eilat, all in collaboration with city planners and architects, with much needed funding from the Ministry of Environment.
Noam feels his greatest role is as an advocate, to cause a change of heart towards the migrating birds. His advocacy has been successful thus far and caused an increase in action from those in the Eilat community. He advocates for education, funding, and caring enough to help implement solutions.
The work in progress on the Kibbutz has additional dimensions, as it involves a community of people, residences, fields, and a hotel. Through education, Noam has inspired the community to create a lake and incorporate creative ideas like designating their hotel as a conservation hotel, which attracts visitors, educates them, gives them fulfilling experiences; as well as helping finance the Kibbutz.
In the date plantations and other farms, education has also been essential, to teach farmers how to use natural agricultural tools to grow crops in a manner that doesn’t kill off the insects migrating birds feed on. There are projects to attract pollinators and create an ecosystem wherein the birds eat the insects and protect the food plants from insect damage.
International Partnerships, Outreach and Creativity
The international Birding and Research Center in Eilat also works with international partners, Birdlife International and The Society for Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), to understand and secure the flyways the migratory birds use.
Bird Life International spearheads an exciting contest, “The Champions of the Flyways”, where those who identify the most species of birds along the flyways are victorious.
SPNI sponsors tours in Israel for international visitors, inclusive of the Bird Sanctuary and the work they are doing.
Sharing and Spreading Success
The Bird Center also sponsors regional workshops funded by the Ministry of Regulating Bird Watching, on how nature infrastructure serves nature. The next one is scheduled in March 2025. These workshops are spreading the positive impact of this growing, successful conservation process being used in Eilat. Past participants have adopted and implemented the process in their regional locations.
Noam makes sure entrance to the Bird Sanctuary is free for visitors to come in and learn about the migratory birds, feed them, and take tours inside the center as well as out in the field. A park type terrain surrounds the center and visitors are able to use “hides” to observe the birds without disturbing them.
The phenomenal and often labor intensive efforts of the bird sanctuary affords visitors this pleasure and assists the environment’s natural cycles to protect birds; both migratory and native.
This emergence of businesses, institutions and governments working together for the safeguarding of the environment, to conserve, preserve and tap into natural cycles is securing sustainability.
Feeling and activating the power of sea waves for clean energy and actively bolstering the existing natural cycles for protecting nature are solid models being duplicated. They represent positive ways forward to direct our sustainability efforts.
About the Author
Andrea Phillips is a Freelance Copywriter and Content Writer. She specializes in B2B Case Studies and Email Newsletters, along with health and environmental sustainability content.