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Positive Thoughts.
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Extract from, “Use of Water Hyacinth!” Keith Lindsey and Hans-Martin
Hirt.
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In order to think positively about using Water
Hyacinth for practical purposes, one must think positively about the
plant.
It is a gift, waiting to be accepted!
As already stated we have a moral imperative to use a source of
biomass that is so abundantly available, in an age when the majority of
the earth’s valuable natural resources are being consumed as if there
were no tomorrow. Such a perspective may not be easy to accept, given
the dreadful hardship that it causes for so many people, and how utterly
impossible its removal seems to be. It does, however, have some positive
attributes:
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-it is abundantly available.
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-it grows readily without any need for sowing,
weeding or fertilizing.
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-it does not require any land space.
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-it costs nothing.
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-to harvest it is to do an environmental favour. |
In terms of its qualities, it
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-has a beautiful flower.
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-grows vigorously and abundantly to produce a
large biomass.
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-has leaves rich in protein, being as valuable
as that in potatoes or clover.
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-has a fibrous stem.
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-has a high potassium concentration.
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-has tough, fibrous roots that purify water, by
absorbing the nitrogen and phosphorus on which it thrives, and also many other substances that pollute fresh water, including
minerals.
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It absorbs also toxic chemicals such as lead,
mercury and strontium’90 in concentrations 10 000 times that in
the surrounding water. |
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