There’s nothing that induces green guilt like bottled water. You can make the bottle live again by refilling it and taking it to work with you, but it stares back up at you from your desk, whispering perniciously “you still bought me, didn’t you? you think tap water’s not good enough eh, Mr Big Shot? You think your itinerant thirst is more important than the environment, don’t you, you freaking eco-criminal? Shame on you! Shame!” Until you have to recycle it to stop the terrible accusations. At least, that’s what happens to Greenbang.
Perhaps that’s what happens to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. The man signed an order this month to cut out bottle water from all government buildings and events, after giving a thumbs-up to Seatlle’s tasty tap water and a thumbs-down to the “environmental cost of throw away plastic bottles.
Here’s more from the horse’s mouth:
“This is a matter of leading by example,” Nickels said. “The people of Seattle own one of the best water supplies in the country, every bit as good as bottled water and available at a fraction of the price. When you add up the tremendous environmental costs of disposable plastic bottles clogging our landfills, the better choice is crystal clear.”
Last year, the city spent about $58,000 for bottled water at city facilities and events. The mayor’s order would phase out city purchases of bottled water by the end of the year, while encouraging employees to switch to municipal water. It would not ban the private purchase of bottled water by city employees.
Bottled water, which costs about $8 a gallon, is about 2,400 times as expensive as tap water, which runs about one-third of one cent. In 2006 Americans bought a total of 31.2 billion liters of bottled water, requiring nearly 900,000 tons of plastic produced from fossil fuels and more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation. That adds up to more than 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases.
Greenbang thinks the mayor may now be her favourite Greg ever, beating golfer Greg Norman and To Kill a Mockingbird’s Gregory Peck.
There are times in life when the carrot is called for, and other times when the stick is what does the job (if you’ve ever tried to get a dog to fetch a carrot, or served up some boiled sticks with your Sunday roast, you’ll know what Greenbang means.) Ask Recyclebank - they’ve just got $30 million of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, according to venturebeat.com - and their whole business model works around the carrot principle.
It goes like this: Recyclebank tracks consumers’ recycling habits, with all the good recyclers getting credits to spend with local and national business. The better you are with your rubbish, the more you get to spend. It’s simple, but it’s devilishly smart.
And the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers isn’t even the first company to get involved with the company this month. A couple of weeks ago, Recyclebank secured $13.1 million in Series A funding from RRE Ventures and Sigma Partners, money which will be spent expanding the company to new areas and developing “many more strategic and key partnerships”.
So, we’re all like: “yeah, I’m all about plug-in hybrids, you know? It’s so cool, emission-free and that. Saving the plant one car journey at a time, right?” and that’s good and everyone’s happy and we’re all cruising about about in our hybrids and congratulating ourselves on our all around brilliance. Well, sort of. But just when we’re settling into this plugged-in happy dream, those pesky academics have to come along and ruin it.
What about the water?
What about all the water we’re going to need to supply these hybrid vehicles?
According to academics over at the University of Austin in Texas, it’s a doozy of a problem. A recent report from two of them notes:
Converting light-duty vehicles from full gasoline power to electric power, by using either hybrid electric vehicles or fully electric power vehicles, is likely to increase demand for water resources. In the United States in 2005, drivers of 234 million cars, light trucks, and SUVs drove approximately 2.7 trillion miles and consumed over 380 million gallons of gasoline per day. We compare figures from literature and government surveys to calculate the water usage, consumption, and withdrawal, in the United States during petroleum refining and electricity generation. In displacing gasoline miles with electric miles, approximately 3 times more water is consumed (0.32 versus 0.07–0.14 gallons/mile) and over 17 times more water is withdrawn (10.6 versus 0.6 gallons/mile) primarily due to increased water cooling of thermoelectric power plants to accommodate increased electricity generation.
Overall, we conclude that the impact on water resources from a widespread shift to grid-based transportation would be substantial enough to warrant consideration for relevant public policy decision-making. That is not to say that the negative impacts on water resources make such a shift undesirable, but rather this increase in water usage presents a significant potential impact on regional water resources and should be considered when planning for a plugged-in automotive economy.
According to those good folks at the Independent water is set to be the next commoditised resource.
The paper says:
The right to use water will soon follow in the footsteps of carbon emissions and become a commodity, like the right to pollute, that industry will have to pay for, executives have warned.”In the not too distant future, we will see a price on water just like there is now for carbon and carbon emissions,” said Ditlev Engel, chief executive of Vestas Wind Systems. “It will have to be factored in as a cost.”
While environmentalists and some people applaud China’s ban on plastic bags in its latest move to save resources, some people, like the plastic-bag producers or anyone making a living on plastic bags, may not be so happy. Here comes a case in point.
Huaqiang, China’s largest plastic bag manufacturer based in Henan Province, has closed since the state council announced its restriction on the production, sale and use of all plastic carrier bags, according to people.com.
“‘The factory stopped production in middle January and its 20,000 employees are awaiting their fate’, said Liu Henglie, director of commerce bureau of Suiping County, where the plant is.
All the machines in the factory will be sold although further details about the future of the factory and its workers remain unknown, according to the official.
The factory, belonging to the Guangzhou-based Nanqiang Plastic Industrial Ltd., is able to produce 250,000 tons of plastic bags at value of 2.2 billion yuan (about $305 million) per year.”
So the big question is, what will happen to that industry? And all those people?
The details are a bit light on this one, so Greenbang will just bring you what she can. Possibly with a cup of tea and a lemon slice, if she’s feeling generous.
A few press outlets are reporting that Renault is getting into bed with Sita, a division of waste company Suez, to create a car recycling venture, with the venture then taking over a majority stake in car-recycler Indra.
The whole thing is planned to cost around €100 million and the companies are hoping to cash in on European Union requirements that stipulate 95 percent of cars be recycled.
Ken Livingstone will have to go a long way to apologise to the world for his part in a series of adverts promoting cheese back in the heady brace and leg warmer wearing 1980s. Back then, he was pushing red leicester, trading on his Red Ken nickname. Now he’s more like Green Ken, with a truckload of eco-biz announcements exiting City Hall this week.
First off, the Mayor will be holding a meeting on zero carbon developments for London, off the back of the first such development called Gallions Park, and whether London can house a few more.
Then there’s more plans for cycle hire to take a little more off London’s carbon emissions and an extra £25 a day fee for Chelsea tractors coming into the capital.
And the proverbial cherry on the cake: a draft plan to get London’s businesses recycling 70 percent of its waste by 2020.
This strategy sets out measures so that London’s businesses can take responsibility for the waste they produce and take action to use resources productively and, with London’s waste industry, maximise the social, environmental and economic opportunities of reprocessing and managing waste within London.
The Mayor’s vision for how London manages its business waste in 2020 is that:
– there is a high level of recycling and composting, more waste is reused and less waste is produced
– advanced waste technologies are used for treating non-recyclable waste, particularly technologies that produce energy
– London’s waste is primarily managed in London, reducing the impact on surrounding regions
– high quality advice, support and recycling services are offered to all businesses consistently across London
– the contribution of London’s waste to climate change is minimised.
This story is brought to you in association with Delta Simons
The buses of Greenbang’s youth were filled with crafty cigarette smoke, superannuated chewing gum and words etched into the windows that would make a sailor blush. For the little nippers of tomorrow, it will be all that and more: gum, smoke, obscenities and a hydrogen fuel cell.
Cal-start, a US transport tech firm, has won five contracts from the Federal Transit Administration, to get hydrogen-powered buses on the roads - it’s a $24 million project, split half each between Cal-start and the Administration.
Here’s the skinny on the fivesome:
* SunLine Transit Agency’s American Fuel Cell Bus - The focus of this direct path project, based at SunLine Transit Agency, internationally known for its hydrogen leadership, is to develop a purpose-built, next generation fuel cell bus. The bus features an upgraded 120-kilowatt fuel cell system from UTC, an advanced lithium-ion energy storage system, an advanced electric motive drive system from ISE Corp. that is lighter weight and lower cost, and an advanced New Flyer bus design using composite materials and modern electronics for weight reduction. SunLine will operate the bus in the nine cities of the Coachella Valley in California.
* AC Transit “HyRoad” - Based on considerable experience operating three advanced designed buses incorporating UTC Power fuel cell systems, AC Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area, a national leader in fuel cell bus design and operations, will push the limits of existing technology in this direct-path project. They will accelerate testing and identification of the weakest areas of fuel cell and hybrid systems, root cause analysis, fuel cell technology development, and component upgrades with more reliable and durable systems. Data collected from benchmarking current systems will lead to fuel cell and component upgrades roughly one year into the project.
* BAE Systems Compound Fuel Cell Hybrid Bus - The goal of this novel evolutionary path project is to trim capital cost and reduce operating costs by building on a highly efficient, commercial Orion hybrid bus design that balances a moderately-sized Hydrogenics fuel cell (15-25-kilowatt) as an auxiliary power unit (APU), BAE Systems’ advanced HybriDrive(r) Propulsion System, and advanced energy storage. Called “compound” because it links fuel cell, conventional engine and battery energy sources in one system, the bus targets doubling the fuel efficiency of a diesel bus in an affordable package. It will operate with San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) transit system for up to one year.
* US Hybrid Integrated Auxiliary Module (IAM) and Fuel Cell Bi-Directional Converter (BDC) - These two component projects from US Hybrid in Torrance, CA., will develop critical enabling systems for more reliable and lower-cost fuel cell bus operation. The Integrated Auxiliary Module (IAM) project will develop and demonstrate a single, low-cost, compact unit housing the 200 amp (A), 24 volt (V) DC-DC converter and dual 10 horsepower (hp) motor drives with CAN interface for auxiliary power needs aboard a fuel cell or hybrid fuel cell bus. The Fuel Cell Bi-directional DC-DC Power Converter (BDC) project will optimize and streamline the complex energy flow between multiple devices, such as fuel cells, batteries and electric drive system. By standardizing the 400A rated bi-directional DC-DC converter module design, the unit can reduce weight and costs, and increase efficiency of the fuel cell systems.
Good news for seances, Bognor Regis and teenage parties: a new breakthrough means even areas with low light conditions can be used to generate solar-alike energy.A breakthrough by University of Johannesburg professor Vivian Alberts means that photovoltaic panels can generate electricity in areas that aren’t ever so sunny, according to Independent Online.
Due to the construction of the cells, comparatively high yields can be obtained even under partially shaded or overcast conditions. Alberts, interviewed in Germany this week, said plans to make the photovoltaic panels commercially available in South Africa were at an advanced stage and there would be a major announcement at the end of March about when they would go on sale.Alberts said agreements had been signed with major investors and they were in the process of finalising agreements with banks for the funding, which prevented him from giving further details on the sale dates.
In case you’re wondering what’s the cunning tech involved, it’s a layer of wafer-thin, semiconducting material, made from copper, indium, gallium, sulphur and selenium. And it’s cheap too - apparently, it’s backers believe it could be half the cost of any equivalent on the market.
There’s nothing that induces green guilt like bottled water. You can make the bottle live again by refilling it and taking it to work with you, but it stares back up at you from your desk, whispering perniciously “you still bought me, didn’t you? you think tap water’s not good enough eh, Mr Big Shot? You think your itinerant thirst is more important than the environment, don’t you, you freaking eco-criminal? Shame on you! Shame!” Until you have to recycle it to stop the terrible accusations. At least, that’s what happens to Greenbang.
