Environment

CNN Likes Recycling

- Adam Clare 3 Comments

Recycling is great! CNN has written an article all about the goodness of recycling. Their reporting differs from how The Economist tackled recycling. I’d love to see CNN cover the reduce ‘R’, until then CNN has fun facts like:

Looking at it another way, according to the National Recycling Coalition, the amount of energy saved in one year by Americans recycling their soda cans, plastic containers, newspapers and packaging represented the energy equivalent of:

Enough gasoline to power 11 million passenger cars for a year
A year’s worth of electricity supply for 17.8 million Americans
11 percent of the energy produced by coal-fired power plants in a year
29 percent of nuclear electricity generation in a year

Be an Environmentalist Everyday

- Adam Clare

It’s easy to show that you care about the environment (and by extension the health of those around you).

The Nature Conservancy has compiled a collection of ways that you can be an environmentalist daily.

Remember when “environmentalist” meant…recycling?

It’s not so simple anymore. Being an environmentalist today calls for a whole new level of greener thinking — from what you choose at the grocery store to how you commute to work every day.

The list includes riding a bike, taking the stairs, compost, and keeping bees in line.

More on Green Flying

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Singapore is going green too, the FAA is trying to green American planes, and don’t forget that you can also travel green!

To add to this list of good news, Christchurch airport is going carbon-neutral, which is really good news!

At a meeting in Christchurch the company received its carbon zero certificate from Landcare Research which chief executive Rene Bakx says comes after a detailed measurement and analysis process.

“We are the gateway for the best of the South Island, and, with an agreed focus on tourism and sustainability, the decision to work towards this goal was a straightforward one for the company to take,” he says.

He says the status has been achieved by the reduction and offsetting of greenhouse emissions by the airport company operations. Emissions from planes are not included in the calculations.

Dreaming in Green

- Adam Clare

The Guardan has a well written article that looks at the emergence of academic green thinking in the UK. The article looks at the advancements being made, but does so in a way that ensures we keep our feet on the ground.

Fortunately, he points out, students are starting to take action for themselves, with campaigns including student organisation People and Planet’s Green League Table last summer, which gave universities degrees according to their environmental awareness. The results were surprising. Oxford and LSE both got 2.1s, while York and Glasgow scraped 2.2s: the top three were Leeds Metropolitan, Plymouth and Hertfordshire. “That really shook a few vice-chancellors,” says Patton, smiling. “I imagine that resolutions were made not to come that far down again.”

But the biggest problem is that, in the end, this is not just an issue for universities. This is going to be a problem for all of us. Paul Allen, development director at the Centre for Alternative Technology, is very anxious about the blindness of the academics. “Do they realise that we need to have a huge reskilling for Britain, that in the years ahead we are going to have to learn how to do things very differently? Are they planning courses that are going to re-educate our young people? No. They’re teaching young people in buildings where the lights are on all the time, in buildings where the energy is badly managed, where no one has even thought about approaching green electricity providers.”

Office Building Warmed by Commuters

- Adam Clare

In Sweden a new office complex will be heated through the power of body heat. The offices will be attached, or really close, to a major train station that is already heated by the people who use it.

“We had a look at it and thought ‘We might actually be able to use this’,” said Karl Sundholm, project leader at Jernhusen, which also owns the station. “This feels good. Instead of just airing the leftover heat out we try to make use of it.”

Jernhusen markets the building as “environment smart” and aims for its energy consumption to be half of what a corresponding building usually is.

The bodily warmth from the central station will be redirected to heat up water. The investment will be around 200 000 Swedish crowns, Sundholm said.

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