Cyclists’ Cellphones Monitor Pollutants

bike

Bike couriers in Cambridge, UK have been given tricked-out cellphones that monitor the air pollution around them and ten report that information to a research team. What a clever way to gather this information.

The technique is made possible by small wireless pollution sensors and custom software that allows the phones to report levels of air pollutants wherever they happen to be around town.

“Mobiles are everywhere, and now have a lot of computing power,” says Eiman Kanjo, the computer scientist at Cambridge University, UK, leading technical development of the project. “They can provide an alternative to expensive custom hardware and report from places that otherwise aren’t monitored.”

Kanjo and colleagues gave local cycle couriers air-pollution sensors and GPS units that connect to their cellphones via Bluetooth. Custom software lets the phone constantly report the current air quality and location to servers back in the lab.

“They cycle around the city as usual and we receive the data over the cellphone network,” says Kanjo. “We can find out what pollutants people are exposed to and where.”

Hummers More Green Than Hybrids?

hummer

You may have heard of the urban rumors that argue Hummers have less of an environmental impact than hybrids because of toxic batteries used in hybrids. So are hybrids more damaging to the environment than Hummers?

The answer is a definitive no.

You can disprove most of the false claims by doing a bit of math. Regarding the hybrid battery, let’s say a Hummer is driven 200,000 miles in its lifetime. Its EPA rating is 14 miles per gallon in the city and 18 miles per gallon on the highway. Let’s be real generous and assume it is driven only on the highway at a reasonable speed, yielding the maximum mileage. Divide 200,000 by 18, and you’re talking 11,111 gallons of gas.

Next let’s calculate the Btus in that amount of gasoline and convert them to kilowatt-hours. Gasoline has between 115,000 and 125,000 Btus per gallon, so the Hummer would burn through about 1.3 billion Btus over those 200,000 miles. Since there are 3,412 Btus in a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy, this would convert to almost 400,000 kilowatt-hours, which, at the rock-bottom price of five cents per kilowatt-hour, would be about $20,000, or almost as much as the price of a Prius. If the energy to make the hybrid battery came from fuel oil, which has around 140,000 Btus per gallon, it would take an estimated 9,524 gallons of oil to match the Hummer’s 1.3 billion Btus. At $2 a gallon, that’s also about $20,000.

31 Tips to Help You Travel Green

ecotourism
Traveling for your daily commute can be damaging to the environement if you drive a car, so why not bike, take transit, or just carpool? Ideas like this can make a world of difference when done en masse. Fortunately someone has gone and made a list of 31 green travel tips to ensure that we do less damage from our travels.

From the section on airplane travel:

24. Combine work and play: If you just have to attend a meeting somewhere overseas, why not book a few days off after the meeting and stay there for a week or so? That way you get the best of both worlds and you don’t have to fly as much, which will massively reduce your carbon footprint.

25. Carbon offset flights: Many airlines are waking up to carbon offsetting and passing some of the expense on to their passengers. If you are so inclined (and can afford it) you can pay a little extra for your flight and the airline will take your extra money and invest it directly into planting trees. Companies such as Treeflights exist in the UK to do just that, planting trees in Wales and Peru.

26. Travelling to the airport: Most hub and regional airports have good public transport links, which means you can catch the bus or train instead of driving to the airport and adding to your carbon footprint even more.

The Story of Stuff

stuffThe Story of Stuff is a project by Annie Leonard that chronicles none other than stuff.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The best part – she provides information on how another way is possible!

Watch the movie The Story of Stuff.

Scroll To Top