Greenbox for Green Driving

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Three fishing men from Northern Wales have invented a device that removes upwards of 95% of greenhouse gas emissions from an automobile. It’s called the Greenbox and it replaces the muffler of the car and is designed to be removable so new filters can be swapped in. The reason that the Greenbox needs to be swapped is because the gasses that it traps can be used to encourage algae growth – to make biofuel.

Can this invention get any better?

We’ve managed to develop a way to successfully capture a majority of the emissions from the dirtiest motor we could find,” Palmer, who has consulted for organizations including the World Health Organisation and GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters

Carpeted Financial District in Switzerland

Thanks Cory!

In the financial distrct of St. Gallen, Switzerland there is now carpeting. It’s an art installation named Stadtlounge that has covered the entire district in red broadloom – including cars!

The winning “Stadtlounge” or “city lounge” proposal, by artist Pipilotti Rist and the Carlos Martinez architectural firm, features a bright red surfacing that appears to have swept in like the tide, covering everything in its path. At night, the streets are illuminated by blimp-shaped objects that hang from cables strung between the district’s modern office buildings.

When I grow up I want to be astronaut, from Switzerland!

Via Boing

China is Greening Up

China, that raucous polluter is open about how badly they treat the environment, and they are also open about how they are trying to clean it up, particularly they are encouraging public organizations to pressure factories and politicians to clean up their acts. THe Washington Monthly’s article The Great Leap Forward looks at the growing green movement in China.

Green Camel Bell’s mission is the “protection of the Mother River,” a motto that evokes the history of the Yellow River basin as the cradle of Chinese civilization. Among other activities, the organization’s two paid staffers (Zhao draws no salary) and several dozen volunteers assemble the environmental records of factories across Lanzhou: culling newspaper articles, academic studies, and reports prepared by local environmental officials, many of whom Zhao knows. They send the information to a partner group in Beijing, which feeds it into the China Water Pollution Map (www.ipe.org.cn/english), a free online database that allows users to access information about water quality in their region. The site also publishes a list of factories that violate national environ- mental standards—including many state-owned enterprises.

Don’t Pirate Entertainment, Borrow it!

With the ability to download almost anything (they’re still working on downloading foodstuffs) there is no reason to go to your community library. Or is there?

Certainly there is! Libraries are the oft-forgetten piracy centres of convience. No longer do you have to search BitTorrent sites for movies when you can get them legally.

CNet reminds us that libraries are a haven of free information:

Libraries are offering more free search services, database access, articles, photos, eBooks, audiobooks, music and museum passes than ever. Chances are you are buying, subscribing to, or stealing something you can get for free with a library card.

Australia Looking to Protect Environment

Two pieces of good news from down under! Oddly (but goodly), Prime Minister Howard, who dosen’t like the Kyoto Accord, appears to realize the environment is important:

1. His government has announced that households that use solar power will get $1000 in rebates. This is to encourage less energy consumption.

2. At the same time Howard also announce that schools will be rewarded if they improve water and energy efficiency.

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