From The Economist:
Month: September 2008
Montreal Launches Bixi the Pedal Powered Public Transit
Bixi is the name of Montreal’s new bike-sharing program. If I had my way every city in the world would have a system like this. Way to go Montreal!
The city joins Paris, Barcelona, and Lyon with the installation of its own public bike system, named Bixi, making 2,400 bicycles available to the public at more than 300 locations across six Montreal boroughs.
Starting next spring, residents will be able to borrow bicycles from one station and drop them off at another.
“You grab it, you ride it, you bring it back,” Montreal’s mayor Gerald Tremblay told The Canadian Press. “It will become an emblem for Montreal.”
Bixi may be a more health-friendly means of transportation, but it’s also environmentally friendly. The bikes, which were made in Quebec, are composed entirely of recycled aluminum and the parking stations run on solar power.
The entire operation cost $15 million and was paid for by Stationnement de Montreal, a company that manages the city’s on-street parking.
DIY Alternative Energy, Build Your Own Solar Power
Ever wanted to build your own energy network? Well, now you can!
This guy made his own solar power unit.
So what is a solar panel anyway? It is basically a box that holds an array of solar cells. Solar cells are the things that do the actual work of turning sunlight into electricity. However, it takes a lot of cells to make a meaningful amount of power, and they are very fragile, so the individual cells are assembled into panels. The panels hold enough cells to make a useful amount of power and protect the cells from the elements. It doesn’t sound too complicated. I was convinced I could do it myself.
I started out the way I start every project, by Googling for information on home-built solar panels. I was shocked at how few I found. The fact that very few people were building their own panels led me to think it must be harder to do than I thought. The project got shelved for a while, but I never stopped thinking about it.
Save the Planet: Plant More Trees
Simple stuff really: forests are good for the environment and we ought to have more of them.
The researchers’ calculations suggest that carbon storage in Midwestern forests could offset the greenhouse gas emissions of almost two-thirds of nearby populations, and that proper management of forests could sustain or increase their storage capacity for future generations.
Based on measurements taken between 1999 and 2005 at a forest study site in northern Michigan, the scientists have determined that similar upper Midwest forests covering an estimated 40,000 square miles store an average of 1,300 pounds of carbon per acre per year.
Factoring in effects of climate, history and tree type, the researchers developed an equation suggesting that a heavily forested region in northern Michigan could store more than 350,000 tons of carbon per year. With the area population emitting about 573,000 tons of carbon annually, the forests would sequester approximately 62 percent of the region’s human-caused carbon emissions – the equivalent of yearly emissions from about 225,000 cars.
The Greenest Cup of Office Coffee
The Green Lantern (the cute name for Slate’s enviro-advice column) answered the question of which kind of cup to use in the office. The answer isn’t as clear as you think, as always, there are many issues that need to inform your decision. In sum, use an old mug (don’t buy new ones) and wash using environmentally friendly soap.
The Lantern uses a mug for office beverages, but he’s chosen to go the scavenger route—using an old one someone left in his office. Your colleagues’ instincts are right to avoid polystyrene, but they shouldn’t buy brand-new mugs as a replacement (even the kind that come with cheeky green messages). Unless you absolutely need to drink your coffee on the go, ceramic is better than stainless steel. And when you wash, do it by hand, using phosphate-free soap and cold water. (If you want to use hot water, see if you can share washing duties throughout the office, so the water doesn’t need to be heated separately for each mug.)
What if you get your coffee at the local Starbucks on your way to work? The nationwide chain deserves credit for including 10 percent recycled content in its cups, and paper—unlike polystyrene—has the advantage of being a renewable resource. But in other ways, the wood-based venti cups are even worse than office polystyrene: They’re heavier, which means more energy used to create the cup and more waste once the cups have been crushed. Other coffee retailers are experimenting with cups made out of plant-based material, which can then be composted—a positive step, although one that raises a question of where all that extra corn will come from.