Author: Adam Clare

Solar Skyscraper

Skyscrapers are bombarded with solar rays and all they did before was heat the building, now an entire skyscraper is being covered in solar panels! No more wasting of that precious light.

Buy 10 million dollars of solar panels and cover the building with them! They’re just as pretty as any facade, and produce hundreds of kilowatts of power for use in the building. In concert with 24 roof-mounted wind turbines, 10% of the CIS tower in Manchester will be powered by building-bound renewable energy. While that might not seem like much, it is a very big building. Only the building’s service tower (shown) will be covered with panels. The attached office building (which gets to have windows instead of solar panels) is much larger.

New York to Plant One Million Trees

New York City is considered a place of glass and concrete (with a park in the middle) and Mayor Bloomberg is looking to add trees to the mix. On Earth Day, Bloomberg proclaimed that one million trees will be planted in the city by 2017. At first I thought that the trees would go in Central Park and in the surrounding parks in the burroughs, particularly Staten Island; indeed, trees will be placed all over.

Bloomberg, whose second term expires at the end of 2009, has a goal of reducing New York City’s carbon emissions by 30 percent over the next two decades. He has said that the population is likely to grow by another million in that time – up from 8.2 million today – and that the city needs a plan now to deal with the strain on infrastructure and the environment.
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For the next 10 years, the city will plant 23,000 trees each year along city streets, to reach a goal of having a tree in “every single place where it is possible to plant a street tree,” Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said.

The remaining will be planted in parks and public lots, while the private sector will also be encouraged to plant trees on their properties as well.

Going Green is Profitable

There two articles out in the mainstream press today that focus on companies that have realized that saving the environment is good for their bottom line.

Publishers have discovered that there is a demand for green coverage:

“Buoyed by the breakaway success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film documentary of Al Gore’s environmental lecture, publishers like The Washington Post, National Geographic and others are increasing their offerings of “green” content, hoping to attract readers and advertising revenues from manufacturers and retailers who are suddenly walking the earth-friendly path.”

And being earth friendly is good for advertising:

“Participating in Earth Day is a way for companies to get their name out there,” said Diane Osgood of Business for Social Responsibility in San Francisco. “It can get them publicity because right now green is in. Green is the new black.”

Bamboo Ecobook

Bambooing
Asus is making a line of notebooks that are modular and easily upgradable for the end user. One of these easy modifications that can be done is making the notebook an ecobook by having bamboo casing and all the plastic made of recycled materials!

There won’t be many who find issue with the choice of material used in the EcoBook. Bamboo wood is easily replenished (it grows infamously fast) and yet when polished up it creates a luxurious wood veneer that is also biodegradable.

But the goodness of ASUS new ECOBOOK doesn’t stop there. the plastics chosen to manufacture the EcoBook come from recyclable raw materials and are numbered to facilitate recycling when the product reaches the end of its life cycle.