Adam Clare

Organization to Help Green PCs

The Green Advisory Service has set out to help PC firms do less environmental damage. In the UK a PC left on overnight can cost upwards of Â£53 in electricity. The cost of running a PC is not cheap for the pocketbook or for the environment and this is what the Green Advisory Service will help change.

“Organisations are increasingly focused on their environmental profile and are beginning to recognise the reputation and cost advantages of a green approach,” said Heidi-Lynn Mitchell, product services director for Computacenter.

This is partly thanks to a major European Union directive – The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE).”

Fun Cartoon Room

An artist as made a really cool paint scheme in a room, it’s like living in a cartoon.

I would love to live in a house painted like this!

More images and a brief description can be found here.

From Air to Rail

Air travel is very, very, very bad for the environment. So why am I bringing it up on this website? (yeah for rhetorical questions!)

A company is proposing to take old airplane fuselages and convert them into monorails. This just sounds cool! And it is! Energy for the trains comes from solar power, wind power, and regenerative breaking.

This is such a good use for old environmentally unfriendly technology because it takes it and makes it into a sustainable transportation system.

It has yet to be prototyped, but let’s hope that this system is built.

Net Metering in the USA

Net metering is a novel concept that allows property owners who produce their own energy to sell surplus power back to the electric grid. There are many, many, many reason why this should be adopted and the International Business Times looks at people are selling energy back to the grid not for profit, but for philosophical reasons. The profit must help the decisions though.

“Net metering essentially allows people to become mini-power producers. Programs vary state to state, but they are typically coupled with financial incentives that make it easier to invest thousands of dollars for photovoltaic panels, windmills or fuel cells. Since sun and wind are intermittent, customers still rely on the grid for steady service. The meter runs backward when more energy is produced than a customer consumes.”

Eco Challenge

The finalists are now online for the Eco Challenge, which is something that MTV and GE have conceived together.

“The mtvU GE ecomagination Challenge is asking college students from around the country to develop new, creative ways to green their campus. We’re looking for innovative and groundbreaking ideas that can have a positive impact at the local level or the global level â€” or both. The sky is (literally) the limit.”

To me this seems like an odd partnership for an environmental cause, but whatever their reasons I’m glad they are doing it.

Thanks, mkb!