The suburbs are infamous for being inefficient, sprawling, violent, and a great place for growing marijuana. So what to do with all this wasted land? Well, here’s a TED talk on how to convert suburbia into a liveable and more urban space. This video gives me hope for a more sustainable North America.
Thanks to Craig!
The Republican party in the USA has been trying to defend the drilling of oil despite an ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, nothing new there. They have also been arguing against progressive economic reforms to make the American economy more efficient and powered by renewable sources.
Thanks to the Republican incompetence I have stumbled across good news from Spain. They tried citing a report that they thought was against green reforms, turns out those reforms have turned a region of Spain from a place of economic misery to a haven of productivity.
Sixty-five percent of the electricity used in Navarra comes from renewable sources — primarily wind — built over the last twenty years. Over those years, the region went from having the highest unemployment rate in Spain to having the lowest rate, today.
“Under President Obama’s leadership,†the report concludes, “the United States’ decisive support of renewable energies…will aid in rapidly overcoming the current economic crisis…â€
The Royal Bank of Canada has launched a series of grants for charities to promote all good things about water. There project is called Blue Water and they want you to promote good water stewardship. It looks like a great project that they have created, it would be really great to see RBC promote good water usage in their wretched tar sands investments.
You can also take a short quiz about your water knowledge.
Here’s a video about the work they did with National Geographic:
You most likely know about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is seemingly never-ending and assumed you’d never see it mentioned on a website about good news. Well, it turns out enterprising people from the University of Pittsburgh have used the spill to test out their new polymer-based filter that successfully cleans water.
Don’t forget that one way to prevent oil spills is to use less oil in your own life.
Here’s a video (might want to turn down you speakers):
And here’s a press release from the university:
Gao’s filter hinges on a polymer that is both hydrophilic-it bonds with the hydrogen molecules in water-and oleophobic, meaning that it repels oil. When the polymer is applied to an ordinary cotton filter, it allows water to pass through but not oil. The filter is produced by submerging the cotton in a liquid solution containing the polymer then drying it in an oven or in open air, Gao explained.
For the massive slick off the U.S. Gulf Coast, Gao envisions large, trough-shaped filters that could be dragged through the water to capture surface oil. The oil could be recovered and stored and the filter reused. Current cleanup methods range from giant containment booms and absorbent skimmers to controlled fires and chemical dispersants with questionable effects on human health and the environment.
Green plastics? Yes please! Bioplastics manufacturer Cereplast has developed a way to produce plastics with algae. By using dehydrated algae who’s natural oils have been extracted for fuel, Cereplast has managed to develop plastic products with properties very similar to traditional polymers.
While developing the plastic, Cereplast is also determining how this plastic mix could be recycled effectively.
Using algae wouldn’t affect food crops the way other bioplastics made from corn and starches could if they were massively scaled up. The process complements algae fuel production instead of competing with it.
[Cereplast founder and CEO Frederic Scheer] said that artificially-grown high-yield algae crops can be harvested after two months.
This would mean that even in small batches, the cost per pound of algae plastic is expected to beat out traditional plastics, too.
Read the whole article here.