In Australia these days scientists and Foster’s beer producers are finding other ways to use beer, or what’s left of it. The waste water from the beer has recently been used to make a fuel cell.Â
“The fuel cell is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol.” The byproduct is clean water!
What will people discover next?
You can check out the story at the CBC.
Every time I’m riding my bike and get stuck behind a smog producing death machine I fantasize about biking in cities like Amsterdam. Compared to North American cities they are already revolutionary in the way they promote cycling, and now some European cities are pedaling harder!
Copenhagen and Amsterdam have a cycling rate of 30% and 40% of their population commuting to work on bikes. This is good news itself, what’s better is that they are looking to encourage more cycling by increasing the cycling infrastructure that exists.
The rest of Europe is paying close attention. Officials from London, Munich and Zurich (plus a handful from the U.S.) have visited Amsterdam’s transportation department for advice on developing bicycle-friendly infrastructure and policies. Norway aims to raise bicycle traffic to at least 8% of all travel by 2015—double its current level—while Sweden hopes to move from 12% to 16% by 2010. This summer, Paris will put thousands of low-cost rental bikes throughout the city to cut traffic, reduce pollution and improve parking.
The city of Copenhagen plans to double its spending on biking infrastructure over the next three years, and Denmark is about to unveil a plan to increase spending on bike lanes on 2,000 kilometers, or 1,240 miles, of roads. Amsterdam is undertaking an ambitious capital-improvement program that includes building a 10,000-bike parking garage at the main train station—construction is expected to start by the end of next year. The city is also trying to boost public transportation usage, and plans to soon enforce stricter car-parking fines and increase parking fees to discourage people from driving.
Over at the ever-informative DeSmogBlog, they argue that based on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclusion that it takes only 0.12% of the world’s domestic product to essentially save the planet.
The bottom line is that the cost works out to $10 a person to save the planet.
Here’s more proof that trying to make a difference does work. Greenpeace, who scolded Apple for not being green, has been effective in getting Apple to change its way.
Steve Jobs, the man behind Apple, has released a statement that Apple is going to be greener.
Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.
The government of BC (the Canadian province, not the era) is planning to outfit mountain city Whistler with a whole scad of hydro-powered buses. Diesel vehicles are the current norm, but the new buses will run entirely on fuel cells, which produce no harmful emissions.
Small numbers of fuel-cell- powered buses have been used in demonstration projects in cities in Europe and the United States over the past decade.
But the Whistler project, which is forecast to have 20 of the city’s 30 or so buses running on hydrogen power, will be the largest fuel-cell-powered fleet in the world and the first project to make such vehicles the backbone of a public transit system.