Environment

Here’s What Individuals can do to Help Stop Climate Change

- Adam Clare

run

This past week UN scientists released a statement which basically says we’re doomed unless we dramatically change our climate policies now. That sounds stressful, and it should be. So how can we as individuals make a bit of an impact to help curb climate change? There are many things we can do to improve the world with the best thing being to stop buying stuff you don’t need.

3. Set some rules

Most of us don’t want to damage the environment deliberately. We just don’t have the right habits installed in our daily life. It’s normal to produce waste which is why everyone is doing so.

Start by carrying a reusable straw and a coffee mug with you every day. Set a reminder on your phone for your shopping day to carry a reusable bag with yourself. Then start reminding your housemates and your colleagues too.

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Ways to Cool Cities

- Adam Clare

The urban heating effect is a very real threat to how we cool our cities. The concentration of cement and machinery generates and stores a lot of heat that natural systems can’t see cool. Unless we purposefully design our cities to incorporate natural cooling techniques. The video above explores three ways that cities can start to cool their local environments.

Over at Reddit user megalomania summarized the video:

Method 1 – White asphalt emulsion on pavement
Method 2 – Rooftop Gardens
Method 3 – “Placement of buildings” to create shady canyons block not to block natural wind corridors.

Energy Fund Backed by Bill Gates Only Invests in Carbon Reduction

- Adam Clare

lab

On of the richest people on the planet is sick of climate change and has launched a venture capital firm to slow down global warming. Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) funds companies that can make a marked reduction on annual carbon output while also being profitable. Using capitalism to undo what capitalism has caused isn’t a new idea but hopefully it’ll work. So far BEV has funded some really neat initiatives from better batteries to cutting edge biofuels manufactured by plants.

“We are a unique fund with investors who are patient and flexible,” says Rodi Guidero, executive director of BEV. “Our goal is to find the companies that will have the greatest impact on accelerating the energy transition and help them in whatever way we can.”

To help him find those companies, Guidero draws on an in-house group of scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, along with a network of 140 academic institutions and large corporations. They provide expertise on the vast range of technologies that BEV is interested in.

To be eligible for BEV’s money, a startup needs to showcase a scientifically sound technology that has the potential to reduce annual global greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 500 million metric tons. Global emissions currently measure about 40 billion metric tons a year.

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Clean Energy Growing in Popularity

- Adam Clare

Anyone looking at the energy industry instantly notices the growth of clean energy relative to non-renewable sources. Clean energy is getting so popular that nations which you might not think of embracing renewable energy are investing quite a lot into the field. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) recently highlighted seven projects around the world which exemplify the global trend to clean energy.

3. The clean energy transition is happening in Russia too.
“I was in Moscow a few weeks ago. We launched our roadmap for Russia for an energy transition. A lot of people didn’t believe we’d ever do this, but we did this together with the ministry of energy. We have projections that they can quadruple renewable energy in their system by 2030. The minister of energy agreed with that assessment publicly… He said we know the world of energy is going to change, [and] we have to decide if we want to be part of the vanguard of this movement, or if we want to be struggling a few years down the road to catch up with everybody else.”

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Thanks to Delaney!

Reducing Waste in Food Courts

- Adam Clare

fries

Poor waste management presents more than just food waste in food courts located in mass or offices. The waste of time, money, and energy plague most of these food operations. In yet another example of how being more efficient with waste saves more than the planet, the CBC took a look at how some food courts in Canada are dealing with waste. There are easy solutions like better signage and reducing what restaurants need to hand out with every meal and there are more complex solutions like dehydrating the food waste. Of course, the best way to reduce waste in food courts is to bring your own lunch from home.

The food court at Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto used to generate 120 bags of garbage a day. Now it produces just three — despite the fact that it serves noodles, fried chicken, burgers and other fast foods to 24,000 customers a day.
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The good news is that far more food court waste is recyclable than you might think. Cromie and his team went through a load of garbage collected at a local food court by CBC News and found 86 per cent of the items in the “garbage” stream could actually have been recycled.

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