The Reality of the Paperless Office

A PDF- making company (no idea these eve existed) recently sent me something that caught my eye about a survey they conducted:

In this survey, three out of every four Americans say they want to reduce paper consumption for the environment, including:

·         48.0% - willing to reduce their use of newspapers

·         45.9% - willing to reduce their use of magazines

·         37.6% - willing to reduce their use of forms, contracts, documents

·         31.6% - willing to reduce their use of books

·         6.1% - willing to reduce their use of toilet paper

Essentially, Americans are willing to half their paper consumption in the next five years. That’s fantastic for the environment! That means fewer trees will be felled uselessly and fuel consumed to transport paper will be reduced too.

They compiled an info-graphic about their survey results.

New Art Project Examines Humanity and Art-as-Experience

ZED.TO is an art project that is examining how people relate to one another while exploring the boundaries of art and theatre. It’s run by a small group called the Mission Business and looks like they’re going to create something downright nifty.

ZED.TO – an immersive biotech adventure from Trevor Haldenby on Vimeo.

This project is an exploration of format. We are curious about what happens when artists and strategic thinkers move outside of their own specific realms to collaborate in story making and story telling. Toronto is currently in a financial artistic crisis. Looking at the report on municipal per capita investment in the arts that just came out this week, Toronto is at the bottom of list of Canadian cities dollar investment in the arts. It’s not a secret that cities flourish when a government invests in culture. The return on investment is high when you invest in the arts. As a result of this lack of funding, the art we are creating is void of risk. The Mission Business, a new collective on the Toronto arts scene, is inevitably caught in a cycle that won’t allow us to gain from writing grants because our project doesn’t fit into any category box, and no one knows our work to be proven successfully. So we are expected to go round and round in a cycle that wants us to prove ourselves before we are supported by larger funding bodies, but we get caught because we can’t put anything up without that support. The problem here is the same as the art-making. No one wants to take a risk. For me, creating an experience that is inherently risky in format and content as well as collaboration, makes sense in a period where we are being forced to do what is considered safe. How are we expected to create change if we do the same thing over and over expecting different results? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

To get their project running they are looking for financing through IndieGoGo, find out more at ZED.TO on IndieGogo

Hot Invention Cools Down Environment

A seemingly banal industrial component is a heat exchanger and they can be ridiculously inefficient. What a heat exchanger does is regulate the temperature of machines that have to be kept cool like an industrial sized-fridge.

At Concordia, a doctoral student has created a new device that can make heat exchangers more efficient and thus environmentally-friendly. It’s this sort of advancement that is good for the environment and good for profits so I’m sure we’ll see his heat exchanging technology being implemented sooner rather than later.

The innovation behind Vatistas’s unique design comes from over two decades of research into vortex flows. “Growing up in southern costal Greece,” recalls Vatistas, “I became familiar with the concept of vortices at an early age when my elders would warn me of the dangers of swimming near whirlpools!” Youthful fascination evolved into research passion as Vatistas performed advanced theoretical work into how vortices alter the flow of fluid substances like air or water. He later went on to gain international renown for proving Nobel Prize-winner J.J. Thomson’s 125-year-old theorem on the stability of vortex rings.

But it is on the practical side of things where Vatistas’s work resonates loudest. When Vatistas realized that swirling flow could dramatically increase heat transfer exchange, the commercial application of his research quickly became evident. He then partnered with Valéo Management L.P. to investigate new designs of heat exchangers and received a prestigious Idea to Innovation Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in support of the work.

Read more at Concordia’s site.

Life After Death for American Shopping Malls

Malls have lost a lot of their popularity in consumer culture which has caused many malls to close down. This leaves huge swathes of land unoccupied in towns and cities that can be repurposed from something destructive to the environment to something that respects it.

Well, if a mall hasn’t already closed, it can consider one of the new iterations of the contemporary mall. Communities and city planners have gotten creative, using abandoned mall spaces for schools, government offices, medical clinics, casinos, wedding venues, call centers and churches. And while some malls are being torn down and housing or completely new retail buildings are being built, it is much more economically savvy (and green) to reuse the existing infrastructures.

How about an urban farm? While streams and other natural features have been brought back from being buried under concrete in some situations where malls are getting makeovers (along with adding putting greens, dog parks and other outdoor activities), a few enterprising souls have taken a look at the great natural light (many malls were built with skylights), good access to public transportation, and central locations. And thinking green.

Read the rest here.