Inspirational and good news.
Not to be outdone by the recycled house in Quebec, the Brits have unveiled a zero-emission home. The BBC reports that it’s the first zero-emission home in the UK and aims to be an example of new rules to be applied in 2016.
“The home generates all its own energy – and when you’re away on holiday can send electricity back to the National Grid. The company says its annual energy bill would be £31, as compared to £500 for the standard new home of this size,” he said.
The Canadian province of Quebec is trying to promote small thing s that people can do in their home to lessen their impact on the environment. Part of this awareness campaign involves building a house using 100% recycled materials, including socks!
The building will be cobbled together with two boxcars, used wooden crates, old firefighting hoses and a roof made of vegetation. It will house a kitchen, living room and a garage with displays of greener lifestyles
Satellite imagery can be used to raise awareness about people in trouble, and now satellite imagery is being used to find ancient settlements.
Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.
I’ve never been one for fashion, but I think that has just changed with the introduction of clothing that eats smogs and kills bacteria. Olivia Ong, a design student at Cornell, came up with the idea of making a jacket that protects the wearer from bad things. It uses nano-materials (pictured) to do its thing, which makes the material itself very very expensive. Just imagine a world in which clothing actually makes the world better.
Ong’s dress and jacket, part of her original fashion line called “Glitterati,” look innocently hip. But closer inspection — with a microscope, that is — shows an army of electrostatically charged nanoparticles creating a protective shield around the cotton fibers in the top part of the dress, and the sleeves, hood and pockets of the jacket.
Sir Richard Branson owns a lot of companies and he has previously mentioned that he wants to fight climate change and cut back on emissions. It appears that he’s sticking to his word as Virgin Trains is running a biodiesel train in Europe and plans to switch more trains to biodiesel if this test run goes well.
If running biodiesel isn’t enough, the trains also produce energy!
In addition to the environmental benefits of the Voyager trial, Virgin’s Pendolino electric trains return 17 percent of the power they use to the national grid every time they brake, making the Pendolino fleet one of the most efficient in the world. Over the course of a year this is enough to power 11,825 homes. These trains emit 76 percent less CO2 than cars or domestic flights.