Using Hair to Remove Crude Oil
Most people think of hair and fur as garbage, or compost. But it turns out to be a great natural alternative to oil containment booms.
And Thomas Azwell has designed a process to bioremediate oil soaked hair mats into nutrient rich soil enhancer.
“Used on a large scale after the 2007 Cosco Busan tanker oil spill in San Francisco Bay, hair mats effectively remove crude from sandy shores. “Within the first 72 hours these hair mats were just slurping up oil,” the group’s cofounder Lisa Gautier said to Audubon”
and
“Hair is very efficient at collecting oil out of the air, off surfaces like your skin and out of the water, even petroleum oil.”
Gen Y…what role are you going to take?
“The study, commissioned by IBM, found that young adults in Generation Y — the folks currently aged 18-24 — had both the highest levels of awareness of environmental issues, and were the biggest wasters of energy and water in the country.”
via greenbiz
Slow is Good
From the New York Times:
By halving its top cruising speed over the last two years, Maersk cut fuel consumption on major routes by as much as 30 percent, greatly reducing costs. But the company also achieved an equal cut in the ships’ emissions of greenhouse gases.
“The previous focus has been on ‘What will it cost?’ and ‘Get it to me as fast as possible,’ ” said Soren Stig Nielsen, Maersk’s director of environmental sustainability, who noted that the practice began in 2008, when oil prices jumped to $145 a barrel.
“But now there is a third dimension,” he said. “What’s the CO2 footprint?”
Traveling more slowly, he added, is “a great opportunity” to lower emissions “without a quantum leap in innovation.”
In what reads as a commentary on modern life, Maersk advises in its corporate client presentation, “Going at full throttle is economically and ecologically questionable.”
That principle holds true in the air and on land. Planes could easily reduce emissions by slowing down 10 percent, for example, adding just five or six minutes to a flight between New York and Boston or Copenhagen and Brussels, said Peder Jensen, a transportation expert at the European Environment Agency.
Humanure: Goodbye, Toilets. Hello, Extreme Composting
“For more than a decade, 57-year-old roofer and writer Joseph Jenkins has been advocating that we flush our toilets down the drain and put a bucket in the bathroom instead. When a bucket in one of his five bathrooms is full, he empties it in the compost pile in his backyard in rural Pennsylvania. Eventually he takes the resulting soil and spreads it over his vegetable garden as fertilizer.
“It’s an alternative sanitation system,” says Jenkins, “where there is no waste.” His 255-page Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure is in its third edition and has been translated into five languages, but it has only recently begun to catch on. His message? Human manure, when properly managed, is odorless. His audience? Ecologically committed city dwellers who are looking to do more for the earth than just sort their trash or ride a bike to work.”
read the entire article at TIME
Dallas’ Eco-Community Could Be the Future of Urban Housing
“In 2011, construction will begin on Forwarding Dallas, a hilltop-inspired community that combines renewable energy and rooftop greenery with practical and cost-effective design. Could we be looking at the model for sustainable urban architecture?
Portuguese architectural firms Atelier Data and Moov designed Forwarding Dallas for the Re:Vision Dallas competition, which solicited sustainable designs to construct on a city block in downtown Dallas. Forwarding Dallas took the top prize, which means it will actually be built, with construction starting in early 2011.
The design is inspired by natural hills, with different portions of the hills designated for different uses. The valleys are filled with public green spaces; vegetation, including food, will be grown on the step-filled slopes, and the peaks are topped with solar panels and wind turbines. The plan is for the community to be completely self-powered, and it even features a rainwater collection and storage facility.
But the community — which will include apartments, a gymnasium, a cafe, a daycare, and exhibition space — isn’t merely sustainable; it’s also a practical, cost-effective design. The construction is completely prefabricated and streamlined for rapid construction. The purpose of projects like Re:Vision Dallas is to provide cities with a model for off-the-grid architecture that’s quickly realized and doesn’t break the bank.”
via i09
From Photosynthesis to Photovoltaics
“Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to grow photovoltaic cells using tobacco. According to their recently published article in Nano Letters, Matt Francis and his team have developed a method of tweaking the genetic material of the tobacco mosaic virus to create chromophores, tiny molecular structures that turn light into high powered electrons.”
read the rest of the article here.
Where there is waste, there is money
Think creatively and look at old phenomena with new eyes. Levant Power, a new venture started by some MIT grads, shows that technology can help us extract value from common movements we take for granted. The company is working to productize shock absorbers that produce electrical energy for use in vehicles.
Get more information from their site.
Concrete Made from Hemp
“Buildings account for thirty-eight percent of the CO2 emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Green Building Council, and demand for carbon neutral and/or zero footprint buildings is at an all-time high. Now there is a new building material that is not just carbon neutral, but is actually carbon negative. Developed by U.K.-based Lhoist Group, Tradical® Hemcrete® is a bio-composite, thermal walling material made from hemp, lime and water. What makes it car”bon negative? There is more CO2 locked-up in the process of growing and harvesting of the hemp than is released in the production of the lime binder. Of course the equation is more complicated than that, but Hemcrete® is still an amazing new technology that could change the building industry.”
via inhabitat
White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters
“Studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20 percent or more in hot, sunny weather. Lower energy consumption also means fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
What is more, a white roof can cost as little as 15 percent more than its dark counterpart, depending on the materials used, while slashing electricity bills”
via nytimes
I’d like to find a way to make a roof that can switch from black to white depending on season. Thus providing the most efficient option for homes and buildings.
