Issue 7
recycling really, what’s the point?
plus: Easy Green: 10 More Sexy Green Gadgets Views on the News: Putting the ‘so what?’ into the news
inside
Easygreen: more sexy, green gadgets (page 6)
Recycling a modern perspective
waste not, want not (page 16) 2
page 17 6 - -In The News page Crowdfunding A traditional selection ofsources the more As of intersting renewable energy stories from the last few weeks
Plus: Views on the News: Half-naked people in mid-winter pool party shocker (page 33) New York Orders New ‘Fatboy’ Climate Change Trousers (page 35)
Cordless Power Vehicle Charging System for Electric Cars (page 37)
welcome
UK comedian Sean Lock talks about the environment: When it comes to global warming and climate change, I’m interested why some people care and some people don’t seem to give a sh#t. shops. If Easy Jet did a “We’ll Fly You To The Shops” deal, they’d think, “Brilliant! I’m in. I can bring back more patio heaters. So the cat’s nice and warm in the garden. While their neighbours could be shivering, drinking puddle water, chucking a sausage backwards and forwards trying to heat it up. On the other hand, some people really care don’t they. Every single piece of
I care. I do care. Not as much as I used to though. Not since I went to America and I came back and thought, “what’s the F#*king point? Why do I bother?” You do, you go there and you think, “This is a waste of bloody time. I mean we have big cars over here, but cars in America are enormous. The average car is like a bungalow with a windscreen. On every level their consumption is so much more extreme than ours. I came home and I just felt stupid. I’m at home right, I’m recycling. Washing out marmite pots. “Ooh, I must get all the marmite out. So that they don’t have to make another one.” And meanwhile they’re drilling for oil in Alaska. Mopping it up with a seal pup. I just feel stupid. I feel like I’ve turned up at an earthquake with a dustpan and brush!” Thanks Sean for letting us use this, and good luck with your upcoming ‘Purple Van Man’ tour.
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easy-green
sexy green gadgets: Clocks can be made of anything really. Like this one, styled from sun-dried recylced paper pulp. Pop on a couple of chrome hands and the normal internal gubbins and you’ve not only got a smart looking clock but an immediate talking point too. Price around £15 Available from www.amazon.co.uk
Funky glowing plant pots that soak up the rays during the day and then glow coquettishly throughout the night. Price £21 com
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The Eton Scorpion A digital AM/FM radio tuner, an LED torch, a USB phone charger, and a bottle opener. Talk about a split personality. Recharges either via its solar panels or the fold out winding handle. Now that’s what we call a gadget. Price £52.99 Available from www.etoncorp. com
The Presso
fellow that requires nothing but your pressing power to deliver an environmentally expresso. Just load it up with your favourite ground and then press them down again. Price £79.95 Available from www.ecoutlet.co.uk
easy-green
Eco Cans insulation. Also BPA-free and completely non-toxic, with a carbon footprint its
For not much more than you’d pay for a good quality cap, why not have one which comes complete with a couple of built-in solar panels and a dual bulb, rechargeable torch. Sunshine during the day powering LEDs at night. Perfect synergy. Price £19.99 Available from www.solarlightcap.com
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A device for monitoring personal energy usage and generation at home provides you with detailed readings and historical data. Prices start around Available from www. diykyoto.com
A quick and easy way to switch your computer to its most energyyou leave your desk for a trip to the banal conversation with Bob from accounts about the futility of your existence and that snarl up on the motorway this morning. If that’s your bag? Available from www.eco-button.com
easy-green At last, a simple mobile phone that doesn’t require a charger. On account of having built-in solar panels. Also, being dust proof, waterproof and encased in durable rubber, it argues a fairly solid case for outdoor types who like to stay connected. “That’s right Ethel, a bear. A great, big hungry bear. Now if you could just patch me through to that emergency rescue number on the fridge door...” Price around £125 Available from www.amazon.co.uk
A bit like a mini hydroelectric power station, this ingenious in-shower radio needs nothing but a jet of water through its innards to charge up its batteries. Price Available from www.gizoo. co.uk
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A solar torch that doubles up as a bike light. foot beam, make it ideal not only for nighttime cyclists, but also for impromptu street theatre. Maybe. Price around ÂŁ9 Available from www.thesolarcentre.co.uk
recycling
waste not, want not A personal journey into the murky world
hen I was about 18, I was lucky enough to spend a year in France as a vagrant. Or a backpacker as it was known in those days. A lifestyle choice which eventually saw me heading, summer, to the crowded beaches of the Cote D’Azur. There I plied my trade as an ice cream salesman, toiling under the hot Mediterranean sun in return for just enough francs to buy food for the evening and a bottle of cheap but extremely palatable local wine. Needless to say, money was tight. Far too tight for luxuries like refreshing bottles of Coca Cola, which, like a 12
gaggle of coquettish sirens would wave to me from the front of the fridge every time I made my early evening food sortie to the supermarché. For the and moved on, ignoring the sleek, curvy waves of their glass bodies. But then, like other new members of the fraternity of sellers to which I had become attached, I was taught one of the fundamental rules of beach life. My mentor, an outof-work panel beater from Manchester called Cookie, took me gently by the arm one day as I was about to wander reluctantly past my tormentors once again. “Do you not fancy a nice refreshing bottle of coke?” he asked, a glint in his eye.
I replied by simply showing him my small handful of cash and shrugging my shoulders.
his body arched the arch of a man about to deliver an enormous coke burb into the world. “Do as I do son, do as I do,” he said,
“Bloody lovely though aren’t they?” he continued, plucking a bottle from the its neck to its base, pushing a small stream of condensation round the swirls of glass that made up its body. second bottle from the display and thrusting it into my hands.
and I mumbled my thanks. “Don’t thank me,” he replied, twisting the top from his bottle and raising it to his lips with a smirk. I followed suit, gradually realizing that rather than a random act of generosity, what I was about to witness was actually more They say that stolen fruit tastes by far the sweetest, and it was a truism which certainly ran to form that day. I can honestly say that I still remember, stolen bottle of coke tasted as I greedily glugged it down in one. of my hand, I went to put the heavy glass bottle back into the fridge, sneaky little caper. “Noo, noo, noo,” Cookie whispered, as
from his mouth like a surfer catching oesophagus. I meekly obeyed as he picked up a bag of pasta, a tin of peeled tomatoes, a can of sardines and a litre of red wine the standard ice cream seller’s plat du jour – and headed nonchalantly to the with a jocular, “bonjour” as he paid for his groceries, and then placed his empty coke bottle on the conveyer belt in front of her. Time stood still for a moment, in my eyes at least, as she registered the then, without a second thought, she dropped the bottle into a red crate by
“I followed suit, gradually realizing that rather than a random act of generosity, what I was about to witness was actually more akin to a lesson in
recycling her feet, ejected the till, reached for a shiny one-franc coin and handed it to my earliest memory of the concept Cookie. “Merci monsieur.” of recycling. Not a particularly honourable one I’ll grant you, but a I followed suit exactly, not daring to start all the same. waver even a jot from the routine, should it accidentally beckon reality The glory days before the advent back into the scene. One minute later, of cheap, ugly plastic bottles, when with the last breath I had taken not you had to pay a deposit on one of daring to join in the fun until the shop those beautifully designed, sturdy glass bottles that Coca Cola used to triumphantly at the coin in my hand. be famous for. A deposit which was refunded without the bat of an eyelid when you returned the bottle on your Cookie patted me on the shoulder. next trip to the shops. “Not only do you get a free bottle of coke, but they pay you for the privilege and thank you for your time. and one which unfortunately only Welcome to the wonderful world of exists now in a few forward thinking recycling.” countries such as Sweden where it has quite rightly become mandatory. It turned out that the supermarché Indeed environmental researchers scam was a standard ploy in the in that country have concluded that beach sellers community and that the thanks to that system, a single bottle more adventurous of its members would sometimes steal whole crates before it eventually falls victim to a of empty bottles from the back yards pair of slippery hands. And even then of supermarches during the night and it probably ends up being added to then innocently ‘return’ them the very their normal recycle streams for later next morning. remoulding. They’re like that, the Swedes.
which unfortunately only exists now in a few forward thinking countries such as Sweden, where it has quite rightly become mandatory.” 14
I was reminded of my teenage bottle incident recently when I was researching a rather distressing modern phenomenon known as the is essentially an enormous area of waste plastic bottles, bags and the around in the sea and gradually breaking down into a highly noxious soup of plastic pellets. me feeling more than a little ashamed to be a member of the human
Redusycling But fortunately it’s not all gloom and doom. If you forget for a moment all those weirdly aligned people who for reasons best known to themselves think that recycling is all part of a communist plot to take over the world and force everyone to wear shoes made out of bananas and mushrooms for hats, there is actually hope on the horizon.
Pandora’s box, in the form of youth. Most kids today are taught in schools about the environment and the a disposable consumer society that we importance of recycling and given are prepared to poison ourselves in the the chance would probably correct name of convenience? me on my technically incorrect use of the word ‘recycling’. Pointing out that
recycling
into a bin of broken bottles for
The same young people will probably also point out that redusyclable
prongs of attack, alongside ‘reducing’ paper, metal, plastic, textiles, and electronics. But not organic waste apparently, which, while being just Or, to put it into school-speak, recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” waste hierarchy. Personally I’d be tempted to reduce, reuse and recycle those three words into just one. Redusycle perhaps? 16
heading in the textbook I stole from one of my next door neighbour’s teenage kids. Reading a little deeper, I also discovered that there are opposing schools of thought when it comes to the thorny issue as to how exactly waste should be collected. All lumped together in one bin and then
“Reading a little deeper, I also discovered that there are opposing schools of thought when it comes to the thorny issue as to how exactly waste should be collected”
by experts and fancy machines at
and businesses before being taken
in the world to introduce a plastic bag fee, or ‘PlasTax’ as they call it there. Designed to rein in their rampant consumption of 1.2 billion plastic shopping bags per year, the tax resulted in a near-immediate
options results in larger yields overall, but the second option leads to less approximately 1 billion fewer bags were consumed annually. drenched in curry sauce is apparently To complete the win-win scenario, approximately 7 million euros was which, along with revenue from subsequent years, has been diverted
1. in industrially developed countries is taken up by polystyrene foam, hundreds of years to biodegrade and is resistant to photolysis
the environment. Several other countries and cities around the world are now considering implementing a similar tax, including the UK, Australia and New York City. Quite why they haven’t yet, still remains a mystery.
3. When you make recycling
major component of plastic debris in compulsory, people tend to do it. In the ocean, and poses a serious threat the London Borough of Waltham Forest for example, they use the mistake it for food.
recycling recycling policy. Which, despite initial grumblings, has helped increased local residents.
“My saucepans have all been surrendered, The teapot is gone from the hob, The colander’s leaving the cabbage,
4.
The country with the world’s highest rate of recycling and reusing is Cuba. Unfortunately because for
“So now, when I hear on the been subjected to a whole array of wireless trade embargoes. Still, it just goes to Of Hurricanes showing their mettle, show what you can do when needs I see, in a vision before me, must doesn’t it?
During the Second World War, citizens of many European countries were forced to take the whole concept of redusycling seriously and frankly became rather good at it. Everyone was encouraged to “do their bit” to make precious resources stretch, particularly when it came to recycling metals to be used to build airplanes. A practice which even spawned its own patriotic little song in the UK:
Just when I thought I’d got my head round the whole concept of redusycling and had armed myself anecdotes to get up on my soap box and start guilting people into ‘doing their bit’, I had a conversation with gleefully introduced me to an even newer concept, the concept of ‘cradle to cradle’ designs.
“The world of waste is transforming from a type approach, to a “look at that enormous pile of materials that we could be mining for away” sort of viewpoint.” 18
“The challenge then,” he went on to According to him, there’s a whole new ‘mining’ methods to harvest old school of thought now which believes in a way we can easily re-use the that redusycling, as honourable a practice as it is, unfortunately doesn’t and manufacturing methods that go nearly far enough to make a are suitable for such cradle to cradle approaches.”
In his own words, “If you’re going to talk about waste, you’re really going to have to talk about how the world of waste is transforming from a that enormous pile of materials that instead of throwing most of it away” sort of viewpoint.”
With it so far? Of course you are. It might sound like a last-minute curve ball to start with, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Redusycling is of course incredibly important, but, if you really follow it through, you begin to see how it could well be argued that on its own it’s actually just a way of making our current unsustainable system last a
recycling “Mate, if you’re gonna travel round the country, you’ll need a Kingswood,” the regulars at the Sydney pub I was working in chorused when I announced my plan to see a little more of their food restaurant during the day, and their ugly faces of an evening.
bit longer. Our current system being about as far away from a ‘circular’ approach as it’s possible to get and one which should really be described as linear. Albeit it a linear approach
materials in the ground to dig up in
materials out of the ground didn’t small percentage of the discarded require a vast amount of energy to materials being earnestly gathered do. Energy which – again thanks up by those who care, cleaned up, and to our linear approach to life, the then fed back into the beginning of universe and everything – has the the system. our overall carbon emissions, global In short, the vast majority of what we warming and climate chaos. consume is derived from materials we dig from the ground – many of which we all know are going to run out one day – which are then need to be able to enjoy our lives to transformed into a vast plethora of things we don’t really need, none televisions, cars, garden gnomes, and of which are designed to last much more than one go, and then when of energy too. we’re done with them, are simply thrown away.
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gradually releasing methane into the restaurant during the day, and their carbon dioxide on the global warming ugly faces of an evening. underground water supplies. As Lewis Carroll’s bowler-hatted we?”
If you’ll excuse me digressing once more, it reminds me of another incident from my youth when I was travelling around Australia in an old estate car and, at any one time, at least 7 passengers. “Mate, if you’re gonna travel round the country, you’ll need a Kingswood,” the regulars at the Sydney pub I was working in chorused when I announced my plan to see a little more of their country than the
“You’ll never be short of parts if you buy a Kingie,” they assured me. “Every mechanic in the country’s got parts for a Kingie, so you won’t go wrong there mate.” I of course later discovered that the reason there are so many spare parts for Kingie’s scattered around the country, is that so many of them make a habit of needing them. As
Always the same problem too, oil leaking out all over the place. in Byron Bay and Brisbane; new big ends in Townsville and Cairns; and whole new engines in Darwin and
recycling did seemed to be able to stop the oil pressure slowly dwindling the further from the garage I optimistically drove. Until that is, I found myself stranded in a tiny little opal mining town in the dead centre of the country called Coober Pedy. Where men were men, women were absent and the sheep were decidedly nervous. There I met what the Australians call a ‘bush’ mechanic. A man whose job it is, on account of the general scarcity of than just throw them away. “It’s bloody obvious mate,” he
a Valiant AP6,” he explained. “But about as useful for this old girl as an ashtray on a motorbike.” of salvaged rubber pipe with jubilee clips from the dipstick outlet directly down to the oil sump at the bottom of the engine. “There you go. All the oil that pisses out the top goes straight back into the system at the bottom. That should last you until you get back to the smog. They’ve probably got whole shops just for dispsticks there. ‘Dipsticks r us’ or something.”
you’ve got there see. They built about he almost dropped the crate of Foster’s from the Kingie’s boot that same fault. The wrong dipstick. See he’d insisted on as payment. But the here,” he pointed to the underside of truth is I didn’t see another speck of the bonnet which was dripping oil like oil from that day on, and I even sold it . “That’s just oil pissing out past the dipstick. The further you drive, the more you lose.” long movement, like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone of Calesvol, and tossed it onto a bench top.
in place. “I see you’ve dispensed with the infamous faulty dipstick and gone for a fully-sealed circular lubrication system instead,” said the car’s new owner with an approving nod. I could
“See here,” he pointed to the underside of the bonnet which was dripping oil like maple syrup 22
of ignorance when I spent more on mechanics than I would have done if I’d made the entire journey by taxi, but I didn’t. I simply nodded in an equally knowing fashion and said, “Who wouldn’t mate? Who wouldn’t?”
to think about inventing our own version of the bush mechanic’s pipe. A way of feeding all those valuable resources back into the beginning of the production line.
One way of doing this might be My point being, that when it comes to put the onus of recycling onto to conserving our planet’s dwindling the manufacturer rather than the resources, and at the same time consumer. Let’s face it, when your TV cutting down on the amount of fossil stops working and, in the absence of fuels we burn digging them out of the quaintly old-fashioned concepts like ground and turning them into useful TV repairmen, you decide to buy a new one, what do you do with your put a bunch of bananas on before we old set? put them into another plastic bag hope that its recycled parts might
recycling
somehow make their way back to the TV factory; According to proponents of cradleyour house in the hope that a passing to-cradle waste management, the retired TV repairmen might rescue correct course of action would be a deserving old people’s home; it from, or the factory that built it, spend half an hour trying to persuade them that ‘surely’ there must be some parts inside it they can make use of, and then, when they go away to discuss your unusual request with management, just run away and leave it with them anyway.
toilet; 24
perfect sense when you think about it and isn’t that far away from my ‘money back on the coke bottle’ who should be best placed to reuse the sort of materials that go into making a TV set? Or for that matter a sofa? Or a chest of drawers? A fridge? Or a car? Or a ship? There will come a time of course, some time in the future when buying the raw materials from which to manufacture new parts will become so prohibitively expensive as to make recycling more attractive to
manufacturers anyway. But why wait that long, when it so clearly makes sense now? The progressive logic being that if manufacturers have to take responsibility for reusing materials and parts from their previous products they might actually start designing and building them with that in mind. Fortunately, far better minds than mine are already working on this concept.
single material that goes into the end product. To whittle out anything which might one day turn nasty. For example they’ve developed a brand new, fabric for a company called Designtex who manufacture commercial seating upholstery, wallwindow treatments. Their brief being to come up with an attractive and functional fabric that could safely return to the environment at the end of its useful life. This involved and chemicals, from which they
Minds belonging to people like Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart and William co-authored a book entitled ‘Cradle To Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things’.
Working with a small Swiss fabric mill, they also analysed and reinvented the entire production process and devised a toxin-free blend of wool and organically grown
One of their main points being that not only should manufacturers be salvaging materials from their own ‘defunct’ products and reintroducing them into their production lines, but that they should also be carefully
so clean that it generates potable waste water. The mill also turns scrap trimmings into felt which Swiss farmers use for mulch in strawberry
“The progressive logic being that if manufacturers have to take responsibility for reusing materials and parts from their previous products they might actually start designing and building them with that in mind.”
recycling Plus, more worryingly perhaps, the recycling process itself sometimes produces additional toxic waste. For example, recycling plastic bringing toxic antimony into contact with your skin. As legislation gradually moves towards making corporations as well as individuals responsible for recouping their own materials and developing their designs to make this more practical, specialist waste companies are stepping into the breach to help out. Companies like Coolrec in the and selling the materials back into the supply chain, and have since expanded to deal with all types of Another point Braungart and McDonough make in their book is that one of the downsides of existing recycling methods, or ‘downcycling’ as they call it, is that because of degradation or contamination by other materials products tend to have to be reused at a lower level. instance. While melting together all the alloys of a simple aluminum can produces an inferior metal because
the ‘chuck it all in one bag and let the experts deal with it’ single-stream approach I mentioned earlier. They go so far as to describe waste as a ‘nutrient’. “The Cradle-to-Cradle concept dictates that products should be manufactured in such a way that they can be reused at the end of their lifecycle or broken down into raw materials to make new, comparable or better products. without creating waste in the form of
alloys for their tops, bottoms and all a valuable raw material for new processes: ‘waste is a nutrient’. 26
“Businesses in the EU could reap annual
And then of course there are the companies who just happen to be run by people with brains enough to realize that a cradle-to-cradle approach to recycling is just a sensible thing for any company.
of manufacturing all its products according to Cradle to Cradle
adopting a Cradle to Cradle approach to way we make things. A new report, ‘Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition’ launched
MacArthur, makes the case for moving towards circular economies “Inspired by nature’s continuous cycle, on economic grounds. “Businesses in the EU could reap annual savings this concept requires companies to use materials and design products in such a way that they will be positive economy.” to the environment and human health,” says current CEO Alexander Another report ‘Towards the Circular Collot d’Escury. Economy Volume 21’ produced by the “In broad terms, this means using focused on the impact of circular models in the consumer goods the goods can be returned and the industry. It found that there was a materials recycled into new high quality products through two streams: global economic opportunity worth technical or biological. In the former, €516 billion in that sector alone. the materials are fed back into the manufacturing process to make new That should do it then. goods; in the latter, they can go back You’d think. as a nutrient into the soil.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Remanufacturing or reusing textiles
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an
produce a quart of Florida orange
waste management
our plastic sea ‘At Least’ the Size of Texas,” says
A lot of people are vaguely aware the enormous marine resting place for all mankind’s discarded plastic “The trash vortex is an area the in which an estimated six kilos
of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton, along with other slow degrading garbage, swirls slowly around like a clock, choked with and birds who get snared. Some plastics in the gyre will not break down in the lifetimes of the grandchildren of the people who threw them away.”
The vortex comprises not just plastic bags but also bottles and containers, plastic drums, expanded polystyrene packing, polyurethane foam pieces, cones, disposable lighters, vehicle tyres and toothbrushes. Everything that we humans seem to think okay to casually toss into the sea. are produced each year of which and platforms, the rest from land,” “These big items do not degrade like natural materials. At sea and on
ever smaller particles. “A single one-litre bottle could break down into enough small fragments to put one on every mile of beach in the entire world. These smaller particles are joined by the small pellets of plastic which are the form in which many new plastics are marketed and which can be lost at sea by the drum load or even a whole container load. These modern day “marine tumbleweeds” have been thrown into sharp focus, not only by the huge quantities removed from beaches by dedicated volunteers, but by the fact that they have been found to accumulate in sea areas where winds and currents are weak.”
wave action and mechanical abrasion by a sub-tropical gyre in which the they simply break down slowly into water circulates clockwise in a slow
spiral. The winds in the gyre are light and the current tends to swirl things around the outside, scooping them up into its inward spiral, forcing them ever closer to the centre to join their brothers, sisters and many assorted relatives in plastic world’s version of a giant elephant’s graveyard. With very few islands on which to wash up, the lumpy plastic soup – estimated to comprise six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton – just stays there, ominously lurking in the middle of the ocean. The gyre has also been described over the years as ‘the Asian Trash Trail’, ‘the Trash Vortex’ and the
Not being particularly visible from measure but current estimates have it at somewhere between the size of Texas and the whole of Midwest America. “This perhaps wouldn’t be too much of a problem if the plastic had no ill items, however, are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that over a million sea birds and one hundred thousand
marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.� Unfortunately it doesn’t end there either. The plastics tend to act as a chemical sponge, creating a concentration of the most damaging meaning that any animal that accidentally eats any of the plastic debris will also be ingesting highly toxic pollutants.
The Sargasso Sea for example has a very slow circulation rate and recent research has suggested that concentrations of plastic particles.
A Grim Discovery Charles J. Moore, returning home sailing race in 1997, came upon an Moore alerted the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who subsequently dubbed the region The area is frequently featured in media reports as an exceptional example of marine pollution. The patch is not easily visible because it consists of very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye, most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean, and the relatively low density of the plastic debris at, in of plastic per square kilometer of ocean area.
vortex is created by a sub-tropical gyre in which the water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral.�
debris exists in the Atlantic Ocean.
Fortunately there are people working out there who believe the problem One of whom is a young man called Boyan Slat from the Netherlands who believes that while preventing further plastic waste being added to the gyres is important, we still need to clear up what has already accumulated. To which end he has devised a possible solution involving specially designed marine vessels and boom nets with which he believes it could be possible to clean up each of the
“Fix the sea water processors to the sea bed, and save vast amounts of funds, manpower and emissions. “The ultimate solution to plastic pollution is clear; we need to close the tap, by ending our reliance on we need proper waste management globally, and we need to become aware of the problems our garbage is creating. It will require drastic changes on legislative, industrial and individual levels of society. we need to get out what’s already in the oceans.
“We’ll need a combination of both The particularly interesting part of his worlds, and we’ll need them soon.” idea being to place the vessels and booms in such a way as to allow the To read more about his project, gyres to bring the plastic to them, entitled ‘The Ocean Clean Up’, and rather than the other way round. watch the presentation he recently made to TED, his website is: www. Problem: The plastic is not boyanslat.com. static, it moves around. Solution: Why move through the oceans, if the oceans can move at pains to point at that his feasibility through you? study is not yet complete: been published, claiming The Ocean Cleanup Array is a ‘feasible method’ of extracting plastic from the gyres. This is an incorrect statement; we of completing our feasibility study.
believe such statements should be made. Although the preliminary results look promising, and our team external experts and students is making good progress, we had and have no intention of presenting a concept as a feasible solution while
it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing. Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster? That was Daniel’s question, and he put it to the test with a very simple and clever process of immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolating the most productive organisms.
“It’s not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May’s Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic.
The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it,
students who discovered plastic-
manufactured each year and a
was Daniel Burd. The second was Tseng I-Ching, a high school student
grows more expansive by the day, a low-cost and nontoxic method
Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn’t considered.
strains and interbreeding them. and optimizing temperatures Burd of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment.
environmentalists’ dreams and, I would hazard a guess, a pretty good start-up company as well.
It goes without saying that these Plastic, one of the most indestructible discoveries need to be tested to ensure, for instance, that the of manufactured materials, does byproducts of organic decomposition in fact eventually decompose. It
with mammalian metabolism of The processing of plastics by these methods would also have to be contained in highly controlled environments. So, no, we’re not
talking about a magic panacea or a plastic-free paradise, but the innovative application of microorganisms to break down our most troublesome waste products breakthrough.
views on the news
wind us up why don’t you?
Report To Discover Some Patently Obvious Facts About Wind Turbines The UK government
is apparently about to get its hands on a report it commissioned to discover why so many local residents object to wind turbines being built in their back yards. A report which, wait for it, will suggest that there would be fewer such objections if people living near wind turbines were given suitably large discounts on their electricity bills every month. When a bunch of highly paid, brilliant minds get together there’s very little can stop them. Pure genius.
top level ‘behind closed doors’ think tank meetings, they have also pointed out that
The Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, is apparently also convinced that “direct remain. reductions in electricity bills represents the Like working out exactly how far from of improving support the turbine you can live and still get your discount. However, as is customary when an For pity’s sake, will expensive committee somebody order comes up with an another box of idea of the ‘patently chocolate HobNobs bloomin’ obvious’ and close those doors. variety and are perhaps With thorny issues like worried that they that still to resolve, might have come up this could take us right with their solution through to the summer recess and a wellthereby limiting their deserved holiday in opportunities for Tuscany. further highly lucrative,
“When a bunch of highly paid, brilliant minds get together, there’s very little that can stop them. Pure genius.”
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“last one in’s a scardey cat!” Half-naked people in mid-winter pool party shocker Imagine what you’d
think if you overheard a conversation like this in a luxury car salesroom: “That’s right sir, it’s a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. Ten liters, fuelinjected, 3 million brake horse power. Costs a king’s ransom, but on the plus side, it’s good for very nearly 2 months “And the other 10 “Are for parking it in front of your house to make your garden look prettier. And impressing the neighbours of “And I can’t actually drive it the rest of the time because…? 40
“Oh it’d be far too cold to rooms. drive the rest of the year sir, it’s unheated you It’s always puzzled me, “So even though a car is on wheels, it doesn’t actually have any “That’s right sir. Awfully costly you see. Having heaters added to the inside can add nearly 5% to the cost of the car. Most people prefer to save on that and then get as much driving in as they can during those 2 balmy months in Which is, as far as I can tell, the sort of conversations that must actually be going on around the world in swimming pool sales
peering into the gardens of the rich and famous, why so many of them have swimming pools, when you consider how much a pool costs to have built and how little they seem to use them. “So how come you don’t heat your pool so you can use it the rest of asked an unsuspecting pool owner. “Far too costly, heating. “So for the rest of the year it just sits in front of your house making your garden look
“And impressing the when people feel the primal ‘urge’ to “Of course, how silly of Have these people never considered solar heating their pools? I can’t actually think of a better way to use doesn’t cost any more than a conventional heating system to have installed, it works whenever it’s sunny
costs buttons to run. No matter how many months of the year you choose to crank it up. Indeed, if I was a pool wanted to impress my neighbours, I think I’d want to do it by throwing lavish pool parties in the middle of
winter. All that steam rising and giggling and laughing and splashing around in the dark. Bloody infuriating for them I’d imagine. prize marrows and how to make your neighbors think you own a pony when you don’t.
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New York Orders New ‘Fatboy’ Climate Change Trousers
New York mayor Michael
Bloomberg this week unveiled a $20 billion plan to prepare the city for rising sea levels and summer heatwaves expected as a consequence of climate change in the next few decades.
A related report concluded that heatwaves over the next 40 years will become two to three times more frequent in the summer months as the city state’s weather gradually becomes more akin to that of traditional ‘hothouses’ such as Birmingham, Alabama.
The 400-page plan – which could become the norm for many other The sea level around New York City cities – includes a proposal to bolster is expected to rise by at least 2 feet Lower Manhattan’s waterfront, and in the next 30 years. New York City is particularly vulnerable to sea In total it cited 250 such ‘adaptation’ level rises and has 520 miles of coastline to worry about. More than storm barriers and upgrades to Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San power and telecommunications Francisco combined. infrastructures. The announcement comes in the wake of a growing realization that climate change related storms such as Superstorm Sandy, which wreaked havoc across the state earlier this year, will become increasingly regular. 42
“New York City could do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms Bloomberg told reporters at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“Or we can make the investments necessary to build a stronger, more resilient New York – investments that will pay for themselves many he said. Superstorm Sandy killed more than 100 people and ended up costing the city an estimated $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity. SO WHAT? In many ways Bloomberg’s plan is admirable. It faces up to reality and proposes methods for dealing with the inevitable consequences of climate change. But if every major city in America
were to allocate a proportionally similar amount of money to such adaptation plans, it’ll end up costing the country far more than it would to deal with the causes of climate change instead. A bit like a fat man with an addiction to doughnuts and soda thinking about abandoning any inclination he might previously have had to go on a diet and instead ordering an entire new wardrobe of ‘large man’ clothes. “Pass the maple syrup would you Mable, these new elasticated- waistband trousers have
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cables not included
Nobody likes an
new device to allow electric car drivers unsightly mass of to recharge their electric power cables. batteries without the Particularly the sort need for cables and of cables that like to plugs. wrestle each other into an unholy mass of knots the moment mounted pad which your back is turned, uses electromagnetic and then sit there induction to jump laughing at you as the gap between you wonder once itself and your car, more how it is they manage to do that. tasty new electricity And electric car to the shops or go to drivers it would seem Which explains why companies like Evatran Inc in America are beavering away on a ‘revolutionary’ 44
While it sounds fairly high tech and magical, the concept of the wireless transfer of electricity
isn’t actually new. As anyone who has watched Back To The Future will know. But it is becoming gradually more available. SO WHAT? Apparently these charging pads will cost about $3k production line this year, which means they are highly unlikely to present an immediate cost saving. “Sure Bob, three thousand dollars is a heck of a lot of money, but
have you considered how much time I save not having to untangle all those wires? Time is money Bob, time is
that’s the sort of people they are. Strokable.
sexy. It’s a sexy gadget that says to the world, “I like sexy gadgets, Are you? particularly green sexy gadgets. Do you want to For more information, try visiting Like many such pluglesspower.com. This ‘time saving’ devices is just the beginning. however, it will sell not have installed a few because it makes sound of them at their HQ in California, because
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total recall The Restart Project in London Looks to Fix Damaged Electronics Instead of Just Throwing Them Away
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U
are the co-founders of The Restart Project, an intuitive movement with the simple aim of encouraging people to
Twitter, members of the public pitch up with various ‘resting’ gadgets and gizmos that they have invariably been advised by their retailers are ‘beyond economic repair’. Volunteer
defunct electronic items instead project than set about assessing the damage to each item and in slinging them in the nearest skip and forking out yet another problem right there on the spot. small fortune on a replacement.
put their money where their mouths are, the pair organize Restart parties, typically in community centres or other easily accessible venues. At these parties, advertised through social networking platforms such as Facebook and
The idea for the project came to Mr Vallauri when he was working for the charity Computer Aid, that refurbishes old computers before shipping them out to developing countries.
just don’t have the money to buy them new. By contrast,
views on the news in developed nations people have lost the
involved with the repair cheap and produce process themselves. goods that have
gadgets. A combination of convenience and cultural pressure leads people to buy new rather than repair.
“Opening up a kettle,
“Also people have lost trust in commercial repairs. They do not know who to go to and who they can trust, especially when it comes to electronics
Ben Skidmore, one of Restart’s team of
laptop and helping to take it to pieces is a powerful way to get
“That fear tends to evaporate completely if the item in question
said Mr Vallauri who added that according to recent research, about 23% of the waste electrical equipment in recycling centres could be refurbished and repaired easily. “Unlocking the value in that could prove a huge boost to local said.
“We don’t like it when we see things that end up in a skip, or even recycled by our councils, when they could have a second or third life if only we use “Just as when people take their car to a mechanic, people they take their broken gadgets to a repair shop they will be overcharged or bamboozled by jargon. The idea with Restart is to overcome that fear by getting people 48
An average of about 20-25 people bring something along to the parties that commons items being LCD TVs, music players, laptops, digital cameras and the like. Not everything can out exactly what the problem is and whether a repair might actually be economically viable
manufacturers go
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“Cheap Coal A Threat To Says Chairman of Environment Agency Lord Smith has never been one to mince his words. The Americans
switch to shale gas, and are buying less coal. Hence the price of coal on global markets has fallen sharply, tempting power generation companies to increase coal’s place in their overall mixes. Instead of reducing it in accordance with those pesky de-carbonisation targets we’re all meant to be adhering to.
ranking since 1996. According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, the UK’s emissions of carbon dioxide rose by 3.9% from 2011 to 2012. Sulphur emissions have also risen instead of falling.
carbon capture technology, which isn’t as yet available. “If we lock ourselves into gas generation for the next 40 years without capturing the CO2 emissions, we will never meet our targets on climate change. At the current rate of progress we will miss our future carbon
Lord Smith has urged the government to commit to a long-term strategy to remove all carbon pollution from electricity generation by SO WHAT? 2030. Time for a carbon tax He also said that the UK surely? Coal now plays a 40% must only develop its part in power generation own reserves of shale in the UK, its highest gas if it can guarantee 50
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reigning in the wasters! Should Recycling Be Compulsory For EU Businesses? European companies
The European Commission got the ball might soon be compelled rolling on June 9th by by law to separate their launching a consultation ‘rubbish’ into the normal process to look into recycling categories improving three current EU directives dealing a result of a review of current EU laws that will seek to eliminate as 2020.
packaging. The EU is reportedly very keen to improve on existing recycling and reuse targets for 2020,
which currently stand at 50% for household waste and 70% for construction waste. With many EU member states already meeting or exceeding these targets, the Commission is understandably keen to raise the bar a little. It is understood that the new targets will encourage businesses to totally manage their own waste streams while also adding a compulsory requirement to sort waste materials for composting, recycling and anaerobic digestion. The Commission is also looking at the possibility
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countries dependent on a few truisms worth trotting out. “Action to curb waste levels is urgently required given that looming resource crunches threaten to seriously undermine member state’s Environment Commissioner Janez “We are importing six times more resources that we are exporting, and per person we are the most resourcehe said. “So one doesn’t need a PHD to draw the economy that for us, producing products using less water, energy and raw materials, reusing them and recycling is a matter of survival and competitiveness, not only of the SO WHAT? When it comes to recycling there are
obvious thing and making recycling compulsory.
1. Once you start doing your recycling properly, be it at home or in the anyone is trying to workplace, you will claim the fundamental right of all citizens to be allowed to scatter recyclable material we their rubbish to the four winds any time once you’ve taken out they feel like it. The the recyclables, there is constitutional right to bare palms. to be ploughed into a Not sorting your ‘rubbish’ properly is, 2. If you make quite simply, antirecycling compulsory social. Ten times worse than farting in people will start doing it.
your nose in your car when you’re stopped
3. If you study the process properly, it doesn’t take long to work out that it makes sense not only from an environmental point of view, but also from an economic perspective.
even putting your used chewing gum under someone else’s dining table.
The bottom line is, it’s actually fairly shocking that the EU even has to go through a consultation process before doing the completely patently
Let’s do it now. Make recycling compulsory and watch how quickly it simply becomes the norm.
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mum’s the word Artist Muzzled By Canadian
Canadian artist
Franke James has fairly mainstream views when it comes to climate change and the dangers of an energy policy reliant on fossil fuels. Unfortunately for her however, the democratically elected government of her country don’t hold the same views. Most comes to the country’s huge untapped ‘Tar Sand’ oil reserves, said to be the largest oil reservoir in the world bar Saudi Arabia’s. James believes that bringing that oil into use, a process which releases up to 4 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 54
as the processing of conventional oil, will cause long term damage to the planet. And is therefore a bad thing for everyone. The Canadian government on the other hand, has decided that the economic far outweigh the potential environmental consequences. SO WHAT?
artist herself, is the lengths to which the has gone to discourage her from expressing her views to the general public. It all started in the Summer of 2011 when to shut down a show of James’s work in Croatia hosted by a local environmental group. The attempt failed but it did herald the beginning of a quite extraordinary witch hunt at the highest level against James. For the crime of
The long-term views of the environment lobby clashing with the shortterm economic policy of a democratically elected to her government about government. It’s hardly a global warming. unique situation. What is surprising however, even to the
grant was cancelled by the government in an
attempt, it would seem, posters – on bus requests involving to shut her down/up. shelters around the city. seven government departments. “I was just going along A counter-censorship tactic which sparked James tells the she said. “I really didn’t a right royal exchange whole story in a book think that I was at risk of memos within the published this week of getting shut down in government; 2,176 entitled, ‘Banned of which James had On The Hill: A True the tenacity to obtain Story About Dirty James then decided copies of through to show her work – a laborious process Censorship. mainly humorous of open records Barring a major policy is unlikely to have seen the last of James just yet. Along with the book she is planning to take her campaign against the Tar Sands energy policy on the road – quite literally – by putting up posters on street corners and bus shelters. She also hopes the book will serve as a how-to guide to other activists hoping to take on the Harper administration, especially with humour. “It’s kind of like a judo someone who is much