Blogs

Automated parking saves space, fuel, and time

Peg Fong — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:04:17 PDT

This video explains the whole process, but I sugest you turn off your speakers unless you want to have the most awkward dance party ever.

Driving aimlessly is bad enough, so the only thing that could be worse is driving in circles looking for a parking spot. Then there are those drivers who deserve a special reserve space in hell for idling their cars waiting for a spot closer to the mall entrance because they can't be bothered walking a few extra feet.

A South Korean company may have a partial solution to this parking problem. There are more than enough cars on the road, but even so, there are even fewer parking spaces, especially in cities.

Automatic parking systems, which have been used for years in Europe and Asia because of space constraints, are beginning to be considered in theUnited States.

MP Systems designed the software and technology that makes parking simpler and easier by letting computers do the work. The system can fit twice as many cars in the same amount of space and eliminate hours of combined engine use every day so drivers don't have to drive around searching for that elusive space.

Drivers pull into a platform, and technology does the rest. When drivers want to retrieve their cars, each one enters a code and the car is delivered back via the platform.

There's also another bonus. With automated parking, the physical footprint of parking lots are smaller and there are cost savings in the maintenance of these facilites.

When people are out of the equation, it also eliminates the need for climate control, walkways, elevators, and lighting.

Eating right

Trystan L. Bass — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:39:11 PDT

You've heard of low-carb diets, right? Atkins, South Beach ... but what about a low-carbon diet?

Just like our cars and the power plants the light our houses create CO2 emissions, the food we eat can contribute to climate change. Livestock creates 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, so meat and dairy products have a high carbon count. Processed, packaged goods shipped across the country consume a lot more energy than fresh, local foods.

You can calculate the approximate climate impact of your meal at EatLowCarbon.org, a nifty tool created by the food service company Bon AppÃ©tit. Just drag and drop ingredients into your virtual sautÃ© pan, and dish up an earth-friendly dinner.

I visited a couple places where Bon AppÃ©tit provides food service and encourages eco-friendly dining. See for yourself how college students and tech workers went low-carb this Earth Day.

Bon AppÃ©tit brought its low-carbon diet to more than 400 corporate and university cafÃ©s across the U.S. this year. The company contracts with places like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adidas, Seattle Art Museum, Oracle Corporation, eBay, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Best Buy, and even Yahoo!.

At Santa Clara University, I talked to students and staff to see how they enjoyed the sustainable lunch choices. The response was very positive. An environmental studies major complimented the cafeteria for emphasizing local produce. The students also admired how Bon AppÃ©tit and the university worked together to educate people on making smart food choices.

Lindsey Cromwell, the university's sustainability coordinator, pointed out that the low-carbon diet is in line with the institution's long-term goal of going carbon-neutral. "As a Jesuit university, we're concerned with the ethical implications of all our decisions," she commented. Stewardship of the planet -- down to the food we choose -- is part of the life education Santa Clara University provides.

Bon AppÃ©tit's Director of Culinary Support, Marc Zammit, gave me a tour of the university's kitchen and pointed out what made the Earth Day meals 'low carbon.'

Cutting out beef is a big part of it, but this doesn't have to mean going totally vegetarian. Raising chicken, pork, and fish uses fewer resources than beef. If you can go meat-free a few days a week, that's great (and pretty healthy too). But trying a tilapia fish taco instead of a hamburger like some satisfied students did is a start.

Cheese is a tough one for many of us to give up. But at the university deli, Zammit showed how you can create delicious sandwiches without a slice of cheese. Yummy spreads like hummus and pesto add creamy texture and loads of flavor without dairy. Definitely worth trying at home!

I also checked out the corporate cafÃ© at SAP Labs. Executive chef Melissa Miller showed me around her kitchen, where she makes tasty meals like chicken pho. This Vietnamese noodle soup traditionally has beef, but her low-carbon version was just as popular as the standard.

Miller's crew also makes potato chips from scratch -- this avoids packaging, since they can serve them from big glass jars. And fresh chips taste better too! What a treat.

The cafÃ© also provides crackers for soups in jars (instead of individually wrapped), and condiments like ketchup and mustard are served in refillable containers (not packets). All of this reduces garbage.

This is something we can easily do at home too. Buying in bulk is often cheaper than buying lots of individually packaged items. We'll spend less and have less trash, so it's a win-win.

Both cafeterias encourage diners to use real china and silverware whenever possible. Paper and plastic to-go containers are frequently not recyclable or just not recycled, so they end up in the landfills. At Santa Clara University, the cafeteria uses 7,200 to-go boxes each week. If you stacked them up, that'd be almost as tall as the Empire State Building!Â

That's something we should remember when we get take-out food or are tempted to use paper plates at home for parties.

Want to learn more about how you can go low-carb? Check out Bon AppÃ©tit's low-carbon diet tips, including research behind why this helps the planet.

And get a recipe from the chef at San Francisco's de Young Museum for seafood stew to whip up your own sustainable dinner tonight.

Inside 'The Story of Stuff'

Trystan L. Bass — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:35:52 PDT

If you're like most Americans, you have a lot of stuff. Jeans, MP3 players, kitchen gadgets, DVDs, shoes, TVs, kids' toys, T-shirts, cell phones, sports equipment ... you know, stuff.

We buy it all the time, in stores and online. We're the shopping-ist country on the planet. And our government wants us to shop more to boost the economy -- that's why some of us are getting rebate checks in May. Stores can't wait to help us spend that money too.

While we see the shiny, new gadgets in our hands and the growing clutter in our homes, what we don't see is the series of events that created that stuff and brought it to us. Sustainability expert Annie Leonard has traveled to over 30 countries and looked at factories and dumps. She's investigated the waste we export back to the Third World.

All this experience lead her to create the short film The Story of Stuff, which she launched online in December 2007.

With clever animations and straightforward talk, Leonard makes huge economic concepts approachable. She explains how the things we buy in the store are made from often-toxic chemicals and how factories use up natural resources and harm local communities. Leonard even points out that America's consumer culture is a relatively new phenomenon, created by post-World-War-II economists.

When I interviewed Leonard recently, she admitted that the movie happened because, "I realized I was too deep into this that I couldn't talk about it like normal people talk about it." Fellow activists challenged her to explain these issues so that they could understand her and maybe even so the rest of the world could too.

But Leonard says, "I was not making it to convert anyone, and I was not making it for the general public who was totally new to these ideas. I was making it for my peers who were familiar with these ideas but who didn't see the connections and the systemic nature of the problems."

Still, in four months on the Web, the movie topped 2.5 million views, and in March, it won the SXSW Interactive Award as an educational resource.

She's been surprised by the interest the film's received. Leonard put it online, "because we wanted to make it free. We're not doing it to make money. And we never expected that many people to watch it!"

In response to the buzz, she's also made DVDs available to those without high-speed net access. "We've distributed 6,000 DVDs to Third World countries, to India, China, Russia, Taiwan, and places are using them in their outreach programs," Leonard notes. "Public schools in the U.S., Native American reservations, churches have all asked for DVDs. We give discounts to anyone who asks." Sponsors like Ben & Jerry's have helped her small team support these efforts.

While the film doesn't prescribe specific actions to solve the problems it exposes, Leonard does suggest that we tackle an area we feel strongly about.

"One of the things I think is so important is rebuilding our sense of communities and a sense of engagement," Leonard says. "I think our greatest sense of joy in our lives is from coming together around a shared interest, whether itâs a book club or getting a bike lane in your town."

To encourage this kind of involvement, each section of the movie has a tab at the top of the website with a "Learn More" link. For example, click on "Consumption" if you want a sampling of groups dedicated to helping consumers be more sustainable. Or check the full list of recommended resources.

Deeper involvement is key. She's a little critical of a '10 simple steps' approach to changing the world. "It's better to change the structure and system so that the default is the right thing," Leonard advocates.

"I think the individual actions are absolutely important, but we shouldn't confuse that with political actions," she continues. "We should always choose the least toxic, most socially responsible option possible. But not because that'll bring about change -- it simply brings our day-to-day actions into congruence with our real values."

The 'grumpies' who comment on the movie often say that "they get the problem, they get the personal cost, the cost to happiness, but they don't know how to unplug from the system," Leonard explains.

"People express concern that if we reduce our consumption how will it affect our economy?" she adds. "This is a valid concern. If we seriously transform our society, it'll involve a lot of hard work. We need to be intentional, strategic, and figure it out. Let's start planning ahead instead of kicking and screaming until the last second."

In this case, knowledge really is power. "The more we can see the connections between these issues," she says, "we can be more transformative, instead of tinkering at the margins."

'The Story of Stuff' is making those connections happen. Leonard has received more than 20,000 emails from people all over the world -- and the vast majority have been very positive. She may not have set out to change minds, but she is. One comment was from "an SUV-driving, die-hard Republican who emailed and had just never considered any of this."

Schools from elementary level through college are using the movie. A fourth-grader in the Midwest saw the film and emailed saying it was "awesome" with lots of smileys. An Oxford professor used it his class.

Watch the movie, and you may not look at your own stuff the same way again.

Al Gore's new slideshow is even more awesome

Hank Green — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:30:35 PDT

I liked An Inconvenient Truth. I liked it because I thought it did a good job of conveying the magnitude of the climate crisis to a lot of people who hadn't thought much about it in the past.

But Al's recent talk at the TED conference is on another level of awesome. It's not about the problem -- it's pretty much all about the solution. The reason why we can't face the climate crisis, he says, is because we in America have to first face the democracy crisis. And I completely agree with him.

"As important as it is to change the lightbulbs ... it's more important to change the laws," he says. And we simply can't do that if Wal-Mart is a more effective leader on climate change than our own government. This problem will never be solved by individuals taking action in their own lives ... we have to make global changes.

So, yes, change the lightbulbs ... but also consider the environment when you're choosing careers, education, investments, and, possibly most important of all: voting. And tell your senators that you think it's disgusting that the U.S. is the only developed country that doesn't have the balls to sign onto the Kyoto protocol.

And, most pressing right now, find your senators' phone numbers, call them, and tell them to vote for the Solar Investment Tax Credit. It's what Al would tell you to do.

Oh, and also, if you watch the whole video, you'll see him liken our exploration of low-quality oil shale to junkies finding veins in their toes because the veins in their arms and legs have collapsed. There has never been a more apt and frightening metaphor. The whole thing really is worth watching.

Staggering video of our nation exhaling CO2

Hank Green — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:11:07 PDT

Scientists at Purdue University recently did an extremely detailed analysis of the emission of CO₂ in the United States. They included every sector: power generation, manufacturing, transportation, etc., and then they used advanced atmospheric models to track the gas.

It's part of a research project they're calling "Project Vulcan," presumably because Vulcans looking down at our planet would either be unimpressed by our technology or wonder how an entire planet could breathe.

The result is both staggering and unnerving. Watching our nation wake up in the morning in this way is just plain freaky. The CO₂ swells into the atmosphere, covering more of the nation hour by hour until folks get home and start relaxing more and consuming less.

I can proudly declare that my city in western Montana, in fact, remains completely unblemished by CO₂ emissions. Though, it's easy enough to spot the coal-fired power plant in south-east Montana that actually electrifies my house.

Via Wired Blogs

Mobile energy solutions

Hank Green — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:15:25 PDT

Cords suck. But we need them. We've got to power our fantastic new digital lives!

Maybe some day, we'll be able to capture the energy that surrounds us daily, and our lives will get a bit more wireless. There's power everywhere -- the sun's rays, the wind, the motion of our bodies.

At Inhabitat's Greener Gadgets Conference in February, there was a panel on just this kind of energy harvesting. I realized that I've never shared it online, and so I wanted to do that now.

Companies and technologies featured in this video: M2E (kinetic energy), HyMini (mini wind chargers), Solio (portable solar chargers), Boston Power (long-life batteries), and MTI (fuel cells).

This summary video is definitely worth watching, while the full-length panel is also available for more die-hard EcoGeeks.

Via Inhabitat

Jet-engine wind turbines could quadruple power

Hank Green — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:36:02 PDT

When we wrote about FloDesign's weird-looking wind turbines a while back, we were pretty excited about the new design. But we were a little confused by how the things worked.

Well, FloDesign seems to have taken my confusion to heart, because it has created a very nice video showing exactly how the turbines work. If you can get over the inspirational music, then you're in for a treat.

The company takes the time to explain a bit about how the turbine actually works and also shows that it's much easier to ship, requires less infrastructure, can be placed closer to people, and can be more tightly spaced in a wind farm.

The new turbines extract three to four times more energy from the wind and so can be much smaller. They don't upset the flow of the wind as much, so they can be placed closer together. And since there is no risk of catastrophic failure (see video), they can be placed nearer to populations.

All of this adds up to a heck of a lot more energy from the wind. The trick will be figuring out how to mass-produce the parts from strong, lightweight materials inexpensively. Then they need to figure a way to put all the pieces together without compromising the strength of the turbine.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative has just invested $500,000 in FloDesign to help the company scale up. I'm not sure what it'll be doing with the money (don't worry, I'm after FloDesign for an interview), but I imagine that amount could help a great deal with prototyping.

FloDesign is definitely a company that we'll have our eyes on. This could be a game changer for wind.

Wind and solar bring telecom to rural Africa

Hank Green — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:58:14 PDT

Motorola wants the entire world to have a cell phone. And if that means building cell towers in the middle of rural Africa, then that's what it'll do. Unfortunately, many of these places are far off the beaten track and the electrical grid. Trucking in fuel would be prohibitively expensive not to mention wasteful.

So Motorola has begun to build wind- and solar-powered cell towers in Africa. The pilot projects, which we discussed a while ago, have been declared a success, and the company is looking for more sites to expand the program. It seems to me like this could only work well in pretty specific areas. The towers would have to be located where:

There is plenty of wind and solar to keep the batteries charged.
The landscape is flat, allowing for a large area to be covered.
Population densities are low, so that the tower doesn't need too much power to service everyone.
The people being served are not going to revolt if service goes out on still, cloudy days.
Grid power is unavailable.

Rural Africa seems to be the perfect place for these towers. Unfortunately, they might not find much of a niche in the rest of the world.

Via TreeHugger

YouTube for greens

Don Willmott , Forecast Earth Correspondent — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:24:17 PDT

What better way to waste half a day than to get distracted by funny, weird, and (sometimes) interesting online videos? The "YouTube phenomenon" could also be called the "procrastination phenomenon," but if you're going to spend the time anyway, perhaps there's a way to make it at least somewhat edifying.

Enter emPivot.com, a sort of special-interest YouTube that presents videos on topics of specific interest to the green/environmental community.

Any person, organization, or company can upload video content, and the fast-growing collection is captivating. Among the most popular videos: Willie Nelson talking about biodiesel, Will Ferrell lampooning George W. Bush's stances on environmental issues, a look at a helix-shaped windmill, and a few mini-exposes on corporate bad deeds.

The site was created by Ecofusion, a Washington-based "business communications consulting and media company dedicated to the world's leading change makers in the fields of sustainability, social enterprise, and green business."

That made me nervous for a minute. Washington? Consulting? Was this whole operation some sort of stealth lobbying effort from the dark side?

Upon further investigation, all is well. Ecofusion's heart is definitely in the right place, so feel free to click around and spend a few minutes enjoying some good green content.

Which way the wind blows

Hank Green — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:34:12 PST

Ever been curious exactly what kind of force would be necessary to destroy a wind turbine? Well, luckily for you (and not for the owner of this turbine), now we get to see.

During periods of ultra-high winds, turbines have to be protected. They either rotate the angle of the blades so they pick up less of the wind, or they stop themselves completely and turn parallel with the wind. If the brakes fail, as it were, then the results can be quite spectacular.

During a storm in Hornslet, Denmark, this turbine's brakes failed to engage, and the turbine continued to capture the maximum amount of energy. As the turbine continued to accelerate, the G-forces were apparently too much, one of the blades splintered, and the resulting loss of balance completely destroyed all of the other blades and the tower.

If you've ever wondered "how could wind possibly contain enough energy to power our world?" here's the answer.

Chevy Volt's edgy new commerical

Hank Green — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:07:25 PST

OK...so that was really weird. I suppose it's fine with me if the next step in the greening of automobiles is ushered in by a foot-loving bulldog...

In related news, the Chevy Volt is officially going to cost something more like $35,000, instead of the $30,000 the company were hoping for. But the second generation, GM promises, will be cheaper.

From the CES archives: Nokia's green plans

Matt James — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:05:52 PST

Nokia's employees are passionate about creating technology that has a low impact on the environment -- and they came all the way from Finland to share their passion with us at the 2008 CES.

While I found it odd that a booth entitled "Ecology Meets Technology" would be set up in front of a single TV reaching from the floor to the ceiling, I liked what the gentlemen there had to say about how they've reduced their packaging and taken toxic chemicals out of their products.

Nokia certainly has a strong environmental platform, and it was at the top of the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics when it first came out. The company has slipped recently due to ease-of-use problems with their takeback practices in the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, India, and Argentina, and could stand to improve its recycling scorecard a bit too.

All told, though, Nokia has an impressive record, and it was great to meet some of the people who make it happen!

Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid reveal video

Hank Green — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:31:20 PST

Earlier I said that Jeep was showing the only non-GM range extended electric vehicle at the Detroit Auto Show. Well, I was half right.

Fisker, a high-performance auto manufacturer, just unveiled its first production car, a plug-in hybrid called the "Karma."

The car can run 50 miles on pure electric power, and only then switches over to become a regular hybrid.

So while it's not technically a REEV (because the internal combustion engine powers the wheels in addition to the electric motors) it does have an extended, all-electric range, which gives you the same advantages of a REEV.

That advantage, in particular, is the car's ability to be a zero-emissions vehicle on most short trips.

Because there are two drive trains, the car is going to be expensive, around $80,000. Of course, Fisker was never going to make cheap cars.

It's not just the hybrid drive that keeps the cost high. It's also the solar panels on the roof, the limited edition styling, 6-second zero-to-sixty time and the 125-mph top speed.

Fisker hopes to sell more than 10,000 Karmas per year following its Q4 2009 sales launch. However, if the record of high-end EV maker Tesla is any indication, these goals may be a bit optimistic.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an elite undie problem-solver!

Molly McCall — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:23:58 PST

The film opens with Earth in the grips of a "global underwear crisis." Even as garment factories churn out new pairs of underwear, old and discarded tighty-whities are filling trash cans and clogging landfills.

Now, one company has sent out the intimate apparel help-signal to "their elite undie problem-solver." Go to Japan, they cry. Join forces with a textile producer who is recycling used polyester undergarments. And then, convince underwear-wearers of the world to recycle their worn-out boxers, briefs, and panties.

Our noble waste fighter, clothed appropriately in tights and external skivvies, blasts to the Far East where he attempts to spread the word.

Once there, he offends the ladies (whack!), pisses off the guys (pow!), and is rebuffed by a bunch of cool Tokyo retro-punks. Will he save the day? We leave that for you to see in this immensely enjoyable under-mentary.

Check out Patagonia's Common Threads Garment Recycling Program. And remember: Put those skivvies to use!

Find the original review for this siteâand other features on the Web's coolest offeringsâon Yahoo! Picks.

Tune in to the polar bear cam

Kastle Waserman — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:52:32 PDT

Polar bears call the icy tundra of the world's northern regions home. But you don't have to freeze your butt off on a frosty trip to the Arctic for a glimpse of these mighty mammals.

You can get a day-in-the-life view through the polar bear web cam.

The cam is online thanks to Polar Bear International, which dedicates its site to educating the public about polar bears and the challenges they face due to global warming. PBI partnered with National Geographic, the Tundra Buggy Adventure, and WildlifeHD to set up a web cam to watch the bears' annual gathering at Gordon Point near Churchill, Manitoba.

This year's cam will be live through November 28. On any given day you could witness the bears enduring snowstorms, sleeping, huddling their cubs, or enjoying a good ol' play fight to pass the time until the ice freezes and they can begin their hunt for food.

The ice however, is a problem, and scientists fear this could lead to the Bears' ultimate demise. Polar bears have become the poster child of global warming as research points to the melting ice as a contributing factor to a decline in the bear population due to starvation.

To help the bears, PBI offers ways to reduce your carbon emissions, plus donations to PBI go to funding research efforts. The site's extensive gift store also offers great holiday shopping ideas with 100 percent of the proceeds going back into organization.

Greentime

Trystan L. Bass — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:14:30 PDT

Want to see how people are making green choices work in their everyday lives? Check out Greentime, a quirky video blog about sustainable living from an urban professional couple (and their two cats) in Florida.

Rhett and Amy explain, in simple, easy-to-understand terms, things like ditching junk mail, making your own soy milk, taking Amtrak (or not), and deciphering earth-friendly coffee labels.

Stay tuned to see what they'll take on next (and where the kitties will show up!).