The Green Optimistic

Usually, plastic bottles, (aka PETs) are recycled by mechanical technologies, and they get several other uses afterwards: carpets, sweaters, etc. They don’t ever return to their original water bottle use.It is possible to chemically recycle PETs, but the method has been so far very expensive and the industry doesn’t want that option.

A group of scientists at the Yale University have created a new type of magnetic, lead-free solder that could be used to manufacture electronics more efficiently and cheaply.

The former WW2 bomb shelter in Helsinki became the center of attention lately, since a data center located there is going to be contributing to the town’s heating system, powered by Finnish company Helsingin Energia, starting next month.

Bio-chemist David Richardson of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom said that Shewanella is the ideal candidate for environmental-cleanup tasks as it lives in the underground: “Understanding their biochemistry could help to develop strategies to stimulate their activities [at the cleanup sites].”

Petroleum stands at the base of every plastic we usually find on today’s market. Polymers are everywhere, and if petroleum resources are about to go scarce with time, it’s a good idea to replace it with other renewable and biodegradable material that we could use just as well as we use petroleum today.

A group of students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur have developed a bio cell(battery) that can be used to treat sewage water and generate electric energy, being a perfect solution to combat the water and energy crisis.

Cereplast has already developed some new technologies before, being able to make plastic from renewable materials such as corn starch, tapioca, wheat and potatoes.

A research team at Stanford has developed a new inexpensive sensor chip made with carbon nanotubes, being capable to detect rapid traces of TNT and poison in rivers, reservoirs.

Jerry Block, a retired anesthesiologist, located in Monte Sereno, California, has developed in his backyard a rainwater harvesting system, capable of holding and collecting up to 20,000 gallons of rainwater each year.

Researchers at the University of Connecticut have used salmon DNA to develop next-gen LED bulbs.

Sainsbury’s, from Gloucester, UK, is the first supermarket to use the kinetic energy coming from the cars entering their parking lot to (partially) power their shop.

Passivhaus is a German concept of a home that needs very little heating or cooling, because it is so well insulated that it could basically be built on martian surface. There are more then 20,000 of these Passivhaus homes worldwide, many of them being buildings, kindergartens and office spaces.

UFO (Unidentified Feeding Object) plates are picnic plates which can be disposed after usage by launching them into the bushes, exactly like a frisbee. The most interesting thing about these plates is the fact that they can provide food for birds, squirrels or rodents.

Even if it may sound like science fiction, the vision of the European Union is to be able to power the entire Continent with Green Energy: from solar panels to wind and wave turbines, from geothermal to hydroelectric power stations.

Scientists discovered a new method to reduce an airliner’s consumption and fuel costs by redirecting the air to waggle sideways around the wings. They are doing this with tiny air powered jets, making the air flow back and forth over the wing.

A team of researchers at the University of Essex has received European funds worth 2.5 million pounds to complete a project to construct a robotic fish shaped like Carp able to monitor the pollution from ports.

Google announced free software that allows users to monitor their home electricity use and mitigate the effects of global warming, without paying anything extra for the effort.

A long time ago, President Obama announced his agenda as very different from what we are used to. He lets us see that US economy can not only not lose, but also win from keeping environmental policies at the front.

We are now trying to bury the CO2, get rid of it somehow, and if fossil fuels came from down below, we think that by sending CO2 from where it came, we will solve the problem partially. And that may be true, regarding that sometimes the patchy solutions are best. So, let’s try to patch our trouble.

The workers say that the newly installed solar panels will save about 200 tons of CO2 in just 2 weeks (the equivalent of 70 tons of oil). It’s just nice. In fact, the Vatican is the only place I don’t think these expensive things will get stolen. The project is estimated to about $1.5 million.