You probably have had your battery-powered remote-controlled monster truck drive up your street before. Well, some kids in the Long Beach area built their own toy emote-control vehicles and had them go solar powered instead, and lined them up for a race amidst cheers and applause at the Good Neighbor Park. The 5th District Solar and Sustainability Task Force and Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske came up with the idea of this race. These kids racked their brains and built the cars themselves, with parts and material provided.

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Electricity grids of the future will see an overhaul in the way they work and function. The process by which electricity is transferred to our homes will soon see a change; future electricity grids will be smarter, save costs and reduce pollution levels too. Appliances in future will also turn off in time to save up energy. Renewable energy will satisfy around 20% of needs, using solar power and wind power.

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The GM electric battery testing lab is bound to swell up soon, thanks to the company’s $8 million investment. The Global Battery Systems Lab is currently the largest battery testing factory for automobiles in US. A new structure will be built, increasing space from 30,000 square feet to 63,000 square feet. This testing unit will help increase the development of the electric vehicle sector. The facility will also be used to develop technology for use in long range vehicles.

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You probably have heard of the tallest building in New York going green. The Empire State Building, with a $500 million renovation, will stand tall with a newly found pride and soon loom greener in the New York skyline. To help power up, the building will have its 6,500 windows retrofitted with an insulating glass. This insulation film developed by Southwall, traps and blocks the suns heat owing to the increased number of cavities within the double glazed windows.

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You probably haven’t realized it, but moving your lawn does pollute air. They cause 5-10% of USA’s air pollution, due to petrol use. Petrol powered lawn movers also consume 2.2 billion liters of petrol annually. So to save up on energy, Colorado based Clean Air Lawn Care is using electric lawn movers, powered by solar panels. These solar powered lawn movers help the company save up around USD $10,000 annually on petrol, spending less than USD $500 to charge them up with. The company claims to have avoided 34 tons of air pollution in 2009.

[Image for representation only]

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If there has been a buzzword over the past few years then this is it. No, not Global warming (that’s two) but recycling. Whether it’s crushing our cans or ditching our drinks bottles, you can guarantee there’s a bin for it. But what about the more awkward, potentially toxic items? It is estimated that the average household uses 21 batteries a year. Considering the sheer volume of gadgets, gizmos and remote controls that fill these four walls, that may not sound a lot, but the UK alone is said to annually generate some 30,000 tonnes of waste batteries, with less than 1,000 tonnes being recycled. Considering the chemical composition of the remainder lining our landfill, the implications of incorrect disposal results in a potentially charged environmental issue. Inevitably the decomposition of hazardous metals (such as lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, and lithium) results in contamination of our soil, air, and water, and more worryingly, our food chain.

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Love it or hate it – modern art never fails to provoke a reaction. While some people can’t get enough, the majority of people tend to think that contemporary art is a load of rubbish. On that note, some clever people have taken this idea one step further and actually created art from rubbish. Aesthetically-pleasing and environmentally friendly.....surely not? The Rainbow Worrier, a boat created from a staggering 5,000 plastic bags, is a fantastic example of using art to raise environmental awareness - even filled with plastic fish in nets to stress how plastic is destroying marine ecosystems. Created by Devon-based outdoor art group ‘Trail’, the piece won the Recycled Art in Landscape Public Choice Award. Who said plastic recycling wasn’t creative?

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Do you remember the time before mobile phones were invented? Seems like a lifetime away doesn’t it? Yet with the invention of innovative gadgets comes the inevitable newer models being created each year. Mobile phones, Mp3 Players, laptops, power tools, all have to be powered by a battery of some sort. Then when the newer gadgets arrive, we simply throw out the outdated models and their batteries. That’s the problem right there. Batteries. Each year the average British household uses up to 21 batteries, and if these old batteries aren’t sitting in your kitchen drawer releasing carcinogenic substances, 600 million of these are pilling up on that every increasing landfill each year.

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This is the Mercedes-Benz Citaro Fuel Cell Hybrid Bus. It is hydrogen powered and has so far shown good performance during fleet testing. It uses the same fuel cell technology as the Mercedes F-Cell B-Class car and will undergo production in small numbers this fall. The buses have been part of the HyFLEET-CUTE test program, which began in 2003 and at the time logged more than 1.2 million miles and 135,000 hours of operation.

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These days everything is just a click away. Almost everything! Be it buying, selling or even recycling. Just type recycling cell phones in a search machine and watch out for the endless results. A significant surge in the number of websites providing this service has led to this boom on search machines. Since the awareness for recycling mobile phones has seeded amongst consumers, this business of getting rid of cell phones in a responsible manner is benefiting all, including our planet. Apart from doing their bit for environment, consumers are also lured to recycle their cell phones to gain some cash benefit too. Along with the cell phones, it is also essential to recycle the batteries that charge them up. As these batteries are short lived then the cell phones, they play a major role in feeding e-waste heaps. They need to be disposed off with care equally. Currently less than 3% of portable batteries in the UK are recycled. BatteryBack provides a FREE treatment and recovery service for all portable batteries. Even WasteCare takes care of Battery recycling with great responsibility.

Mazda today delivered the first Mazda Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid to Iwatani Corporation, an energy development company based in Japan. The Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid is Mazda’s latest hydrogen rotary engine (RE) vehicle which uses hydrogen as a fuel and features a unique hybrid system.The Mazda Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid can run on both hydrogen and gasoline thanks to a dual-fuel system that was developed for the current RX-8 Hydrogen RE. The addition of a new hybrid system significantly enhances the vehicle’s performance and contributes to its increased hydrogen fuel range of 200 kilometers; double that of the RX-8 Hydrogen RE.

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If you have the money, use it. And some people take the efforts to use it well as the world is a concern for them, for example, celebrities as they require a safe and healthy running earth to be in a profession. Sheryl Crow, amongst many others from Hollywood, cannot stop loving her Mercedes-Benz R320 BlueTEC. It is one of today's modern diesel vehicles that are extremely quiet, environmentally clean, and can achieve a range of 500 miles on a single tank of diesel fuel. Owners of new clean diesel vehicles are also eligible for the same tax credit as hybrids.

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In this day and age, newer gadgets and technology keep mushrooming every day to make our lives easy. However, such a rising e-trend has given rise to grave situation. Electronic waste, popularly known as ‘e-waste’encompasses ever growing range of obsolete electronic devices such as computers and its peripherals, TVs & display devices, telecommunication devices such as cellular phones, audio and video devices besides refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and microwave ovens. The list is endless and so are the troubles that come along with it. This is taking a toll on our landfills as most of the gadgets hit the e-waste fills before even serving a part of their estimated life span. As residents of this planet we need to take the responsibility of managing our waste in appropriate manner. By encouraging the three Rs, that is ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, we can minimize the negative environmental aspects of disposal. WasteCare offers a unique recycling and waste management service that enables waste producers from all industrial and business sectors to manage and report their waste, from collection to recovery regardless of the type, volume or location. And WeeeCare, UK's favourite Compliance Scheme, aims at encouraging reuse and recycling too. Since Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations became effective the waste industry has seen an increase in the amount and variety of electrical waste being collected. WasteCare also has a purpose built re-processing facility for computer and VDU equipment for appropriate Computer Recycling & Disposal.

This was a guest post by John an expert in Waste Management and Computer Recycling.

Rotterdam has now finished hosting the world's first international championship for fuel cell powered racers from August 22 - 23. This new zero-emission race was open for all fuel cell single seaters. The competition had just one rule zero emissions, presently Formula One cars gain speed to over 200 miles per hour, whereas Formula Zero cars at the moment, reach just over 30 miles per hour. Each team's entry was powered by a commercial fuel cell that produces electricity from hydrogen.

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California's largest utility company- Pacific Gas and Electric has signed deals to build the world's two biggest solar plants that would supply electricity to 250,000 homes and reestablish the United States as the global leader in solar power, officials said Friday. Pacific Gas and Electric will use the two massive solar facilities to help it meet state requirements to generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. PG&E has signed contracts with two Silicon Valley firms, Optisolar and SunPower, to build the plants in the sunny central California coast city of San Luis Obispo, which is almost equidistant from the state's two population centers San Francisco and Los Angeles. Optisolar will build a 550-megawatt solar farm using thin-film photovoltaic panels, while SunPower will build another 250-megawatt plant on former farm land, PG&E said, adding that the OptiSolar plant alone could reduce as much carbon emissions as by 90,000 cars. Energy sector officials said that the new project is so large that it would double the entire installed base of solar power generation in the United States. The world's largest solar facility is currently in Spain with a23-megawatt generation capacity, while a 154-megawatt station is under construction in Australia.

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