Category Archives: Awareness and Hype
A short while ago, we saw the LA County imposing strict laws on the ban of plastic bags. It’s now time for the San Jose City Council to place a ban on all single use plastic shopping bags. Retailers have been barred from giving out plastic bags after a 10-1 verdict. As the New Year slowly kicks in, the ban will to, beginning from the 1st of January 2012. Non-profit organization, Save the Bay did its part in helping the ban be put into place. According to estimates, about 1 million single use plastic bags end up floating in the San Francisco Bay every year. This indeed is a staggering number and is enough to choke the living day lights out of life forms in the waters.
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San Francisco hopes to turn green in the future, and the city is really serious about it this time. So serious, that Outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom is busy making plans to have the city use 100% renewable energy that will help meet city demands. An initiative was launched and the announcement was made by the soon to be lieutenant governor of California at the speech commemorating the completion of the Sunset Reservoir Solar Project. With 5 megawatts capacity, this one is the largest municipal solar facility in the state and was completed last
week, covering an area of twelve football fields. Huge!
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Well, even the Eiffel Tower hasn’t had as much attention lately as this awesome 60-foot Christmas tree in Albay. Now it isn’t just any Christmas tree with an angel and a star on top. This one’s powered by energy from the sun! Complete with a viewing deck and stairs, crowds of people have been visiting the Albay Christmas tree, near the Albay Aerodrome. Also, authorities have made sure the tree is safe, with only two people allowed to climb the stairs at a time, while just four people are allowed up on the deck at a given point of time. And this one isn’t fully relied on the grid. So, if ever there needs to be a power cut-off, this lovely tree will glitter bright in the darkness, shedding light powered by the energy from the sun.
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Procter & Gamble are hell bent on turning into a zero-waste company, and in an effort to do so, have finally pulled the veil off its first zero-waste-to-landfill manufacturing plant located in Auburn, Maine, North America. All the waste created by the company will be reused. 60% of the waste will be sent for recycling while the rest of the waste will be used to generate electricity. Currently the company has had eight zero-waste facilities in places like Belgium, Italy, U.K. and Hungary. The plant in Maine is the first of Procter & Gamble’s zero-waste facilities in the United States. The company also plans to use 100% recyclable material while manufacturing and have 100% renewable energy juicing it up. Procter & Gamble sure deserve a pat on the back for these green initiatives.
[Greenbiz]
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First an iAd, and now a website for kids, Nissan sure knows how to promote its cute electric, the Leaf. Now we aren’t really sure why exactly a child would need to know much about electric cars, since they use skateboards and bicycles to commute, which are eco-friendly. But then again, a few years in the future, they might just end up driving an electric car, thanks to this sort of early education! The “An Electric in Our Home” sub-site has a cartoon family busy showing of their brand new electric car, and boasting about its features, along with irritatingly annoying background music. Also, the Nissan dealer representatives are portrayed as a dog and a giraffe in suits, and we haven’t figured out why. Maybe those naïve little kids enjoy talking animals.
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So here’s the verdict, the cleanest states in the United States of America. A research and advisory firm called Clean Edge has come up with a list of the top 10 states portraying clean energy leadership, based on 80 different state-level indicators and more than 4,000 public and private data points across all 50 states. Besides just considering which state produces the maximum amount for clean energy, the ratings list also makes a note of government policies, venture capital, patent activity and a lot more, according to state size. Topping the list is California, way ahead from the rest with a score of 91.6, owing to all its technological innovation and abundance of natural sources to producing energy. Following California are the states of Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Minnesota and New Jersey.
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Now rainwater collection systems usually aren’t too much of a visual treat, and the most basic way of collecting rain is by simply lining buckets outdoors. This is why, this rainwater collection system designed by Italian, Araceli de la Parra, left us with our jaws dropped in awe and amazement. Basically using a series of flowforms cleverly arranged one beneath the other, naturally channeling water using eddies and vortices, the Acqua Viva as it is called is indeed beautiful. All this is attached to a building structure with the help of cables and positioned below a gutter. The water collected can then be used to replenish plants.
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The holiday season is just around the corner, and everyone’s making plans for that jolly good time of the year again, Christmas. Well, besides all the celebrations and festivities, this time of the year has its toll on the environment, and here’s just what you can do to keep it green this Christmas. Well to start off with, you can recycle all that gift wrapping you usually tear out, too eager to look what’s inside. Reusing 2 feet of ribbon by every family could help save up 38,000 miles of ribbon, enough to tie a bow around the planet. Also, this might seem a bit out of the Christmas spirit, but buying an artificial tree just once, instead of having to bring a live one every year could help save some green. That’s not all. You can also opt for low energy lights to string up, instead of the old one’s you’ve been using that suck in juice.
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Besides just drowning off the Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio has helped changed the perception of Tag Heuer for the greener. A short while ago, the Hollywood star decided to take a walk through a factory La Chaux-de-Fonds and ended up pointing out some green ways the company could adopt to go green, and Tag Heuer sure as hell has considered them. Signing up with Swiss energy distributor VITEOS and Planair, the watchmakers will now have solar panels installed on the rooftops of four of their buildings. 500 photovoltaic panels will be installed, as part of the deal signed between the two firms, for a minimum of fifteen years.
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The best way to go around your mistakes is to own up for them. China thought so too, and has decided to own up. After a load of finger pointing and blaming one and other, the country courageously stood up and accepted the fact that it really is the world’s largest greenhouse emitter. And that really is a great start to going green. And it isn’t much of a surprise either. We’ve all known all along just how polluting China has been and is. So now that the country has finally admitted, its time China takes a leap towards turning green and cut down emissions. Busy developing cleaner and greener technologies by the day, we’re pretty sure China will make up for all its carbon footprints left behind, or at least hope it will.
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