May 2011

Most drivers have a friendly neighborhood gas station, but what about electric car charging points? Chances are you’re more likely to find a one in your neighbor’s garage next to their shiny new Volt or Leaf than on Main Street. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, aims to make them as commonplace as gas stations with a plan to put an EV charging station within one mile of every resident.

Perhaps inspired by the recent Tainted Green article on plastic waste, the European Union is considering a tax or ban on single use plastic bags. The European Commission is taking public comments until August 2011 regarding such policies aimed at reducing plastic waste.

Although plastic carrier bags, such as HDPE bags used for groceries, are recyclable, the size and lightness of the bags allow many to escape the waste management stream. An estimated 500 metric tonnes (over a million pounds) of plastic debris float in the Mediterranean, causing havoc to the marine environment.

In the humid summer months many of us rely on air conditioning to keep our homes and workplaces cool. However, this luxury may not be a reality in power-starved Japan after the Tohoku earthquake and damage to several power plants like Fukushima. Japan's Ministry of the Environment (MOE) hopes that an old plan that encouraged salarymen to get rid of stuffy suits can lessen the load that air conditioning places on the power grid.

As we roll into summer there’s always one thing that gardeners and allergy suffers dread, the lowly dandelion. While it may wreak havoc on your lawn and sinuses, the pesky weed may end up in your next set of wheels. Ford and The Ohio State University (OSU) are looking to transform dandelions from a pollen-filled menace into a source for car parts.

Ecosystem services refers to vital services natural systems provide that, if damaged or degraded, are expensive or impossible to replace. In the rush to exploit non-renewable energy sources, the value of these services is not currently taken into account. As a result, private interests put public assets at risk to the detriment of both public and private enterprises.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill last year clearly shows the need to value ecosystem services. The Gulf Coast region provides important resources, such as nurseries for fisheries and wetlands to mitigate hurricane damage. These resources provide value simply by being there. Unfortunately, the economic benefits of wetlands and fish nurseries are not recognized until they are damaged by an event such as the BP oil spill.

Calculating ecological footprints is a technique to quantify a person’s impact on the environment. This calculation determines how much land and sea area is required to both provide for consumption and to absorb waste. A similar technique is determining carbon footprint, which calculates the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a person or household.

The purpose of both these techniques is to give people a better grasp of the impact of their behavior and choices on the environment. The intent is that, armed with that such knowledge, people would make better choices. A recent study indicated, however, that such techniques might have the opposite effect, particularly for people who don’t have a strong commitment being environmentally responsible.

According to Santa Clara University psychologist Amara Brook:

Using an e-reader would seem to be a natural fit for academic reading and university study. Rather than hauling massive tomes in a bursting backpack, all the texts could be contained by something like a Kindle DX, which is the size of notebook and weighs just over a pound. But a recent study on how students do academic reading indicates that e-readers still have a long way to go before they are college ready.

To gage the utility of e-books at the university level, researchers at the University of Washington conducted a study using Kindle DX’s with 39 first-year graduate students in the UW’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The goal of the study was to look at the strategies students employ while reading and studying and how the Kindle aided or hindered these strategies.