Pavlo Khazan,
Institute of Nature Management and Ecology of the National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine

Ganna Yeliseyeva,
Bologna University, Italy

The external financial, social and environmental factors have an influence upon human in different interconnections. [1]. The problem of the exact determination of these influencing factors is concluded in necessity to take into consideration indexes, which have a significant correlation, existing in dynamics, with indexes of human vital activity: ecological footprint and biological capacity. [1,2]. At the same time current world crisis of financial system, which mankind is suffering from, was predetermined by the system of economic relations, which has been accepted internationally long time ago. [3]

For the last decades growth was set as a main indicator of the government performance. The way, those target values for growth were reached, has been neglected. Now humanity is a witness of all consequences of the damage that agreed system caused and continue to cause to the environment. Recent attempts of the governments to switch from unsustainable economy to sustainable one showed that it

It started with a guilt trip.

As is the custom these days, when digital-media strategist Toby Daniels sets up meetings, he goes out for coffee. When he would meet with Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger.com, Hill would bring along one of his side projects–a ceramic coffee cup in the manner of an old, diner-style paper cup, which he sells at WeAreHappyToServeYou.com.

“Every time I used to meet Graham, he used to bring me one of these ceramic coffee cups sort of as a way to suggest I shouldn’t be drinking my coffee out of a paper cup,” said Daniels, who moved to New York from his native United Kingdom a few years ago. “I’m still struggling to switch. I have five reusable cups at home and I never bring them with me when I get coffee on the go.”

Finally, Hill’s passive-aggressive statement of sustainability turned into an idea. While attending an April 2009 conference hosted by edgy consulting firm PSFK, the two came to the conclusion that maybe there was a real problem if a seemingly forward-thinking city dweller like Daniels couldn’t seem to curb his addiction to disposable coffee cups. And thus, the Betacup Challenge was born: $20,000 of prize money at stake in a contest of designers, builders, and thinkers striving to create a legitimate alternative to the 58 billion disposable coffee cups that are thrown away, unrecycled, around the world each year.

And this summer, after one false start nearly derailed the competition earlier this year, there will be a champion: Entries will close June 1, commentary and rating end June 15, and after that, judges select a winning design that will be awarded $10,000. The remaining $10,000 will be distributed among five community favorites. They’ll all be honored in an awards ceremony of sorts.

The Betacup Challenge is purposely open-ended: design a coffee cup that addresses the problem of disposable coffee cups, and upload the concept to the Web. As a result, some of the 200-plus submissions are disposable cups that use alternative materials, some are reusable cups with a built-in incentive for actually bringing them back day after day, and some are entire infrastructures of cups and specialized recycling systems. Take, for example, the inflatable plastic “air cup” that claims to use less than half the material that a traditional coffee cup does, is already insulated to eliminate the need for cardboard sleeves, and which could be disposed at “cause recycling” locations that would funnel their reconstruction into materials for humanitarian projects, like water jugs and plastic lumber.

A handful of entries weave Starbucks loyalty programs into the design of the cup. One of the top-rated Betacup Challenge submissions is the “Mille Mug,” a collapsible cup that an MIT designer has already physically built, and suggests that it could be accompanied with a loyalty program that registers how many times the cup has been reused–which, in turn, ties into how many cups have been saved.

Still other designs promote wacky ingredients: A Berlin-based designer suggested rice husk as the base material for a cup that would be both reusable and biodegradable; another designer decided that shredded bamboo could do the job. Multiple entries, meanwhile, were inspired by one of the natural world’s own drinking vessels–coconuts. There’s the “Cococup,” which suggests coconut hull as a biodegradable, sustainable alternative to paper. In the spirit of collaborative design, someone else took that idea in a different direction with the “Grown Cococup.”

“The idea is simple to cultivate a novel coconut breed with less flesh, and let the fruits grow in pre-cup-forms, like bulbs in bottles,” the designer of the Grown Cococup explained in his product description. “Such novel coconut plantations can replace monocultures in the third world, maybe also beside established coffee plantations.”

Maybe it’s not the most practical idea. But it’s inventive for sure.

What do the experts like? Graham Hill, an adviser to the Betacup Challenge, could not comment much. Reached via e-mail, he was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, one of the crew members on board the Plastiki–a boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles, captained by British adventurer David de Rothschild to raise awareness of the impact of disposable plastics on the environment. The inquiry to Hill’s e-mail address was met with an auto-response of “SERIOUSLY OUT OF OFFICE.”

What can be done to solve the problem of the 58 billion coffee cups that are thrown away each year? In a pro-sustainability move, coffee giant Starbucks has thrown its weight behind the Betacup Challenge, a design competition dedicated to building a more sustainable coffee cup.

Entries in the competition run the gamut from practical to ridiculous, a mix of reusable cups and sustainable disposable cups.

This one, called the “Cococup,” suggests that coconut hull could be used as a naturally sourced, biodegradable material for coffee cups. If thrown away into special “Cocobins,” the designer foresees them as recyclable, too, easy to break down and reconstruct into new cups.

Photo by Tevada

The Cococup wasn’t the only Betacup Challenge entry inspired by the coconut’s potential role as a naturally grown drinking vessel. This one, called the “Grown Coco-Cup,” goes a step further by suggesting that it would be possible to grow coconuts in the shape of coffee cups.

“(The) idea is simple to cultivate a novel coconut breed with less flesh and let the fruits grow in pre-cup-forms, like bulbs in bottles,” the designer wrote. “Such novel coconut plantations can replace monocultures in the third world, maybe also beside established coffee plantations.”

Photo by jorvoto
Caption by Caroline McCarthy

One of the most popular entries in the Betacup Challenge is the “Mille Mug,” a collapsible, reusable mug. Its creator envisions incentives like “badges” on the mug for every 100 times used, or using a barcode to build in a Starbucks loyalty program.

Unlike many of the concepts entered in the Betacup Challenge, the Mille Mug has already been physically constructed. Its creator has even put a video online.

Photo by Mike Siboni

Here’s another collapsible cup, but this one is a little more off-the-wall: “Made from heat-resistant elastic rubber,” this collapsible coffee cup claims to use 75 percent less paper and requires 90 percent less shipping space than a traditional paper coffee cup. Plus, the creator claims it’ll be reusable.

That’s ambitious. But could you really imagine rushing to the office with it?

Photo by sengkaraoke

One entry in the competition was not a cup at all, but a cleaning device designed specifically for reusable coffee cups. “I believe the majority of coffee drinking people would use a travel mug in their coffee routine if only the inconvenience of having to wash it after every time of use was removed,” the designer wrote in his Betacup Challenge entry.

These would, ideally, be installed in coffee shops. “Just bring a travel mug to the nearest coffee shop, have it cleaned and filled with coffee, and then carry on with the day,” the designer suggested.

Photo by David Stievenart

Here’s one of the wackier ideas: A firm called Tallac Design has designed a cup called the “Bucky Air,” an inflatable (!) cup that it says will use 8 grams of material in contrast to the 20.45 used in a traditional paper coffee cup. The designers envision the cups as “dispensed from a filling station that inflates, pressure tests and heat seals each cup.”

Bucky Air cups would be constructed from a single recyclable plastic, or alternately, the design team suggests that special “cause recycling” bins be placed inside each Starbucks so that cups could be turned into something for charity: water jugs, for example, or plastic lumber for construction.

Photo by Allen and Paige Young

Right now, the array of Betacup submissions have amassed hundreds of comments and suggested improvements from around the world. But things weren’t always this prolific for the Betacup Challenge, which took months to get off the ground and was nearly derailed when the $20,000 in prize money proved harder to secure than its collaborators had initially thought.

Early interest had been positive. As the summer of 2009 kicked off, Daniels teamed up with Jovoto, an online community for “crowdsourced” projects, and set up shop in the New York offices of Colaboratorie Mutopo, a firm that focuses on projects of “mass collaboration.” A few Betacup representatives traveled to Monterey, Calif., that July for a design conference called Overlap, where a blogger in attendance wrote about their project–and the link made its way to Jim Hanna, director of environmental affairs at Starbucks.

It was clear early on that Starbucks, a company attempting to keep a delicate balance between corporate ubiquity and a socially conscious, innovation-savvy image, was interested in putting its name on something like the Betacup Challenge. Exactly how it would be involved was less clear.

“It was clear from the first conversation with them that Jim was less interested in cups per se,” said Shaun Abrahamson of Colaboratorie Mutopo, another core member of the Betacup organizing team. He’s out there trying to lobby to get a city like New York to improve its infrastructure for recycling. But from Starbucks’ perspective, (the Betacup) is a way to say, ‘Look, this is why it’s hard.’”

Daniels and his collaborators e-mailed with Hanna at Starbucks about working together, but Daniels said the talks didn’t progress very far at first since they weren’t quite sure how a partnership would fall into place. A few months went by, and in November the Betacup team decided to raise the prize money–$20,000, with $10,000 for the winner and the rest to be divided among runners-up–by establishing a fund on microfinancing site Kickstarter, which more recently has been pulling in plenty of press as the platform for the funding of conceptual Facebook alternative Diaspora.

“We love Kickstarter. We thought it was phenomenal,” Daniels told CNET. “We thought it was an obvious way of raising the $20,000 in the absence of not having any other way to raise the $20,000.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The Betacup Challenge on Kickstarter failed to reach its fundraising goal by the January 1 deadline that Daniels and his team had imposed, and so no money was raised.

“We had some initial early success, and we got to three or four grand in a relatively short amount of time,” Daniels said, “but we definitely saw the fundraising aspect of things plateau, and we didn’t have the resources to keep up the momentum.”

The Betacup was in hot water: When the development of a project is chronicled in public from its earliest days, its failures as well as successes will be broadcast for all to see. Daniels and the rest of his team weren’t willing to give up, but with the Kickstarter fundraising a bust, the whole project was at risk of being seen as an early failure. Thankfully, there was still an open door at Starbucks, and now there was a concrete way they could help out–by fronting $20,000. On March 15, all of the would-be Kickstarter donors received an e-mail informing them that Starbucks would be sponsoring the Betacup Challenge. Things were back in motion.

More sponsors and partner companies have jumped on board, too: T-shirt company Threadless has launched a Betacup tie-in contest for the design of “an amazing tee inspired by coffee,” and do-it-yourself geek community Instructables has put up a promotion dedicated to alternative uses for paper coffee cups. As for the Betacup Challenge itself, the submission deadline is June 1. The panel of experts to choose the eventual winner is an impressive one, too–Threadless CEO Jake Nickell, Starbucks’ Hanna, and the currently seafaring Hill, among others.

Yet despite star power, the fate of the Betacup Challenge is unclear. Starbucks is not obliged to purchase the winner’s design or to make any in-store changes as a result; under Jovato’s regulations, the person who comes up with the winning idea still retains ownership rights to it. Starbucks’ connection to the Betacup Challenge is not as close as, say, Netflix’s was to its Netflix Prize competition to build a more accurate recommendation system.

“What took the longest with Starbucks was a legal discussion,” Shaun Abrahamson said. “Within the community the clients are basically paying to be part of the conversation. What they aren’t paying for is ownership of the idea or the rights to the idea.”

With no guarantee to implement the winning design, it may still be awhile before Starbucks or any other major coffee chain starts stocking cups with built-in barcodes or constructed from coconuts, if they ever do at all. Like concept cars at a high-end auto show, they make for sexy prototypes but still are difficult to imagine operating in the real world. The team behind the Betacup Challenge says that it will have been a success if it catalyzes conversation about bringing sustainable practices to the morning latte ritual.

“With the conversations we’re starting to have, I think what can we pilot is whether there is anything we can take away from this, and I think that’s more of a Starbucks question,” Abrahamson said. “Maybe a material science cup problem is a longer, harder thing.”

Still, stranger things have come to fruition, like a boat made of plastic bottles.

Originally posted at The Social

http://news.cnet.com/greentech/food-and-drink/?tag=rtcol;tags

New Hampshire, United States — The renewable energy industry has grown substantially in recent years, despite the down economy. But while solar, wind and to a lesser extent, geothermal energy put up solid growth numbers, the bioheating market has lagged behind.

The reasons are simple enough. Low rates of new construction, a declining housing market and lower oil prices have made capital intensive investments in wood pellet, chip and gasifying systems a tough sell.

But the signs of recovery are now being seen in this space. Consumer demand is improving and policymakers are placing renewable heating higher up on their energy agendas. In the last six months, the American Renewable Biomass Heating Act of 2010 (S.3188) was introduced in Washington, D.C. The bill would add renewable heating systems to the list of technologies that qualify for federal renewable energy tax credits. New state- and utility-level incentives were also created in New Hampshire, with more expected in other Northeast states.

Charile Neibling, chairman of the Biomass Thermal Energy Council (BTEC) and general manager of New England Wood Pellet, said the policies being put in place at the government and utility level signal a return to pre-recession thinking, when oil was expensive and both consumers and corporations were looking to be more eco-friendly. The result, he said, is that the industry is seeing momentum return, leading leading policy makers and utilities to put incentives in place to help get the market moving again.

“In Washington, there are three pieces of legislation we’re working on. All of them are demand side incentives for commerical, residential and industrial applications for high efficiency biomass thermal technologies,” Neibling said. “The utilities, which have historically been focused solely on electricity, are starting to view their role more expansively and are viewing the efficiency monies that they administer in a more technology and fuel neutral way, and that’s a really encouraging sign.”

Niebling wasn’t alone in his optimism at the Heating the Northeast with Renewable Biomass (Heat NE) event last week in New Hampshire.

Lew McCreery, Biomass Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) Northeastern Area said that he’s encouraged by the increasing cooperation taking place between government agencies. But he cautioned that there is still a lot more to be done politically to increase the adoption of high efficiency bioheating technologies. Recognizing heating and combined heat and power technologies under renewable portfolio standards is a top priority for the industry, McCreery said.

“The thermal use of wood is almost the ideal use as an energy source,” he said. “The biggest concern I have is the inefficiency of wood in standalone electric plants, which are being encouraged by things like renewable portfolio standards that don’t include heat as a recognized technology.”

Joe Kohler of Kohler & Lewis, Mechanical Engineers said that the recession caused some customers to put plans for biomass systems on hold as a result of the recession. Now Kohler said he’s seeing interest come back and expects it to remain high for the foreseeable future. The keys to keeping interest high, he said, will be the availability of systems and the quality of the work being done in the field.

“Once it gets to the point where oil is $3.50 a gallon, I think this will be a self fueling industry, we don’t even have to do much to make it happen. We just need to have the product out there for consumers to buy and we have to have successes,” he said

Though higher oil prices will undoubtedly lead people to look at new choices for heating, challenges to market adoption still exist. Mark Froling, president of boiler installer Froling LLC said that installers need to act as both marketers and educators by building showcase projects — even if it means working for a reduced price — in order to prove to consumers that biomass thermal projects work. Showcase projects will allow people to “kick the tires,” he said.

“Right now we’re building a project in Peterborough, New Hampshire and doing it at a reduced cost so that it’s a showcase [and] people can see the project and see that it works. There’s really no one out there that has equipment installed and there are only a handful of boilers out there running,” he said.

As is the case with any new industry, consumer education plays a big role in renewable energy implementation and adoption. Educating regulators and policy makers is also important. During his keynote address, John Kerry, Director of the Maine Office of Energy Independence & Security, reminded Heat NE attendees to make more effort to communicate the industry’s message in order to provide people with a better understanding of the benefits of the industry.

“I think the very first thing thing needs to be knowledge, that is, the legislature, the public, and the industry itself needs to become fully engaged in understanding the newest of technologies, the resources and the impact of harvesting the resources to create jobs and economic development,” he said.

The energy transition is a cultural transition from one based on fossil fuels to one based on conservation and sustainability, said Kerry.

Christiane Egger, deputy manager of the Upper Austrian Renewable Energy Agency (Oberösterreichischer Energiesparverbund) used her European region, which is on a path to get 100% of its primary energy from renewable sources by 2030, as an example of the sustainable culture Kerry alluded to. The most important component to making the move she said, is to make a commitment and to stick to it.

“My state decided in the mid 1990′s that sustainable energy was a crucial question for us and we’re now in the third phase of state action plan, under which we said that by the turn of the millennium we would have 30% of our energy from renewables. And we did it,” she said.

In order to overcome many of the challenges in front of the biomass industry, BTEC recently issued a report called a “Bold Vision for 2025.” The report calls for a shift to 25% renewable heat in the Northeast, with 19% from biomass and the rest from solar thermal and geothermal heat pumps.

BTEC, Maine Pellet Fuels, the Pellet Fuels Institute, the New York Biomass Energy Alliance and the Alliance for Green Heat laid out a series of steps needed to achieve this goal, including increasing state and local government support for renewable heating through the use of regulatory requirements, tax incentives and rebates. The report also said that in order to hit this figure, academic institutions will need to develop improvements to technologies currently on the market and work to create new, more efficient ones.

Were these targets hit, the industry would bring more than US $4.5 billion in economic activity to the region and would create more than 140,000 permanent jobs, as well as thousands of temporary and indirect jobs in the construction, farming, forestry and transportation industries. The expansion of the bioheating industry would also prevent $1.6 billion from leaving the U.S. for petroleum producing nations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Check back with RenewableEnergyWorld.com for more coverage from Heat NE in the coming days. We’ll be releasing video and podcast interviews from the event as well as more information about the “Bold Vision for 2025” report.

by Graham Jesmer, Staff Writer

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/05/fired-up-bioheat-gains-momentum-as-recovery-takes-hold

Moments before heading out for dinner this past Saturday night, I learned I was living in what you could call a dry town.

Along with 2 million other people in the Boston area, water service to my town was disrupted because of a “catastrophic” break in the distribution system.

Early Saturday morning, a collar attached to a giant water pipe in Weston, Mass., broke off, which cut off the source of clean water to 30 cities and towns. Two days into the crisis, people in the area are now being supplied by a backup reservoir system that requires people to boil any water they consume.

Obviously, this is a serious situation, which officials hope will be resolved within days. But in my household, the “boil water” order raises a practical question: what is the most energy-efficient way to boil water?

This seemingly simple question, posed by my wife Sunday morning, launched hours of Internet searching and a mini science experiment at home. After vacillating between the electric kettle and gas stove to boil water all day Sunday, I feel like I’ve now unraveled a great mystery and can, for the moment at least, proceed with more confidence.

Apart from this curiosity-piqued sideshow, the entire episode is a sharp reminder of how important access to fresh water is to our daily lives. Yet, as a resource, people don’t expect to pay much for it and it’s an area that sees relatively little technology innovation or investment.

Where’s my beaker?
Nailing down the answer of energy efficiency and water boiling is more complicated than it seems. If you poke around the Internet, you can conclude fairly quickly that electric kettles are far superior to microwaves and electric stove tops. It gets trickier when you bring gas into the equation, with both gas stoves and electric kettles being good options on the efficiency front.

I found a number of analyses heaping kudos on the lowly electric tea kettle, including this one from Treehugger last fall. In short, kettles blow the other electric options away because they are designed for efficiency. They are the best at transferring the energy from the heating element to the water, compared to other methods, which lose more heat to the air.

In my home, though, it came down to gas or the electric kettle. As an added wrinkle, I get almost all my electricity from solar panels, particularly during the long days of spring and summer.

Setting the solar bit aside, I focused on how much energy is required to bring water to a boil. Depending on how long this goes, it may actually be noticeable on our bills.

Using a Kill A Watt power meter, I measured how many kilowatt-hours were required to boil a liter of water. Then, I measured how long it took to heat a liter on the gas stove. I got an estimate for how many BTUs an hour my stove’s burners are good for and then converted the total BTUs needed to kilowatt-hours.

At first blush, the kettle uses less energy than the gas stove. However, the two sources are awfully close in total energy consumption when you consider the amount of fuel that is required to generate electricity and deliver it to your home.

The best recommendation I could find is that going with a gas kettle is a good way to go in winter when you can benefit from the heat it gives off.

The data
In the U.K., where people boil water to make tea many times a day, this issue has been studied intensively. For the actual analysis, I defer to David MacKay, a professor of natural philosophy at the department of physics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, a book that takes a look at big picture energy needs through the lens of everyday life. (Coincidentally, I’ve been reading his book on Bill Gates’ recommendation.)

His numbers were not far off from my own. I found that it took 0.11 kilowatt-hours to boil water in the electric kettle. Boiling one liter of water on the gas stove took about eight minutes. I found an estimate for my stove’s BTU per-hour rating, did the math, and found that it uses an estimated 0.35 kilowatt-hours.

Does that make it a clear winner? No! It turns out that centralized power plants are about 33 percent efficient, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association. Then a few percent of the energy from burning fossil fuels is lost in sending electricity over transmission lines.

Taking electricity generation and distribution into account means that the two methods are roughly equal in terms of the amount of energy required, concludes MacKay.

Cleverly, he suggests that people take advantage of the fact that gas burners are only 37 percent efficient at converting energy from the gas flame to heating the water. Hey, you can use that gas burner to help heat the room!

The people at efficiency start-up PlotWatt also concluded that gas is a good way to go, particularly if you live in an area that is powered by coal.

But on a warm day, an electric kettle’s insulated design keeps the heat contained and is a good choice, MacKay says.

Having on-site clean electricity does tilt things in favor of the electric kettle. You use less energy overall and you eliminate that waste from centralized power generation and delivery. Given that we’re producing more electricity than we consume at this time of year, we’re going with the kettle. Plus, it’s hot outside.

Clearly, there are many other more significant ways to save energy at home in normal circumstances. But as we wait out the repairs to the water system, it’s good to know, one day later, that we’ve thought this one through.

http://news.cnet.com/greentech/water/?tag=rtcol;tags

Good on paper, bad in practice: from fart offsets to eco-beer, blocking the sun to Green Burning Man, here are 20 of the craziest innovations, inventions, and ideas to save the planet – most of which have fallen miserably short of the mark. In the modern green movement rush to solve our numerous environmental crises, scientists have been scrambling to develop innovative technologies and creative solutions. Some of these developments – from small-scale interventions like cargo container homes to citywide green urban re-designs – have been lauded for their ingenuity and potential. But other concepts, while initially offering promise, have turned out to be impossible, dangerous, or just…ridiculous.

Global warming. Food shortages and water scarcity. Fossil fuel depletion. Deforestation and extinction. Freakish weather. Methane pollution and acid rain. Dwindling resources. It’s an understatement to say we’re facing major environmental issues as the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close. No wonder scientists are trying anything and everything. Even things that don’t work. At all.

Artificial Islands and Floating Cities

Land reclamation project turned private playground for the rich and famous, artificial island projects such as Dubai’s The World have come under criticism for harming the environment and disturbing delicate ecosystems as developers claim the projects actually benefit the planet like natural islands. Despite the fact that self-professed environmentalists Brad and Angelina have snapped up their own faux islet, The World is an environmental embarrassment compared to contemporary architectural trends toward prefabrication, portability and the recycling of old structures into new houses.

Other artificial islands claiming to preserve the environment are credible, such as (where else?) the Bay Area’s Treasure Island project, China’s Dongtan, and the high-tech Lilypad – the amphibious answer to a future of rising tides. These artificial cities are carbon neutral, self-sufficient and 100% sustainable. However, a lack of scalability and prohibitive cost for at-risk regions makes projects like Lilypad a novelty, not a global solution. A more likely (and practical) solution will be to retrofit existing cities and suburbs…although the Superstar is cool, but the nuts and bolts like bedrooms, bathrooms & storage spaces have yet to be worked out.

Human-Powered Floating Gyms

Human-powered floating gyms – a great way to transport yourself downriver as long as you don’t mind working out in an encased shell with a dozen other sweaty bodies. Could this be New York’s answer to the problem of traffic congestion? While scientists have been working to find a way to harness wasted energy expelled by people at gyms, the practicality of floating gyms is debatable. Would people want to work out on their way to meetings and appointments? Would the resources used to build the gyms make the energy savings even worth it? Isn’t walking or biking on existing roadways a more feasible (and inexpensive) method of transport?

The 15-Year Light Bulb

Everyone would love love a light bulb that lasts 1.5 decades. Think of all the energy humans would collectively save. Unfortunately, though many were excited by the, um, glow of this idea, the radioactivity of the bulb means we still need a nontoxic answer to the problem of wasted electricity when it comes to lamps and lighting.

Failed Hybrids

Hybrid concepts are hot, but not all futuristic vehicle concepts are realistic. Like the extreme gravity car. Or even Hybrid SUVs that get worse gas mileage than most sedans and require tremendous virgin resources to produce. But then there is Ford’s failed hybrid revolution and the plight of the electric car. Though there are plenty of great hybrids on the market these days, as well as some great upcoming models and concepts, many have been dismal failures. The air car is a kick-ass concept, but time will tell if it can significant mileage with the media or consumers. And of course, there is the infamous water-powered car.

“>You may want to hold out hope for the 330 mpg Aptera.
The friction and heat generated by cars on the road adds up to a lot of wasted energy. Scientists have toyed with the idea of special absorbent cells that could harness all that alternative energy for reuse. The only problem is a lack of feasibility: retrofitting roads with special cells is unlikely when our crumbling infrastructure is already in such a state of disrepair. And the wear-and-tear dilemma has yet to be resolved.

Biofuels

They were the next great answer to the unquenchable thirst for fuel. And then people saw the rapidly burgeoning rates of deforestation and created a global food crisis the world is still dealing with. Biofuels seemed like the magic ticket, but the number is up. Though biofuel production is still growing and politicians are still hopeful that these agricultural sources of energy can get us off fossil fuels, the management and production thus far has been a free-for-all with unintended consequences and tragic collateral damage. Biofuels may even create more carbon emissions. And as if this weren’t bad enough, biofuels apparently marginalize women.

Cow Fart Offsets

Cows produce a lot of methane when they emit. Methane is 23 times worse than carbon dioxide. Researchers recently discovered that kangaroo flatulence is methane-free thanks to a certain unidentified bacteria. They have said that if people can infect livestock such as cows with the bacteria, humans can possibly prevent this widespread methane pollution. But it will take at least three years to isolate the bacteria, and scientists have no idea what impact the germ would have upon the health of cows. While cows do produce tremendous amounts of methane (14% of greenhouse gases total), bypassing cattle farts would do nothing to put a dent in the tremendous resources they use: water, feed, and space. Beef is one hell of an inefficient dinner. Besides, cows also produce ammonia.

Burning Man Goes Green

The glorious dome became Earthdome and Burning Man went green. And around the world…crickets were heard. Bay Area Prada-wearing hippies and artsy types from all corners were bummed, but unfortunately, the great green statement of last year’s Burning Man went up in smoke.

Burying Pollution in the Ocean in Really Big Bags

There are numerous ideas to deal with carbon dioxide that involve the ocean: planting lime, seeding iron, and least plausibly, dunking carbon-filled sacks. Some ideas may indeed be viable, but specialized sacks don’t look to be. The appeal? These large, sausage-shaped skins could be easily transported (the resources and transport required for carbon tanks has rendered that scheme a lost cause for now). But they could also be easily snagged and torn, and scientists won’t have them ready until 2020. And since humans produce 800 tons of carbon every second, people would use a bag every 11 days at the current rate. If oceans are forced to absorb carbon dioxide, though, the acidity will increase, which translates to danger for marine life. The inherent dilemma remains: people simply need to create less mess.

Block the Sun, Blow Up Volcanoes, and Other Manly Stuff

Geo-engineering was once consider loony bin science. No more. Of particular interests to scientists right now is the potential cooling that could result if they engineered a massive volcanic explosion. When Mt. Pinatubo exploded in 1991, millions of tons of sulfur dioxide helped create a cooling effect. Unfortunately, scientists still know too little about the exact mechanisms of global warming, and intentionally creating massive weather systems or environmental catastrophes could cause more harm than good. This is talking about tinkering with a watch when people don’t know the time. It’s not off the table, but geo-engineering has a long way to go before being viable.

Eureka! Don’t Have Babies

Humans tend to look to technological innovation in hopes of saving the planet, but the simple truth is that consuming fewer resources is (or was) the best hope. And that means no more babies. Especially for Americans – they are living as if there are 5 earths instead of 1. Unlikely, however, until humans no longer feel compelled to continue the species and the Pope no longer feels compelled to keep millions in the Middle Ages with his rants against birth control. The urge to procreate and religion: good luck taking these on, environmentalists.

Really Dumb “Green” Gadgets

From the Asus bamboo paneled laptop to the flower you can grow in a plastic case hooked up to your computer, many “green” home gadget inventions are not only silly but require the use of virgin resources to produce. Other dumb inventions to “help” the environment include the Petapotty (an indoor platform on which your dog can dump – to prevent harm to lawns because you forgot your baggy), the Go Green paper shredder (it shreds your paper into squares, because you don’t own scissors), the so-called Eco Kettle (Barbie says: measuring is hard!), the solar-powered fan hat (don’t ask), the nano-silver washing machine that eliminates the need for detergent (because silver strip mining is eco?), and many more. There’s nothing like a good coat of greenwash to remind everyone that silly gadgets are not going to save the planet.

Sonic Curtains

Biophony is an important element of environmental stability, and with the widespread problem of noise pollution harming animals and stressing humans, scientists are looking for answers. The Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain is convinced that sonic cloaks are the remedy to camouflage too much noise. Ostensibly, this will encourage people to repopulate cities, reducing suburban sprawl, but what happens if your neighbor’s apartment is on fire and you’re blissfully sleeping through the screams?

Rich people

Oh, rich people. They’re so cute! From pristine environmental enclaves for the superrich that turn out to be harmful to Kevin Costner wasting $40 million on useless green initiatives, to Madonna plastered on a green Vanity Faire as she spends $120 grand a year on plastic bottled water, to celebs claiming to be green while their lifestyles are anything but, rich people and green = FAIL.

Hairy Plants

A researcher named Christopher Doughty of the University of California at Irvine noticed that plants in hot, arid regions are hairy – and this unique characteristic enables the plants to reflect harmful near-infrared light and drive more efficient photosynthesis. The proposed solution: a hairier, furrier landscape, coming to a backyard near you. Unfortunately, disturbing natural ecosystems by introducing alien plant species is a poor idea. And while plants could be genetically engineered to be as furry as their desert counterparts, the practicality of this green solution is questionable at best. Extra reflection could mean less water evaporation, which would actually heat the planet further.

Beaming Electricity from Space

Send satellites into space, where they unfurl 1.5 mile-long solar arrays and send limitless clean energy to earth. Japan is already investing heavily in this technology. One problem: the beam could theoretically miss the receiver and fry, say, a neighborhood. Researchers are working on a solution to this potential disaster, but so far no luck.

Giant Fake Trees

One passionate, if nutty, scientist named Wallace Broecker has a desperate plan to save the planet: “plant” millions of massive trees all over the globe at a cost of $600 billion a year. Fake trees, at that. The trees will be capable of sucking up carbon dioxide, thereby theoretically containing the climate change threat. Broecker is the scientist who originally coined the term “global warming”, but his scrubber tree scheme isn’t sticking.

Harnessing Tornadoes

Since tornados frequently exceed 100 mph, generating 10 mega-watt hours of power, scientists are hard at work developing machines that could somehow intake and harness this power. One scientist says he knows how to trap a tornado and keep the twister going indefinitely, generating all the power we need. The commercial machine is slated for debut in about 5 years, but the dangers of such a device are serious. A tornado might grow out of control, destroying the machine and creating widespread devastation. The scientist working on the machine says such concerns are ridiculous, because all he has to due is flip a switch to slap that silly little tornado back into its place. Why, a tornado spinning out of control would be inconceivable!

Pig Pee Plates

1 billion pigs, 90,000 tons of urine daily. With all the bacon and pork chops Americans eat, there’s a lot of porcine pee to divert. Pig urine contains urea, which is already in use in many products (it is used in de-icing formulas, among many applications). Researchers have created a bioplastic from the urine, but it is not as great as one might think. For starters, when the bioplastic breaks down in landfills, it releases methane. The inherent problems associated with meat production are not alleviated, either. What’s more, bioplastic still requires the use of some petroleum-based plastic, meaning recycling facilities are going to have a hard time getting equipped for this new hybrid of plastic. The Danish scientists are undeterred, however, envisioning pig skyscraper cities where all waste is harnessed for reuse. Production on plates begins soon.

Eco Beer

Something involving wort and steam cannot be worth toasting – or can it? Engineers think that using steam to brew the wort (the mixture of starch – like barley – and water) can reduce brewing time by half while using half the energy. And this is a solution to our environmental woes? It’s like that scene in South Park when the gnomes are stealing underpants. Steal the underpants, do other stuff, profit!

Great green innovations don’t always pan out. And sometimes ideas that read like a wacky sci-fi novel turn out to be brilliant. Look for updates in future posts.

http://webecoist.com/2008/10/20/failed-green-technologies-designs-and-innovations/