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The cavern beneath Helsinki's beautiful Uspenski Cathedral will soon shelter a brand new server farm for local technology company Academica and along with it, a new source of heating for homes in the area. The waste heat from the IT center will be captured and channeled into Helsinki's district heating system. It is estimated that the IT sector accounts for as much as 3% of total......read more
Electronics are the fastest-growing waste stream in the country, and only 15% of American e-waste gets recycled. The Los Angeles Times reports on a California company looking to do something to deal with it. This week, ECS Refining is launching ecollective — a network of drop-off points to recycle electronics for free. Californians can get in on the action by visiting the website and......read more
Twenty years ago, California had the world's most advanced biorefinery. The Long Beach facility churned out more megawatts than any other on the planet. Not so today. The technology has fallen well behind the global standard. A biorefinery is essentially a plant that turns trash into energy. At a bioenergy plant, garbage gets incinerated, creating steam that powers turbines and makes......read more
How's this for meta? The City of Toronto has launched the first of a fleet of waste collection trucks to be fueled by, well, collected waste. The garbage-eating truck will join Toronto's existing Green Fleet, created as part of a government effort to reduce the city's fuel consumption and protect air quality and health. The newly unveiled vehicle contains a Cummins Westport ISL G......read more
Oh snap, SHFT is popping up again this week, this time with the cool nerds at Wired. The space opens today, at 692 Broadway in NoHo. The SHFT selection looks a lot like this. The Philadelphia Eagles expect to save $60 million on energy costs by retrofitting their their stadium with wind turbines and solar panels. They should consider attaching turbines to Michael Vick's heels. This......read more
Marmol Radziner, the LA-based architecture firm well known for clean aesthetics and outside-the-box green thinking (check out their prefabs), has decided to apply its creative talents to jewelry design. The Marmol Radziner collection of bracelets and rings makes stylish use of the strips of bronze left over from making architectural models. The Wide Bracelet comes in both men's and women's......read more
What's with Canadians and turning trash to energy, eh? The latest ingenious idea is to convert waste soda and beer (because no self-respecting Canadian would throw good beer down the drain) into ethanol that will in turn be used to power a waste plant on the Atlantic seaboard. The pilot project is an initiative of New Brunswick Community College's Bio-energy and Bio-products Applied......read more
California, stand up! The first organized attempt at a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags may have faltered, but the fight rages on. Emboldened by several successful local actions boycotting wasteful plastic shopping bags, Californians are urging Governor Jerry Brown to make a move. Plastic pollution harms wildlife, threatens public health, and hinders the economy. It's......read more
We tend to look at environmental legislation through a national lens, and the view these days is depressing. With Capitol Hill stuck in political gridlock, national action on climate and energy is proving to be a practical impossibility. Luckily, U.S. cities aren't waiting for Congress to climb out of the mire. Today at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit......read more
In the world of sustainable food, Austin, Texas is known best as the home of Whole Foods, the natural foods giant that first opened there in 1980. But it's another Austin-based retailer of local and organic food that has people talking these days. The store, called In.gredients, is looking to lay claim to the title of America's first ever "package-free, zero waste grocery store." The idea......read more
