Coke upgrading all bottles. Now 30% plant material
Calling it the PlantBottle, Coke is changing all of their bottles to include 30% plant material. The plant material is molasses and sugar cane which are leftovers from sugar making processes, which reduces the overall waste of the sugar refining process as well as giving Coke the perfect recyclable plant based matter to use in their bottle. The change in their bottle will create an estimated 25% drop in the carbon emissions from the Coke product. This is just a stepping stone towards Cokes official goal of having a 100% renewably bottle. I did not see anywhere in the articles that I have read whether or not these bottles would then be biodegradable, but my assumption is that they are not now, but will be in the future. See more on Inhabitat.
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Wind farm in Utah goes live 203MW
Utah just went live with their largest wind farm yet, 203MW of clean pollution free electricity is now being generated in the first phase of what will become an even larger project. 203MW is enough to power 45,000 homes with clean renewable energy. Though Utah will be getting $86 million dollars injected into their economy for the project, all of the power that is generated is not going to homes in Utah, all of the power is being sent down to California where a 20 contract for the energy has been signed. First Wind is operating the project and the wind farm which is located in the Beaver and Millard counties of Utah. See more about this project on TreeHugger.
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Frickin’ Finally!
Finally! Cars are going to become more efficient and safer than ever before thanks to a new European technology. The most dangerous part of a car, and the part that causes 99.999% of all accidents is the human behind the wheel. Humans are imperfect creatures that are distracted, emotional, and stupid. These shared traits should keep us from driving cars in the first place, but it doesnt. The new car train idea would give your car the ability to link up to a professionally driven “car train” which is a series of cars all traveling in a caravan controlled by a computer system that links all cars to the first in the line. The first car in the line would be driven by a professional driver who would keep everyone safely and efficiently moving. Anytime you wanted to enter or leave a car train, your cars computer would handle the merging in and out, and you would gain control of your car again once you left the car train. By traveling so closely together, cars can gain 20% more fuel efficiency just in reduced air drag. In a car train, you could also pay attention to the other things in your car while the car itself did the driving. This would reduce accidents, fuel consumption, traffic jams and road rage. Yes, it would reduce traffic jams, as impossibly as that seems. It would work because all it takes is one idiot senior citizen going too slowly in the fast lane to ripple into a traffic jam before long. This would reduce the number of people operating their cars on the freeway, and therefore reduce the number of idiots driving at the same time. See more about this on TreeHugger.
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Saharan solar farms to power Europe?
12 companies forming the Desertec Industrial Initiative have put together a $555 billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’) idea to supply 15% of the total power needed by the entire continent of Europe by installing solar concentration farms in Saharan Africa. The plan also includes seawater desalination plants that are supposed to bring fresh water to the people of Africa. This would be the largest renewable energy project in the world.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of it, but something just does not seem right with this. Unfortunately solar concentration facilities generally need a ton of water to zap into steam and run turbines, so this would mean that the desalination plants would need to supply the solar concentrators first and then the people of the region second. The other thing that worries me is the fact that this sounds too good to be true, which is generally an indicator that it is. This strikes me as an Enron-esque in size, and a lot of organized crime happens these days under the guise of environmental and humanitarian efforts. This is all just opinion here folks, and I have no evidence at this time to back me up other than that “gut feeling”.
Cheers and good luck to these guys if they are the real deal. See more about this on Inhabitat.
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