Celebrate the Royal Wedding

By Vicki Felgate, Freinds of the Earth (Publishing & New Media Team)

I blogged about the royal wedding last month, speculating about how green it will be.

A few things have happened since then.

William and Kate announced an alternative wedding list, asking people to donate to charity instead of giving presents. 26 charities will benefit. Sadly Friends of the Earth didn't make the cut. But loads of great charities did.

And we're all being encouraged to organise street parties to celebrate the wedding. Now I like a good party as much as the next person. But I keep thinking about all the plastic cups and plates that will get used once and then thrown in the bin. And most of it will end up in landfill.

I'm not organising a party. But if I was, I'd make it a green one:

Ask people to bring their own crockery, cutlery and glasses.
Use cloth table covers instead of paper ones.
Serve tap water not bottled.
Buy local, organic food and fair-trade chocolate for the cakes.
Make decorations from old paper and fabric.
Use biodegradable balloons.
I might even go the extra mile and hire in a cycle-powered sound system.

Whatever you decide to do for the royal wedding, have fun and keep it green.

Earth Day 2011... Celebrate!!!

For over four decades, Earth Day—April 22—has inspired and mobilized individuals and organizations worldwide to demonstrate their commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. This year's celebrations will be marked by thousands of the planet's loyalists from every continent who continue to discuss and search for solutions in the fight to save the planet from environmental issues.

Save the Planet

Global warming, climate change, large scale pollution and deforestation (to mention a few) have plagued the Earth at alarming rates for decades but there is great hope as environmental awareness by seem to be gaining grounds. Today, the Earth Day, is a time for celebration and appreciation for the great environmental work that have been done so far. Earth Day is an opportunity for people around the world to rejoice in the beauty of our wondrous planet.

I have made a commitment to the 3 R's; Reduce, Re-use and Recycle.

Millions of people have also pledged to help our planet. What will YOU do??? I hope the list below helps...

1 Slow down. Driving at 50mph uses 25% less fuel than 70mph.

2 Wash your clothes with your flatmates' instead of wasting water on half-empty loads.

3 Turn down your central heating and put on a jumper.

4 Take a brisk shower, not a leisurely bath, to save water.

5 Hold a Tupperware party. Airtight food containers can be reused; sandwich bags and plastic wrap cannot.

6 Choose energy-efficient appliances when you replace old ones.

7 Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs. They last eight times as long and use a fraction of the energy.

8 Join a library instead of buying books.

9 Get to know your neighbours; they are more likely to keep your home safe than energy-guzzling security lamps.

10 Recycle your car oil at a recycling depot or petrol station; it contains lead, nickel and cadmium.

Apple Named Least 'Green' Tech Company

While Apple celebrates a surge in profits, a report by Greenpeace has ranked it as least ethical among tech companies.
Apple's quarterly earnings have grown 95% to $6bn, but the company has also been accused of heavily relying on pollution-inducing coal power to support its banks of data servers.
The report, How Dirty is Your Data?, highlights the company's investment in a new North Carolina facility which will triple its electricity consumption, using up the same electricity required for 80,000 average U.S. homes.

Apple

North Carolina is known as the "dirty data triangle" used by Apple, Google and Facebook. And they are likely to use it because it's cheap and offers tax incentives. But it comes at a high price: only 4% of its energy comes from renewable sources; 61 percent comes from coal.
"Consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to global warming or future Fukushimas," said Gary Cook, Greenpeace's IT policy analyst and lead author of the report.
Apple's data centers' dependence on coal is estimated to be at 54.5%, followed by Facebook at 53.2%, IBM at 51.6%, HP at 49.4%, and Twitter at 42.5%. On the report's good books are Yahoo, Google and Amazon for their use of clean energy; however Google and Amazon both scored an F for transparency.
Greenpeace was able to do its research for the report by relying on publicly accessible data, but there are concerns that tech companies aren't transparent enough. In the US, companies are not required to disclose their energy use.
The authors emphasize that the internet needs growing amounts of energy, but secrecy in the IT industry means that it's difficult for us to know how it is affecting the world.
Greenpeace predicts shocking figures; the electricity demand of the web is estimated to be greater than the total electricity demands of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil put together.
Now doesn't that make you feel like switching off your broadband?
Correction appended: The original version of the article incorrectly placed quotes around the words "least ethical" in the first sentence.


Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/04/21/apple-named-least-green-company/#ixzz1KBjtwcbw

ENERCON E126 - The World's Largest Capacity Wind Turbine

This is the Enercon E-126, the first wind turbine with 7.58MW rated power, rotor diameter: 126m (413ft), hub height: 135m(450ft). Two of these giant wind power units have been built for testing at an onshore location, Rysumer Nacken, near Emden, in the northwest of Germany.

Here each WPU is expected to produce about 18 Mio kWh per year, enough for more than 4,500 homes.

These turbines are equipped with a number of new features: an optimized blade design with a spoiler extending down to the hub, and a pre-cast concrete base. Due to the elevated hub height and the new blade profile, the performance of the E-126 is expected to by far surpass that of the E-112  (the world’s former  largest wind turbine rated at 6 megawatts).

Source:www.youtube.com, http://www.enercon.de/p/downloads/EN_Produktuebersicht_0710.pdf


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India... Moving to the Next Level

As renewable energy technologies move to the forefront, the energy sphere in the 21st century is set for a major overhaul. Worldwide, studies predict that solar and wind energy will address more than 60% of the future energy needs. Countries, including India, are taking concrete steps to ensure a stable and secure future in energy generation; renewables such as solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energy are the key to this. Of all, solar energy is the most widely available renewable energy source in the world. It is clean and it integrates high technology manufacturing into electronics and other aspects of BoS (balance-of-systems) into the value chain.

Indian Rural Residents Checking Out Installed Solar Panels in their Neighbourhood

The government has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) to tap the country's solar energy resources. However, in the Indian solar market, only a few companies manufacture solar PV cells or modules, since the field involves hi-tech processes. Most players are focused on developing end products and appliances like solar lanterns, street lights and water heaters. Such manufacturing installations are most often supported through government or NGO financial assistance, and fall under the off-grid sector.

10 Stories That Could Have Been April Fools... But Weren't

It's here again, the day when jokers set out to make fools of the rest of us. But not every bizarre story is a hoax. Here is a round-up of some past seemingly spoof news stories which were actually true (and one that wasn't).

1. A new pay-per-view funeral service scheme is being launched today. The Daily Mail says the scheme at Southampton Crematorium allows mourners to grieve from home by watching proceedings online.

Fool: Flying penguins

2. A turtle is addicted to nicotine. He became addicted after picking up the smouldering butts in his owner's garden, in Kouqian, China, and sulks if he doesn't get his fix. The Daily Express, which picked up the story from Chinese news agency Xinhua, includes a gob-smacking picture of the turtle doing a rather good impression of Dot Cotton.

3. The menopause is caused by the age-old battle between wives and mothers-in-law, reports the Times. As long as 50,000 to 300,000 years ago, competition for food in a family unit was a battle won by the younger women who fed their offspring, which led to the older women losing their ability to breed. With food hard to find, mothers-in-law tended to help rear the grandchildren rather than have more children themselves.

4. Wind turbines or solar panels built by UK companies anywhere in the world could count towards Britain's renewable energy targets under controversial government proposals, according to the Financial Times.

5. School desks and chairs are to be enlarged to meet the needs of the UK's ever-heavier schoolchildren, reports the Express. On average British children are a centimetre taller than they were 10 years ago, and there are more obese youngsters, so desks supplied to UK schools will reflect this.