Archive for August, 2010
Cars packed with hemp (on the outside, that is)
Why not?
The Scotch are using, well, Scotch. (We posted that bit two news items ago.)
Canada — the land where people seem startlingly unruffled, except for sporting events — has what treehugger.com calls a “Cannabis Cruiser:” http://tinyurl.com/3xtxfw7
The Kestrel electric hemp vehicle uses hemp for composite material to keep the car lightweight, says Motive Industries, which developed the car. The company states that the innovation was part of Project EVE, an effort to advance electric vehicle production in Canada.
More details about Project EVE and the full debut of the Kestrel to come at EV 2010 VÉ – Canada’s Electric Vehicles Conference and Trade Show, slated for September 13-16 in Vancouver.
Sticker shock: New fuel efficiency labels for cars
The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are working to make fuel efficiency stats crystal clear on new car stickers.
Check out the proposed designs on Good.com
Warning: Breathe at your own risk (unless you live in Bismarck, N.D.)
The American Lung Association has released its “State of the Air” report, a ranking of the most polluted cities.
Despite the glorious developments coming out of California in terms of sustainable living, from organic farming to clean transportation, several cities from The Golden State ranked among the country’s most polluted. Even San Luis Obispo, a bucolic town with a farmer’s market that boasts some of the most beautiful and larger-than-life produce I’ve ever seen or tasted, came in at #9 for most polluted by ozone.
Georgia showed up quite a bit in the rankings for worst year-round particle pollution:
- At #16, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, GA-AL tied with Houston-Baytown-Huntsville, TX and Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH;
- At #19, Macon-Warner Robins-Fort Valley, GA tied with Cleveland-Akron-Elyria, OH;
- And at # 23: Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC.
Seems you can’t judge a city’s environmental health by its looks.
San Luis Obispo, a bucolic California town with a farmer’s market that boasts some of the most beautiful and larger-than-life produce I’ve ever seen or tasted, came in at #9 for most polluted by ozone. But it ranked the 23rd cleanest U.S. city for year-round particle pollution.
And Augusta’s manicured golf lawns apparently belie a not-so-pristine environment after all.
We probably need a statistician and a social scientist and an environmental activist to explain it all to us.
In the meantime, you can head to Bismarck, N.D. for the best ozone layer in the country or Cheyenne, Wy. for America’s cleanest level of year-round particle pollution.
Visit www.stateoftheair.org for the full report.
If only Ron Burgundy could report this
The latest news in biofuels: transportation powered by Scotch.
Yup, you read that right.
Scottish scientists have determined a way to use the waste from distilling whiskey to create butanol, which, according to the report below, provides 30 percent more power than ethanol.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/17/whisky-biobuel-scotland
An added benefit: the news has already pedaled the unique brand of bawdy British humor:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/22/green-energy-fuel-cars-carbon
All about the BeltLine
We’re all about it. And we think you should be too because it will take Atlanta from a moderately cool city to an uber-cool city that rocks.
It’s “the country’s most comprehensive urban renewal project,” so says WSB, which, as you can see by the link, is also all about it.
http://www.wsbtv.com/beltline/index.html
What I can’t understand is why the buzz seems limited to people “ITP” — that’s inside the perimeter for anyone reading this who is not from the ATL, a.k.a. even further “OTP,” which is an insult that ITP-ers use for OTP-ers. As in: “Oh no. I would never go there, not even for Target. It’s way OTP.”
What I also can’t understand is why every project or group nowadays goes by a compound word that’s mashed together so the second word starts with a capital letter a la BeltLine.
In any case, the project is a dream come true. Specifically, Ryan Gravel’s dream. It was his thesis as a 25-year-old grad student at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture. The 127-page report, written in 1999, is also on WSB’s Web site.
Hooray for WSB for its dedicated, thorough coverage on such constructive (yes, pun intended) news.
