Myanmar City Jails Woman for 15 Days Over Plastic Bags

 Maybe this is a little too harsh, but it sends a message. Don't use non-recyclable bags or else! Zero tolerance. We would like to see stricter laws here in the US too!

YANGON, Myanmar -- A woman in Myanmar has been jailed for 15 days for violating a city ban on non-recyclable plastic bags.

The Voice news magazine reported Saturday the Chinese market vendor was the first person to be punished for violating the ban enacted two years ago.

The report said Yan Marayi, also known as Daw Kyu, was arrested when municipal authorities found 18 packets each containing 100 plastic bags at her shop at Mandalay's Yadanarpon market.

Myanmar's second-largest city was the first to ban non-recyclable plastic bags. The largest city, Yangon, and the capital, Naypyitaw, now have similar measures.

Article by Fox News

Pepsi Unveils Eco-Friendly Bottles

[Finally a big-time plastics user is moving away from bottles that are largely petroleum based. Even though the bottles are not biodegradable, it is a step in the right direction.  

Click here for info on 100% biodegradable plastics.]

PepsiCo Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a bottle made entirely of plant material, which it says bests the technology of competitor Coca-Cola and reduces its potential carbon footprint.

The bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business. 

The new bottle looks, feels and protects the drink inside exactly the same as its current bottles, said Rocco Papalia, senior vice president of advanced research at PepsiCo. "It's indistinguishable."

PepsiCo says it is the world's first bottle of a common type of plastic called PET made entirely of plant-based materials. Coca-Cola Co. currently produces a bottle using 30 percent plant-based materials and recently estimated it would be several years before it has a 100 percent plant bottle that's commercially viable.

"We've cracked the code," said Papalia.

The discovery potentially changes the industry standard for plastic packaging. Traditional plastic, called PET, is used in beverage bottles, food pouches, coatings and other common products.

The plastic is the go-to because it's lightweight and shatter-resistant, its safety is well-researched and it doesn't affect flavors. It is not biodegradable or compostable. But it is fully recyclable, a characteristic both companies maintain in their new creations.

Traditional PET plastic is made using fossil fuels, like petroleum, a limited resource that's rising in price. By using plant material instead, companies reduce their environmental impact. Pepsi says the new plastic will cost about the same as traditional plastic.

PepsiCo plans to test the product in 2012 in a few hundred thousand bottles. Once the company is sure it can successfully produce the bottle at that scale, it will begin converting all its products over.

Article courtesy of Associated Press

Solar Power Research An Energy Crisis Fix?

It’s the Holy Grail at clean energy research labs all over the world and something which could address long term energy issues domestically and beyond: more efficient photovoltaic solar. We’ve told you about scientists studying full-spectrum cells, using textured substrates, trying self-regenerating nanomaterials – we’ve even reported on an anti-reflective film inspired by a coating found in moth eyes. Now a Stanford team is claiming a breakthrough in making cheaper, more efficient panels by adding a single layer of organic molecules to solar cells.

The researchers studied this technique on a fairly new type of solar cell that uses tiny particles of semiconductors called quantum dots. Quantum dot solar cells are cheaper to produce than traditional silicon cells, but they haven’t caught on due to their relative inefficiency.

For Stacey Bent, a chemical engineering professor at Stanford, this represented something of a challenge. She knew that solar cells made of a single material have a maximum efficiency of about 31 percent, a limitation of the fixed energy level they can absorb, and that quantum dot solar cells didn’t share this limitation. “Quantum dots can be tuned to absorb a certain wavelength of light just by changing their size,” the Stanford report on her research says. “And they can be used to build more complex solar cells that have more than one size of quantum dot, allowing them to absorb multiple wavelengths of light.”

So Bent and her team coated a titanium dioxide semiconductor in their quantum dot solar cell with a very thin single layer of organic molecules. They found that just that single layer, less than a nanometer thick, was enough to triple the efficiency of the solar cells.

Even with this breakthrough, there’s still work to do: Bent said the cadmium sulfide quantum dots she’s been using aren’t ideal for solar cells, so her group plans to try other molecules for the organic layer, while also tinkering with the solar cell increase light absorption.

Her theory is, said Stanford, that once the sun’s energy creates an electron and a hole, the thin organic layer helps keep them apart, preventing them from recombining and being wasted. The group has yet to optimize the solar cells, and they have currently achieved an efficiency of, at most, 0.4 percent. But the group can tune several aspects of the cell, and once they do it is said, the threefold increase caused by the organic layer would be even more significant.
Article by Peter Danko, Earth Techling

GOP Cancels Biodegradable Packaging, Brings Styrofoam Back

Is this the attitude toward "Green" initiatives the GOP is promoting? The Republican leadership can't be that insensitive or out of touch, can they?

Yesterday it was reported that, in a political nose-thumbing to the Democrats, the GOP had ditched the biodegradable food packaging that they'd used for four years in the House cafeteria -- and were bringing back old school, trashy Styrofoam. 

Congress switched to biodegradable packaging, along with a number of other green initiatives like composting, as part of its Green the Capital program. But the program was lead by Nancy Pelosi, who is unliked in certain conservative circles. So John Boehner -- the new Speaker of the House - and company dismantled her program, largely as a political jab. 

This struck a nerve with folks, who recognized the move for what it is: a huge step backwards. And one of the people it ticked off the most just so happens to be someone who has to eat lunch in the Styrofoam-laden cafeteria every day now. An anonymous staffer who works in Congress snapped some photos.

Along with the biodegradable packaging, the GOP canceled the composting program, too. So all of this stuff is heading straight to the landfill.

 

Our contact also sent over his account of how much Styrofoam our Representatives are plowing through at lunch:

It was actually kind of funny. As soon as a trash can started to go over the rim, one of these guys would come push it down and take it out. I had to move my lunch over to that trash can there in order to snap a decent picture in time! The guys on the job didn't seem too happy about working twice as fast either ... They had these guys emptying them every ten minutes, it was tough!

So, the Congressional cafeteria has transformed from a pretty sustainable operation that minimized and reused packaging and food waste into a Styrofoam-stuffed dump where accumulating, non-biodegradable trash needs to be cleared out every ten minutes. Well done Republicans! What's next...coal fired heaters?

Article info by Brian Merchant, Courtesy of Treehugger