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

Philips Predicts LEDs Will Take 50 Percent Of Lighting Market By 2015

Today, Philips announced that their Philips Ambient LED 12.5 watt light bulb — which gives off as much light as incandescent 60 watt bulbs, using less energy — attained Energy Star qualifications. It’s the first LED light bulb of this type to gain approval in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponsored program. Energy Star sanctioned products are usually eligible for utility rebate programs that can lower the cost of a product for consumers, while allowing a company to keep their margins strong.

According to Philips, its bulb lasts 25 times longer and uses 80 percent less energy than the 60 watt incandescent bulb it was designed to replace. A company press statement reported that in order to obtain the Energy Star label, its LED bulb had to demonstrate a minimum light output of 800 lumens, a color temperature of 2700K (for soft white light), color rendering index (CRI) of 80 and a minimum three-year warranty; it actually offers 806 lumens, 2700K, a CRI of 80 and a six-year warranty. The bulbs are currently selling at Home Depot for $39.97.

A Philips company representative told TechCrunch the bulbs are also recyclable. The lighting corporation wasn’t issuing predictions about how much the Energy Star qualification would drive sales of its Ambient 12.5 watt bulbs. More macroscopically, however, Philips predicts LEDs will take 50 percent of the residential lighting market by 2015.


Other companies are sure to follow in Philips’ footsteps, from large and medium-sized businesses like Cree (NASDAQ: CREE) and the Lighting Science Group Corporation (OTCB: LSCG) to younger startups like Bridgelux.

The Durham, N.C.-based Cree now has a demonstration 60 watt incandescent replacement LED bulb — the TrueWhite Light — that the company claims is the industry’s brightest and most efficient, and meets Energy Star performance criteria. A company spokesperson said Tuesday that Cree submitted it to an independent testing facility, with testing on track to be completed by the fall. (Energy Star doesn’t test bulbs for certification.)

Meanwhile, LSCG has an Energy Star approved line, called DEFINITY. Bulbs in this line, the company announced today, have been installed in Yankee Candle Stores throughout New England. LSCG claims these are approximately 80% more efficient than the halogen bulbs that they replace, are “dimmable,” contain no mercury, and are completely recyclable. Yankee Candle received rebates from National Grid and Western Mass Electric Company through the Mass Save program, and other electric utility companies throughout New England.

Article by Lora Kolodny, TechCrunch.com

Meet the World’s First Biodegradable Shoes

OAT Shoes created the first biodegradable shoe collection that can actually be planted in the ground. Photo: OAT Shoes

It’s not often a company recommends that you bury your shoes in the backyard, but that’s exactly what OAT Shoes says. As makers of the world’s first biodegradable shoes, that advice is perfectly legitimate.

OAT debuted the shoe collection at the Amsterdam International
Fashion Week last month, where they won second place in the Green
Fashion Competition.

The “Virgin Collection” comes in four colors – red, blue, green and
yellow – and are made from canvas and seed-embedded cork soles that will
break down over time.

The company spent two years in research and development, visiting
modern factories and ancient craftsmen to find the right combination of
materials and manufacturing principles.

While the 900-shoe limited run will only be available in Europe, demand could spread to the U.S. soon.

Article by Megan Dobransky, Earth911.com

Princeton Plans Massive Solar Field

Princeton University will soon be home to the college world's largest solar collector field, the Daily Princetonian reports.
Planned to be built on 27 acres of Princeton land by 2012, the field is predicted reduce the school's energy costs by 8 percent. The field will be composed of 16,500 photovoltaic panels, creating enough energy to fuel 700 households.
The Times of Trenton has more on the field's potential power:

A field that size could generate 8 million kilowatt-hours per year, or enough to cover 5.5 percent of the campus' total electricity needs based on an annual average, according to SunPower Corp., the company slated to build the system.

However, on a summer day when the sun is shining brightest, and the electric load is highest at the school, the field could provide as much as 20 percent of campus power in a given hour, said Michael McKay, Princeton's vice president for facilities.

According to the Princetonian, the field will be financed by a "groundbreaking" funding model:

[The university] will partly pay for the solar collector field under the New Jersey's Solar Renewable Energy Certificate program, through which the state will issue one SREC to the University for every 1,000 kilowatt-hours of solar energy it generates, until 2020.

The university will sell the credits to a utility company to help offset the costs of the project until 2020, after which it will retire the credits by ceasing to sell them in order to help reduce carbon dioxide emission levels.

 Article courtesy of Huffington Post