Student-Built, Hydrogen Fuel Cell-Powered Boat to Set Sail on Hudson River Welcome to another episode of “If college students can do it, why can’t the rest of the world figure it out too?” An enterprising and organized group of undergraduate and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have fitted an old sail boat with a spiffy set of hydrogen fuel cells and plan to run the boat from Manhattan to upstate New York later this month in a “green power” tour of sorts. I love it when college students do this kind of stuff. Seriously. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. Believe me, ...

Double Whammy of Pollution for Mississippi River in Minnesota A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee samples river water for endocrine disrupting pollutants. Study results publicized this week suggest Twin Cities water resources and the Mississippi River downstream from the Cities are suffering from pollution by road salt and endocrine disrupting chemicals. The results are from U.S. Geological Survey analysis of watersheds around the U.S. The road salt results indicate chloride levels that may imperil aquatic life in creeks and rivers in the Twin Cities. A study by the University of Minnesota released last winter found that about 70% of the salt applied to roads in ...

Save on Electricity… and Get Rewarded Do you remember RecycleBank, the Philadelphia-based company that rewarded customers for recycling? I thought that was a great idea, and I’ve got a similar response to Earth Aid’s new rewards program for energy savings. Rolled out earlier this month in Washington, DC, Earth Aid offers a program to track your energy use and savings, and then to “pay” you for those savings through reward points that can be redeemed at partner companies. In its press release for the launch of the rewards program, the company claims that its program “…creates a virtuous circle of local businesses providing incentives for ...

Agricultural Waste Can Clean up Nuclear Waste, Researchers Find Waste uranium can apparently be recovered very cheaply from the polluted runoff from uranium mining using E. Coli and a phosphate storage molecule found in seeds, British researchers have found. They used the common bacteria with a chemical parallel of what is already found in agricultural waste: inositol phosphate. Inositol phosphate is insoluble, so it forms a precipitate on the bacteria. The E. Coli then broke down the precipitate; releasing the phosphate molecules which then attached to uranium molecules to form uranium phosphate, which can then be harvested to recover the uranium. What they have developed is a way for one contaminant ...

Popomomo Introduces the Curatorial Collection This morning, per usual, I checked my email. A huge smile crossed my face when I saw an email from Lizz Wasserman, designer of Popomomo. With the words “Introducing” and “Collection” in the email’s subject I immediately, my heart racing, opened it. To my delirious satisfaction, my eyes soaked in picture after beautiful picture of a limited-edition-sexy collection. Read more of this story » Source: Green Options

Backyard Solar Dish Melts Steel We’re all familiar with the vast solar thermal power stations in the desert that use mirrors to make steam to drive turbines. Giant solar thermal arrays are already making electricity in the desert in Spain and California. But what if we could have just one of these units in the backyard, just for our own use? That’s what motivated a team of MIT students to find the way to make the cheapest solar power station out there. Mass produce it for the home user and market it under their own new start up RawSolar. Sure, it melts steel. But even more practically for the ...

China Bans Scrap Polysilicon In an effort to curb solid waste pollution, China banned the import of scrap polysilicon at the beginning of August, an effort supported by its current environmental laws according to its Environmental Protection Ministry. Scrap polysilicon is a low-grade form of silicon not pure enough to use in microchips. However, it can be used as a component of solar wafers, which contain a variety of types of silicon, including up to 30% scrap polysilicon. Read more of this story » ...

Outside Lands - Day 2 - Bands and Sustainability Live from Outside Lands day two (Green posse in tow), today we focus on some of the artists. After all, for most people Outside Lands remains about the music. But unlike many festivals or shows Outside Lands offers a significant numbers of bands and singers who either have some direct social justice, environmental or artistic causes that they support or create. Pearljam, who rocked us (despite poor Eddie Veder’s scratchy throat) last night has been offsetting their tours since 2006. The social and environmentally minded rockers fight corporate monopolies, create and cover songs with social and environmental angles (no surprise that ...

Marshal the Power of the Sun (Part 2): Sun Prints It’s an old-school way of creating an image, perhaps reminiscent of junior high science projects on one of those lucky days when you got to hold class outside. Or maybe it reminds you of your undergrad years, spending hours in the darkroom in the basement of the union, a hobby that you gave up a few years later when you got pregnant and the idea of the chemicals started to skeev you out. Or does it remind you of how you totally want to learn to do gocco or screen printing, but it seems kind of hard and requires more equipment thn ...

Waste Heat Recovery From Air Conditioners If you live in one of these states now sweltering through heat waves; even more frequent sweltering days are in your future as a result of preventable climate change. But it’s not only your children’s children who will suffer heat waves more often, but also your property values in these states will also sink over time as your neighborhoods heat up to unlivable levels over the next decades. Installing an A/C heat recovery system will at least cut those losses to home values: Read more of this story » ...