Green-News: Wednesday 6.24.09
- If you take the train into New York City you’ll now be greeted by a 70-foot-tall digital billboard outside Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. Last Thursday, Deutsche Bank unveiled the world’s first real-time carbon counter, displaying the running total of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere; via Red Green and Blue.
- Experts at the United Nations insist a green economy and green industry should be the goal of all countries to help combat climate change and the overcome the economic crisis, saying “business as usual” is not an option and the $100 billion spent every year on renewable energy must be increased three-fold; the AFP reports.
- The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the world faces an ever-growing risk of “abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts” due to global warming, with carbon dioxide emissions having already compromised the natural ability of oceans and forests to absorb CO2 created by burning fossil fuels; from the AFP.
- Bananas are a healthy food packaged in their own wrapper, which we normally throw away, but researchers have now developed a system of mashing banana peels and mixing them with sawdust to make briquettes. Then, after they’re dried in the sun for two weeks, the bricks can be burned as fuel. No word on their carbon-footprint though; BBC News reports.
- Officials in San Jose, California have introduced plans to develop a $20 million program for processing food and yard waste into usable biogas. The proposed facility would ferment biomass in an air-tight digester, producing biogas and fertilizer pellets. The gas can be used to power the operation or sold to fleets; Green Inc. explains.
- Fungus makes good biofuel too. Back in World War II, U.S. soldiers encountered a fungus that ate their cotton tents. Today, scientists from Denmark are cultivating the enzyme to break down plant matter and create cheaper ethanol, but the process isn’t easy. Plant matter must first be treated with heat, steam or chemicals; via Bloomberg.com.
Image credit: Red Green and Blue
