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The US Department of Energy has granted $9.5 million to a company in California that plans to build America’s first recycling facility for lithium-ion vehicle batteries.
Anaheim-based Toxco says it will use the funds to expand an existing facility in Lancaster, OH, that already recycles the lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries used in today’s hybrid-electric vehicles.
There is currently little economic need to recycle lithium-ion batteries. Most batteries contain only small amounts of lithium carbonate as a percentage of weight and the material is relatively inexpensive compared to most other metals.
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All aspects of food – production, processing, distribution, retail, consumption and waste – must be addressed, says Hilary Ben.
Regular wheat already reflects large amounts of sunlight ? new varieties could Photograph: Graham Turner/Guardian
Fewer cut-price supermarket gimmicks and other measures to help target food waste are central to a new government food security strategy to maintain UK food supplies for the next 40 years.
The strategy is highly critical of bogof – “buy one get one free” – offers and heavily reduced “loss leader” lines that encourage shoppers to buy food they don’t need which eventually ends up in the bin.
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Broadcaster is assessing ‘health issues’ of tap water after a freedom of information request revealed cost to licence fee payers.
The BBC spends nearly half a million pounds a year on bottled water for water coolers. Photograph: Getty Creative
The BBC has been accused of wasting public money and creating unnecessary environmental damage by spending nearly half a million pounds a year on bottled water. Responding to a freedom of information request from the Guardian, the public broadcaster said it spent £406,000 annually on large bottles for its water coolers.
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Researchers at Imperial College London embark on ‘artificial leaf’ project to produce power by mimicking photosynthesis.
It is one of evolution’s crowning achievements – a mini green power station and organic factory combined and the source of almost all of the energy that fuels every living thing on the planet.
Now scientists developing the next generation of clean power sources are working out how to copy, and ultimately improve upon, the humble leaf.
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The aviation industry – a rapidly expanding sector – is looking for ways to secure its fuel supplies without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, says Fred Dryer. In the Green Room this week, he outlines some of the options available to deliver these goals.
There is wide agreement that to mitigate climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced to 50% of 2005 levels by 2050, with industrialised countries cutting their emissions by 80%.
In order to achieve this goal, large increases in both energy efficiency and renewable energy will be required.
Biofuel alternatives to petroleum are getting much attention for both ground and air transportation.
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Following the leads of the EU, US, Australia and Japan, New Zealand this week became the latest developed nation to announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
It will fall between 10% and 20% from 1990 levels – if the UN climate negotiations which are this week going through a relatively informal set of talks in Bonn result in a global deal.
As my colleague David Shukman reported from that meeting, significant differences remain between developed and developing worlds over who should shoulder how much of the pain of carbon cuts, and who should pay how much to the poorest countries projected to feel the impacts of climate change first.
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A new 95 Mega Watt power plant capable of turning 600,000 tonnes of waste each year into electricity and heat, to be built at Ince in Cheshire, was approved by the Government today.
The waste, which would have otherwise gone to landfill, will instead be used to generate electricity to power a new Resource Recovery Park. Excess electricity will also be exported to the National Grid.
The approval follows a public inquiry held into both the power plant and the Resource Recovery Park, which recommended that consent should be granted for the construction and operation of the plant and also that planning permission be given for the Resource Recovery Park.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said:
“We need to increase our use of renewable energy and to find solutions to the UK’s waste problem. This power plant will convert over half a million tonnes of waste each year into energy.
“The Inspector recommended the power plant be granted consent after a thorough public inquiry. I am satisfied that the mitigation measures to be put in place will protect the amenity of local villages.”
The separate planning permission for the Resource Recovery Park was also given today by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, John Denham.
The university recruitment circuit is alive with environment-friendly appointments.
Candy Snelling: “Our green ideas really have an impact”. Photograph: Graham Turner.
When Mark Warner started a new job at Leeds Metropolitan University, he faced a dilemma about his commute into work. “I was offered a parking space, but turned it down because taking it would lack credibility,” he says. As the university’s sustainability officer, it wouldn’t really do to drive to campus.
At first, he travelled by bus, but even that didn’t go down too well with staff. “I was constantly asked how I could support cycling if I didn’t do it myself.” So Warner bought a bike via the Cycle to Work scheme, and now rides into work, encouraging fellow staff and students to do so, too.
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This house, in Crossway, Kent, is one of the first zero-carbon homes in the UK. It was designed by architect Richard Hawkes. Photograph: PR
If your sole experience of “green homes” is TV’s Grand Designs, chances are your idea of an eco-home looks like the one in Kent above.
But reality is a world away from the super-insulated and vaulted Crossway above, much as we love new build eco-homes.
Most of the energy-efficient and energy-generating homes of the future will look more like this Nottingham house, or this London end-of-terrace:
Appalled by a throwaway US culture, Amy and Adam Korst have embraced recycling, given up convenience food and boycotted excessive packaging – but cannot persuade their cat to switch to biodegradable kitty litter.
If you want to save the planet, don’t count on your cat. An American couple who set out to live for a year without producing more than a single small carrier bag of rubbish have discovered it’s far, far easier for humans to adapt to a greener way of life than felines.
Appalled by their country’s throwaway culture – the average American throws out about 4.5lbs (2kgs) of rubbish every day – Amy and Adam Korst, a couple living in a small logging town in Oregon, embarked on a personal quest last month to drastically reduce their household rubbish.
“As environmentalists, I feel like we are bombarded by so many different messages: buy local, buy organic, do all these things. And at the end of the day you don’t really see the difference it has made,” said Amy Korst. “But if Adam and I can get our total garbage output down to 5lbs at the end of the year, we’ll have really made a difference.”
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