Help the earth: Reduce, Renew and Remove

Today is Blog Action Day! The day the internet talks about the environment. I joined the action on August 17 with about 300 blogs participating at the time. This has grown into an enormous amount of over 14,000 15,500!

This is somewhat offtopic for this blog but then again, one of my guidelines is to give back to nature as much as she gives me. So here’s a little thing I’m giving back.

There’s really an enormous amount of things you can do about the environment. Sure, they are small efforts, but every little step is a step forward. At the same time there’s a great movement of creative and innovative people and organizations taking big steps to improve our environmental impact.

Reduce
What’s going on?
There are a lot of projects that focus on reducing our impact on our planet. One of these projects that really appealed to me was a revolutionary redesign for water desalinization plants (‘factories’ that make fresh water from salty water). This is a process that uses enormous amounts of energy when done in the conventional way. In this video Water Theater you will see an alternative that uses hardly any energy and looks good too!

What can you do?
Reduce is what most tips about the environment are about. Reduce the energy you use, reduce the waste you produce, reduce the water you use, reduce the use of your car and so on. There are countless lists around that can help you find tips on how to reduce your footprint on this earth.

Renew
What’s going on?
On a macro level there are a lot of activities that focus on renewable energy. Solar energy and wind energy are the two most common and environmentally friendly forms in my opinion.

• Concentrating Solar Power
  Various forms of techniques that concentrate sunlight in a small spot to create heat, which is used to drive power generators. Examples are the Stirling Dish, Parabolic Troughs and Central Power Towers. Deserts are the ideal locations, lots of sun and heat around. Also 100% emission free.
• Oceanic Wind Turbines (video on the Discovery Channel, 2nd clip of 4)
  Big wind turbines in big farms off the coast. The same principle can be used in other deserted windy places.
• Solar Tower of Power (video on the Discovery Channel, 1st clip of 4)
  Using a huge field of glass and a 1 kilometer high ‘chimney’ to power wind turbines. 100% emission free and enough power to support 100.000 homes.

What can you do?

• Choose an energy supplier that supplies green energy
• Investigate whether solar cells are an economical option for you
• Plant a tree or two

Remove
What’s going on?
Another approach to improving the environment is taking out the bad stuff. As far as I know there’s not a lot going on this level. One of the major initiatives of late is a contest for inventors focused on removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Whether there is a feasible solution to that challenge is debatable, but who knows?

What can you do?

• Remove pollution you see around you. Pick up a can, plastic or other stuff and toss it in the garbage bin.

What else?
Well besides Reduce, Renew and Remove there’s also Recycle, Reuse and Repair. There’s a lot you can do with those words as well. In the end it’s about making our footprint on this earth smaller on a personal level. There’s a lot going on at macro levels as well, and you can support that by voting for parties that support that effort or donating money or volunteering your time.

But the key success factor of environmental solutions will be that it’s economically beneficial. If we make more profit from environmentally friendly solutions as compared to their polluting competitors, then will we see major progress. And the way oil prices are behaving sure helps the business cases of the environmentally friendly solutions

Posted in 15 bean soup on Mon 2007.10.15