Aquafina labeled as tap water

With pressure from growing environmental concerns, PepsiCo Inc has decided to label its Aquafina bottled water with the words “Public Water Source.” Not many people are aware that Aquafina bottled waters are from purified water sourced from public reservoirs. Coca-Cola Co’s Dasani is also another bottled water that gets its water from a public reservoir. This is pretty much the same water that you can find from your tap water. Evian and Poland Spring water actually come from natural springs but they also require a lot of costs to transport the water as well as to produce the bottled water. Four out of five plastic bottles end up on landfill sites and the distribution of bottled water also involves shipping water all over the world. It is not too rare where you can often find sodas and alcohol costing the same if not cheaper than water and that is pretty ridiculous considering the abundant amount of water in the world. It is also sad to see that many parts of the world still have a hard time finding clean water to use while U.S. consumers spend up to $15 billion on bottled water last year. The big corporations have marketed bottled water as the healthy convenient way of drinking water whereas drinkable tap water is not always easy to find.

Many cities such as Minneapolis, MN, Ann Arbor, MI, San Francisco, CA, and Salt Lake City, UT have promoted banning bottled water. New York City has also recently launched an advertising campaign to promote people to drink tap water to protect the environment. Many local restaurants in San Francisco and New York are also getting rid of bottled waters and only serving tap water.

sources: Yahoo News, BBC

2 comments July 27th, 2007 Alex

water from air

WetAir is an invention by Joseph Cory and Eyal Malka that is an inverted pyramid made from elastic canvas, recycled polycarbonate, and metal or glass that can extract 48 liters of fresh water from the air in a day. This inexpensive invention can be a great way to bring clean water to people who don’t currently have running water. This invention may not seem that important to us because we never have a problem finding water but there are still plenty of people in this world that actually don’t have clean water. Parts of the world still do not have electricity, showers, faucets, and toilets that are easily accessible.

 The invention won first place in a Drawing Water Challenge sponsored by Arup, a global building, infrastructure, and consulting firm, and  WaterAid, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world’s poorest people gain access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education. Joseph Cory of Geotectura and Eyal Malka of Malka Architects came up with the idea by dew that forms in the morning on leaves, spider webs, and tents. Dew drops form on the top and undersides of the panels of the pyramid at night and the drops eventually drip down to a well on the bottom. The structure was originally 96 square meters, but the dimensions can vary and can still produce the same effects. Hopefully, this invention will be used and implemented to provide water to people in underdeveloped areas of the world.

via abc.net.au

Add comment July 27th, 2007 Alex

Plug-In Hybrid by Toyota

 UC Berkeley and UC Irvine will each get a Plug-in Hybrid for testing by Toyota.  The cars will look just like regular Priuses but will run on an electric motor that plugs into a regular 110-volt for charging overnight and will have a second nickel metal battery. There are aftermarket modifications that are done to Hybrids to make it into a plug-in hybrid, but this will be the first time that a carmaker will be developing an electric-gas hybrid car for the US. The cars can go up to 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

via SFGate

Add comment July 26th, 2007 Alex

Clean My Ride Project Phin Episode 2

You can see more from this video series here

Add comment July 25th, 2007 Alex

Ice Cold Air Conditioners in New York

In New York, a company called Credit Suisse is using a creative energy saving system that uses blocks of ice to cool the office. The system is developed by Trane, the air conditioner division of American Standard. There are about 3,000 of these ice-cooling systems worldwide that can save the company money as well as helping the environment. Since electricity is still needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large tanks every night when the power demand is low. The cool air from the ice blocks is then piped through the building. At the end of the day the water will get frozen again following the cycle. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will also be using a similar system in the headquarters office in downtown New York. The system at Credit Suisse is using 900 kilowatts less and has reduced overall electrical usage by 2.15 million kilowatts per hour annually. The system also costs more than 3 million to implement, but for large companies, the ROI can be seen faster. This is another technology that should be implemented by new buildings that get developed as well as Government buildings. If a city or state wants to set an example of going green, this is another great example. I have also heard of datacenters in Chicago that use the cool air in the winter from outside to cool the inside. For cold areas, that works even better because it is using a natural resource but of course it only works in the winter and would need another source of energy for the other seasons such as wind power. Even though using cold air from the outside only works in the winter, and a company would need to use A/C in the other seasons, it is still saving electricty for those 3 months out of the year which is still better than nothing.

via Yahoo News

1 comment July 25th, 2007 Alex