It’s summer time! For students preparing their final exams, this means spending hours in the library with their textbooks. If there is one thing they will all agree on, then it is that textbooks contain a lot of bullsh*t. Although the scientific correctness of that statement can be questioned, it is now empirically proven it is at least true when it comes to climate change. Or rather, what YOU can do to stop it.
Category: Solutions
The drones that will plant 1 billion trees a year
Illegal logging, urban expansion, cattle farming and palm oil production… they all contribute to deforestation. And that’s problematic. Very problematic. The current rate at which forests are chopped down is 15 million trees per year or 36 football fields per minute. Yes, per MINUTE. Where the trees once sequestered atmospheric CO2, their removal leads to 17% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN. To reverse the effects of this mass murder of forests, reforestation at industrial scale is needed.
photo: ABC News/Dave Maguire
The Ocean Cleanup: getting rid of the Pacific garbage patch
Close-up of the Ocean Cleanup floating barrier (photo: The Ocean Cleanup)
Does the name Boyan Slat ring a bell? There is a good chance it does. The now 22-years old engineer from the Netherlands decided to tackle the huge plastic waste problem in our oceans, after encountering more bags than fish in a scuba diving trip in Greece when he was 16. He came up with an invention to clean up the ocean’s garbage patches, an idea that soon would capture the attention of many after a video of his TedX talk in 2012 went viral. What the young inventor proposed is, by all means, ambitious – and in the eye of some oceanographers straight away insane. Nonetheless, in 2013 Boyan Slat founded a company to realise his idea: the Ocean Cleanup was born. After he revealed some major design changes and an updated timeline during an announcement event Delft, the Netherlands, earlier this month, it’s time to have a closer look at how this young fella thinks he will make it happen.
Boyan Slat at the announcement event on May 11th, in Delft (photo: Pierre AUGIER for The Ocean Cleanup)
Tesla’s solar roof: too good to be true?
(photo: Tesla)
Elon Musk has been in the spotlight a number of times on my blog now, and once again he succeeded in creating a good portion of buzz in the cleantech world which I cannot let go unnoticed. Yesterday the Silicon Valley entrepreneur announced that Tesla is now taking online orders worldwide for their latest disruptive technology: the solar roof. Seen by Elon as the third leg of the stool of a sustainable energy future, next to Tesla’s Powerwall and electric car, first installations in the US follow later this year, while worldwide rollout begins in 2018.
Solar roof can be ordered for almost any country. Deployment this year in the US and overseas next year.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2017
CloudFisher turns fog into drinking water
photo: Aqualonis
Last Wednesday the 22nd of March, the UN celebrated the World Water day. Many take drinking water for granted, but there are still 1.8 billion people in the world who use a source of drinking water that puts them at risk of getting deadly sick. In the driest and poorest regions of the world, women and girls walk for hours in the blistering heat to collect water for their families –withholding them from studying or working. Addressing the drinking water crisis of those regions can solve many problems at once.
photo: Aqualonis
Turning waste milk into loo paper
Carezza di latte, caress of milk. It sounds like a new version of delicious Italian coffee to me, but make no mistake. It is the Italian toilet paper brand Tenderly’s latest premium product. Silky soft, it holds the promise of a supreme caress even for the most sensitive skin. And all of that with the help of waste milk. Sounds amazing, don’t you think?
