Ideaplants

Thanks for sharing on fb, gps

China is increasingly making data on air and water pollution public. Many pressure groups have been taking advantage of this data.

The Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) has taken this opportunity and compiled a map of companies in China that do not meet the pollution requirements set by Chinese law. International companies like Nike, Wal-Mart and Siemens are increasingly using this information to check whether there are any issues in their supplier base to avoid public scandals that may damage their reputation and brand value.

It seems that Apple lacks behind with even an unwillingness to openly talk about the location of suppliers…

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I just listened to an entertaining iTunesU podcast on Nutrition by Berkeley University taught by Nancy Amy. The topic: Alcohol


“That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains” is the Shakespeare quote that opens the discussion.


Nancy explains how alcohol enters your stomach and gets absorbed so quickly that it can get to your brain in less than a minute. As stated by Bert Valley, alcohol has been consumed for over 10000 years. One reason that made our ancestors drink was the fact that people knew about the contamination of water and the impacts this could have on the human body (e.g. diseases). Since not many people had access to clean water they simply used fermentation to purify the water. That is one important reason why alcoholic beverages were so popular in the Western world back in ancient times…


In Asia another method became popular to purify water and avoid diseases: cooking water and brewing tea.
As in Western Europe alcohol was consumed over generations, the gene that helps us absorb a fair part of the alcohol became a quite important feature in daily life while in the Asian world, the gene was not needed and therefore did not develop as strongly in the Asian gene pool.


Interesting that the issue of water contaminations brought us to a regular consumption of alcohol, isn’t it?


For more lectures on Nutrition by Berkeley University have a look here 

I just read this article on BBC and thought it might be worth sharing.


In Glasgow, Scotland, Professor Andrew Mills and his team are developing a smart wrapping developed to detect ‘off food’. The wrapping changes colour when food goes bad. The team hopes to be able to avoid the enormous amounts off food we waste every day of which great parts could in fact still be eaten.


It sounds quite amazing, doesn’t it? >>> You check your fridge and within seconds you can tell what food you need to throw out. >>> No more off food in supermarkets that accidentally finds its way into your shopping basket… almost too good to be true.


Then there’s only to question what additives are actually being added to the wrapping. …and I wonder whether this also works in places like China, where especially meat contains chemicals, colour enhancers & sometimes even medication that has been given to animals to make them grow faster (ever heard about a chicken that can grow up in only 21 days?). I am very curious to see this invention hit the market.

I feel a bit blown away during my first weeks in Shijiazhuang / China from an environmental point of view. Environmental issues is what we are all aware to a certain extend. But once you get to live in a place where they become so obvious like the air you breathe and the water you drink, it changes your perception on things.

Shijiazhuang is such a place. Pollution and dust are part of the environment we now live in. Many people on the street wear masks and believe this could help them filter the air they breathe. However, most of them are out of cotton which makes me doubtful on how much it actually helps.


I’m not surprised to see that my new city scored highest on air pollution on the world bank index in 2007 and that “Epidemiological research has found consistent and coherent associations between air pollution and various health endpoints, or health effects.” these range from “reduced lung function, respiratory symptoms, chronic bronchitis” all the way down to “premature death”.



The water that comes out of our pipes at home leaves white slick if you cook it. So I even hesitate to wash our dishes tap water. This is what we take showers with and wash our face. Now living a ‘common people & student life’ here, I realise more than during my last stay in China how much luxury we actually have in Europe where in most places tab water has a better reputation than bottled water from supermarkets.


If you go to a restaurant here, you cannot tell whether the oil that is used for cooking has been changed recently … and even whether it was bought in a supermarkets or whether it comes out of the underground pipes where organic rubbish is used to extract the remaining oil and reused as cooking oil. There is very little quality control for restaurants except to some extend in student restaurants.



See here a comparison between oil from the pipes (left) and fresh cooking oil (right):

Safety, health and environmental issues are so clearly linked together here. But what solutions are there that help on one hand to raise awareness for environmental safety and on he other hand secures jobs and a way to get to work for the masses of people that live here?


In a place where skyscrapers have an average lifetime of 10 years which shows that development has a clear priority, the answer does not seem as evident and I understand it will take some time…

All the best,

Mira

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Energy efficiency in china -interesting panel discussion
A panel from april at Yale university including panelists from HSBC India and several representatives with experience in China discuss challenges in implementing energy efficiency and renewable projects in china. 

The different view points (corporate, policy making, investors and local networks) give interest insight in challenges and progress in the area of energy efficiency in both countries.

Enjoy!

Mira

PS: Read the report giving some background on best practice sharing the panel was involved in here 

It’s time for Nuit Blanche again! On Saturday night Brussels city centre around St Catherine will be turned into an outdoor galery and concert space for artists from all over Europe. And we’ll be part of it.


This year our installation is called e-Pong. Our team decided to make a tribute to the game Pong (one of the first video games).


E-pong is an interactive gaming art-installation that enables you to experience a 360º projection of a pong game inside a ball-shaped tent. Four players can play at a time, each of them being in control of a light bar that is used to bounce balls back to the top of the tent. Find out more about the project here!


If you are in Brussels, come and experience the installation!
Date: 2nd October 2010
Time: Public access from 21:00
Place: Fish Market, 1000, Brussels (view map)
More info about Nuit Blanche Brussels 2010:
http://2010.nuitblanchebrussels.be


All the best, Mira

Greenpeace is using social media to stop facebook from using coal energy to run a big new data centre in Oregon/USA. Over half a million of participants have joined the campaign since february. Here the campaign trailer:

I went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden the other day. The garden is only open to public for a short time every year. I am generally quite reserved when it comes to tourist attractions, but this garden is just amazing and you simply forget about hundreds of people that are amazed by the flower paradise around you.


If you get the chance go and visit the place. Not just a nice thing to light up your weekend – we cannot take enough opportunities to admire the beauty and variety of life nature has created around us. Let me know if you know of similar places that you can recommend .

Cloud-computing and ICT technology as such has changed our society. A development of our Web2.0 culture is just one small part of the impact. The way we communicate, the way we interact, the tools we use.


Even if we often are not aware of the environmental impacts of our actions – it is evident, that our changed behavior with the availability of computing tools and new ways to interact has an impact on the environment.


Nothing to be afraid of – there are positive and negative impacts: Did you know that a modern laptop consumes less energy than an old light bulb?


As Jorge Zapico who is currently researching the intersections of ICT and Sustainability at the Centre for Sustainable Communications in Stockholm points out correctly, that there are many ways in which we can enhance the positive impacts. For example an open source approach to sharing information, using the net to mobilize the environmental movement and taking advantage of technologies that make our life more (energy) efficient.


Which does not mean we should neglect the negative ones like the hidden hardware in many data centers that is running our beloved Internet cloud (slide 13). Enjoy Jorge’s presentation on this topic: