90% of seabirds have consumed plastic

. Photograph: Chris Jordan/Midway: http://bit.ly/1iYURFI

Our litter and waste has reached a new level of disbelief with a new study showing that upto 90% of seabirds will have ingested plastic items they have mistaken for food.  A report in the Guardian has highlighted their work link.  Their results can be seen in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

We still haven’t learnt as our production of platics in the past 11 years exceeds the amount produced since it was first produced  in the 1950s.But something is being done and new a new collection boom is hoping to start removing larger material soon.

You can help right now by picking up litter that will find its way eventually into the sea.

Posted: Nick Gray

Twitter @Nickgraytcd

The 21st century, The age of expiration!

I-phones, I-pads, MRI scanners, solar panels, computer chips, superconductors and spacecrafts, if I asked you what do all of these objects have in common what would you say? That they are all examples of technology, the age of science, products that are improving our lives and future? This all may be true but the answer I was looking for was that all of these products may not be around in the next century.

It may seem bizarre that objects that we associate as symbols of the future may not be around in the future. The rare earth metals and gases used to manufacture these products are non-renewable and are only present on earth in finite amounts. Helium which is critical for superconductors, space exploration and medical technology will run out in 25 years. Global hafnium supplies, which are utilised in the manufacturing of the chip in this computer, is predicted to be exhausted by 2017 (yes,it is the year 2013 now!) The screen you may be reading this off may be an LCD screen and if so say goodbye as indium, the main component, will be exhausted by 2020. Zinc...2037, uranium...2090, copper...2100...

It is disheartening, especially to me as a scientist, that the major advances of the past few years in medicine, nano-and micro-technology will probably not be commercially viable to expand on due to the lack of rare metals, that the recent advances in renewable energy such as hybrid batteries, energy-efficient lighting and solar panels will ironically come to a halt as the non-renewable resources used exhaust. But as well as being disheartened, a worry has begun to creep in as I consider how we are beginning to depend on these new technologies. 28% of helium supplies are used to super-cool magnets for MRI scanners. What will happen when this runs out in less than 30 years? Does anyone have a back-up plan?

We claim to be a caring species who are trying to live sustainably so that the future generations, our children and grandchildren, can have the chance to experience the amazing world that we live in today. Unfortunately, they will have to deal with the past generations mistakes, from climate change to ozone layer depletion and its consequences such as higher global levels of cancers and other diseases. These generations will need much greater control over their environments than we do today and therefore, much better technology in order to survive.

We need to claim responsibility, even if industries and governments won’t. Can more efficient goods with longer lives be designed? Is the recreational use of these rare materials acceptable? Awareness needs to be raised now if we have any chance of halting the exploitation and expiration, as I for one could not live with the guilt of knowing that in the future a sick child may die due to a lack of MRI scanners all because we wasted the helium needed to cool these machines in our party balloons!

Ailis O’Carroll

The Real Cost of a Google Search!



Can Google go Green? 

Google searching has become a basic tool in everyday life. If you don’t know the answer, just Google it! Since its launch in 1997, billions of people worldwide have been using it. It’s a free search engine which I’m pretty sure most people use on a daily basis. For us it’s free to use, but what is the real cost of a Google Search? There are many factors that need to be taken into account, such as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted not only from generating the search results, but the emissions from our electronic devices while we are searching.

A typical Google search takes on average about 0.2 seconds to return results. That Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO₂. ^[1] It seems to be a small enough figure. But in 2011, Google handled about 1,722,071,000,000 searches! ^[2] That amounts to roughly 350 thousand tonnes of CO₂ emissions that year! But who owns that carbon emission? Us or Google? We’re the ones using the search engine, but Google’s the one that’s returning the results. Google has gone green and offset their carbon emissions to deal with their environmental impact. We too should aim to reduce our carbon emissions.

That was just the carbon dioxide emission cost of the actual Google search, the cost of running the device that the search is done on has not been taken into account yet! According to a Harvard University physicist, a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of CO₂. ^[3] This is taking into account the CO₂ emissions generated from both the Google search and the desktop computer. So really that amounts to about 12 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions for the year 2011 just for Google searches!

In doing this blog alone, I have already done three Google searches. One for finding out the actual cost of a Google search, another for how many searches Google handled in one year and finally another for getting an image for this blog. So I have already generated 21 grams of CO₂ just by searching for information for this blog. This does not include the time I spent using the computer to type this blog up and emailing it!

So how can we reduce our Google search carbon emissions? Instead of making unnecessary searches, we should think about what we really need to look up. In fact, we can reduce our overall carbon emissions by using sustainable renewable sources of energy, such as wind and sunlight. If our electronics are powered by renewable energy, we have already immensely reduced our CO_2­ emissions.

Ivana Yeow

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2009/01/powering-google-search.html
[2] http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
[3] http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10140142-54.html
Image: http://www.google.com/green/bigpicture/#/

https://twitter.com/Nickgraytcd

Eco Gyms - Generating Your Own Electricity?

A photo of The Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon.
(image from: http://www.thegreenmicrogym.com)

The other day I was working out at my gym and I looked around at the rows of people moving along to the rhythms of their various ellipticals, treadmills, cycles, and stair masters, their store-purchased water bottles perched atop the blinking electronic dashes of their machines; I took note of the row of large televisions that constantly blare at the front of the room; I thought about the lights turned up bright, despite the sunlight flooding in through the wall of windows; and I thought: “This seems wrong!” I was surrounded by consumption and wasted energy. All of the cardio machines, TV sets, fans, stereos and lights in this gym are plugged in and running all day long from open till close. Fitness centers, particularly in the United States (my home country) use an extraordinary amount of energy and water. Treadmills alone require about 1500 watts of energy to power and most machines and equipment in gyms are left on all day long (1).Stationary bikes lose about 90% of the energy they use in heat while only 10% is used to actually power the machine (2).  The gym would appear to be the ultimate antithesis of an environmentally friendly institution. It seems silly to be on machines that are reproducing motions that our bodies should be able to do on their own. Our lifestyles should, in theory, be supporting our health, right? We should be out in nature, running and walking and cycling and lifting every day items and we should all be in perfect shape. Gyms, in a perfect world, should be entirely unnecessary. But that is not how it works. We are endlessly confronted with the paradox of the developed world’s endless struggle with fitness. None of us are strangers to the epidemic of obesity that struck America and moved its way over to Ireland (and in a big way, might I add!)

Our world cannot become sustainable if the health our population is slowly deteriorating into a big lump of overweight consumers. Many gym enthusiasts will never give up their memberships in exchange for a jog outside, and many unfit or unhealthy individuals may have to rely on a gym as a way to find support and assistance in their efforts to become healthier.

So, are gyms just a necessary evil that will go on producing emissions at remarkably rapid rates, and we should just turn our heads the other way? It doesn’t seem so entirely hopeless! I started doing some research into the topic of sustainability in gyms and quickly found that I am not the only person who is troubled by the vast amount of water and energy wasted by gyms, particularly in the US. There is a wealth of information about the inefficiency of gyms and health centers, but there is also an incredibly interesting new trend of what are called eco gyms. Eco gyms operate on the idea that they can capture the energy that is expended while working out and use it to power their facilities, in theory rendering the building self-sustaining. Like gerbils spinning around a wheel, humans in a gym are in essence doing little else beyond producing energy in the form of burning calories. One of the many gyms that I read about was from Portland, Oregon (my hometown!) and uses incredibly low levels of energy by using specially designed machines that are and hooked up to DC generators that produce energy to power the facility (3). The gym also uses refurbished and sustainably manufactured equipment (even mountain bikes made of bamboo!) and the bathrooms use special water heaters and eco-friendly cleaning products. Eco gyms are becoming increasingly popular around the globe (4). They also include lower levels of lighting, relying more on natural light, more eco-friendly water usage, and sustainable cafes in their lobbies. There are, of course many problems, such as the high costs of “greening” an already existing facility, and the fact that many gyms are too small to actually produce enough energy to run their own machines, but these ideas seem incredibly helpful in moving the fitness industry in the right direction (5).  Of course, the only real way to eliminate emissions issues with gym facilities would be to move everyone’s workouts outside, but it would be great to see more facilities at least attempting to institute some of these practices or even for cities to start adding incentives for companies to do so so that our health and environment can become more sustainable. Some of these products, such as cardio equipment that captures and stores usable energy could even be useful in the home, producing power to fuel your ipods and cell phone chargers. You could offset your own footprint to some extent with your own human watts! I love the gym, but I am going to be more conscientious and start taking my workouts outside whenever the weather permits.

Katie Gourley

(1) http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/treadmills-suck-kilowatts.html

(2) http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsArticles/Green-Building/Gyms-Get-Sustainable.html

(3) http://www.thegreenmicrogym.com/
(4) http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsArticles/Green-Building/Gyms-Get-Sustainable.html

(5) http://www.everyjoe.com/2008/09/23/health/green-gyms-talk-about-powering-through-your-workout-663/

https://twitter.com/Nickgraytcd

Technocentrism: The Bee All and End All for Sustainable Living? (See what I did there...?)



http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/21/bee.movie

 Sustainable living, to some, may seem like nothing more than a pipe dream and indeed it’s hard to imagine achieving a truly ‘sustainable’ lifestyle without being regressive to some extent. However, with the continuous advent of new and more advance technologies is it now conceivable that progressive technocentric approaches will hold the answer to all our environmental problems?

Global warming is perhaps the greatest environmental problem we face today and in light of recent socio-economic adversity it’s easy to lose sight of this issue. In addition to the ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases that are industrially produced each year, logging operations exacerbate the problem. One of the biggest driving forces of deforestation is the production of cardboard and paper but with environmentally friendly alternatives now available is the 30% of remaining forestland safe from destruction? Polyart (Link), a completely synthetic and 100% recyclable paper, is just one simple example of how technology can be conducive of a more sustainable lifestyle and ultimately promote environmental mitigation.

Moving on to more extreme examples, the innovation of technologies that allows us to exploit renewable energy more efficient continues to increase the allure of these renewable energy sources and large scale implementation of these technologies becomes more viable. With more people now opting to install geothermal heating systems, solar panels and wind mills at home, does this reflect the early success of the environmental movement promoting sustainable living or merely represent a remnant ‘trend’ from the glory days of the economic boom? With over 3 million exajoules of energy being radiated by the sun each year (3 orders of magnitude more than the annual global energy consumption), solar energy certainly has the potential to alleviate our energy crisis. With solar panel efficiency increasing ever year it becomes more and more feasible that solar energy will do for us in the future what oil did in the past.

With so much technology at our disposal it’s hard to image what life in 10 years will be like, inevitably “big things have small beginnings” and the technology that is readily at our disposable may ultimately displace regressive anthropocentric approaches to environmentalism and sustainable living. 

Eoin Mac Réamoinn