The New Green... Continuing Environmental Awareness

Started by Technowraith, April 21, 2011, 01:31:21 AM

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Technowraith

Our old green thread is sorta dead, so I decided to try and kick start a new green thread.

Some exciting news on the environomental front in my area:

-The new compost center accepts all manner of organic material, from yard waste to food scrap waste, to even large roadkill deer or animals. The new equipment installed allows for a 3 week conversion process. Rich, fertile soil and compost is the result. As long as you drop waste off, you can pick up soil and compost.

-The trash pick-up now has a yard waste pick-up day. It occurs once a week, and the waste that is picked up goes to a clean burn incinerator to fuel the power grid.

-The local public transportation has been phasing in new diesel elctric hybrid buses. They reached a milestone last week with the delivery of their 75th hybrid bus. The fleet is now 20% fully hybrid. They aim for 30% fleet hybrid by the end of this year. In 2012, they aim to achieve 50% and by 2014, they plan to 100% converted, or earlier if they can take delivery of all their new hybrids earlier.

-2 New test trains on the regional rail routes have been designed to replace the older rolling stock. These all new trains are not only an upgrade comfort wise, but also sport systems that are 30% more power efficient. The new traction motors that drive the wheels use 10% less power per acceleration cycle than the existing motors on the trains that run the rails now. This may not seem like much, but when you think about it, a regional rail train undergoes hundreds of acceleration cycles (getting up to speed from a standstill) a day. The 10% decrease in power demand will result in significant power savings.

-I purchased a new uninterruptible power supply-UPS for my computer, that also serves as a capacitor to power on my pc's 1.1 kilowatt power supply. Instead of drawing a heavy charge on power up, the UPS provides the heavy charge from a capacitor. During normal non emergency use, the capacitor recharges, so the power draw on the UPS is constant, and doesn't spike when the pc is turned on.

-I personally oversaw the re-planting of several hundred feet of river that was subject to severe erosion. The properties fronting the flood outflow stream in the lower half of the neighborhood suffered severe erosion during storms due to large volumes of run-off. So I suggested planting various forms of resilient, appropriate plantings to ensure that erosion was minimized, beautifying properties and creating animal habitats. The one retention pond, the neighbors are working on turning into a small preserve for animals by planting marsh plant life and encouraging animals to live their by creating habitats. A viewing platform is being built at the far end of the retention pond so people can watch animals and even feed the ducks and geese.

More to come as further developments continue.  :D :)

See that shadow? It's the last one you're gonna see.

Tsmukan fa kxetse anawm