Keeping the Blue Skies Green

UPS is on track to achieve some pretty ambitious sustainability goals. How are they doing it? Amongst other things, they've taken to the skies.

With a few seemingly simple changes (think better calculated take-offs and landings) and an always-evolving fleet, the company has been able to reduce aviation gallons burned per 100 available ton miles (2011 goals represent a 32% improvement from 1990). Simultaneously, UPS significantly cut CO2 emissions per available ton mile (UPS has achieved a 9% reduction since 2005).

via www.fastcompany.com

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Your Next Volvo May Be Made out of Batteries

Imagine a car whose body also serves as a rechargeable battery. A battery that stores braking energy while you drive and that also stores energy when you plug in the car overnight to recharge. At the moment this is just a fascinating idea, but tests are currently under way to see if the vision can be transformed into reality. Volvo Cars is one out of nine participants in an international materials development project.

Nano battery project: A composite blend of carbon fibres and polymer resin is being developed that can store and charge more energy faster than conventional batteries can. Materials development project launched by Imperial College in London that brings together nine European companies and institutes. Volvo Cars is the only car manufacturer participating in the project. The project started early 2010.

via www.media.volvocars.com

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The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010 on storyofbottledwater.org, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

via storyofstuff.org

Weaving Baskets from Weather Data

An artist named Nathalie Miebach has some unusual inspiration for the sculptures and music that she creates -- data from meteorological and astronomical instruments and ecological surveys.

Miebach likes to collect the data herself, spending hours and days in the field trying to understand complex, dynamic relationships between different variables in an environment. The key, she says, often isn't to examine the numbers on the instrument -- it's to observe the different things that are going on around you.

via www.wired.co.uk