Perpetual Innovation

Author: SustainMe

  • In China, an underground luxury hotel | SmartPlanet

    In China, an underground luxury hotel | SmartPlanet:

    Wow. Don’t know if we should be happy or sad about this resort project.

    Kind of makes you wonder how and why this massive hole in the ground was constructed as a by product of the need for resources?

    Good. This should start to make miners think hard about the use of the land when done. The open-pit mines for ore and oil and coal might start to design their end-game for the land as they dig and truck.

    So, is this a resort that you wanna go visit? That’s the Billion Yuan question?

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Bill Gates Helps Reinvent the Toilet – Earth911.com – Poo Power

    Bill Gates Helps Reinvent the Toilet – Earth911.com:

    I know what you’re thinking, when you contemplate the power of poo. You’re thinking about Winnie the Pooh. Right.  “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” Winnie famously said… Talking about going out and making a difference.

    Apparently the same can be said for poo. We need to take new and better toilets to the masses of people, 2.5B or so, that do not have clean sanitation. And you use that same poop and pee-power toilet to generate  poop and pee-power. Something you would want to call Poop-Pee Power, I’m sure.

    Processing it and storing the “fuel” (methane?) can then be used for power. Fuel cell for on demand, when needed,no moving parts, power seems logical. A requirement is that the final outputs must be power and hydrogen. Bill Gates says in the press release related to the challenge/competition:

    “Imagine what’s possible if we continue to collaborate, stimulate new investment in this sector, and apply our ingenuity in the years ahead, . . . Many of these innovations will not only revolutionize sanitation in the developing world, but also help transform our dependence on traditional flush toilets in wealthy nations.”

    Innovation such as this will bring sanitation, health and power to poor and unclean masses.

    No crappy jokes here. (Well, maybe a few.)

    This is a great idea, that’s a HEAD of its time — or maybe a little BEHIND the times.

    We all really should have done something like this a LONG time ago.
    And that’s the stinking true of it.

    “Innovative solutions change people’s lives for the better,” said foundation Co-chair Bill Gates. “If we apply creative thinking to everyday challenges, such as dealing with human waste, we can fix some of the world’s toughest problems.”

    By the world’s toughest problems, do you think that Bill thinks we can apply some of such solutions to politics? It seems that PolitiPoo should be especially high-octane and extremely combustible. !:-)

    The trick seems to be keeping it out of the fan long enough to harness PolitiPoo power.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Ethanol Producer Mag — Strategies for Collaboration in Innovation

    Ethanol Producer Magazine | EthanolProducer.com:

    Strategies for Collaboration in Innovation

    This is a short, but concise article on collaboration and strategic partnerships in the agrofarm business.
    In forming agreements of sole supplier, independent contractor & R&D agreements, it is clear that clairvoyance would be best to make these decisions!:-) 
    Unfortunately, in farming, as in many things in life, you make your bets in advance when you make your agreements and when you sow the seeds. And then you wait to see if it was the right bet given the weather appears on the horizon. 
    You might hedge your bets with revenue insurance and such, but your bets are pretty well planted in the ground with the seeds.
    In this article, it’s not so much the farm as the bins to store grains in, but the concepts and strategies still apply.

    ‘via Blog this’
    http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/9101/strategies-for-collaboration-in-innovation

  • Ethanol Producer Magazine

    Issuu – bbiinternational – Documents:

    Check out issues of Ethanol Producer Magazine… And other Biomass, biodiesel, biomass, biofuel rags. (Reading these online is surprising smooth once you get the swing of it.)

    Great info in this month’s edition of Ethanol Producer. Because of the trade-off between burning our food (corn) and eating it, the use of corn-ethanol as a fuel is critical. It’s especially critical during times of drought. It takes a lot of water to grow corn, and it takes a lot of water to process ethanol.

    Ethanol is down, corn-based ethanol is down, exports are down, etc.

    But what’s interesting is the field tests (pun intended) of new corn crops that are more drought tolerant.

    If you haven’t yet ventured off into this genre of magazines, you will find it very interesting and surprisingly relevant. Relevant, if you drive, if you eat food, if you have interests in the economy. . .

    Make no doubt about it, the drought is gonna impact us all in food, fuel and more, for at least the next couple years. What we have just learned this year about droughts will be useful for the rest of the world, too, in seasons to come.

    Hang on for the bumpy ride.

    ‘via Blog this’ (also blogged at IPZine)

  • Dirty little Coal secrets… shhh …. Talking Tr-Ash…

    Sustainability eMagazine

    If you have never done so, you want to visit the EarthJustice site about coal ash: http://earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/coal-ash-contaminates-our-lives

    And what you want to do, is visit this site every time you see one of these sweet and pretty ads about “Clean Coal”.

    Admittedly, the EarthJustice takes the other side of this far, very far-from-clean, source of energy. However, coal produces half of the electric power in the US. Well, all right, now only about 34%. But that “cheap” energy has a lot to do with the high quality of life that we all enjoy. It also does not get credit for the hidden costs it presents to the environment and to personal health.

    Back to the dirty little secret of Coal Ash. Remember the Ash trashing by TVA in 2008. The damage is into the billions of dollars and climbing. And it has not been cleaned up. All those heavy metals in the ash down a couple rivers. Sadly, that’s a gift that keeps on giving.

    Heavy metals include lead, mercury, arsenic and more. Sulfur, lots of sulfur. They can have traces of radiation. We, in the US, tend to want to clean most of these by-products from this soot from the smoke. Other countries like India and China, not so much so.

    And we have these ash build-ups all over the world…. And the mountains are growing.

    Here’s just one source on the running costs and litigation at ABC News.

    Of course is the worst fossil fuel, by far, in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

    We don’t need to burn that dirty coal, better simply to ship it to China and India and let them burn it there. No harm done in that.