Green Options » CO

Eco-Artist Creates ‘Puff’ Device to Monitor Car Emissions

Michael Ricciardi — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:04:38 +0000

Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

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Transit Use Boom, but in Some Surprising Cities

Zachary Shahan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:44:03 +0000

Transit use boomed from 2006-2008, but not in traditionally transit-friendly areas. This shows hope for more transit use in traditionally car-oriented places in the US in the future.

An analysis of the most recent transit use data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that transit use grew by up to 47% in major metropolitan areas in the U.S. from 2006-2008, with several metro regions in the South and West growing by more than 10%.

The South and West, being more dominated by automobile-oriented development and auto use, have historically struggled to get significant transit ridership. However, the top ten cities with the highest recent increase in ridership include several metro areas in the South and West, including Charlotte, NC (47%), Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA (26.7%), Pheonix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ (23.6%), San Antonio, TX (15.1%) and others. This seems to shine a light of hope on increased transit use in the southern and western U.S. in the future.

First, however, why are we seeing a boom in these places?

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From Trash to Treasure: The Future of Syngas

Lisa Wojnovich — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:00:14 +0000

The renewable energy startup Ze-gen, Inc., has put a new spin on an old technology. Before the advent of the electric light bulb, many cities used coal gasification to provide fuel for their street lamps, and as the costs of oil and natural gas soar, many are reconsidering this old method in the hopes of providing cheaper sources of fuel. But there is a downside. Gasification works by using heat to convert solids into gas, and as we all know, burning coal tends to release large quantities of carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming.

However, Ze-gen has come up with an alternative solution. Instead of using coal, which has numerous detrimental environmental effects, they are using garbage — waste that would otherwise be destined for landfills. For about two years now at a demonstration facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the company has been injecting what it terms biomass, organic waste from construction sites as well as municipal sources, into a vat of molten scrap metal.

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Cars Are Hurting Our Children: Air Pollution and Infant Health

Jennifer Lance — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:38:31 +0000

A recent paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Air Pollution and Infant Health: Lessons from New Jersey” examined a large sample size of infants and mothers. Using information from air quality monitors near children’s residences, researchers discovered “consistently negative effects of exposure to pollution, especially carbon monoxide, both during and after birth.” This really doesn’t come as any big surprise to me, but research like this is important in substantiating why we need stricter clean air regulations.

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