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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Yes we do call traffic lights robots in South Africa, presumably because its “A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control”. The Department of Transport’s magazine was titled Robot until 1998 but they now seem to use Traffic Light in formal documentation.

The Central Energy Fund (CEF) of South Africa has announced a drive to install solar-powered traffic lights at critical intersections in South Africa’s major cities. The CEF foresaw an investment of R 100 million and installations at 400 intersections. This was justified by “Quantified in monetary terms, productivity losses, accidents at uncontrolled intersections, and exhaust emissions from stationary motor vehicles all have an adverse effect on the economy,”

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Environmental Management

To begin with, the Army Strategy for the Environment, was developed to serve as a policy guidance document leading the Army to “establish a long-range vision that enables the Army to meet its mission today and into the future.” Their motto? “Sustain the Mission - Secure the Future.” Some may find it trite, but without a vision and goals, it’s hard to get anywhere.

There is also the Army Environmental Policy Institute, which ”assists the Army Secretariat in developing policies and strategies to improve or resolve environmental policy issues that may have significant short or long-term impacts on the Army.” It works towards the Army’s triple bottom line of Mission, Environment, and Community.

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“We are unable to meet the ethanol target. The major reason is because of a shortage of raw material,” said Ren Dongming, a deputy director with Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.

This is quite significant, since China has been ranked as the third largest ethanol producer in the world.

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