Green Options

Those of us who don’t live in developing countries might not always remember that the majority of the world still uses biomass-fired cookstoves that produce smoke and other toxins. It’s a serious problem–indoor air pollution kills 1.6 million people yearly. Enter the SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration, and Electricity), a $33 cookstove developed by researchers at the University of Nottingham that doubles as an electrical generator.

It’s easy for me as a teacher to tell whose parents smoke. All it takes is one walk over to the coat area, where the fumes linger in the classroom. Or when I am working one on one with a student, crunching numbers in math. The smell always makes my stomach turn, then I feel overwhelmed with sadness for the child.

Smoke on clothing, carpets and furniture is much more than a nasty smell, however. According to the New York Times, the smoke is a toxic brew of “heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.”

Researchers have labeled it “third hand smoke.” What exactly is it? According to the Scientific American, “”Third-hand smoke is tobacco smoke contamination that remains after the cigarette has been extinguished,” says Jonathan Winickoff, a pediatrician at the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in Boston and author of a study on the new phenomenon published in the journal Pediatrics.”

If you’re dead and worried about the carbon emissions created from your cremation, relax. The Swedish town of Halmstad has a solution. After an environmental review showed that Halmstad’s crematorium was pumping too much smoke into the air, the facility’s director decided to re-use heat from the cremations to warm up the crematorium’s buildings.

South Korea is becoming more health-conscious. Koreans are kicking the habit in growing numbers and telling smokers to butt out of public places.

In the late 90’s, cigarette makers experienced the kind of market boom in Asia that they hadn’t seen in the USA in years. Big tobacco enjoyed a tightening grip on Asian asian wallets and lungs; things were looking good. But in the last decade, an emerging health consciousness, popularly known as the wellbeing trend, has threatened to send the plans of cigarette makers up in smoke.

South Korea, for one, has seen a precipitous drop in smoking. In 2000, 70-80 percent of South Korean men were smokers. That number has tumbled to around 40% today. It’s no Bhutan, which banned all tobacco in 2004, but that’s still an impressive improvement. Why the sudden decrease in smoking?