Environmentally Friendly Biofuel?
A Swedish bus company is marketing it’s use of environmentally friendly biofuels by depicting humans drinking from petrol pumps.
Needless to say the Swedish Poison Information Center is up in arms over the Flygbussarna Airport Coach company’s advertisements.
The company operates shuttle busses to seven airports throughout Sweden, and has increased it use of rapeseed bio-diesel in its fleet. The company plans to use only biofuels within three years, and is using the campaign of posters and ads on its website insinuating the fuel is safe enough to drink.
Swedish officials say the fear is that children who see the ad may just want to try it out, stick a fuel nozzle into their mouths and have a sip. The results, according to the Poison Information Center, could be catastrophic.
The bus company, meanwhile, is quoted as saying, “children see a lot of violence on TV they never go and shot people afterwards.”
Good advertising strategy, or a dangerous one? What do you think?
Source of Image and content. The Local
]]>
SAS flies slower to save fuel and lower carbon emissions.
Well, when I read this headline, conflicting views sprang to mind.
Firstly of course, being an Englishman with no sense of irony, I immediately leapt to my feet and saluted my queen and her armed forces.
Then I faltered slightly, and thought, if a crack team of SAS marines were being air dropped into some war-torn despotic state, surely, speed is of the essence, to ensure that the paras can be in and out again with time for a cup of tea a mere hours later.
And of course, well, I thought the SAS were used relatively infrequently – as a last resort. Surely the carbon savings are going to be miniscule.
Also, come to think of it, is it politic to announce slower-moving troops to the enemy…?
As you can tell, my mind by this time was racing with all the possibilities, all the negatives surrounding this piece of news. And I still hadn’t clicked on the link!
So I did so to find the opening paragraph reads:
“Scandinavian airline SAS is flying slower to save on sky-rocketing fuel costs and curb emissions of carbon dioxide in a new push to green up its image.”
Oh.
Oh, I see.
Relief all round I’d say. The full story can be found here detailing real positives surrounding Scandinavia’s decision to try and get a grip on air travel’s dreadful CO2 emissions.
Please also read: Fly Me to The Moon, But not via Heathrow – written by EcoWorldly’s Zurich correspondent, Mark Seal. Particularly relevant as it details the UK’s own lacklustre approach to the skies.
(I also found it interesting to learn about the story behind the image I decided to use. Rather fun and informative link here.)
Image credit: ladyb at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
]]>
This blew me away at first, but then it does make some sense. What do you think?According to Swedish car safety specialist Claes Tingvall, GM has wrapped up a multi-year project which used dead human bodies instead of crash dummies. Specifically, the tests were made with Saab automobiles.
Tingvall told the Swedish Newspaper Expressen, that people had donated their bodies for the tests. He said the bodies aided researcher in better design of crash dummies, and, of course, see first-hand injuries sustained by human bodies in car accidents.
The article, in the English language website, The Local, says neither Saab or GM has acknowledged using human cadavers in any tests.
A Saab spokesperson, Christer Nilsson is quoted in Expressen as saying,
“We are with GM through thick and thin. We conduct our own research and try to find other methods to achieve our results, with the help of computers, for example.”
I might mention the image you see came from the pages of Expressen, and if you go there, I hope your Swedish is good. I found no way to convert to English.
]]>
I grew up by the sea – always had an affinity with the waves, the tides, that sense of looking out to the great beyond, wondering what lay there.
But as one grows older, the great beyond takes on connotations other than distant lands lying beyond a Devonian horizon.
We can’t help but begin contemplating what will happen once we’ve died.
But I know what’ll happen to me – all thanks to this Swedish company.
I’m being thrown to sea in something that looks remarkably like a UFO.
Named the Shell, it is a burial urn made of compressed paper that dissolves in the water over time.
There’s a small slit on the top, so that loved ones can post messages. Messages of support? I’m not sure. Knowing those I’ll be leaving behind, probably just bawdy jokes.
Nevertheless, I’m off to the great beyond in a UFO. Nothing excites me more.
More information available here.
Image courtesy of www.lotsdesign.se
]]>
Nicole Kidman left a swimsuit beside a Swedish swimming pool some time back, and people wondered what to do with it.
A Swedish charitable group auctioned it off, using the money to purchase cows for poor families in India, according to The Local.
]]>
The Swedes are an inventive lot, but this article in The Local really takes the cake, or milk, if you will.
They milk 1000 cows at Wapnö castle outside Halmstad, Sweden, and during the process of cooling the milk from 37 to 3 degrees C, they have devised a way to capture that heat and use it to warm up the castle and workshop buildings.
]]>
You’d think in January, Sweden would be cold, blanketed with snow and ice, but not this year.
According to The Local, a hobby gardener in southern Sweden has already harvested the first potatoes of the New Year, with a garnish of strawberries and daisies.
]]>
An unusually mild winter in the land of my ancestors has fooled nature into believing spring has arrived. The so-called “killer slug”, a 10-15 cm beast is beginning to eat its way through the new flora, and ticks are ready for suck some blood from anything that bleeds. Even mushrooms have been spotted in a province south of Stockholm.
Read on, one Swedish gardener has a solution for the killer slugs in his garden, he eats them. Check out the link, ‘Slug Toast‘.
]]>
It was only last year that I began to fully appreciate the concept of incidental heat gains within buildings - heat gained indirectly via a window facing the sun, the heat generated from electrical appliances and rather surprisingly, the heat generated from our own bodies.
I thought the latter would be insignificant. Not a bit of it.
In fact, whilst sitting down, we provide the same amount of heat as a 60 watt light bulb. This can increase to 250 watts depending on the type of exercise we are doing.
Which is why I’m so pleased to have come across this recent story that wings its way over from Stockholm, Sweden where planners have decided to harness the body heat of commuters passing through the city’s railway station. (See photo above.)
According to Reuters:
The body heat of 250,000 commuters passing through the central train station in Stockholm every day is to be channelled into a new office block, where it will supply 15 per cent of the heating.
Karl Sundholm, of the property administration company Jernhuset, said in The Local: “So many people go through the Central Station. We want to harness some of the warmth they produce to help heat the new building.”
He added that it was in fact quite difficult to get rid of the heat generated by the passengers and that, rather than opening windows to allow the heat to escape, why not capture the heat and put it to good use?
Reading through the reports on this story, this stands out as exceptionally positive because old technology is being put to a new use. All that is required are pipes, water and pumps, yet, according to Mr Sundholm, they have never before been used in this way.
Couple this with the fact that the whole project is predicted to cost around $31,000 - incredibly cheap considering - and one realises what an exciting technological breakthrough this could prove to be.
For additional information, please click on the links provided.
Source:
Image courtesy of tillwe at flickr
Further links:
]]>
In an article that ran earlier this month, I learned the Swedish government has announced that Sweden is beating emissions targets as laid out by the Kyoto Protocol.
“Sweden was allowed to increase its emissions by more than four percent.
[But] emissions have decreased by nearly nine percent so [overall] that means Sweden has reduced its emissions by 12.7 percent, more than agreed under the Kyoto Protocol,” said the political advisor Hannes Borg.
Please click here for the article in full.
Though a positive story, the mood is darkened somewhat by a link to a further story suggesting that the younger Swedish generation seem apathetic towards sustainable technology.
A regrettable juxtaposition.
I agree entirely with a spokesperson I interviewed from the UK’s Green Party last year who stated that it is imperative greener options become the more stylish options.
Perhaps then the younger Swedes would follow suit?
Indeed, globally, are eco-friendly individuals still seen as bearded liberals ill-equipped with dealing with the real world?
If we are seen as - gulp - untrendy, naive, living in a fantasy world, what changes are required to bring the younger generation into sync?
Source:
Image courtesy of Stockxpert
]]>
Visitors to Stockholm could soon have a new option for cheap airport accommodation – a Boeing 747 at Arlanda airport.Uppsala businessman Oscar Diös has been given permission by airport owner LFV and the Swedish National Roads Administration to open a youth hostel in a Jumbo Jet parked by the airport entrance.
Read all about it at The Local
]]>
We've seen plenty of evidence that the tech world has caught the green bug, and now the search engine optimization (SEO) folks are getting on board.]]>
