Latest Inventions

posted by admin on Jul 6

I mean, is biodegradable plastic such a good invention after all?

It always seems like an invention suddenly comes along and you think ‘wow, that is absolutely fantastic!’ - until you think it through for a bit longer.

Well this is exactly like that.

The invention is still a great idea - but the implications of it could actually have worse effects than before it was invented!

Why?  Well let’s follow through the life cycle of a plastic bottle and see what happens - but first - what is biodegradable plastic all about?

The Invention:
Regular plastics are made of polymers that can take literally for ever to break down.  They will do though - at varying rates - depending on the type of plastic they are it can be months or years before they start to break apart.

Now, we all know that plastics will never actually really ‘biodegrade’ in the sense of breaking down into total natural products that can be used again by organisms - but the word is used for the relatively fast breakdown of an entire container or sheet of plastic.

Now, this plastic is made to contain certain other particles that will help to induce and encourage the ‘natural’ breakdown of the item.  Just like burying a plastic carrier bag in damp mud will help it to weaken and fall apart.

So, anyway - they have come up with 2 types - Hydro-Biodegradable Plastics (HBP) and Oxo-Biodegradable Plastics (OBP) - and they work either by the chemical actions of hydrolysis or oxidation respectively to reduce the overall bulk of the product.

This then renders it into small enough pieces that natural bio-degradation can start to act on the remaining parts, reducing the product to it’s chemical components much faster than normal.
 
The Problem:
Normal plastics have been designed to be virtually indestructible, therefore you can use a plastic bottle over and over and over again. Even if you can recycle it - it is still as strong as it was before.

This was the original problem, meaning that plastic products never broke down:

Old Plastic Bottle: Brought new with product inside - product used up - container cleaned - container reused to carry another product - and another - and another -and another - then the container is recycled to start all over.

However, now this means that all new plastic will only have a short shelf life - too short for some - in fact, it is already making regular plastic fall apart as well!

New Plastic Bottle:  Brought new with product inside - product used up - container cleaned - container thrown in compost heap to degrade - the end!

So, how is it affecting new bottles?  Well - biodegradable plastics shouldn’t ever be recycled as it will compromise the quality and durability of new mixed plastics - basically it is starting to make recycled products less reliable!

If you buy a product in a biodegradable container, you must dispose of it after use - this means more plastic is being produced and thrown away than ever before!

At least with the regular plastic, you could reuse your toiletries bottles when travelling, use old pots and tubs for planting and store water and food over and over again.

Not with this new invention!  You will just have to keep replacing your containers and as a result, dispose of more plastic than ever!  And in fact, there are governments who are really getting angry about these new plastics and is trying to get them eliminated!

The Answer?
Well, we still need the regular plastic and we still want the biodegradable plastics!

Can they both co-exist or has 1 got to go?

I suppose it all depends on the person using it as to how beneficial each type is - to them and the planet.  Can you trust people not to recycle the new type - and can you trust people to recycle the old type?

Is it better to have lots of old plastic going around and around  - or only new plastic, but a higher production rate?

Well, maybe financially - it was a better invention after all!

posted by admin on Dec 16

Welcome to the final Blog Carnival of 2009 - And Best Wishes for the New Year!

Let’s begin with the very thorough and interesting article by Mary Jones who details 25 Everyday Technologies That Came from NASA. Neat!

And welcome back to a regular writer on e-books - Marco Gustafsson with his article this time on the Cool-er EBook Reader: Intuitive Marketing or Blatant Copying?.

The third article is about the planet - and lists lectures that could change the way you think about biology, technology and the world itself - let Linda Jones share with you 50 Fascinating Lectures on the Future of the Planet.

A little story about the Eco Rally that took place earlier this year by 00FF00 has some great info and some nice photos too! So, read here about The Revolve Eco Rally

And finally, the obligatory ‘Apps’ listing article this month is from Carolyn Friedman who tells us about the Top 20 iPhone Apps for Business Travelers but is joined by a very in-depth article on just 1 particular app - John presents us with his article on A Bird-finding App for iPhone and iPod Touch

See you in 2010!

posted by admin on Nov 3

Imagine a plastic box that reduces deforestation, improves health and boils water at the same time!

It seems almost impossible that theses 3 things are related in the same action, but if you just stick with me, all will be explained.

The Kyoto Box could well be the perfect solution for many people in developing countries in terms of reducing their need to travel for miles every day to find fuel for their fires and clean water for their families.

What Is It?
Basically, it is a cardboard box snugly fitted inside another box and topped off with a plexi-glass lid.  Sounds simple because it is!  All it does is absorb heat energy from the sun during the day which then becomes trapped inside the device. 

This allows for very high temperatures to be reached for boiling water and cooking certain foods!  It can also be used to dry certain plants and baking ingredients.

Although it is ’simple’ in principle it has taken Norwegian entrepreneur Jon Bøhmer (of Kyoto Energy) around 10 years of tinkering to get it to the stage where it can be shipped out across the world for everyday use - at around $6.

Not only can the Kyoto Box boil a large amount of water in just a few hours, it’s very materials also insulate against heat loss, so any cooked foods will remain warm for many hours after the sun has set.

How Does It Reduce Deforestation?
There are many ways in which this invention helps the people who use it - and the places in which they live, and the following summary covers the main points:

Reduces Deforestation: By removing the need to use any other fuel to cook and boil, local people do not need to clear local woodlands of trees to feed their families.

Improves Health: By removing wood and dung from the equation - this method of cooking is smoke-free.  Women and babies no longer need to breathe in fumes from the fire while carrying out their daily chores.  It also lowers the risk of fires in the home.

Reduces Diarrhea: By allowing families to boil water before drinking it, this has a massive effect on the family by reducing upset tummies and the drinking of parasites from local water sources.

Reduces Conflict: If families do not need to travel for miles to reach fuel or clean water, they will not come into conflict with other tribes, communities or armed poachers, etc.

Increases Other Livelihoods: If local women can stay in their village for more time everyday rather than spend hours just walking, they can take on other work or trades that could bring more money into their community.

It ticks all the right boxes!

posted by admin on May 26

Can Vanilla Ice Cream Help Our Honey Bees?  Well it can if it’s Häagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream!

You must have been living in a cave if you haven’t heard about the current crisis facing the worlds bee population at the moment!  Well, to be more precise - the human population!

Why humans?  It’s the bees that are in trouble!

Well, yes, but without the bees flying around between flowers - there will be no more pears, nuts or apples - along with many other major seeds and vegetables.  It is quoted that a third of all the food we eat has needed the honey bee!  I kid you not.  Bees are a necessary link in the pollination of many of the foods we eat - and without pollination - there is no fruit, nut, seed or vegetable for us to eat or use for cooking and this includes Vanilla itself!

Seriously - if you grew an apple tree in a bee-proof environment it would not grow a single apple in it’s life time!  In Japan - farmers killed off their honey bees with pesticides and now have to pollinate all their own fruit trees by hand using feathers on sticks!  Seriously. 

And can you imagine how many people it would take to hand-pollinate the 60 million almond trees in California alone if the honey bees carry on disappearing?  Let alone all the other crops we need them to pollinate.

Would it surprise you to know that there is a huge trade in honey bees across the world, where hives are transported all over the place to help pollinate giant mono-cultures of fruits and other crops that are too big for naturally occurring bees to pollinate.  Without this paid influx of honey bees - the crop numbers would fall until its wasn’t worth farming that crop anymore.

So, what’s my point?
Well, after reading a book about this growing crisis - I found out that Häagen Dazs are one of the serious parties that are getting involved in research.  They are funding the cause.

When you look at the fact that 50% of Häagen Dazs flavors are produced by bee pollination - they have a reason to get involved.  Imagine the flavours you’d be getting otherwise: potato and sweetcorn ice cream doesn’t sound so good, does it!

They have set up a website about their involvement as well as containing research information about the plight of bees and what is being done - and more importantly - how you can get involved.

So go visit Help The Honey Bees and get involved - or go and buy their ice cream and contribute with a full tummy!

This is the first great initiative I have seen about this agricultural and natural disaster - has anyone seen any others?

posted by admin on May 23

Would You Spend $155,000 to keep your dog forever?

Well, news has it that an American couple did just that!  5 years ago, they decided that they loved on of their pets so much, that they were willing to pay to have it’s DNA cryogenically frozen so that when the technology had improved enough - that they could get their little bundle of joy to walk again!

And the technology was improved last year - and so now they have a little puppy which is exactly the same genetically as their first one!  It was the first single-birth commercially cloned puppy in the world.

But why stop there?

There are plans afoot to clone animals that have been dead for some time - and in the case of the woolly mammoth - 40,000 years of it!

Cases in Japan recently have allowed scientists to clone mice that have been ‘dead for 16 years’ - so why not other extinct animals?

San Diego zoo have been busy with cloning - but with live animals.  They are not just cloning something normal like a sheep from a sheep - a la Dolly from the UK, they are cloning an endangered animal and crossing the species barrier by allowing the eggs to develop inside a bog standard domestic cow!

They basically made it possible for 2 south-east Asian oxes (Banteng) to be born through a cow mum.  Therefore paving the way for an elephant to give birth to a baby mammoth!

The Mammoth Task:
In December 2008, 70% of the mammoth genome was published from frozen specimens which had ‘fallen out’ of the permafrost in remote parts of Russia.  Obviously there is still 30% missing - but expert say that this won’t take long to overcome.

Basically, experts are claiming that the cloning of a mammoth will happen - it is just a matter of when!  The technology exists to re-create long dead animals - someone just needs to foot the bill.

They have several ways to clone the mammoth (or Tasmanian Tiger, or Dodo, etc..) and all depend on the getting the frozen cells to replicate and grow inside another animals womb.

They don’t actually need any sperm or mammoth eggs to perform this cloning (although that is a viable option) as they can electrically or chemically stimulate any cell into dividing sexually - so one dead mammoth can offer them goodness knows how many attempts at this!  All they need is the DNA - and this is found in every (non-sexual) cell of every living animal.  It’s just not always 100% there in long dead ones!

And Then?
Obviously, they need an animal from a similar taxonomic group and of a similar size, but everything else is a bit of guess work!

They also have no real idea of what they will need to don once the animal is born - as they have no ‘real’ mammoth breast milk to use - in-fact no idea at all about what it should contain - other than basing it on it’s only realistically useful relative - the elephant.

Another potential ethical issue at this point would be that there is only one - or a very small group, and possibly they are all the exact same animal genetically.  Needless to say, this won’t create a viable ‘herd’ or ‘flock’ of clones.  They would be just ’something to look at’.

We are also going to be bringing them back into a world that they no longer live in!  Yes, it is possible that humans were the main reason for their decline and extinction in the first place - but how do we know that they will survive in a new and changing world when we get them back?

Some people don’t even want beavers to be re-introduced into their neighbourhoods - so who is going to want a few giant hairy elephants roaming about their woods?

And are we not in a recession, with environmental issues all around us and medicine in desperate needs of funds?  Children starving, wildlife made extinct and forests being destroyed?

Would spending a fortune on raising the mammoth be a wise choice right now?