Solutions de collecte d’appareils ménagers – Eco-organisme pour le recyclage d’appareils électriques – Traitement des Déchets d’Equipements Electriques et Electroniques (DEEE) – Eco-systèmes. Belgium wants to build a doughnut-shaped island to store energy. Belgium's North Sea minister has revealed the nation's novel solution to preserving excess energy -- build a doughnut-shaped island a few miles of the coast that continually pumps water through its delicious centre. Apparently the country has so much clean energy, it doesn't know what to do with it, and while that doesn;t appear to sound like a problem on the surface, storing renewable energy is a big problem. At the moment, excess energy generated by Belgium's wind farms is simply going to waste, reports Reuters.
"We have a lot of energy from the wind mills and sometimes it just gets lost because there isn't enough demand for the electricity," a spokeswoman for minister Johan Vande Lanotte said. Once completed, the island would receive excess energy from the country's wind farms and use it to pump water out of the doughnut hole (its reservoir). The idea does not sound so bizarre when you consider that pumped hydroelectricity reportedly has a storage efficiency of more than 80 percent.
Freegan.info | home. Climate Change Is Inevitable â Itâs Time to Adapt | Magazine. Illustration: Stephen Doyle In the waning weeks of 2009, planeloads of scientists, politicians, and assorted climate wonks from 192 countries will blow through a few million tons of CO2 to jet to Copenhagen, one of the world’s most carbon-conscious cities. The occasion is the much-awaited United Nations Climate Change Conference, aka Kyoto 2. Speeches will be made. Goals and targets will be hammered out. Limited victory will be declared. Set a Google News alert for “Last Chance to Stop Global Warming.”
There’s just one problem. Now here’s some good news: We can still come out OK. But won’t the transition to a warmer world be painful? Ditto the other supposed horsemen of the climate apocalypse. It’s worth keeping in mind that the planet we inhabit has always been fundamentally out of control, driven by fantastically complex, chaotic systems we scarcely understand. There are lots of reasons to avoid shifting the focus to adaptation. Unfixable Computers Are Leading Humanity Down a Perilous Path. Circuit boards on display at an electronics repair shop in Nairobi, Kenya.
Photo: Kyle Wiens I’ve been writing about Apple and the value of repair for the better part of the last decade. Repair is our mission at iFixit — and it always has been. Even so, I didn’t expect the scale of the public response when I argued last week that consumers should choose the hackable, fixable non-Retina MacBook Pro over its sleeker-and-shinier-but-locked-down sibling. The debate has been contentious. Others said repair doesn’t matter; consumers don’t care. The future of this planet depends on the quality of our electronic devices — and how long they last But sending your difficult-to-repair computer off to a Genius doesn’t exempt you from repair troubles.
Yet I think this argument misses the bigger point. Technology doesn’t just make our lives more convenient. I dream of a sustainable technology industry that makes life-changing innovations like the iPad available to everyone on the planet. Meet âthe Minimalistsâ â two guys who had it all, and gave it up. Almost 12 months ago, my family resolved to quit buying new stuff for one year.
The experiment itself was nothing new — in fact, it’s been recycled many times over. But we wanted to take a triple bottom line approach: In a year of widespread belt-tightening, focusing on people, the planet, and profits — or in this case our pocketbooks — made just as much sense for families as it does for businesses. To clarify, it didn’t mean we wouldn’t buy anything at all, but when we did need something, we’d try to find it used.
When we could, we’d borrow or rent. Of course we still buy our food new and we make exceptions for some essentials like toiletries and medicine — and underwear. The idea is to be more conscious and thoughtful about the things we do buy. The experiment has not only altered my relationship with stuff, it’s opened my eyes to all kinds of people — and whole movements — dedicated to simplifying their lives and breaking out of joyless consumerist mindsets.