Tag Archives: Three Gorges dam
Do some green deeds while sleeping
Ecotypic Bed
Sleeping till late hasn’t really been too productive for any of us before but here is Ecotypic Bed. Well, sleeping and lazing around on the Ecotypic Bed could do a lot more!
Designed by Arthur Xin is a marvel of technology. Packing a battery below, this Ecotypic Bed generates electricity from the activities carried out on the bed. Basically, everything you do in bed and around the bed is turned into energy. This electricity generated is then use to power up the LED reading lamps, the speakers that play some soothing music to wake you up, and also LED lights that help the plants on this one grow.
The Ecotypic Bed has hooked on a bunch of straps and pulleys for you to exercise with, that helps generate electricity too.
“This is a green bed.” It has everything you need! A LED reading lights, speakers and a flower box.
There’s a battery below the bed which turns the activities you do on the bed and around the bed into energy.
Do everything all day long on the Ecotypic bed!
Firth and his Wife go green on Oscar’s red carpet
At the 83rd Academy Awards, actor Colin Firth not only stole the show with accolades for his The King’s Speech performance but for his eco-friendly attire.
As always, Firth and his wife Livia donned environment-friendly outfits at the Oscars and this year they did it recycled style in order to raise awareness for recycled fashion.
Livia, who founded Fair-trade boutique Eco Age, wore an amazing paneled gown recycled from old dresses on the red carpet while Colin made a Tom Ford suit made of ethical materials look better than good. “It defies what you normally see on the red carpet. It’s really beautiful — it’s pretty but also has a message,” said Livia.
Know the emissions of your car and keep it efficient
The cars we use today just keep chocking the life out of our environment. And every time we rev our engines or leave our cars on at traffic signals, we blow up a load of fuel and at the same time, spout out carbon emissions.
Here’s a device to help keep a check on your current car’s emissions. The Eco-Navigator is basically a GPS navigation device with a high- speed Internet access and an Eco-Way mode. This mode plugs into your car’s diagnostic port, and keeps a check on your car’s current miles-per-gallon, throttle position (as a 0-100 per cent), and pounds of CO2 emitted per mile. The device also gives out information on the ideal stats your car should throw up, allowing you to alter the way you drive accordingly and helping increase fuel efficiency!
A smart device that helps you drive smart, the Eco-Navigator is the answer to current day efficiency woes.
Wonderful ants
Little ants impact the environment in a big way, thanks to their role as “ecosystem engineers” and predators, a British study has found.
A University of Exeter study found that ants have two distinct effects on environment. They move soil by building nests and they affect the level of nutrients in the soil by collecting food. This can indirectly impact the population of many animal groups, from decomposers such as Collembola, to species much higher up the food chain, the Journal of Animal Ecology reports.
The ants prey on a wide range of other animals too, according to an Exeter university statement. “Ants are very effective predators who thrive in huge numbers. They’re also very territorial and aggressive… All of this means they have a strong influence on their surrounding area,” said study author Dirk Sanders.
“What we found is that despite being predators, their presence can also lead to an increase in density and diversity of other animal groups. They genuinely play a key role in the local environment, having a big influence on the grass-land food web,” Sanders said.
The study, carried out in Germany, investigated the impact of the presence of different combinations and densities of black garden ants and common red ants.
International accords on saving forests have little impact
International accords on saving vulnerable forests are having little impact because they do not attack the core causes such as growing demand for bio-fuels and food crops, a new report said.
With Africa and South American alone losing 7.4 million hectares of forest a year, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) said a drastic change of policy is needed by the United Nations and governments.
Sixty international experts said in the report, to be presented at a UN forum this week that too much attention is being put on forests as a store of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming.
Deforestation accounts for about a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions each year which are blamed for rising temperatures. Live trees act as a sponge for carbon but give it off when they decay or are burned.
“Our findings suggest that disregarding the impact on forests of sectors such as agriculture and energy will doom any new international efforts to conserve forests and slow climate change,” said Jeremy Rayner chairman of the IUFRO report panel.
Even the most recent UN backed initiative, Reducing Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD) is criticized because the panel said it seeks a single global solution.
The experts said that REDD and other international accords should focus more on supporting regional and national efforts to save the forests at risk.
“Unless all sectors work together to address the impact of global consumption, growing demand for food and bio-fuels, and problems of land scarcity, REDD will fail to arrest environmental degradation and will heighten poverty,” said Constance McDermott of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
Most popular posts of 2010 on Green Planet Fan
Another beautiful years is about to end and I want to wish you all a happy new year. Here are the top ten list of post which was most popular for the year 2010.
All these datas are based on Google Analytics.
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/celebrities-with-green-homes/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/how-to-reuse-old-shoe-laces/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/pollution-renders-quarter-of-chinas-water-unusable/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/how-to-reuse-plastic-cups/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/sunderbans-may-submerge-by-2020/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/stopping-co2-emissions-cannot-avert-climate-change/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/how-green-is-hydroelectricity/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/hong-kong-brings-plastic-bags-use-down-by-90-percent/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/spain-boasts-of-worlds-largest-solar-station/
http://www.greenplanetfan.org/are-you-willing-to-give-up-bathing-for-environment/
Three Gorges dam threaten by debris
Thousands of tonnes of rubbish washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China’s massive Three Gorges dam and is in places so thick that people can stand on it. Chen Lei, a senior official at the China Three Gorges Corporation said that 3,000 tonnes of rubbish was being collected at the dam everyday, but there were still not enough resources to clean it all up. “The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the mitre gate of the dam,” said referring to the gates of the locks which allows shipping to pass through the Yangtze river. The river is a crucial commercial artery for Chingqing and other areas in China’s less-developed western interior provinces. 
Some 50,000 square meters of the water’s surface had been covered by debris washed down since the start of the rainy season in July. The rubbish is around 60cm deep and in some part so compact that people can walk on it. The three Gorges dam is the world’s largest hydro power project and was built partly to tame the flooding along the Yangtze which filled over 4,000 people in 1998. The dam has cost over £24 billion and forced relocation of 1.3 million people to make way for the reservoir. Towns, fields and historical and archaeological sites has been submerged. Environmentalist have warned for years that the reservoir could turn into a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial chemicals backing on to Chongquing city, fearing that silt trapped behind the dam could cause erosion downstream.
-The Guardian