Some good and bad ideas

I wanted to give you these examples of smart things, the first three taken from Goleman's book Ecological Intelligence:

   

The Paris Metro’s new line uses old technology in a holistic way. The standard technology generates electricity from the friction produced when a train brakes and then uses this energy to boost the same train when it starts or accelerates. On the new line 14 the electricity all the trains make by braking is fed back into the power system so that any train can draw on it, reducing the energy needs of the line by 30%. 

FiberMark is a manufacturer of papers, packaging, and lots of related things. It has a paper mill in Brattleboro, Vermont.  where they switched from fuel oil to used cooking oils to power the factory’s turbines, drying papers, and heating the plant. This change reduced their fuel oil’s use by 75%, reduced emissions of sulphur dioxide & nitrous oxide, both cause of acid rain, and improved the air quality in the plant.

   

Goleman also wrote about plans for a plant to be located in South Bronx. The plant was designed to use recycled paper harvested from offices' recycling as its pulp stock, not that from trees. “There’s more paper fibre per acre in NYC than you can get from an acre in the Amazonas, “ says Jonathan Rose, who helped draw up the plans. “It’s in the recycling bin or the garbage.” Paper plants use huge amounts of water, so the site was chosen to be close to a sewage plant, the paper would be made using cleansed sewage water rather than devouring fresh water.  Before, NYC’s newspaper received their paper by truck from Maine or Canada. This journey will be avoided. “Why do we have pollution?” Rose asks. “Pollution is a sign of incomplete consumption – something being wasted. ..”       

In a recent paper I found a report on Urbee, a new car designed around energy use, minimising the use of fuel to help preserve nature. It's expected to use 1 gallon on 200 mi or 1.18 litre on 100 km. Great but there's a problem: design. What does it help to have a super fuel efficient car when it's so ugly nobody would want to buy it? Oh, there's another problem: With oil corporations controlling politics (at least in North America) how are you going to produce and market this car? 

There's still plenty of "un-smart" things though: The state of Washington considered launching a tax on everything "environmental" making life more costly for those who care about nature and live accordingly. How retarded!              

We were given a baby bedtime lotion by Johnson & Johnson. It claims that thanks to the release of "NaturalCalm" essences baby will fall asleep better. This NaturalCalm nonsense is a "patent pending blend of gentle and soothing aromas". Reading the ingredients list I could not figure out though where those come from. Apart from water, mineral oil and glycerine there's not an ingredient on the list that I understand. But it's got parfum in it, which could be anything. As a matter of fact the lotion smells so strongly I can't bear it. That's not for my baby.