COOL TECH OF BENZ!!

Check out this Fuel Cell car from Mercedes-Benz! It has no CO2 emission to the air and uses hydrogen energy. Here is a post of this kind of car.

Here is the dealerships and hydrogen fuel stations in LA area!

Where do you find the fuel for the next 125 years? The universe's single most abundant element is a good place to start. F-CELL drive converts compressed hydrogen—estimated to make up 74% of the known universe—into electricity. This electricity then powers an electric motor, delivering spirited performance and a range of around 190 miles, all while returning the equivalent of over 
50 highway mpg and emitting nothing but water vapor. More than just a new way of moving society forward, F-CELL is a preview of a future unconstrained by range anxiety, nonrenewable fuels and worrisome emissions.

For futher information, please go to http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/green/electric_car

http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/green

 (By the way, I highly recommend the ad of this car!)

Why Couldn't Plastic Bags Disappear in China?

   In 2007,Chinese Government banned plastic bags of the whole country. The state counsil released relative policies on banning plastic bags in China. In other words, plastic bags will never be offered for free in China anymore, including in markets, department stores, shopping malls, etc. However, if you want to get a plastic bag so badly because you aren't able to hold all the thing you buy, you will have to pay 0.1-0.5RMB to buy a bag. In addition, community workers offered residents cloth bags for free.

      In fact, I live in Shanghai, China. Soon after this policy was released, I quickly got interested in it and thought that it was a really cool idea. The government finanlly did something about the huge negative impact on the environment in China. 

      At first several month, I have to say that the policy worked  really well. Everything went exactly as it supposed to be. But however, several months later, plastic bags started to appear in markets and to be offered for free. What's worse, most of the plastic bags are extremely thin and I didn't know the ingredients inside.

       I didn't know what to do. It seems that writing to the local government isn't  as efficient as it suppose to be. Anyway, it is a servere issue that need more attention on it. 

The Company Born to Be 'Green'------Interface

    Have you ever heard of the company called interface?

    Well, probably you haven't heard of anything of this company,but maybe you can see its products everywhere in your office, classroom, or even museums! What can that name remind you of? An IT company? Something to do with Internet? Well, the answer is NO!

    Interface is the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet. Their carpet tiles are very flexible, which means that you can cut them into any shapes without loosening the fibers of the carpet tiles. They released several collections in different themes. All of them are really finely designed and are made of recyclable materials. Actually, last week, my classmates and I just went to Interface and had a lecture about Interface's suatainable strategy. All of us were deeply impressed by Interface's remarkable approach to sustainability. Interface is not only the one of the companies that applied sustainable strategy into their current and future plans, but also is the only company which was founded because of sustainability. That means the product of Interface,A.K.A, the carpet tiles are only the intermediary of this company in order to promote their ideas of how to make the business case for sustainability.

    The speaker showed us different samples in the manufacturing of carpet tiles, including the fibers in the carpets, the polymers, etc. These substances gave us the intuitive overview of the life cycle assessment of Interface. Statistics showed that Interface could recycle 80% of their carpet tiles, and what's more gratifying is that Interface was moving towards the recycle rate to 100%! Who would ever noticed that a single piece of carpet tile may make a dramatic progress in being net positive to the environment!

     One of the programs that are on track is that the employees of Interface have created a technology to convert plastic fishing nets into the polymers and make the polymers into carpet tiles! They have released the particular program which calls for the villagers living in areas, where there are tons of broken fishing nets, to gather the wasted nets together so that they could process them easily.

      I don't know if there are still other companies that are as committed as Interface. At least Interface is a perfect example of combining sustainability and business together. No matter what reason for a company to apply sustainable strategy, this is undoubtly a global tendency that could be soon spread around all over the world. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing the big transformation of the enterprises in the near future!

      For futher information, please go to http://www.interfaceglobal.com/default.aspx