Recently, the buses in London are now powered by coffee, instead of fossil fuel.

Of course, we will not burn the coffee beans as fuel, but the coffee grounds instead, which is known as the leftover after brewing the coffee. It is the first time that coffee was tested to fuel the buses after cooking oil and tallow oil. This project aims to be an important step to reduce the toxic air pollution of London.

The company behind this revolution — bio-bean, is the first company in the world to industrialise the process of recycling wast coffee grounds into biofuels as well as biochemicals. According to the research, waste coffee grounds disposed via landfill emit methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Of course, the habit of having a cup of coffee is not blamed, but we should notice that it has an impressive carbon footprint.

Recycle and reuse the coffee grounds is beneficial both economically and efficiently. First of all, the coffee grounds is always considered useless after the coffee is done and the grounds would be tossed into the trash bin and emit methane spontaneously during the landfill. This action of reusing the coffee ground would reduce the green gas emission as well as reduce the amount of waste. On the other hand, it is found that the coffee grounds have considerable high caloric output, it burns hotter and longer than wood and have 100% carbon-neutral environmental impact. After the coffee grounds is dried, the extracting coffee oil is mixed with solvent and then the solution is combined with other fuels into a hybrid B20 fuel, which could be used in diesel buses directly.

I am really impressed by this innovation as previously, no matter the hydrogen energy or electricity, people uses complicated process as well as additional energy consumption to produce these purified fuel, while the reuse of the coffee grounds would be much easier and require less useful resources. So next time, when you are having a cup of coffee, the journey of the coffee beans has not end yet.

Apple plans to make iPhones and MacBooks from recycled materials.

Apple, as one of the most famous electrical device company around the world, brings new design (however the new design no longer has really revolutionary innovation in the recent year) as well as incredibly high price every year, and many people are really crazy about their products. It is nice to see that this leading technology company is also a leader in sustainable manufacture.

In the article, it is indicated that Apple contributes its effort to environment as well as the society in many ways: for instance, they noticed the problem in Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than half of the worldwide supply is produced, however it is reported that mineral is mined by hand and even child miners are involved in the production process, which is quite against the human rights as the it contains high workload as well as child labor. Because of that, technology giants like Apple and Tesla are among companies refusing to those “unethical cobalt” in their batteries. Now, Apple says it has stopped buying cobalt from artisanal mines and requires the cooperated cobalt company to verify the individual artisanal mines according to Apple’s standards, and continues to cooperate with local Congolese groups to improve the working environment and stop child labor.

On the other hand, recycled material is used behind the delicate package of each Apple device, on the official website of Apple as well as its annual report, it indicated that they are sourcing virgin paper responsibly and make the iPhone 7 boxes from responsibly managed paper, bamboo and waste sugarcane.

In addition, in the 2017 Progress Report, it also indicated that the new Apple Park in Cupertino is the largest LEED certified building in North America and 95% of the material from demolished buildings at the site was recycled or reused for the new Apple campus. Also, it is indicated that the windows, insulation, shading and rooting materials of the building is carefully selected in order to reduce heating and air-conditioning loads.

The Swedish power plant burns discarded H&M as renewable fuel instead of coal. And the last coal delivery for the power plant would be arrived on Tuesday.–– Bloomburg Technology

Initially, I was really surprised about this news. Previously when somebody talks about the ways to deal with old clothes, I would think about donating them to poor people or, as we discussed during the class, recycling the clothes for new design or taking the clothes to the repair point like what Patagonia does. Before seeing this news, I had never thought about burning clothes for electricity, as they are recyclable, reusable and more valuable than other kind of rubbish.

However, on the other hand, this is also a good idea. As the clothes of H&M and other fast-fashion brands are largely produced, and not all of the clothes are recycled or being reused as secondhand clothing. In America, about 10.5 million tons of clothing is being sent to landfills every year, which is one of the poorest recycling rates of any reusable material. Although burning the clothes is also not a really recyclable way, but at least it provides a new and wild idea for people to deal with the old stuff.

On the other hand, of course the burning solution is not applicable to every discarded stuff, some of the materials contain toxic parts which would be even more damageable to the environment than being thrown somewhere. And fortunately the stuffs make sure that the clothes gathered from H&M are all safe to use (burn), and therefore it would not damage the environment when producing power.

Moreover, this power station in Vasteras also has a deal with nearby cities and even overseas to receive rubbish to fuel its main boiler. I think it would be also a good idea for the power plants all over the world, especially Asian countries, as most of the cloth factories are located in Asia as well as the largest proportion of the population in the world is in Asia. As the fossil fuel is non-renewable, it is better to burn the proper waste in a more economical and sustainable way.

“China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, is poised to install a record amount of solar-power capacity this year, prompting researchers to boost forecasts as much as 80 percent.”–Bloomberg Technology

Right now, almost every country in the world is seeking for a sustainable way for energy generation in order to substitute the traditional ways of generation and reduce the carbon footprint. Traditionally people use fossil fuel power stations which burn coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce energy. On the other hand, most of the renewable energy contains solar-energy, hydroelectric power, nuclear power and wind power.

Nuclear power plant is always a controversial topic, especially after the nuclear leak of Fukushima nuclear power plant during the 2011 Toukoku earthquake, people started to focus on the safety factor of the nuclear plant rather than its efficiency and effect. Although compared with solar-energy, hydroelectric power and wind power, nuclear power plant requires the least of the surrounding environmental situation and it could operate during anytime in the whole year, people do not really trust the stability of the nuclear power and worry about the waste after the operation, therefore the nuclear power plant is not the popular option of renewable energy.

Similarly, people also worry about the safety of hydroelectric power. For example, the Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest hydroelectric power station in the world, but people are worried that in case of terrorist attack and war, the Three Gorges Dam would probably be a target as the dam failure or destruction would cause severe damage of the area at the downstream. Moreover, the establishment of the Three Gorges Dam has influenced the climate of the surrounding area, therefore people are now criticise the establishment of it.

In the meanwhile, the wind energy and solar-power have become more and more popular. For the wind power stations, they occupy quite a few land and could even be settled by the sea, such as the Dutch windpark at Egmond aan Zee and the Lillgrund wind farm of Sweden. (I could clearly see it when I was on the train crossing the Öresund Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö, it is so amazing!) On the other hand, solar-power is also a preferable to generate power, this year a panda-shaped solar plant was built in Datong, China and has a capacity of 50 megawatts connected to the state grid. Solar-power does not have any by-product, solar panels just stand there and produce electricity. However, it requires a lot of land for placement as well as good weather for operation.

In all, no matter what kind of form to produce energy, as long as it is a renewable way to generate energy and able to ensure long-term operation, then we are still on the way toward a sustainable society.

These days I am ill, and had to spend most of my time at home. Besides of resting in the bed, sometimes I would like to walk around in the living room and the kitchen and one day I think of something interesting.

Most of us are living with other students or friends, in other word, roommates. Similarly to our society, some rules need to be settled in order to maintain the efficiency as well as equity. Therefore, I think the sustainability concept also exists in micro-scale — home.

For instance, in our kitchen, there is a dishwasher to use, and for convenience, one of my roommate would like to use it rather than washing the dishes himself. Also, in order to lower the water consumption, it is more economical to turn it on when it is fully-loaded with dishes. However, before each operation, those unclean dishes are mostly placed in the sink or left on the table, which makes the kitchen so messy. One other problem is that there might be a situation that there are only dirty plates left when one wants to use a clean one.

On the other hand, if one could clean the dishes immediately after the meal, it would be easier to clean them than those which have been staying in the sink for days, also for certain bowl or plate that there is only one in the kitchen, cleaning directly would ensure that those would be available for the next person who wants to use, and also the kitchen would not be so messy. No matter what, one should clean the dishes anyways, so why not cleaning them right away?

Similarly, in our society, issue like pollution is also a kind of problem that would grow larger if it has been accumulating for a long time. Therefore it would be more difficult if the problem is ignored for a long time and be solved later.

The Uber company released an advertisement called “Boxes” recently, illustrating the traffic problem in Asian cities.

In the video, each of the “driver” is in a car-sized box and wanders around on the road. Some of them are finding parking places, some are waiting for the lights and some are just stuck on the road. There are also some shots to reveal the storage problem: A lady is walking through piles of boxes to find her own “car” (in reality, it is hard to find your car in big parking lot), a man was smashed by the boxes from above when trying to take his “car” at the bottom (as sometimes your car is stuck by other cars in the front or at the back, you need to wait for the owners of these cars to move theirs first in order to drive out). At the end of this short video, lots of the boxes leak out of the parking building. (which shows the overload of cars in the parking buildings in large Asian cities)

I really like this advertisement from UBER, not only because it is hilarious, but also it really illustrate the problem in a more straightforward way, and more importantly, it expressed the main idea of UBER: Ride together.

The main reason of the traffic jams in big cities is the inefficient use of the car. For example, a four-door car could contain about 5 people, however, most of the cars you could see on the street just contain the driver him/herself. Just imagine, if 4 colleagues could drive to work in one car instead of 4 separate cars, there would be 3 cars less on the road, if this concept is wildly-accepted by the public (for example more than one person in each vehicle on the road), the road situation would be much better in every city.

Moreover, some governments also released some legislations to limit or stop the growth of cars. For example, the government in Beijing introduced a policy that every potential vehicle buyer need to participate in a lottery in order to get the license plate. Similarly, in Singapore, where is the most expensive place in the world to own a car, the government would like to maintain zero growth of the total car amount in the future.

“Beijing has issued its first orange smog alert ahead of the winter when air pollution levels usually soar in northern China as power is ramped up to fuel central heating systems.”–South China Morning Post

10 years earlier, the most unpleasant weather in Beijing would be only the sandstorm, which mainly occurs only during spring and annoys all citizens in April or May. The Gobi deserts are the main source of the sand.

These years, the sandstorms were not the worst weather around the year, we are more annoyed by the smog (or haze), which could come at anytime during the year, especially winter and spring. As I clearly remembered, the year 2017 started with a clear sky, however, the second day was covered by haze unfortunately.

In November, 2014, the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit was held in Beijing. During the meeting, Beijing enjoyed attractive clear sky and good weather for almost one whole week. During that time, one derisive buzzword called “APEC蓝” (APEC Blue) was widespread nationally, which is defined as “something wonderful but also fleeting”, because we all knew that this scene was somehow “artificial”. Before the summit, the government forced a lot of industry around Beijing to stop production, especially those factories which had high-energy demand, such as coal, steel production and heating supply. Therefore, the air quality problem is not a irresolvable issue, as long as there are real policies and actions.

Besides those large summit, the weather in Beijing is highly determined by the wind direction: If the wind comes from the north (which contains cold air), the weather will be nice; however, if the wind comes from the south (which contains warm air and some polluted industries are located in southern provinces), the air quality would be bad.

“Economic growth or the environment?”. This is always a problem in China. For the central government, they definately want to maintain the annual economic increase as well as ideally keep the environment situation well, but some governors in small towns or countryside do not really care about it as most of the highly-polluted and energy-demanded factories in small places contribute a large amount of the tax income of the town.

“Would you like a separate bag for the meat?”

“Would you like one more bag for the milk?”

These are the two common questions I hear when I check out in Safeway, which sound quite friendly to the customer. But wait, another bag?

Safeway is the supermarket I would like to choose when doing grocery. I like it because the large amount of products to choose from, the fairly low price as well as the discounts. However, one other reason why it is particular to me compared with other supermarkets is: it is the only supermarket I found in Vancouver that provides free plastic bags.

On August 29th, I arrived at YVR Airport and started my study trip with two friends in Vancouver, Canada. After settled down in the hostel, we went out for the whole afternoon and went to IGA to buy something to eat for dinner. However we forgot to take a bag, as we did not buy much and it is not worthy to pay extra money for a plastic bag, we put most of them in our backpacks and took the rest in our hands. I thought like any other supermarkets in China or the Netherlands, the plastic bags in these large supermarket chains would cost few money in order to let citizens to take their own shopping bags when doing the grocery and reduce the plastic bag consumption.

Until one day, I went to the Safeway near my place just after lectures, however this time I need a plastic bag to carry the products I bought. After I went out, I could not find the plastic bag price on the receipt. “Plastic bag is free in Canada?” I thought, but then I found Safeway is probably the only supermarket that provides free plastic bag in Vancouver.

Ten years before I would question why the supermarket charge the plastic bag, but right now I am confused why Safeway provide the plastic bag for free. As we all know, the plastic bag is one of the most difficult thing to degrade and charging the plastic bags is one common way to discourage people to reduce plastic bag consumption and also reuse the bags. But is this a really useful way for the limitation or just to alert people?

The plastic bag here is 5 cents each. In China, the plastic bags in supermarkets are from ￥0.2 to ￥0.5 (about 3 cents to 10 cents). Although the policy of plastic bags limitation in China started 9 years ago,  ironically, the supermarkets earned a lot from the plastic bags’ profit. In the Netherlands, the price of the shopping bag differs from its size, from €0.35 to more than €1, which are relatively expensive. According to the report from the Dutch government, there are 70% less plastic bags cross the counter and 40% less plastic bags as litter. They are designed to be reused for future shopping and they are in really good quality, but I still saw some people pick it easily at the cashier and even sometimes they appeared in the trash bins as trash bags.

I admit, you could still find free plastic bags in some stores or on the market in the Netherlands or in China, but I do not think it is possible to find free plastic bags in large supermarket chains in these countries. On Safeway’s website, the company states that they cares about the sustainability and dedicate themselves to reduce plastic bags usage, but I kind of doubt it as they do not even try to charge the plastic bags and connive customers to take them freely.

After these experiences in different countries around the world, I start to think: Is this policy really effective? Who gets the most benefit from it: the environment, the government, or even the supermarket chains?

“I don’t need a bag, please.”

“Excellent!”, said the cashier.

Well, regardless of others’ habits, we should be responsible to our own behaviour.

(This article reflects the personal view of the author)

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