Garbage to Fuel Garbage Trucks
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Living-Green/2010/0107/California-garbage-trucks-fueled-by-garbage
Going to do another "green" post today. And to start it off, we have California, again, finding alternate ways to reduce green house gasses; Garbage Trucks fueled by garbage... sorta.
California has harnessed the many landfills around San Francisco (and a couple other smaller areas) to farm methane gas from them. Bacteria deep inside the landfill produces this gas when breaking down organic matter. The gas is then sucked up and processed to form a liquid fuel, which goes into garbage trucks to produce an alternate fuel source.
This method isn't as "green" as finding an alternative energy source that doesn't require combustion power, however, this does greatly reduce pollution produced with conventional fuel burning. Methane is considered a natural gas. This gas burns much cleaner than fossil fuels which means less CO2 build up in our atmosphere. Even though the trucks aren't powered by 100% pollution less energy sources, this does kill two birds with one stone by reducing the methane released into the atmosphere via landfills, AND by switching to a cleaner burning fuel for trucks already in use.
There is a bit more info about politics and money regarding this method but I am never fond of the "I don't want to diminish my yearly returns for an upgrade" excuse. Read the whole article for all the details.
NYC Taxi Upgrade... Eventually
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110503/ap_on_re_us/us_nyc_s_new_taxi
Now this article seemed really interesting to me for a number of reasons. New York City is planning on replacing more than 13,000 taxi cabs (eventually) with electric vehicles. That is a very positive step towards a better cleaner tomorrow. Something very few states are really even bothering with.
The new taxi is going to be a Nissan NV200, still powered by fuel, and will be phased into use at the beginning of 2013 replacing the current Crown Victorias. The platform is eventually going to be replaced with an electric engine as part of a plan to convert over to electric powered transportation. Although this isn't going to happen for a while, it is good to know this new version is getting twice the amount of city fuel mileage as the Crown Vics. This reduces pollution, fuel costs, and probably even the cost per trip to those using the public transportation system. Great news for those paying $1500 for a studio apartment.
A number of other benefits for this replacement includes sliding doors for easy in and out of tight spaces, increased passenger accessibility, and glass roofs to allow tourists to get a new look of New York. This is also the first vehicle used for public transportation that will come standard with passenger airbag safety equipment.
There is more to the article talking about the other vehicles that were almost chosen for use. Read the full article for all the info.
Hope you enjoyed today's articles. Follow, comment, and enjoy!
This is great ;D
ReplyDeleteWait, Imagine, a truck that goes around the town, get's the garbage, and make the garbage, the fuel, so they can goes around the town, to get the garbage and there it goes, IT'S A INFINITE CYCLE.
ReplyDeleteGoing to work, going to work. Helping the environment, saving the economy.
ReplyDeleteThat would be awesome!
ReplyDeleteThis is nice :)
ReplyDelete