News Bits

• Province offers financial incentives for low-flush toilets
• Kyoto stove wins $75,000 FT climate change innovation competition
• Samsung offers free cartridge return
• Future Shop makes recycling part of its future
• Home Depot and the Colour Green

Province offers financial incentives for low-flush toilets

Kyoto stove wins $75,000 FT climate change innovation competition

We all hate packaging, but the Kyoto box is that rare thing - a cardboard carton that's part of the solution. It's also the winner of Forum for the Future's Climate Challenge competition with HP and the Financial Times to find the year's best climate change-tackling innovation. After voting by FT readers and mulling over by an eminent panel including Eileen Claussen and Rajendra Pachauri, it's the Kyoto box, a solar-powered cardboard cooker that will take away the $75,000 prize.

It's aimed at the 3 billion people who use firewood to cook, and in the words of Kenya-based Jon Bohmer, the entrepreneur behind the scheme, "We're saving lives and saving trees. I doubt if there is any other technology that can make so much impact for so little money.'

The box costs about $6 to make, and ironically uses the greenhouse effect to boil and bake. It consists of two boxes, one inside the other, with an acrylic cover, which lets solar energy in and traps it. Black paint on the inner box and silver foil on the outer help concentrate the heat, while a layer of straw or newspaper between the two provides insulation. By making it possible to boil water cheaply, Bohmer believes the box will save some of the millions of children who die each year from water-borne diseases. It should also halve the need for firewood, saving an estimated two tonnes of carbon per family per year.

Kyoto box was amongst 300 projects from around the world that entered the competition. The runners-up were:

• Mootral, developed by Neem Biotech in the UK - a feed additive, derived from garlic, which cuts the methane in cow, sheep and other ruminant burps and farts by at least 5%, and up to 25% with optimum dosage. Methane from ruminants is estimated to be responsible for 20% of global warming;
• Evaporating Tiles developed by Loughborough University, an indoor cooling system which works by using exhaust air to evaporate water within hollow tiles built into a false ceiling. It halves the energy use of air-conditioning systems and can be used as a standalone.
• The other finalists were Carbonscape, a joint New Zealand/UK venture to fix biomass carbon by turning wood into biochar -a kind of charcoal that can be used as soil conditioner, buried as a carbon sink, or burnt as a highly-efficient fuel; and Deflecktor, created by ADEF in the USA, an inexpensive, lightweight aerodynamic cover for truck wheels reduces drag and can cut fuel consumption by 2% on an eight-wheel rig.

We're very pleased with the way the Climate Challenge has shown how green innovation can tackle climate change, and hope all the finalists will now find a faster route to market. Bohmer says publicity from the competition has already generated opportunities for his venture with a number of companies and academic institutions interested in the stove. He is planning to use the prize to conduct mass trials in ten countries and is also developing a more robust cooker in corrugated plastic, which he says can be mass-produced as cheaply as the cardboard version.

Carbon credits should help the project scale up: Bohmer says they will cover the cost of the boxes as well as a package of other affordable low-carbon products including a solar torch. Distribution will be critical if the stove is to overcome cultural barriers to cooking without flames. Bohmer plans to distribute the package free on condition that families use it, and aims to work with women's groups in each community to build acceptability.

(Source: wwww.grist.org, June 2009)

Samsung offers free cartridge return

Samsung has announced its own recycling program in Canada . The program, called Samsung Take Back and Recycling Program, will be a free service that lets customers return empty Samsung-branded toner cartridges for laser and multi-function printers.

STAR is supported by Canada Post, and will see returned cartridges safely reprocessed into their major usable component materials, like plastic and metals. These bulk, reprocessed materials will then be made available to the market for re-use in creating a range of other products.

To return an empty Samsung toner cartridge, just visit www.samsung.com/ca/star to print out a pre-addressed, pre-paid Canada Post return shipping label, than return the box to any Canada Post Post office or red label letter box.

[Recycling Today , Feb. 2008)

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Future Shop makes recycling part of its future

Your household really only needs so many coasters, so what do you do with umpteenth unusable CD in your life? Now you can take that Windows 98 boot CD that you’ve been storing in your desk for the last 10 years, and recycle it at Future Shop! But the good news doesn’t stop there — they also accept several small electronic devices not covered under our Saskatchewan Waste Electronic Equipment Program. Death-prone items like portable CD and DVD players, MP3 players and cell phones can be taken to any Canadian Future Shop location and deposited in the Greentec recycling bin. Although this program does not provide us with a place for the cassette tapes (or vinyl) haunting our basement, nor provide any incentive to make electronics last any longer, it is at least a step in the right direction. See the Future Shop website for further details.

(Source: November 2007 WasteWatch)

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Home Depot and the Colour Green

Our big orange box store friend, The Home Depot, is starting to turn green. The home renovation retailer announced that as of November 22nd 2007, they will take in compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs) for recycling. As a major retailer of CFBs in Canada, this is an important stewardship step. The light bulbs have become popular for home owners because of their energy savings. In theory, they provided a ‘win-win’ lighting option by reducing both energy costs for users and total demand for electricity. Their only downside is the small, but important, amount of mercury present in them. Consequently, a safe way to dispose of them was just as critical for many buyers as their energy efficiency. Although CFBs have been sold and used for many years now in Saskatchewan, this is the first retailer program to recycle the bulbs.

(Source: November 2007 WasteWatch)

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