Words About Things

We tend to forget about our waste once it has been um… dispensed with, flushing it away for someone else to deal with. But what if you could power your car with human waste thus reducing the amount of pollution you create and the amount of money you spend on driving?  Lots of cars in the UK currently run on liquid natural gas (LNG) but could compressed natural gas (CNG) be just as effective?

Wessex Water Plc are a water and sewage-treatment firm so they have access more human waste than they know what to do with, until now. They have recently had a Volkswagen Beetle converted to run on compressed natural gas from their Bristol sewage treatment works. They are running a six month trial to test the viability of powering their entire fleet from small cars right up to larger vans with natural gas.

The processing plant is already partially powered by electricity created from natural gas and Wessex Water even creates enough power to sell some back to the National Grid. Releasing biogas back into the atmosphere would be harmful as Methane is a ‘greenhouse’ gas so the company wanted to use the excess they created. They say the car runs well:

“We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK. If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.” – Mohammed Saddiq

Unfortunately powering cars using human created biogas is not an entirely scalable idea, it takes the combined output of 70 homes to create enough fuel to power the VW bug for 1 year. If you consider that most households have a least one car or van there just isn’t enough poo being produced.

Last week I created a page which aggregates Twitter tweets which are related to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. All tweets containing #COP15 are displayed on this page albeit temporarily. The aim was to create a live stream of people’s thoughts and opinions about Climate Change Copenhagen and the events which were happening there. The good thing about drawing in content like this is that it has not been filtered through an organization like a newspaper or a television station so it is not overly biased. Whilst this is an interesting jumping off point (particularly if you follow a few links) it does not give you as much information as some other sources.

It is possible to stream live videos of some of the talks going on at the Climate Change Conference thanks to the wonders of the internet! Below I have embedded several live streams which you can watch until the conference ends on Friday. There are also links to the sites which are hosting the streams. If you have any more to add please get in contact via the contact page.

Live on TheUptake (Via live.tcktcktck.org)

OneClimate.net

As you may know April the 1st in National Energy Wasting day, a time when we all try to waste as much energy as possible. The best way to celebrate is to turn on all your lights and drive everywhere, even if it is within walking distance. You can also get down to the latest single by Dan Power called ‘Energy Wasting Day’, the worlds first ‘Anti-Eco’ single. The video features girls pole dancing around patio heaters and various other methods of wasting energy.

Of course this is all very tongue in cheek, national energy wasting day was was created to draw attention to how we all contribute to climate change.