6 new technologies cutting carbon footprint

KETCHUP CAR

You say toma­to, I say food-pro­cess­ing byprod­uct as bio­plas­tic feed­stock. While the lyri­cal twist might not make for a clas­sic sing-song, it could help man­u­fac­ture cars for Ford. Two brand giants have teamed up to explore poten­tial appli­ca­tions for use of left­overs from mil­lions of tons of toma­toes that go into mak­ing the world’s most well-known ketchup. H. J. Heinz Com­pa­ny vice pres­i­dent, glob­al pack­ag­ing R&D/innovation, Dr Michael Oko­roafor explains: “Repur­pos­ing fac­to­ry waste to make com­pos­ite mate­ri­als with plas­tic is a nov­el approach to reduc­ing depen­dence on petro­le­um-based resins. The Heinz-Ford toma­to fibre project has the poten­tial to replace £10 mil­lion to £20 mil­lion of plas­tic derived from fos­sil fuels and is a part of our jour­ney towards devel­op­ing 100 per cent plant-based mate­ri­als through the Plant PET Tech­nol­o­gy Col­lab­o­ra­tive group.”

WAVE OF INNOVATION

Auto­Naut is a 3.5 meter-long wave-pro­pelled unmanned sur­face ves­sel (USV) that offers autonomous ocean­ic data gath­er­ing, with zero-car­bon propul­sion – a kind of green sea drone. The brain­child of Mike Poole and David Maclean, Auto­Naut is already in pro­duc­tion and their Chich­ester-based com­pa­ny Most (Autonomous Ves­sels) Lim­it­ed hopes to build six to eight boats by the mid­dle of 2015. The USV can be con­trolled via satel­lite from any­where in the world, is silent, and boasts extreme long range and endurance. Describ­ing its suc­cess, Stephen Brown­ing, head of the small busi­ness research ini­tia­tive at the Tech­nol­o­gy Strat­e­gy Board, one of the co-fun­ders of the project along with the Nation­al Oceanog­ra­phy Cen­tre, says: “Auto­Naut is a great exam­ple of how inno­v­a­tive small busi­ness­es can help solve pub­lic-sec­tor chal­lenges, and in turn receive fund­ing to devel­op their prod­ucts and grow.”

ONE SCOOP OR TWO?

If not flavour of the month, a manure sep­a­ra­tor has cer­tain­ly proved pop­u­lar at a 375-cow farm, sup­pli­er to glob­al ice-cream brand Ben & Jerry’s. As part of the Unilever subsidiary’s Car­ing Dairy Pro­gramme, the invest­ment elim­i­nates near­ly 13,000 tonnes of car­bon diox­ide, by sep­a­rat­ing out 50 per cent of manure solids and com­post­ing them into san­i­tary bed­ding mate­r­i­al for live­stock. The Help Build mod­el at NativeEn­er­gy pro­vid­ed upfront fund­ing in exchange for cer­ti­fied car­bon off­sets. NativeEn­er­gy pres­i­dent Jeff Ber­nicke explains: “Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ben & Jerry’s, NativeEn­er­gy set out to cre­ate an inno­v­a­tive and replic­a­ble approach to achieve pol­lu­tion-reduc­tion goals, and also improve a sup­ply farm’s finan­cial prospects. The Green Dream Farm Methane Reduc­tion project, locat­ed in Ben & Jerry’s home state of Ver­mont, demon­strates that sus­tain­abil­i­ty invest­ments can both cre­ate strate­gic val­ue and long-term ben­e­fits for the ice-cream mak­er, and also for its com­mu­ni­ties and sup­ply chain.”

CONCRETE EVIDENCE

Zero-cement struc­tur­al con­crete might appear a con­tra­dic­tion in terms, but that is exact­ly the sus­tain­able solu­tion for today’s con­struc­tion indus­try offered by Cem­free. It acti­vates 95 per cent ground blast fur­nace slag (GGBS), pro­duc­ing an ultra-low car­bon alter­na­tive to con­crete mix designs that tra­di­tion­al­ly use Port­land cement (OPC). Total UK GGBS grind­ing capac­i­ty a year is 2,920,000 tonnes. Hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, using all this with Cem­free for low-car­bon con­crete, in place of tra­di­tion­al OPC-based mate­r­i­al, would equate to sav­ing more than 2,100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, equiv­a­lent to tak­ing over 750,000 cars off the road. The prod­uct is evi­dence of sec­tor car­bon-cut­ting ambi­tion, accord­ing to World Con­crete Forum direc­tor Mar­tin Clarke. “Cem­free is a sym­bol of the deter­mi­na­tion of the glob­al cement and con­crete indus­try to reduce envi­ron­men­tal impact with inno­v­a­tive busi­ness-led solu­tions,” he says.

HOUSE THAT LISTENS

What if your house could talk or at least lis­ten? Con­nect­ing to your Up24 wrist­band, Nest ther­mo­stat-based home automa­tion can know when you wake and adjust room tem­per­a­tures or antic­i­pate arrivals by inter­fac­ing with your Mer­cedes. Asso­ci­at­ed effi­cien­cies can help save ener­gy and shrink car­bon foot­prints. Fol­low­ing acqui­si­tion by Google, Nest has built on its Learn­ing Ther­mo­stat and Pro­tect prod­ucts by launch­ing a devel­op­er API (appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­face) last month. For sus­tain­able design­er, writer and TV pre­sen­ter Oliv­er Heath, this tie-up prompts mixed feel­ings. “On the one hand, embed­ding sus­tain­able lifestyle prac­tices into home tech­nol­o­gy can offer a low-inter­fer­ence way of reduc­ing ener­gy bills and CO2 emis­sions,” he says. “It’s easy to live bet­ter, smarter and more effi­cient­ly – who wouldn’t aspire to that? On the oth­er hand, I am con­cerned Google own­er­ship will lead to a web of ever-increas­ing min­ing for per­son­al data.”

LIGHTING UP LEAGUE

In trans­fer news of a dif­fer­ent kind, Southamp­ton Foot­ball Club is about to make soc­cer his­to­ry with its St Mary’s sta­di­um becom­ing the first in Europe to switch to LED flood­lights. New Pre­mier League guide­lines call for a sig­nif­i­cant increase in light lev­els for flood­lit games and using tra­di­tion­al light­ing solu­tions this could poten­tial­ly require dou­bling the num­ber of 2,500-watt lumi­naires. By con­trast, an LED sports flood­light is only 720 watt and will fit into most sta­di­um infra­struc­tures with­out core upgrades, sav­ing con­sid­er­able cap­i­tal costs. The sec­ond big ben­e­fit of LED is TV-relat­ed, as Southamp­ton FC’s sta­di­um facil­i­ties man­ag­er Mark Hum­by explains: “Dur­ing this process I have been intro­duced to the tech­ni­cal term ‘flick­er’ which only caus­es an issue dur­ing slow-motion and super-slow-motion footage. By using a top-qual­i­ty LED prod­uct we have all but removed this.”