Sustainability news

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Americans debate clothes drying options

NEW YORK: The indoor electric clothes dryer vs. outdoor clothesline debate is heating up in the United States again. Some 60 million Americans now live in one of the country’s 300,000 private communities.
These private communities are governed through bylaws that are passed by local housing associations. The majority of these housing associations have restricted the use of outdoor clotheslines for aesthetic reasons and because some people view them as a marker of poverty that could potentially lower property values.
With Americans becoming increasingly concerned about their households’ energy use, clotheslines are a simple way to lower their electricity bills by reducing the use of their electric clothes dryers.

Several US states, including Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Utah and Vermont, have passed state-wide laws protecting the right to hang laundry outdoors, and similar bills are being considered in Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia.

The opportunity for New Zealand companies is to offer energy efficient appliances and space saving appliances to American consumers. This is an expanding market and energy efficient clothes dryers are just one example.

Source: NZTE as printed in New York Times

David De Rothschild’s Plastiki Adventure

Born into one of the world’s richest and most powerful dynasties, banking heir and eco-warrior, David de Rothschild has serious clout to wield and he is channelling much of it into raising public awareness. In his sights are the hundreds of kilometres of plastic debris that is threatening to strangle the North Pacific Ocean.
Dubbed the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ this shameful dump of predominantly non-biodegradable plastic bottles, estimated to be twice the size of France, is rapidly increasing in volume killing millions of birds and marine mammals a year and polluting the water with toxic chemicals.

‘Bottled water has become a symbol of convenience,’ says de Rothschild. ‘The question to ask is, when did we get so thirsty?’

A committed environmentalist and adventurer, de Rothschild and his handpicked team have built a 60-foot catamaran, the Plastiki, made entirely from recycled material, essentially srPET (self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate) a new plastic product developed in Europe similar in strength to fiberglass but made from 100% recycled plastic. Its twin hulls are moulded from 12,000 recycled two litre plastic bottles.

The name Plastiki is a salute to the Kon-Tiki, a raft made from balsa wood which, in 1947, sailed 7000 kilometres across the Pacific.

When Green Pages went to print, de Rothschild was preparing to set sail on an epic three-and-a-half month journey crossing the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney. His focus will be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but the Plastiki will also draw attention to the sinking islands of Tuvalu and the effects of mass pollution, sub-water testing of nuclear armament and coral bleaching.

‘Society’s habit of throwing everything away has to change,’ says de Rothschild. ‘I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to encourage people to start thinking of waste as a resource.’

The Plastiki expedition is aimed at transforming the iconic pin-up of mass consumption, the plastic bottle, into an effective resource that will act as a catalyst to initiate change for the world to see.

De Rothschild maintains that people are growing tired of hearing that ‘the planet is really screwed’. He contends that not enough time or energy has been spent on encouraging people to find answers.
‘There’s been a major marketing faux pas,’ he declares. ‘Green is now seen as worthy, but overwhelming, exclusive, sanctimonious, gender driven and not transparent, and it’s driving people away; even those who hold the same core ideals.

‘The reality is that the list of solutions is bigger than the list of problems. The trouble is, we’re not applying them because we’ve got caught up in the clutter. We need to stop blaming and vilifying.’

The over-riding message of the Plastiki project is ‘plastic is not the enemy’.

‘It’s not the plastic that’s to blame, but the inability to understand how to use and reuse it properly,’ he says.
His hope is that the legacy of the Plastiki will be a clear demonstration that solving waste issues is going to require a major re-think of how we currently use, reuse and ultimately dispose of plastics.

‘It’s a big step from problem to solution because we haven’t created the playing field to engage and encourage solutions,’ he says.

‘This issue is solvable but it’s going to require all three sectors working together.’

London born, David Mayer de Rothschild, 31, whose famous family heritage is reportedly worth around $US500 trillion, is inherently driven by curiosity.

‘As a child, when I started to explore – I immediately began to question and challenge,’ he says.

Admitting that, despite being an accomplished equestrian, triathlete and web designer, he was directionless for many years, he talks of discovering his passion when he followed his degrees in Political Science and Information Services with a Diploma course in Natural Medicine.

He established an organic farm in New Zealand in 2005, after a trip to Antarctica, which he says dramatically altered his thinking. He is the founder of Adventure Ecology, a global network that mounts expeditions to environmentally sensitive areas to encourage awareness, especially among schoolchildren.

Adventure Ecology came about because de Rothschild recognised that adventures are vehicles for stories and dreams and if approached this way lead to an experience of interconnectedness as opposed to the desire to conquer.

He believes that the sense of separation from nature is a symptom of affluence and success, and as long as the externalisation of nature persists so too will the abuse.

‘We’ll never get a true grasp of the issues we’re facing until we realise that we’re intrinsically linked to the natural world and have to reintegrate back into the web of life and that every single being on this planet is dependant upon the natural world.’

De Rothschild refers to adventures in nature as part of ‘the equation of curiosity’.

‘It’s the formula for connecting human beings regardless of their backgrounds, religions or lifestyles. Humans are motivated and connected by dreams.

‘Dreams act as the breeding ground for adventures and the moment you act upon that dream you’re on your adventure, which, in turn, inspires more dreams, more stories and more adventures.’

Having never done a sea trip of this magnitude, certainly not in a boat made from material untested on the treacherous seas and one that will encounter three hurricane and cyclone seasons en route, de Rothschild confesses to moments of trepidation.

‘However, a license to experience danger,’ he says, ‘is a precious component of freedom, and something the world is perilously close to losing.’

He talks of the thin veneer between chaos and security. ‘As the world becomes increasingly unstable, we look at the correlation between regulation, rules and danger. The more rules we have, the safer and more protected we feel, but it’s a fine line, and we’re becoming more sterile in our environments.

‘We create rules that detach us from issues and our sense of being alive. Fundamentally, we need to take back our planet.’

He says the Plastiki expedition is about showing that waste can have a second life.
‘The message should be that there is no such thing as waste. Quite simply, it should be a natural part of resource management,’ he concludes.

Source: www.thegreenpages.com.au