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A Pixelated Mind

Aptera from above
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Selfish reasons to be environmental

In trying to be an innovator (rather than simply an early adopter), I like to keep my ears open about all sorts of cool things. Especially when these things solve problems you otherwise would have to live with. These are three.

1. Getting rid of junk mail from Green Dime:

Shocking facts about everyday waste in the US

  • Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled
  • Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon
  • Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour
  • Each year, Americans trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City
  • Americans toss out enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times
  • Forty-three thousand tons of food is thrown out in the United States each day
  • Sixty-five billion aluminum soda cans are used each year
  • Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation’s automakers every day

They send you a packet that you sign and send to various junk mail companies. Presumably, they then take you off their list and you stop receiving junk mail.

2. Catalog Choice employs a similar concept sans the snail mail. Here you get to choose which catalogs you receive that you want and opt out of all the others. The Web site then sends a letter to the catalog companies and the catalogs stop coming. The beauty is you can keep updating your profile so you can list new catalogs as they arrive.

Aptera from above3. Finally, I’ve found my next car. It’s called the Aptera (Greek for ‘wingless’). And you’ll notice from this hotlinked file (from their Myspace site) that it’s not a conventional car. Far from it. The car comes in the all-electric model (which can go 120 miles/200 kilometers on 2 hours of charge) or the hybrid model (which can go 200+ miles on one gallon or 90+ kilometers on one litre of gasoline).

Also, instead of rear-view mirrors, it includes three cameras that let you see behind you and to each side. It comes with GPS and XM satellite radio along with RFID (so that you never have to take out your keys to enter or start the car). My favorite bit is that there’s solar panels that use the energy of the sun to cool down the car so it never gets hot inside no matter where you park.

Sorry, my heart is beating too fast, I need my inhaler. 🙂

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In trying to be an innovator (rather than simply an early adopter), I like to keep my ears open about all sorts of cool things. Especially when these things solve problems you otherwise would have to live with. These are three. 1. Getting rid of junk mail from Green Dime: Shocking facts about everyday waste…