Green Gazette (Issue 38) Planes, Trains and Automobiles
ByHello again, regular readers might be familiar with the Green Gazette and perhaps thought your author had retired or exhausted his supply of eco-tales of innovation and improvement. The truth is I was otherwise engaged but now I’m back - if that all feel a little bit Leno vs Conan please don’t cast me in the role of Jay. I do however have a few stories to share if you can stay a while.
It has been a horrible few months for Toyota, it seems that you can’t watch the news without learning more about safety and design issues that are impacting the giant (world’s largest) auto manufacturer. Correctly using the word irony is not always my biggest talent but it seems that the top brass at Toyota are now admitting that the root cause for many of the errors was success, that they grew too rapidly for their infrastructure to properly assess design faults and correct issues as they arose. 2010 will be a telling year for the company as they need accomplish three 
things really rapidly - explain how these things got through the cracks, make appropriate repairs to all vehicles on the road and improve their internal processes so that it doesn’t happen again. I think that they need to hit home runs on all three to remain on the top of the world auto buyers shopping list. In light of that it’s remarkable that the Prius has just won Consumer Reports award for best eco-friendly car. The Prius is a testament to the innovation at the company and the results were compiled after the current dark clouds settled over Toyota. Here’s hoping they resolve these critical issues and continue to lead the industry in making eco-friendly vehicles that benefit us all.
Would you believe that the combined amount of waste created by airlines in the US is in excess of 880 millions pounds of waste per year? More importantly they could (emphasis mine) be recycling some 75% of that total. The sad reality is that only about 20% of the waste created by our airlines is actually being recycled, that is not even a decent effort in my opinion. Perhaps we need to know more to hold airlines more accountable and a report that has just been published empowers you with exactly that information. The entire report is very alarming but I wanted to bring your attention to the following:
While airlines acknowledge the importance of recycling waste, no airline recycles all the major recyclables: aluminum cans, glass, plastic, and paper. No airline has a comprehensive program for minimizing or composting food waste or waste from snack packages, provides good public information about their recycling program, or reports out on progress in relation to any stated goals.
The good news I guess is that a lot can be done, I would highly recommend taking some time to look at the overall report it might just make you change your preferred airlines. The waste is borderline insulting to anyone who is committed to recycling I’ll just share some numbers if I may. Annually the airlines simply throw away:
- 9,000 tons of plastic
- Sufficient aluminum cans to build 58 Boeing 747 jets
- Sufficient newspaper and magazines to cover a football field 230 meters deep
Shouldn’t the airlines be interested in trying to offset some of the 600 million tons of carbon dioxide per year pumped into the atmosphere by commercial jets alone? The full report is available here, and if you want to take part in the ongoing survey the link is right here.
We have planes and automobiles in the post so I wanted to share something recent about trains. Not much out there to be honest, but as part of the Green stimulus in the US the plans for expanding/beginning high speed rail links look to be on track to a certain extent. I hope sooner rather than later as the thought of avoiding airports for journeys of up to 500 miles would have huge appeal to many in my opinion. If a train went from Phoenix to Los Angeles in 2.5 hours versus the 1 hour flight and all the hassles that go with flying were on offer I know I’d prefer the train. Not to mention that it is a radically greener way to transport people or freight.
