Greenbird

A sail-car

It’s green. It’s a car. It has no engine. It uses wind-power only.

And it can travel at a speed of more than 200 kph!

Richard Jenkins from the UK designed, built and drove this car, and it just broke the world record speed for a wind-powered car.

Paradise island

Have you ever wondered what paradise looks like? Well, this is it!

It is called Paradise Island and it is one of thousands of islands in the Maldives. The only problem is that in about 50 years this island will not exist.

Glacier

This is a glacier in Alaska. A glacier is like a river of ice, but it moves very very slowly. However there is a big problem with this glacier: it is melting.

It makes a great photo with the bright blue lake at the bottom of the glacier, but it should not be there!

Compost

Recently I have been feeling very guilty about the amount of garbage I have. Yes, I do recycle things like paper, polystyrene, bottles and cans, but twice a week I still seem to have a big bag of rubbish that is collected.

What happens to this rubbish? It is either used for landfill, or burnt. It has really been bothering me that I should be doing something more to reduce my rubbish. So today I bought a compost bin (made from recycled plastic!). It looks a bit like this:

It is very simple. Just place it on some earth and fill it with all your natural garbage, like the parts of vegetables or fruit that cannot be eaten, tea leaves, egg-shells etc (though not meat or fat!). Even a little cardboard can be thrown here, like cereal boxes, but it should be cut into smaller pieces first.

Then let nature take its course. I’ve put my compost bin near the riverbank opposite my house, let’s see what happens.

I reckon that about 10% of my rubbish can be put into the compost bin, so I can save about 5 yen every two months on plastic rubbish bags. The compost bin cost ￥2,480, so in 206 years I will get my money back!

But that’s not the point is it? It will also mean that 10% of my rubbish will not be burnt, and less gas will be in the atmosphere. That will make me feel a little better, but it’s only a first step, there must be some other things I can do.

Last view of winter

Looks like spring is here, earlier than usual. It’s nice to have the warm weather back, or is it? The reason it is warm is simple: global warming.

So here is a view of winter to remind us of what we are going to miss when global warming really hits us.