Today I did, what you are not “supposed” to do on your blog: Scrubbing! But who are they to tell me? Who are “They” anyways?

Looking back at my blog posts, I feel that I was putting a lot of immaturity on display here over the past three to four years. Just like you don’t want everyone to know the silly things you did in University, I had to do a little bit of spring cleaning. I left some posts that have some interesting thoughts in them, but many of the silly thoughtless ones are gone.

For 2011

Seeing that 2011 is right around the corner, here is my public New Years Resolution for this blog: To write one… 1! … single thoughtful post per month. I know it seems very little for these fast moving always connected times that we live in, but I would like to display quality rather than quantity. I’ve tried more in the past and usually failed at it, because the simple thought of the task is too dreadful for me to even get started. On top of it I’m not a particularly well articulated writer. It’s never been my forte, and it will probably never be. I’m sure everyone of my past German, French and English teachers will attest to it.

So for now, Make it a Happy New Year

I took this photo from a “Cradle-to-Cradle” video. I think it sums up what is wrong with our cheap products industry right now!

Blue Arrow: Cheap Products
Green Arrow: Obviously Money
Red Arrow: toxic garbage (cheap products at the end of life cycle)

Hi everyone,

I quickly wanted to leave an update. I’ve been really busy with all the work over at Ukoonto. So if you want to keep in touch about things that I do, please go to Ukoonto’s webpage to follow all the work going on there.

I also quickly wanted to post about an awesome house just outside of Toronto. It’s called the Wilson Natural Home. For more info and a video click here. The Wilson Home is going to host an open house on October 19th 2008 and you will definitely find me there. It’s so interesting and this is exactly what I would like to do. Our little house has just been the beginning.

Alright, maybe I’ll see you at the home

Cheers, Hans

This weekend at the Green Living Show in Toronto I had the chance to talk to the developers (Unicell) of the zero emissions delivery truck. The truck is fully electric and has some more features that are really impressive.

As I understand correctly, Unicell was approached by Purolator to develop a modern delivery truck for urban zones that is not only economical, but also much healthier for the operators and the environment.

First, the team observed what a delivery truck really does in one day of operations and they found out that the truck only drives for about 60 km’s and makes about 200 stops in 10 hours per day.

The team built a fully electric truck, that kneels and has very low ground clearance, eliminating the steps that the operator/deliverer needs to take every time he walks into and out of the old style (box) trucks. This reduces the wear on the driver, speeds up his work day and the reduces the risk of injury (therefor also the down time of sick operators, which is very costly in a large company). The doors also open and close automatically, which enables the operator to use a two wheel dolly of and on the truck. The truck was used for 7 weeks in the fall of 2007 and all the operators really liked it. The batteries for the electric drive train never ran out.

This truck is a very good example of a company that thought an old concept through and created a product that is much more economical, and healthy for employees and the environment.

The following videos show the truck in action.

I would also like to add, that Purolator also uses another company called Azure Dynamics to retrofit their already existing fleet of box trucks to be hybrid diesel trucks, which cuts down on the carbon footprint of the fleet.

Last but not least, here is some food for thought, for some really advanced environmental solutions. The team from Unicell explained to me that these kind of trucks can be used for a very advanced electrical grid. This is a very theoretical scenario, but very possible in the future.

One of the problems of having an electrical grid that relies on wind, hydro-electric and other renewable energy sources is the availability of the power in the grid. If the wind happens to blow a little less and therefor not provide as much power as needed, some energy needs to be stored. This is where a large fleet of these kind of trucks comes in: In an extremely smartly designed electrical grid, the electric batteries in the trucks can provide power back into the grid. It is very well possible to know, that the trucks don’t need the energy stored in the batteries at a certain time (ie: on weekends or at night) and feed it back into the grid and still be fully charged by the time the truck is needed.

This is funny. It’s extremely geeky, definitely worth browsing by though.

PS: You can also watch Cheatneutral on Joost (the channel is green tv )

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Do you know what Kyoto is all about?

I find that the word Kyoto is in everyones mouth, but there’s not to many people that actually know what it is all about. I found a page that explains it very well: Kyoto 101. Go check it out!

… But where are we walking to? If you’re interested in walking some more, but don’t really know what’s all close by, just go on “Walk Score”. You might be surprised what you’ll all find within your neighborhood.

More than 150 large corporations just pledged to reduce their carbon emissions according to this news article on Reuters. Lets not forget about this pledge and remind them of their own goals. Something is happening and it’s good!