Biomass

Many in the auto industry are touting ethanol as the solution to the challenge of post-petroleum transportation. Major carmakers advertise many new cars can run on E85--a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline--and they trumpet the fuels environmental benefits relative to gasoline. But the ethanol story is not as straightforward as it sounds. Aside from the lack of infrastructure--only around 1,400 out of 170,000 U.S. filling stations have ethanol available--the production of ethanol from corn has drawn criticism for its cost (in terms of food-stocks and land usage) and the relative inefficiency of the … Read more

Hewlett-Packard says it has begun to manufacture ink cartridges with some of the stuff in your home recycling bin.

The multi-resin process, devised by HP and chemistry specialists Lavergne Group and Butler-McDonald, essentially allows HP to mix in plastic from discarded printer cartridges with lower-grade plastics used in objects like Mountain Dew bottles or Night Ranger CD cases. Broadening the type of plastics that can be used increases the amount of recycled materials HP ultimately puts into new products. (The metals inside printer cartridges, meanwhile, get recycled too.)

So far, HP has manufactured more than 200 million cartridges with plastic … Read more

Ze-gen, a company which has a process for converting municipal waste into electricity, has raised $2.5 million to fund construction of its first full-scale plant.

Pinnacle Ventures on Thursday said it will provide the debt financing, which will be used to develop a commercial plant. Ze-gen's pilot plant opened in the middle of last year in New Bedford, Mass.

Ze-gen developed a process to turn municipal solid waste into electricity, which you can sell onto the grid or to an on-site consumer.

Through gasification, it turns waste into syngas--a combination of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen--which is … Read more

EnerTech Environmental has attracted $42 million to build out facilities that turn human and industrial wastes into fuel.

The funding, announced on Monday, was co-led by Citi's Sustainable Development Investments (SDI) unit and Masdar Clean Tech Fund, which is financed in part by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company.

EnerTech Environmental's technology takes high-moisture biosolids, including sewage sludge or agricultural wastes, and treats it with heat and pressure to separate water from it.

What comes out the other end of its SlurryCarb process is water that is sent back to wastewater treatment plants and a solid which it … Read more

Digital TV will bring a new world of entertainment to consumers and generate a big honking pile of electronic waste.

Roughly 80 million analog TVs will get heaved out in 2008 and 2009, according to John Shegerian, CEO of Electronic Recyclers (ER), one of the largest e-waste recyclers in the U.S., and someone is going to have to dispose of those old TVs properly. The glass in the tube consists of about 22 percent lead.

Even without the digital TV mandate (which kicks in on February 17, 2009), the e-recycling business is booming. Roughly 65 million pounds of e-waste … Read more

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the vast waste of materials at the gargantuan Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Mobile phones frozen into buffet ice sculptures just scratch the surface of the showcase of an industry that thrives on planned obsolescence.

Three years ago, I'd asked the planners of CES about its waste management, receiving befuddled looks in return. But then I stopped worrying and learned to love my free CES vinyl laptop bag, stuffed with plasticky swag that will outlast the bones of any great-grandchildren I may ever have.

Sure, there were e-waste recycling awards back … Read more

Two Australian firms have established a joint venture that intends to use emissions from coal power plants to grow algae that can be used as fuel.

Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal announced the creation of the company last week and said they would spend $1 million over the next year to build a prototype bioreactor.

The bioreactor will be designed to grow algae, using the carbon dioxide produced from processing coal for electricity as "food." That process should dramatically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, the company said.

The dried algae could be … Read more

Oil officials see limit looming on production. It's not an oil peak; it's an oil plateau. The Wall Street Journal reports on impending restrictions on oil extraction. Now both oil industry skeptics and execs are seeing limits. Recently, Don Paul, CTO of Chevron (not the presidential candidate), told us that the world has consumed 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and will go to 1.5 trillion by 2012. The world only had 3 trillion barrels to begin with.

A deeply green city confronts its energy needs and nuclear worries. The New York Times reports on the struggle … Read more

Printer companies are under attack as more people become concerned about global warming and toxic pollution.

The solution? "Printer Vendors Need to Greenwash Their Image."

That unfortunate headline was the theme of an e-mail newsletter this morning from Lyra Research, a well-respected firm that tracks the digital imaging industry.

Apparently the writer didn't realize or care that "greenwashing" is a negative term. It describes how companies aiming to appeal to treehuggers are painting a green face, without necessarily cleaning up their act.

Picky consumers detest this trend, which makes it nearly impossible to tell which … Read more