BDPollution

iPic Theaters is organizing a Film Festival Contest themed under “Earth Preservation“.   The winning video will have their  chance to get their video premiered at iPic Theaters  for a month. The winning contestant will also receive $4000.

How to get involved?

Create a short film on the theme of Earth Preservation with a timeline of two to six minutes. Submissions will be accepted from Jan 7th,2012 – Feb 10th,2012. Results will be published on Earth Day, April 22nd 2012. Time is running out as the deadline approaches. To know more about the event go over to the facebook event here.

*All applicants must be 21 years or older

When going green started out couple of years back, businesses were very reluctant not to go towards that. There was a myth that going green was a waste of money and just a business-killer. However over time becoming more environmental-friendly became an investment to companies in the long run.

 I worked on some technical aspects on green investments for businesses/industries in Dhaka and found certain things why it’s worth it

When it came to energy auditing, generally the entire energy flow would be mapped. Then after mapping that, you know where you are losing extra energy. So if you plug that portion of energy down, you save energy. So what’s the benefit of saving energy? Firstly you spend less fuel (with fuel prices increasing, you would be definitely glad if fuel was saved), you save electricity are just some places where you save. However the strongest motivation is money, and trust me you save a lot of money. For businesses

Saving Money    =    Profits.

Anyways I got an article from The Economist on as to why firms go green.

Link courtesy Julika Niehaus- Global Campaign Manager at 10:10

As UK leads one of the largest coordinated global event 10:10:10, the Global day of Doing, this news sounds great. UK embraces renewable energy to a whole new level.

Details, basically this wind farm is one of the world’s largest offshore wind farm situated off the Thanet in Kent. The project was at a cost of £780m ,and is expected to generate enough electricity to power 240,000 homes.

Read more about it.

Its great to hear that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has endorsed 10/10/10, the Global Day of Doing. As he quotes

“It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on building the clean energy future that will generate economic opportunity and provide a better, safer, healthier world for our children. On October 10, I encourage everyone to do his / her part to be part of the solution to the climate challenge.”

He further said

“It’s time to roll up our sleeves.” Let’s get to work pulling in those 35 remaining countries and signing up even more work parties for 10/10/10. Together, we’ll show our nations what unity is all about.

Why the rest 35 countries? Apparently in 350.org website, 25 countries are still not active about 350 as in no activities relating to 350 have taken place. If they did last year, probably not this year. Just before posting this article, I was going through the list of the countries at 350.org website.

Read more about it.

Mr. David Sandalow served in the State Department and at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. Mr.Sandalow also have helped the Obama administration to up speed the development of electric cars and offer incentives for consumers and communities to begin taking steps to make transitions off conventional vehicles.

He travels on a Prius, which he converted to the latter models which allows you to plug it at an electric outlet and charges the battery. He fills his Prius will gasoline only once or twice a month. Just imagine the amount of CO2 emissions he saves!

Hats off and its great that officials like him are setting the example.

Get the full article here.

The enviro fair was held as mentioned in the previous post on August 19th-21st, 2010. When I arrived at the fair, I was wondering if I was at the right place, it just did not feel right.

Well I got out of the car, and walked all the way ( it was quite some distance) to our 10:10 stall and was awed. As you can see from the pictures, the stall was truly amazing. A great start to the 10:10 campaign in Bangladesh.

Before I began the tedious task to go around signing up people, I thought why not walk a bit, understand the people who are there. So I adventured, peeping through the different stalls, some to be quite impressive. An eco-resort, a company selling solar panels while other products being powered by solar.

Then few of our team at 10:10 got their guns loaded( giving them their sign-up sheets and a pen) and we began approaching people about 10:10.

The enviro fair turn-out was not high being a festive month and I just cause of the downpour, overall a successful 10:10 event.

More pictures can be seen at 10:10 flickr page here.

Yamaha has announced, actually last month that it has added a zero-emission electric scooter to its arsenal. The scooter is a 50cc and apparently can travel five times farther than its gasoline counterpart.

The scooter, EC-03, can travel 43 kilometers on a single 6-hour charge from a normal household power outlet .The model will be launched in September 1st,2010 with a price tag of $2,800.

Courtesy of Physorg.com

In my last post, I mentioned about the campaign on PutSolarOn.it, a campaign targeted towards world leaders, so that they also start by getting to work. The objective, placing a solar panel on top of all head buildings.

Bangladesh and India have recently powered their head buildings with solar power. Bangladesh Prime Minister office was lighted by solar power something earlier this year. Soon after the Prime Minister’s office, the Bangladesh Bank was also powered by solar. Looks like in Bangladesh, the politicians are a bit ahead in fighting climate change compared to the West but there a still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Governor of West Bengal in India, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, installed solar panels on the Kolkata Raj Bhavan, the Governor’s Residence, in December of 2009.

Even before the PutSolarOn, leaders have taken action and this shows that you too as an individual can do so much without waiting for someone do it for you. Anyways, the people at 350.org were quite excited when they found out. Get it here.

Another campaign initiated by my favorite group 350.org in light of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party called the Put Solar On It, there aim to target world leaders on installing solar panels on the roof of where the leaders work. Like the US, the White House, India the Rashtrapati Bhavan; in Mexico they call it Los Pinos.

We all know that installing solar panels will not solve the climate crisis, but will send a strong message, setting an example. This is a perfect opportunity for leaders to get involved on the 10:10 goal.

As countries make strong decisions on cutting their CO2 emissions, I came across a list of the top 10 countries using solar power and to tell you the truth, its quite fantastic.

1. Germany (9,785 MW)
2. Spain (3,386 MW)
3. Japan (2,633 MW)
4. United States (1,650 MW)
5. Italy (1,167 MW)
6. Czech Republic (465 MW)
7. Belgium (363 MW)
8. China (305 MW)
9. France (272 MW)
10. India (120 MW)

Courtesy of 1bog.org