shipping
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IKEA will ship disposable furniture on disposable pallets
IKEA knows from disposable. So when the company realized it could save money and shipping space by using cardboard shipping pallets, it tossed out its traditional wooden pallets like last year's BILLY bookshelf. The new pallets can support loads as heavy as the wooden pallets could, but they’re only a third as high and weigh […]
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Huge, polluting container ships that carry all our stuff clean up their act
Everyone knows that our iPads, clothes, kitchen appliances, furniture—our entire lives, basically—are made in China. But everyone might not know the container ships that bring that stuff over to the U.S. are climate-destroying juggernauts. According to OnEarth, just one container ship emits as much sulfur oxide (the stuff that makes smog) per year as 50 million cars. Plus, shipping accounts for 3.5 percent of all GHG emissions, twice as much as aviation.
The good news is that air pollution rules are pushing container shipping companies to clean up their act. -
Oil spill is New Zealand’s worst-ever environmental disaster at sea
It's bad when a tanker strikes a reef. It's worse when that tanker is carrying oil that starts tarring some of your country's nicest beaches. It's even worse when bad weather makes more oil leak from that tanker.
That's the series of increasingly problematic events that's been unfolding off the New Zealand coast, and the country's government is now calling it the worst maritime environmental disaster they've ever dealt with. The weather is keeping response crews from doing their thing, and birds and seals are both at risk. Plus, in addition to oil, the tanker was carrying smaller quantities of materials like ferrosilicon, which have the potential to wreak havoc in their own special way.
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Canada probably didn’t NEED that ice sheet, right?
If you thought you were melting over the summer, just be glad you're not an ice sheet that's been chilling out since before Europeans settled in Canada. Over the summer, two huge Canadian ice shelves in the Arctic shrunk down precipitously, report scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. One sheet had already split into two sections and just kept getting smaller; the other broke in half this year. Icebergs are breaking away and "pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes," reports the Associated Press. "Since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times to the size of Manhattan Island have broken off."
This is not normal behavior for an ice shelf this large and old, says the AP:
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Revival of 117-year-old canal cuts cargo emissions 65 percent
Turns out shipping by barge is crazy efficient. It's also kind of picturesque! (According to this video from CNN there are no mules anymore, but we choose to imagine mules to up the picturesqueness factor.)
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Critical List: Shipping industry objects to E.U. emissions scheme; when horses act like squirrels
Like the airline industry, the shipping industry objects to the E.U.'s decisions to include it in a emissions trading system.
Will the federal government be spending less on disaster response in the future? Somehow “let ‘em drown” doesn’t seem like the best possible debt reduction plan.
Australia's carbon tax, which was so hotly disputed that people were sending climate scientists death threats, would apply to just 400 of the country's top polluters.
Hydro turbines are going into the Puget Sound by late summer 2013. -
Build this beautiful shipping container house for only $40K
There's been a small vogue for houses and buildings made of shipping containers, which are cheap, plentiful, and often end up tossed in the sea (either on purpose or otherwise). This airy two-container dwelling is one of the prettiest we've seen, and it only cost $40,000 to build.
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Airships may be the key to a greener, steampunkier future
Steampunk enthusiasts rejoice: The skies may soon be full of airships. Dirigibles are the low-carbon way of shipping goods long distances, according to a recent article in Scientific American. No word on whether it's greener to wear aviator goggles, petticoats, and button boots while flying them, but let's just go ahead and assume the answer is […]
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Is this the Amazon checkout of the future?
This concept for choosing a shipping method shows what rethinking design can do for the environment.