Big green ideas

A few years back, the bright green future we imagined sounded more sci-fi than sensible. But the great brains of the world have taken on the challenges ahead, and some of their best and brightest ideas are fast becoming our reality. Here are ten smart ideas and trends that will change the way we live—and soon.

It’s 2010: where’s my jetpack and meal in a pill?
The future’s not quite what we expected, but
that doesn’t mean we’re short on innovation—
and who wants flying cars and x-ray specs
when they’re turning goo into gold and poo into
power? Here are ten smart ideas and trends
that will change the way we live—and soon!

Photo: Cushla Mahoney / Photo New Zealand

1 Eco-sabbath

Indulge in a zero-impact
afternoon

Whether it’s a Friday, Saturday or Sunday,
many religions have a tradition of resting
on the sabbath—and until recent decades,
almost everyone else did too. Being able
to go shopping every day of the week
once seemed like progress, but we’re
starting to think again. Turns out taking
a day out was a smart idea, and it’s being
revived with a 21st-century twist.

An ‘eco-sabbath’ can be observed for
one day, an afternoon or even one hour
a week. Popularised by ‘no impact man’
Colin Beavan (www.noimpactman.com),
the idea is to go, well, no-impact: don’t
drive anywhere, don’t buy anything, don’t
switch on anything electric, do nothing
that uses any resources. (Not sure how
to do nothing? Find ten great ideas at
good.net.nz/2/donothing.)

Four hours of downtime a week will
cut your carbon footprint by 2.4 percent
over a year, and observing a whole day’s
eco-sabbath will reduce it by 14 percent.
But the benefits go much deeper. It’s a
chance to spend more time with your
family and pets, read more books, play
more games, take more naps and walks,
enjoy some peace and quiet, and recharge
for the week ahead. Go easy on yourself,
though—it’s not a sin to boil the jug for a
pot of tea. Even better, opening a bottle
of wine and a bar of chocolate uses zero
electricity.

2 Waste to energy

A home fuelled by rubbish
(and poo)

At last: the future, as seen in the movies,
has arrived. Okay, it’s not quite Doc
Brown’s flux capacitor from Back to the
Future II, which converted household
waste into fuel using nuclear fusion, but
a household biodigester is pretty cool all
the same. Popular in China, these airtight
units turn household waste (including
the stuff you flush) into natural gas and
compost. The methane biogas can then
be used for cooking, heating and lighting,
just like LPG.

Wait—methane, the greenhouse gas?
In the atmosphere, methane’s about 25
times more potent than carbon dioxide.
But burning methane transforms it into
CO², so it’s far better to capture and burn
it than let it escape—especially when it
generates free renewable energy and a
smug smile whenever you flush.

How can you get your hands on one
of these magic machines? They’re about
to be piloted in New Zealand by Carbon
Partnership, which hopes to start selling
household units next year. With your
toilet plumbed in and kitchen waste
diverted from an in-sink disposal unit, the
goal is to produce enough biogas to keep
your home in hot water and stovetop gas.
One unit is likely to set you back “a few
thousand dollars—cheaper than solar,”
says company boss Sean Weaver.

3 Serious games

Changing the world is
an epic adventure

Anyone who’s watched their teenager—or
husband—get sucked into an alternative
reality night after night knows the power
of video games. Collectively, gamers
spend three billion hours a week playing
online games; the hugely successful
World of Warcraft has clocked up a total
5.93 million years of game-play since its
launch. So what if the skills gamers learn
saving made-up planets could be applied
to improving our real one?

Game designer Jane McGonigal
develops future simulation games related
to real-world challenges such as peak
oil, using the same powerful feedback
loops, immersive environments and global
distribution as online games—with the
difference that players are given offline
challenges to complete. McGonigal’s new
game Evoke (www.urgentevoke.com)
launched in March 2010 with sponsorship
from the World Bank Institute. It provides
a ten-week “crash course in changing
the world”. The aim: to create social
entrepreneurs equipped to come up
with solutions to the world’s greatest
problems.

Elsewhere on the internet, you’ll find
the aptly named Armchair Revolutionary
(www.armrev.org), a role-playing game
that gets players taking real-life action
(and making real-cash donations), while
over 12,000 younger kids have already
joined Minimonos (www.minimonos.com),
the new virtual world based on generosity
and sustainability developed by New
Zealander Melissa Clark-Reynolds.
There’ll be more where these came
from. The Serious Games Initiative has
been set up to link game developers to
projects in education, health and public
policy, while its Games for Health project
promotes ‘exergaming’ (think Wii Fit) that
may put that sedentary gamer stereotype
to bed for good.

4 Subsidised cycling

Tax breaks for cyclists
(and their employers)

What can reduce traffic congestion, boost worker
productivity, cut carbon emissions, improve air quality,
decrease reliance on imported oil, strengthen hearts and lungs,
reduce obesity, and make you fitter, happier and healthier?
A bicycle—and the UK government’s willing to put money on it.
Its Cycle to Work scheme offers tax breaks for bicycles bought
for the purpose of commuting to work. Generous tax exemptions
subsidise 40 to 50 percent of the cost of a new bike, be it electric, folding or unicycle,
and all the associated gear (helmet, lights, locks, panniers). Employees effectively hire
the bicycles from their employer, with the option to eventually buy their bike for a
nominal sum. It’s a win-win solution: employees get the bike of their dreams for half
the price, and employers get healthier, more productive and more punctual staff.

5 Algae power

Green goo to fuel the world

It seems almost too good to be true: a
truly green biofuel produced from algae
that cleans up waste water and soaks up
CO², produces freshwater as a by-product,
and poses no threat to food supplies or
rainforests. New Zealand’s Aquaflow is
an algae-power pioneer (see good.net.nz/
biofuel) and even ExxonMobil jumped in
last July, investing US$600 million in an
algae research partnership. Algae fuel
could be only a couple of years away
from the pump—and we may have the US
military to thank.

The biggest energy consumer in the
US, the military uses 60 to 75 million
barrels of oil a year, but it aims to obtain
half that from renewable energy sources
by 2016, and the US Air Force wants its
entire fleet to use a 50:50 mix of fossil and
biofuel by 2011. The Pentagon’s Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency—
whose previous handy inventions include
sat-nav and the internet—announced in
February that it had extracted oil from
algae ponds at a cost of just $0.75 a litre.
This can be further refined into jet fuel
for less than $1.12 a litre. Tests begin
next year, with commercial production
scheduled for 2013.

6 Eco-apps

Technology makes
eco-living easy

As we become ever-more aware of the
environmental and health impacts of our
everyday choices, there’s a corresponding
increase in the amount of information we
want to remember. Which are the ‘dirty
dozen’ pesticide-heavy vegetables that
are best to buy organic? Which cosmetics
chemicals should I avoid? Which fish do
I choose? Everyday purchasing decisions
would be so much easier with all that
information at your fingertips—and with
new mobile phone applications that make
eco-info easily accessible, it soon will be.

These so-called eco-apps have taken
off in the US, and it’s no surprise that
Apple’s iPhone is at the head of the
pack (see box). Another US initiative
is FishPhone, a service that suggests
sustainable alternatives when you textmessage
the name of a fish. Even the First
Lady is jumping in: Michelle Obama’s
Apps For Healthy Kids competition
(www.appsforhealthykids.com) launched
in March, with US$60,000 in prizes
for game developers who create tools
and games that help children eat more
healthily. It’s only a matter of time until
we see more eco-apps that are tailormade
for New Zealanders.

7 Edible pets

The rise of useful
domestic ‘pets’

Victoria University professors Brenda
and Robert Vale created a stir when
their book Time to Eat the Dog?: The
real guide to sustainable living was
released last year. They calculated that a
large dog like an Alsatian has the same
ecological footprint as a Toyota Corolla.
The Vales’ solution wasn’t really to eat
your pet dog, but to instead adopt a pet
you can eat: chickens, rabbits, a pig, goat
or sheep. The suggestion was met with
hoots of mockery around the world, but
in fact ‘edible pets’—or pets that produce
yummy stuff like eggs and honey—have
been increasing in popularity for years.

Darcy Philp, president of the
Wellington Association of Purebred
Poultry, has been in the egg business
since the 1950s. “The number of people
that are keeping half-a-dozen birds
in their backyards for fresh eggs has
probably trebled in the past ten years,” he
says. “I get four or five calls a week from
people looking for laying birds. I used to
be lucky to get one call a month.”

It’s okay to get attached to an edible
pet, says Novella Carpenter, author of
Farm City: The education of an urban
farmer and former apprentice of writer
Michael Pollan. “It’s really important to
love the animal you’re going to eat. That
makes meat more of a sacrifice, which is
what it should be.”

8 Civil
disobedience

Peaceful, slightly naughty
eco-action

Millions of people all over the world
became politically active for the first time
in the lead-up to last year’s UN climate
change conference in Copenhagen.
We marched, we wrote to politicians,
we signed online petitions. When the
conference failed to produce a meaningful
agreement, that feeling of empowerment
was hard to maintain. What now? For
some rebels with a cause, it’s time for a
bit of bad behaviour. Civil disobedience
and non-violent direct action will take
activism much further than e-petitions
in the build-up to the next significant
climate change conference.

At BeyondTalk (www.beyondtalk.net),
almost 6,000 people around the world
have pledged to “risk arrest in order to
get our leaders to make the right climatechange
choices”. Those not willing to
take that risk can buy an arrest offset,
funding someone else’s civil-disobedience
training—or bail. When the target of
10,000 arrest-ready volunteers is reached,
a mass international civil disobedience
action is planned.

In New Zealand, Greenpeace offers
basic actions training to interested
volunteers (sign up at www.greenpeace.
org/volunteer) and the grassroots Climate
Camp movement is “for anyone who’s
fed up with empty government rhetoric
and corporate spin; and for anyone who’s
worried about our future and wants to do
something about it”. Join them at
www.climatecamp.org.nz (don’t tell the
cops we sent you).

9 Biochar

Green coal that feeds soil
and locks up carbon

So it seems as if we’re going to keep
on digging up the stable, permanent
deposits of carbon buried safely
underground—sometimes in our National
Parks—and burning them, releasing that
carbon as an atmosphere-warming gas.
Awesome. But what if we could quickly
capture some of that carbon and put it
back into the earth, where it could once
again lie safely buried and dormant?
Biochar promises to do exactly that.
Also known as ‘green coal’, biochar can
be created by slowly heating biomass
(anything that biodegrades) without
oxygen, in a process called pyrolysis.
The result is basically charcoal, which
can then be dug into the soil, locking the
carbon into the ground for hundreds of
years.

It’s a smart way to restore the
billions of tonnes of carbon that have
been stripped from the soil by industrial
agriculture. Biochar puts this missing
carbon back, allowing more plants to
grow, which absorb still more CO². It’s a
happy cycle, and results are even better
in developing countries, where biochar
can slow down deforestation, increase
food security and provide renewable
energy—as well as sequestering carbon.

10 Land-sharing

Hooking up gardens
with gardeners

If anyone needs a matchmaker, it’s the
keen green fingers that are itching to get
dirty but don’t have the outdoor space,
and those who have land to spare but
lack the time, skills or inclination to tend
a garden. Turning ignored or manicured
patches of lawn into productive gardens
means not only less wasted land, but
also stronger community connections and
more local, organic and home-grown food.

The idea of gardening on other
people’s land isn’t new—‘share-cropping’
has been practised for centuries—but
the internet is making it much easier
for would-be gardeners to find wouldbe
gardens. UK chef Hugh Fearnley-
Whittingstall calls it a “food revolution”.
He set up Landshare (www.landshare.net),
where people can register as a grower,
owner or ‘spotter’ (someone with an eye
out for unused public land that might be
suitable for guerilla gardening).

The US-based Shared Earth
(www.sharedearth.com) launched in
March, signing up almost three million
square metres of underused land in
just its first few months of operation—
including a few plots in New Zealand.