A Step Toward Getting Rid of Plastic Chowder

The bad, from Garbology:

Tiny pieces of plastic, a trashy confetti too small to see from the ship deck, had swirled through the water into the net. The bits of plastic were all colors and shapes, jagged and smooth, flakes and pellets, making a veritable plastic noodle soup. A hundred similar trawls across the twelve hundred miles of ocean pulled up plastic every time…the ocean, [environmentalist Mary Crowley] realized, had turned to plastic chowder.

The good, from MSNBC:

By now, it’s hardly news when a city bans plastic bags at checkout counters — but an entire state? That’s happened in Hawaii, where Honolulu County has joined the state’s three other counties to give Hawaii a first-in-the-nation title.

Nissan’s Second Highest Selling Car in Norway

BusinessGreen:

The surge in sales catapulted the LEAF to ninth on the list of the best-selling passenger cars in Norway in February this year, bagging a two per cent share of the car market, and making the LEAF Nissan’s second highest selling car nationally….No VAT is charged on electric vehicle purchases in Norway, the new car tax is waived, and drivers are eligible for free parking, exemption from some tolls, and can use bus lanes in Oslo. There are also around 3,500 public charging points in the capital, many of which are free to use.

Save Us, Mushrooms

Wendy Gordon at the Huffington Post:

Their product, called EcoCradle Mushroom Packaging, performs as well as polystyrene, its plastic counterpart, but is totally natural, non-toxic and 100 percent compostable, breaking down in 6-9 months. This is in stark contrast to polystyrene, which is so stable it may take decades to hundreds of years to deteriorate in the environment, making it a major component of plastic debris in the ocean where it becomes toxic to marine life.

14.5 Seconds

“In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.” dlvr.it/1S5Xd3—
CleanTechnica (@cleantechnica) April 18, 2012