Environment
Pod coffee's bad taste for the planet
But what bugs me most about pods isn't the marketing. It's the needless waste. Those 186m capsules used in Britain last year all had to go somewhere. So far, most aren't going in the recycling. Dolce Gusto mixed-plastic capsules "cannot currently be recycled in the UK", though a spokesperson says Nestle is "exploring a number of possible solutions." Tassimo T-Discs are "fully recyclable with Terracycle," though so far there are only 40 UK recycling points.
Convenience comes with a price in both taste and the environment…
Plastic Solar Panels?
This is potentially good news:
A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.
Not only that, but it’s way cheap. Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic.
Florida: the state of the beach
Gathered on a 10 minute walk down the Fort Lauderdale beach. Frightening.