Solar Cooker

New way for cooking food is through this new explored technology. By using 'fuel' from the sunlight and by promoting using the solar cooker, it help to slow of deforestation and desertification by less use of coal or methane as fuel for cooking. Quite interesting when no cost incurred and in Malaysia, we have enough source over the year just by 'harvesting' the sunlight out of your home. New cost-free method that absolutely need to implement in our home!

Belows are some info on type of current solar cooker and some principles on how it working.

Types

The most common types of solar cookers are as below:

1. Box cookers

This box cook at moderate to high temperatures and often accommodate multiple pots. This is the most popular type of solar cooker.

2. Parabolic cookers

Curved concentrator cookers, or "parabolics", cook fast at high temperatures, but require frequent adjustment and supervision for safe cooking. They are very useful for large-scale institutional cooking.

3. Panel cookers

Panel cookers incorporate elements of box and curved concentrator cookers. They are simple and relatively inexpensive to buy or produce. The most popular brand for this panel cooker is "CooKit".

Principles

Basicly, the solar cooker is using this basic principle; sunlight is converted into heat energy that is retained for cooking. It work best when in dark, shallow, thin metal with dark surface, tight-fitting lids to hold in heat and moisture.

Sustainable Fashion

Sustainable fashion, also called eco fashion, is a part of the growing design philosophy and trend of sustainability as well as environmentally friendly. It is also a part of the trend of “ethical fashion”. According to the May 2007 Vogue appears not to be a short-term trend but one could last multiple seasons. Nowadays, fashion designers have adopted the ides of sustainability where they were using more environmentally-friendly materials such as organic cottons and methods in clothing production. They were some designers said that they are trying to incorporate these sustainable practices into modern clothing, rather than producing “dusty, hippy-looking clothes.” However, sustainable fashion is typically more expensive than clothing produced by conventional methods. There are many factors when considering the sustainability of a material in sustainable fashion. The renewability and source of a fiber, the process of how a raw fiber is turned into a textile, the working conditions of the people producing the materials, and the materials total carbon footprint. All of these factors are needed to be considered when practicing the sustainable fashion. In my point of view, although sustainable fashion is expensive but the idea of sustainability practiced can be promoted through out the world due to sustainable fashion and it is worth.

There are several celebrities and designers like Bono and Stella McCartney have recently drawn attention to socially-conscious and environmentally-friendly fashion. Besides that, Portland Fashion Week which has featured sustainable designers and apparel since 2005 has also attracted international press for its efforts to showcase sustainable designs in a 100% eco-friendly and sustainable production. Furthermore, there are also some organizations working to increase opportunities for sustainable designers. The National Association of Sustainable Fashion Designers is one of those organizations. Its purpose is to assist entrepreneurs with growing fashion related businesses that create social change and respect the environment. Well, fashion is now going to idea of sustainable and we shall do our part to promote sustainable as well. Small step of practicing sustainable method in your home can make the change to better environment. ^-^

Organic cotton which from non genetically modified plants and being grown without the use of any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.

Amazon Rainforest…

A movie named ‘Piranha’ was screened around August… well, I not really interest on this kind ‘meat feeding’ fish… ^^ the things I wanna let u guys know is some facts about piranha hometown – the Amazon forests... I’m sure everyone got heard a pieces of news about this famous rainforest directly or indirectly… Amazon river, Amazon rainforest, new species found in Amazon and so on and so forth… so, I gather some information from the web… lets look at some fun facts about this.. relax before we start our final exam and thesis presentation for those final sem coursemate… XD

1st… Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world… how large is it?? The rainforest spread over eight South American countries, i.e. Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. If Amazon is a country, it will be the ninth largest in the world… they cover 6 million square kilometers of land (for your information, Malaysia is only ranking 65 for land area coverage^^)…

2nd… Nile is the longest river in the world… Amazon River is the second… The length of the Amazon River is more than 4000 miles where it is originated from Andes and end up at Atlantic Ocean. The water discharge rate is around 3.4 million gallons per minutes… the Amazon has more than 1100 tributaries and 17 of them are longer than 1000 miles… 2/3 of the fresh water in the world can be found in the rivers, streams and tributaries associated with Amazon River...(Malaysia longest river – Rajang River is approximate 350 miles)…

3rd… Amazon Rainforest has been described as the ‘Lungs of Earth’ because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20% of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest… but now, deforestation is getting serious… this cause a lots of scientist , environmentalist, biologist etc started panic… :(

4th… fauna… Guys, how many species of ant can you found in your home?? In Amazon, 43 species of ant can be found in 1 single tree.. amazing is it?? Haha :) More than half of the world’s estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforest. The bird species native to the Amazon rainforest constitute approximately 1/3 of the total bird population on the planet. Some of the animals native to this rainforest include Jaguar (a bit look like leopard, but definitely different^^), spider monkey (this creature has long limbs and tail, live in the upper layer of rainforest and forage of the canopy, from 25 – 30 m.. wow~~ sort like living in high rise condos… haha), Anaconda (another favourite topic for movie >.<), Amazon pink river dolphin (personally, I love this… thinking is it they stay together with piranha… @@) and many others… 2500 species of fish… 1500 species of birds… 1800 species of butterflies… 4 types of big cats… 200 species of mosquitoes…

5th… flora… Estimate more than 40,00 plants species in the Amazon… 50 – 200 different trees species per hectare can be found in Amazon… Those plants have numerous medical uses with many of the possible medical uses are still undiscovered (around 90% of the plants used by native tribes have not been studied by scientist for more possible medical purposes)... Besides, more than 3000 fruits growing in the Amazon; native tribes use more than 1500 of them, but only 200 are grown for outside use…

6th… well.. not only flora and fauna… human also… around 250,000 Amazon natives are believed to be living in the rainforest and they comprise 215 ethic groups speaking 170 different languages… about 50 native Amazon tribes living deep in the rainforest have never had any contact with civilized world (sort like the lost world… haha^^)

Thought of just end the article here… but I think should share this pieces of info also…

As I said just now.. deforestation is getting serious in Amazon rainforest… between 2004 and 2005, the mean annual deforestation rate in the Amazon had increased up to 13,900 miles per year.. If this rate is continues, the forest cover of the Amazon will reduced by almost the half in the next 2 decades around 2020… this means that numerous of flora and fauna species will be invariable driven to extinction…. The rainforest covered around 14% of the surface of the earth at one point of time, now have been reduced to a 6%... within this 6%, the Amazon rainforest holds more than half of the 10 million species in the world… it took millions of years for these rainforest to evolve… but at the rate at which we are destroying them… they will not last for more then a few decades… how sad of this… haizz….

check this for more information…
http://www.ehow.com/about_5431539_funny-amazon-rain-forest.html
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/amazon-rainforest-facts.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/20_facts_about_the_amazon_rainforest
http://www.rainforest-facts.com/amazon-rainforest-facts.html

ITER Project potential as future energy

ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment intended to prove the viability of fusion as an energy source, and to collect the data necessary for the design and subsequent operation of the first electricity-producing fusion power plant. Launched as an idea for international collaboration in 1985, the ITER Agreement includes China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States, representing over half of the world's population.

The ITER platform in Cadarache, where construction will begin in 2010 on buildings and facilities. Photo: Agence ITER France.

ITER is an important step on the road to fusion power plants in Cadarache, Southern France. The project is being planned with great respect for the local environment, in keeping with the aim of producing an environmentally benign form of energy.Fusion has the potential to play an important role as part of a future energy mix for our planet. It has the capacity to produce energy on a large scale, using plentiful fuels, and releasing no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

Water is essential to the ITER installation. The terrific heat generated by the fusion reaction inside the ITER machine will be evacuated by a water cooling system. Approximately 1.5 million cubic metres of water will be necessary per year during the operational phase of ITER. This water will be supplied by the nearby Canal de Provence, and transported by gravity through underground tunnels to the fusion installation. The volume of water needed for ITER represents only 1% of the total water transported by the Canal de Provence.

Electrical supply to the ITER site will be assured by an existing network that feeds the Tore Supra Tokamak - part of the adjacent CEA Cadarache research facility. A one-kilometre extension will be enough to link the ITER machine into the network, without changing the current distribution of electrical lines. Operating the ITER Tokamak will require from 120 MW to up to 620 MW of electricity for peak periods of 30 seconds. No disruption to local users is expected.

The incredibly complex ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 meters tall, and weigh 23000 tons.The very small man dressed in blue at bottom right gives us some idea of the machine's scale.

During ITER operation, the products of the fusion process are Helium, which is inert and harmless, and neutrons, which will lodge in the vessel walls and produce heat and activation of materials. ITER is an experimental facility and is not designed to produce electricity; the heat produced by the fusion reaction will be evacuated by water circulating through the components inside the vacuum vessel and by water circulating in the vacuum vessel walls.

ITER is not an end in itself. It is the bridge toward a first plant that will demonstrate the large-scale production of electrical power and Tritium fuel self-sufficiency. This is the next step after ITER, the Demonstration Power Plant, or DEMO for short. A conceptual design for such a machine could be complete by 2017. If all goes well, DEMO will lead fusion into its industrial era, beginning operations in the early 2030s, and putting fusion power into the grid as early as 2040.

While ITER is being constructed and DEMO is in its conceptual phase, several fusion installations, with different characteristics and objectives, will be operating around the world to conduct complementary research and development in support of ITER. In Japan, the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) program has begun. This installation, part of the "Broader Approach" Agreement, will test and qualify the advanced materials needed for a full-scale fusion plant.By the last quarter of this century, if ITER and DEMO are successful, our world will enter the Age of Fusion - an age when mankind covers a significant part of its energy needs with an inexhaustible, environmentally benign, and universally available resource.

you can see more information about the ITER Project through this website, http://www.iter.org/

wind power

Wind power is one of the power plant,it is friendly with environmental.Wind is kind of power that could convert to new type of energy.This conversion is useful.Wind power can use in wind turbines to make electricity,wind mills for mechanical power,wind pumps for pumping water or drainage,or sails to propel ships.

Human have been using wind power for simple usage as propel sailboats and sailing ship.Windmills have been used for milling grain, in fact wind power slue the windmill,so water could pump so machine worked and grid. The new style of usage of wind power began in 1979 with the serial production of wind turbines by Danish manufactures Kuraint, Vestas, Nordtank, and Bonus.These turbines were smaller than today.And they just had 20-30 kW capacities.But today their capacity increase and deliver up to 7 MW.

Now a days, many country could produce these turbines.

There are now many thousands of wind turbines operating, with a total nameplate capacity of 157,899 MW of which wind power in Europe accounts for 48% (2009). World wind generation capacity more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006, doubling about every three years. 81% of wind power installations are in the US and Europe. The share of the top five countries in terms of new installations fell from 71% in 2004 to 62% in 2006, but climbed to 73% by 2008 as those countries — the United States, Germany, Spain, China, and India — have seen substantial capacity growth in the past two years.

I saw in my class that Malaysia has these turbines on water,because in Malaysia the speed of wind on ground is not suitable for produce other energy,but in ocean or sea the government could use from wind for production electricity power.

In my country(Iran),we have many windy area,one of them is Manjil (windy city),the city is famous because of the wind,and has lot of wind turbines.In those area electricity power supply with wind,more over that if the wind flaw is powerful,it could transfer power to other city.These are some photos from Manjil's turbines.

Although wind turbines supply electricity power in Manjl,but there is a dam which protect from electricity power in there,because as u know these kind of sources couldn't be trusted.

Compared to the environmental effects of traditional energy sources, the environmental effects of wind power are relatively minor. Wind power consumes no fuel, and emits no air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources.So big companies could use from this sources for production electricity power by build their buildings near the windy area and make wind farm.

Although this power is friendly with environment but scientist are worried about birds that

fly near this farm,because turbines movement could kill them.

Overall, I hope human utilize more from these kinds of power which are friendly with environment and are more less or without harmful.

Jim Carrey - Environmental Guy!

This is some simple joke from Jim Carrey, but you know what...some celebrity have the power to changes the peoples thought like Oprah Winfrey. They just need to say something and others will follow just like that. When we do some campaign for better environment, this celebrity can make our campaign be more effective and better result...

JAMES BOND GO GREEN?

Environmental Friendly Celebrities who support green building, conservation and various aspects of sustainability and alternative energy. Being “green conscious” has become a deeply held cause embraced by many of Hollywood’s elite. Pierce Brosnan (picture) who act as James Bond focuses on marine mammal and wetland protection, headlined Natural Resources Defense Council campaign against effects of Navy sonar on whales, and has been awarded in 1997 Green Cross International Environmental Leadership Award. A wide array of stars have made it an avocation to champion their favorite environmental and green causes. Many are advocates for every aspect of saving the environment while some lend their names and influence to specific areas.

While domestic environmental issues draw continued attention, many environmentalists are now placing international issues at the top of their list of priorities. Issues like global warming, population growth, deforestation, and the continued loss of many species of plants and animals have reached increasing prominence on the environmental agenda.


Leading Green Celebrity Players

Dave Matthews Band: offsets CO2 emissions produced by their multi-city tours by funding projects such as tree plantings and wind turbine construction.

Cate Blanchett: plans to equip Sydney Theatre Company building with solar panels, rainwater collection systems to make it completely eco-friendly. Sydney home is fully powered by solar energy, donates to Forest Guardians.

Richard Branson: Virgin Group chairman, a former global warming skeptic, who in Sept. 2006 pledged to spend all profits from his airline and rail businesses (estimated $3 billion over 10 years) on investments in biofuel research and projects to tackle emissions.

Ward Burton: Ward Burton - Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation: NASCAR driver and winner of the Daytona 500, he is the founder of this foundation whose mission is to conserve America’s land and wildlife.

Gwyneth Paltrow & Camerson Diaz: Act Green: "unite to conserve energy and reduce our reliance on oil."

Cameron Diaz: Trippin', MTV Series: "Cameron Diaz and a group of her close, personal friends think globally and act globally too as they travel to unlikely getaways...from Chile to Yellowstone, on a quest to safeguard the environment."

Leonardo Dicaprio: started the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 to promote environmental issues, drives a hybrid car, currently writing and producing a feature length documentary on global warming called "11th Hour".

Harrison Ford: vice chairman of Conservation International, has a Central American ant named after him, won the Global Environmental Citizen Award in 2002.

Jane Goodall: The Jane Goodall Institute: Purpose to advance the power of individuals to take informed and compassionate action to improve the environment of all living things

Daryl Hannah: arrested in June 2006 for staging a 23-day tree sit-in during a bid to preserve an urban community garden in Los Angeles, traveled across America in 2005 in a biofuel car, home is entirely off-grid. dh love life: a video blog focused on green topics

Woody Harrelson: "transforming the world together." This is a guy that is inspiring, focuses on biodiesel, getting off the grid, organic & overall good green-ness.

Josh Hartnett, Orlando Bloom, Maroon 5, Kt Tunstall: promoting 2007 Global Cool initiative to cut carbon emissions by encouraging people to turn off TVs, mobile-phone chargers and other energy-draining gadgets.

Barenaked Ladies: run their tour buses and trucks on biodiesel fuel.

Alanis Morissette: given 2003 Environmental Media Association Missions in Music Award; campaigns against oil drilling in Alaska; has solar panels on home.

Willie Nelson: singer, co-partner in the Willie Nelson Biodiesel Company.

Edward Norton: launched the BP Solar Neighbors Program in 2003 which matches each celebrity purchase of a solar energy home system with a solar installation in a low-income family home in Los Angeles.

Brad Pitt: co-creator of design competition to build 20 affordable, reduced energy, environmentally friendly homes in New Orleans.

Robert Redford: 30 years on board of Natural Resources Defense Council, founder of Sundance Preserve, winner of 1993 Earth Day award, 1987 United Nations Global 500 award. In April 2007, launches weekly three-hour slot called "The Green", dedicated entirely to the environment, on his Sundance TV channel.

Sting: founder in 1989 of Rainforest Foundation to protect rain forests and their indigenous peoples.

Kt Tunstall: ran her US tour bus on biodiesel fuel, performed at eco-friendly "Golden Green" at the 2007 Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles.

Neil Young: 2004 North American tour fueled entirely with biodiesel.