Eco-news

By Andy Kenworthy, May 1, 2010 @ 10:19 am

Recycling takes on a whole new meaning

Two Wellingtonians have transformed used car tyres into an innovative and good-looking bike stand that won’t scratch your bike.

Bikerakk is made from a steel frame encased in rubber from four recycled car tyres. It doesn’t chip or scratch bike paint and there’s an illuminated disc for advertising and to draw attention to the bike rack for enhanced safety.

“It just worked on various levels once I started thinking about it,” says designer Matt Hammond, “and what you see now sits well with cyclists, greenies, urban planners, property owners and people who actually want to see and touch something that is a real sustainable product.”

After two years of development, the first unit has been put outside the front doors of Chaffers New World in Wellington and the second is due any day now outside the city’s downtown food and produce market Moore Wilson.

The team is now trying to take a slice of New Zealand’s $57 million annual outdoor advertising market. And there have already been expressions of interest from Australia and the UK, particularly in using Bikerakks to ‘book-end’ existing bike racks to raise the profile of cycling and recycling simultaneously.

Business partner Duncan Forbes says, “Property owners and landlords like them because they look cool, not just because of what they are made of, or because they work. One guy suggested fixing a whole lot of them to a wall as a feature piece. Others want to hang a Bikerakk outside their front door with their brand on it.”

Kiwi-tech set to make a renewable power plant

It might sound comic book, but New Zealand’s hotly tipped clean-technology company, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, is making serious headway in the US.

Aquaflow recently announced a deal with UOP, part of giant US-based conglomerate Honeywell, to work co-operatively on a US$1.5 million demonstration project for the US Department of Energy.

The scheme will use Aquaflow technology and UOP control systems to demonstrate carbon dioxide capture from exhaust stacks at Honeywell’s manufacturing facility in Virginia that produces caprolactam, a precursor to a form of nylon.

The CO2 will be transferred to a pond near the plant, where algae will be grown using nitrogen in the wastewater from the same facility. Algal oil will be extracted from the algae and converted into biofuels. Any leftover algae will be converted at very high temperatures into a different type of oil, suitable for burning to generate renewable electricity.

This latest development is something of a return home for this technology, as the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fuels Development spearheaded its development from 1978–1996.

Jennifer Holmgren is vice-president and general manager of UOP’s Renewable Energy and Chemicals unit, which develops and licenses process technology for the production of biofuels. UOP has already commercialised a process to produce green diesel fuel from biological feedstocks, including algae, and demonstrated process technology to produce green jet fuel.

“This project will demonstrate integrated concepts and technologies that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions while showing the viability of new sources of energy,” she says. “Integrated approaches such as these are our best hopes for creating economically sustainable renewable energy solutions.”

Aquaflow director Nick Gerritsen says, “It is significant for a New Zealand company to be involved in a complex project like this. It is an indication of the broad application of the Aquaflow technology.”

Aquaflow’s boffins have been working since 2005, accumulating knowledge and experience gained at its Blenheim site, to grow and assess key characteristics of algae species indigenous to the local James River waterway.

More than just hot air

David Senn is the classic Kiwi tinkerer. In only five years he took his Econergy heat pump design from a garage in Ardmore to winning last year’s Consumer NZ DIY Product of the Year.

Now, according to the University of New South Wales, anyone currently using an electric boiler could save up to 69.4 percent on hot water heating by switching to an Econergy HP4000LT heat pump, which transfers energy from the air in your roof space.

Senn set to work after searching in vain for an efficient water heating system while renovating his own 1930s home in 2005, where gas and solar weren’t an option.

“I thought, ‘Surely it can’t be that hard,’” he says. “The basic concept is not new but being an energy nerd I wanted to perfect it. I’m a problem solver by nature and I grew up with the oil crisis of the 70s; my innovative father converted his car to natural gas and put up solar panels.”

The results, according to Consumer NZ’s Bill Whitley, are world class. “The Econergy HP4000LT was the star of our heat-pump water-heater test, blitzing its competitors,” he says. “Our test found that Econergy, a locally designed and made product, was at least three times more efficient than a standard electric cylinder. It’s on a par with solar power in terms of energy savings—and is likely to outperform solar in less sunny parts of the country.”

This is the next step for Econergy: to take on the more eco-fashionable solar panel market and win. Senn’s argument is that his device, by using the heat gain from your roof, is as much powered by the sun as most solar systems, so should get the same grant support and eco-credibility.

Bayleys goes green

Eco-homes may have finally gone mainstream with the launch of a new property website featuring sustainable homes by one of the country’s largest high street real estate agents.

www.bayleysgreenhomes.co.nz has been established by marketing specialist Lynn Lacy-Hauck to feature homes with especially high standards of energy use, water, siting, landscaping, construction and durability.

Lacy-Hauck became New Zealand’s first certified ecobroker after taking a commercial course that covered issues such as home insulation, windows, heating, cooling ventilation and design. She has also worked for pioneering eco-architects Ebode.

“Overseas data from Australia, the United States and Europe has shown that homes with better energy performance, for example, have a distinct market advantage over ordinary homes, achieving higher sale prices than conventional homes,” she says.

“An energy-efficient home can be significantly less expensive to operate month-by-month. This is becoming quite important to home buyers as the cost of energy rises. Many of these homes include materials that are much healthier to live around than conventional ones. Using low-VOC paints, non-chemically infused materials with good natural ventilation all make a difference to human health, and don’t pollute the environment.”

The small indoors

The Kiwi approach to house and home can be a bit two-faced. On one hand, the availability of land has meant sprawling homes where you can get fit jogging from room to room and urban areas bulging with the relentless march of the quarter-acre section. On the other, this settler nation maintains a deep desire to return to the seclusion, intimacy and compactness of the campsite and the bach.

In recent years these mixed feelings have given rise to various self-contained home kits that attempt to squeeze comfortable living into a tiny footprint with a wild, natural, eco-friendly flavour.

The latest is the Hatch (www.hatchhouse.co.nz), a rugged, all-steel, kit-set three-bedroom house, designed and engineered to meet Housing New Zealand standards in all but the most extreme conditions. For about $1,000 per square meter, it bolts together onsite and is self-sufficient: solar power battery inverter for lighting, cylinder gas for hot water and cooking and Bio-loo composting toilet and grey water system. And water collected from the roof is pumped from a rubber bladder suspended under the floor.

The Arkit (www.arkit.com.au, pictured right) is really an acorn out of which it is hoped a mighty oak will grow. The company, which has its HQ in Melbourne and a presence in Auckland, wowed punters at Victoria’s state of design exhibition last year with its indoor installation of a demonstration building. The plan is to set up there again in July, but the goal is to perfect a building system that can be used to create homes of all kinds and sizes.

Port-a-Bach (www.port-a-bach.com) is aligned to the architectural cargo cult that finds new and interesting ways to recycle shipping containers. When folded up, its steel shell protects it against unwanted interest. Inside, the stylish interior is split into flexible room spaces with a fabric screen system, and a fresh indoor/outdoor flow includes a striking flip-down sun bench.

Habode (www.habode.co.nz) has taken this one step further, with a shipping container-sized steel sub-frame that unfolds, complete with pre-installed utilities, to become your home, wherever you want it.

All these designs offer you the chance to move your home when you want to, and to site it with minimum disturbance to the landscape. They are unlikely to replace many people’s main home any time soon, but they sure beat trying to de-stress in a clapboard shack full of granny’s chintz.

New centre to reduce greenhouse gas

A new Centre for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research has opened in Palmerston North to try to tackle one of the nation’s most pressing environmental issues.

The agriculture sector is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in this country, making up just under half our total emissions. Most of this is methane emitted by livestock.

While opening the centre, to which government is funding $5 million a year over ten years, Prime Minister John Key, said: “Feeding the world’s growing population, while keeping a lid on emissions to fight climate change, is one of the defining challenges of the early 21st century.”