POSITIVE IDEAS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
The world is rightly concerned with the health of our environment and most news is of a negative nature. However, there are bright and workable innovations just waiting to be put into action to help mitigate climate change. The following article features four of these ideas – one has already proven worthwhile. This idea, a cooperation of the Trust for Public Land and local agencies, revamped a hot concrete playground in NYC into a play area/public mini-park that mitigates climate change effects for a school in New York City. The other three are winners in an innovation contest this year held by The Fast Company. The top winner designed satellites to find methane leaks. The “runner-up" ideas were a thin white paint that reflects heat extremely well and an ingredient in cement that will make it a partial carbon sink.
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is celebrating its 50th birthday this year. It has a long history of securing greenspaces for parks, trails, cultural exhibits and more. The green schoolyard design is such a positive idea. TPL partnered with local community agencies to revamp a hot, uncomfortable space in New York City into an oasis that is many degrees cooler, collects runoff from storms (1.3 million gallons recorded in a recent storm), saves water by using stored water for irrigation, and provides a mini-park for the neighborhood. The organization has built hundreds of others in New York and is now working with Native American tribes to build culturally sensitive and climate sensitive playgrounds for their communities. The organization estimates that there are more than 90,000 playgrounds in the US that could be revamped to fight climate change effects.
Methane leaks are a big problem because this greenhouse gas is 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide over 20 years. These leaks are hard to spot and thus keep leaking until folks can locate and fix them. Because this process is costly and takes time, companies tend to ignore the scope of the problem. The company called GHG-Sat, has designed satellites to spot and communicate exact locations and levels of leaking methane. They use a “light spectrum fingerprint” to locate leaks. The company has five satellites now and hopes to add five more this year. They estimate that each leak found might stop around 750,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas from escaping into the atmosphere. They won first place in Fast Company’s Innovation contest.
Purdue University researchers have redesigned a rather thickish white coating into a very thin paint that will reflect 98.1% of sunlight from objects. This can be used for airplanes, cars and home roofs. It is expected to be scaled up and marketed soon. When in wide use, it will lower energy use for air-conditioning and thus reduce emissions overall.
The company “Capture-Crete” has developed a material that can be put into the process of making concrete that partially replaces Portland cement. They claim this new product interacts with carbon dioxide in the air, making it a carbon sink. The company claims the results will be a stronger product and a reduction of about 75% of the present footprint of regular cement. More testing needs to be done on the efficiency of the product before upscaling, but it may be game changing for the fight against climate change.
Earth Steward Action: Keep positive so that you will continue to do all you can to fight climate change. Encourage others to embrace a Creation Care Lifestyle.
Sources:
https://citylimits.org/2023/01/27/an-overlooked-climate-solution-greener-playgrounds/
https://www.fastcompany.com/90869781/world-changing-ideas-climate-2023 (click on ideas listed.)
