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Smelting Saves Electronics from the Landfill

SCGH — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:30:23 +0000

Smelting: Recycling We Urgently Need

Electronics go out of style faster than clothes these days. Americans throw out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers every day, according to Time. E-waste piles up and often gets shipped to poor countries where it causes serious environmental and health problems.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to letting e-waste accumulate and leach dangerous chemicals into the surrounding soil and water. In this video, Michael Pittman from 2nd Solutions explains to Sierra Club Green Home how smelting makes it possible to recycle old electronics.

You can also learn about batteries’ eco afterlife, or find places to recycle your cell phone safely and sustainably.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Carbon Offset Projects Revitalize Forests

SCGH — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:00:55 +0000

Carbon Fund is a nonprofit that offers carbon offset options for individuals, businesses, and organizations who want to reduce their carbon footprint. When you buy carbon offsets, you sponsor one of the nonprofit’s projects to counteract global warming. These projects range from a providing hydroelectric power to a community in India to reforestation in Louisiana, as well as awareness campaigns.

Here Brian McFarland, project manager at Carbon Fund, tells Sierra Club Green Home about some cool ways they are making the planet healthier. Learn more about these projects to plant trees while offering local communities recreation and employment, plus plans to conserve rainforests worldwide in 2012.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Save Gas and the Environment with these Driving Tips

SCGH — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:00:08 +0000

Maybe an electric vehicle, biodiesel engine, or hybrid car is out of reach right now, but you can still drive your current car in a manner that saves gas, money, and the environment. Sierra Club Green Home learned some fuel efficiency tips from Ford at this month’s auto show in Detroit, and we’re only too happy to pass these along.

Did you know, for example, that if you’re driving over 50 mph you actually save gas by using the AC instead of rolling down the windows? Or that using the right motor oil usually improves your fuel efficiency by 2%? Considering how many cars using gas are already on the road, we think it’s important to pass these on. Check out Ford’s Web site for the full list of ways to save gas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hybrid Cars and Electric Vehicles Are Ford’s Rising Stars

Juliet Blalack — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:14:39 +0000

By J.S. Blalack

Hybrid cars and 100% electric vehicles are set to be the stars of Ford’s next generation of cars. Sierra Club Green Home drivers, meet the Focus Electric, the Fusion Plug-In, and the C-MAX Hybrid! These cars vary in range and energy source, but all promise to make alternative energy cars more practical and fun in 2013.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Focus Electric is 100% gas free. This electric vehicle runs instead on a battery with a life of 100 miles per charge, which takes about four hours to charge. Other fun features include push button start, a voice-activated navigation system, and HD radio. Unlike most electric vehicles, its interior and carpets are made of recycled plastic bottles! Ford plans to collect enough plastic bottles during this year to make the interior for their entire fleet of 2013 Focus electric vehicles.

If 100 miles barely covers your commute, never fear! The Ford Fusion is one of the longer-range hybrid cars in the works. You can drive 100 miles on battery, and then hit the gas station as a backup. Even cooler is the fact that the battery charges while the gas engine is running. The 2013 Fusion’s interior is made of recycled yarn from post-industrial and post-consumer products.

The C-MAX Hybrid car has an even longer rage, and features a new type of battery. While most first-generation hybrid cars (like the outgoing Ford Escape) run on nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries, C-MAX will use a lithium-ion (li-ion) battery. Li-ion batteries are 25 to 30 percent smaller and 50 percent lighter than NiMH batteries, but still carry the same charge. One of the most efficient hybrid cars, its battery recharges while the gas engine is in use, and the braking system uses 95% of braking energy to help charge the battery. C-Max Energi, the plug-in version of this hybrid, is expected to have a 500-mile driving range.

Sustainable Cars Made from Natural, Recycled Materials

SCGH — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:21:28 +0000

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“Soy foam” is used in the headrests and seats of cars. (Courtesy of Ford)

Have you ever wondered how an electric vehicle works, or how car companies can use more environmentally friendly materials? Ford sustainability expert John Viera has spent his entire career working on everything from fuel efficiency improvements in cars to sustainability initiatives for manufacturing facilities, and is excited to talk shop with Sierra Club Green Home readers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Compostable Cars of the Future
Ford recently began incorporating natural, environmentally friendly materials into its car parts, including wheatstraw and soy products. Its scientists are also researching uses for coconut husks, carrots, and corn-based plastics. The company envisions making cars with 100% biodegradable interiors in the future.

Wheatstraw is a waste product of wheat. That means using it diverts waste from landfills, and does not require extra agricultural land. Manufacturers use wheatstraw to create fibers that go in the center consoles and bins, which makes these car components biodegradable and more environmentally friendly.

Since soy is grown in excess in the United States, Ford partnered with the United Soybean Board to use soy in every one of its vehicles. “Soy foam” is used in the headrests and seats of cars. This foam is made from petroleum, like conventional foam, but soy oil is used as a substitute for 4-11% of the petroleum. This reduces carbon emissions and the amount of petroleum extracted. Soy oil is also used to create the sealing rubber applied throughout the car, and researchers are looking into using dandelion for similar purposes. Although this is slightly more environmentally friendly than conventional foam, the natural ingredient is such a small part of the foam that it is not biodegradable or low-impact.

With coconut husks, the fibers and sugars are extracted from the husk for material use. This coconut material is currently being used in research for seat fiber materials, and for replacing petroleum in plastic production. One benefit of using coconut oil in the plastic is that it makes for a lighter car, which increases fuel efficiency.

Blue Jean and Plastic Bottle Carpets
Ford is also finding ways to use fewer virgin materials (those extracted from the earth) and more environmentally friendly, recycled materials in their cars.

For the Focus Electric, Ford teamed up with fabric supplier Sage Automotive Interiors and Unify Yarns to create car fabric from post-industrial waste. Sage sells their post industrial waste to Unify, who then makes it into yarn. This yarn is then sold back to Sage. Sage then uses this yarn to make interior car fabric, then sells the fabric to Ford to make the fabric in its cars.

Ford is also collecting bottles from conferences to use in the entire fleet of Focus Electric cars next year. Its goal for the “2 Million Bottles Campaign” is to collect millions of plastic bottles and create bottle carpeting and seat fabric. The company already incorporates up to three pairs of used denim jeans per car in the carpet mats of some models.

Batteries’ Eco Afterlife

SCGH — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:39:38 +0000

From cameras and cell phones to watches and eggbeaters, we use batteries every day in all sorts of household products. It’s hard to imagine not using batteries, but is our current use and disposal sustainable?

Sierra Club Green Home asks Jessica Bell from LEI Electronics to explain what a standard battery does to the environment when it is disposed of in the trash, and why it is important to think about sustainability when powering up. LEI Electronics produce EcoAkalines, which are carbon-neutral, environmentally-friendly batteries.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To find a recycling location for your single-use batteries, check out our Recycling Center.

CODA’s Electric Vehicle: Shorter Charge, More Miles

SCGH — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:52:31 +0000

CODA is more than a car company. These self-described “hippies of the car industry” are on a mission to get an electric car in every garage in the United States. They do their part by creating a more affordable, practical electric vehicle (EV), and by raising awareness of the EV option. Next month, CODA will release their four-door sedan with two battery options: 125 miles per charge, or 150 miles per charge.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While a standard electric vehicle (EV) requires overnight charge, both of CODA’s batteries only require four hours to charge up. CODAs are also reasonably priced compared to other zero emissions cars. Their sedan with a 125 mile battery has a base cost of $37,250. After federal tax savings, the price will be $29,750 and, in states where there are additional state tax credits, it can go down to $25,000-22,000.

“Research shows that the high cost of today’s alternative fuel technologies is one of the largest barriers that keep the average driver from purchasing an electric vehicle. Our continuous dedication to identifying affordable solutions and passing the savings on to our customers aligns with our mission of putting an electric vehicle into every garage,” says CODA CEO Phil Murtaugh.

CODA complements their business efforts with educational endeavors. At the CODA Experience Center in Los Angeles, the company hosts an electric vehicle speaker series the last Wednesday of every month. This month’s speaker will be Steve Glenn, CEO and Founder of LivingHomes. He will speak about sustainable construction on Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm. There is also a lot of information about EVs on CODA’s website.

It is now possible to reserve a CODA car by paying a refundable $99 fee. You can also learn more about electric cars’ impact on the environment or check out upcoming CODA events.

For more innovative and inspiring companies and organizations, check out our video library.

City-Wide Program Composts 1 Million Tons

E.Q. Lam — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:42:17 +0000

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Robert Reed, Recology public relations manager, feels the soil made from the company's composting program. (By E.Q. Lam)

Editor’s Note: Recology announces milestone in advance of Thanksgiving, the biggest food week of the year. Read on to find out more about the company’s programs, including art, education, and falcons. UPDATED WITH VIDEO: Recology gives SCGH a tour of some of its recycling facilities.

By E.Q. Lam
November 22, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — Waste management company Recology has hit a milestone: 1 million tons of composted materials in San Francisco. That’s enough to fill San Francisco’s famous TransAmerica pyramid-shaped building more than 16 times, as Recology put it. That’s also 1 million tons diverted from landfills.

What’s more, Thanksgiving is the biggest food week of the year, and Recology is calling for all scraps to be composted, the company announced today at a press conference. Overall, waste increases in San Francisco by 15 percent during the year-end holiday season.

Recology, which also handles all of San Francisco’s recyclables and garbage, collects from the city’s curbsides the food scraps, yard trimmings, and the like that residents and businesses throw away. The city-wide program allows even residents in apartments (without a back yard) to participate in composting.

: Jose Morales of Pina Vineyard Management inspects a load of compost from Jepson Prarie Organics at O’Brien Estate Vineyard and Winery in Napa. (By Larry Strong Photography, courtesy of Recology)

In addition, the program makes an urban-rural connection: The compost material goes to more than 200 local farms and vineyards such as those in Napa Valley, which use the nutrient-rich soil to grow cover crops such as mustard and beans. This renewable resource sequesters carbon in the topsoil, one way the program has helped to offset the city’s carbon footprint. The cover crops pull carbon from the air into the topsoil, known as carbon fixing or carbon fixation.

“This is some of the most important garbage there is. This is where the nutrients are, the carbon,” says Robert Reed, company public relations manager, during a tour of Recology’s facilities.

Whether to compost or send the trash to a landfill or incinerator can mean the difference between life or death, as one observer put it.

“If you put it in the green bin, it’s made into compost, it goes to a vineyard. Based on this, do you throw it to the left or do you throw it to the right?” Reed asks, referring to the green-blue-black bin sets for composting, recycling, and other trash.

Compostables in landfills would have created methane (a greenhouse gas). Since 1996, the compost collection program has a total CO₂E benefit (carbon sequestered and methane avoided) of more than 300,000 metric tons—the same amount as offsetting emissions from all vehicles crossing the Bay Bridge for two years, according to Recology.

Recology sees composting programs as part of a cycle to create jobs, help grow healthy produce, and help farms retain rainwater. In the past 10 years, the employee-owned company also has created 250 permanent jobs in the city by upgrading recycling programs, says Reed. See a report from Tellus Institute about recycling’s potential to create more jobs and greater health (an attractive solution to addressing issues regarding the economy and ecology).

Recology started the green bin program in 1996, and the city of San Francisco mandated composting and recycling in 2009 for all residents. It was the first municipality to pass such a law, with the goal of zero waste by 2020. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans send 33 million tons of food to landfills and incinerators each year, composting only 1 million ton. San Francisco composts about 600 tons a day, the most of any city in North America. About 300 US cities and universities have food composting programs, according to Recology, and more than 90 municipalities have residential composting programs, according to a national survey.

Statistics provided by Recology:

Recology handles 626 tons of compost feedstock (food scrap and plants) per day in San Francisco, with a 75 percent increase in five years.
1 million tons equals 2 billion pounds.
1 million tons is 2.38 times the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge, not including the anchorages or approaches.
By composting 1 million tons of food scraps and plants, San Francisco saved 2.7 million cubic yards of landfill space.

Besides composting, Recology has about 20 other programs, recycling nearly everything—from remodeling scraps to paint. (The company even tried recycling Styrofoam but decided there were health hazards, Reed says.) People drop off their leftover paint in Recology’s Household Hazardous Waste Facility, which has a chemist on staff. Recology sends recycled paint to schools, hospitals, libraries, community groups, and abroad, says Reed. Other recycled materials are sent to other cities, states, and countries (25 percent domestically, 75 percent exported).

Recology tries to make it easy on people to simply decide whether to compost, recycle, or toss. There is no need to even pay attention to the recycle numbers at the bottom of bottles.

“We left that behind ten years ago,” says Reed. “… We tested twelve different approaches, and we found a three-bin system [works best], where you put all your recycling in a blue bin, a green bin for composting, a black bin for all your materials that you don’t recycle. It’s our goal, eventually, the black bin will go away.”

Take a tour of Recology’s recycling facility and find out what happens to everything that goes in the blue bin:

Click here to view the embedded video.

About 90 percent of what comes through the door is recovered or recycled, says John Jurinek, plant manager at Recycle Central on Pier 96, where Recology recycles bottles, cans, and paper. Salvaged items are sent to St. Vincent de Paul where trained people refurbish the items for resale at thrift shops, Reed says.

Because the facility is next to the bay, along the lower eastern border of the city, Jurinek says Recology is conscious of the surrounding area. “So I have to be spiffy clean, try to contain all the material in the building as much as possible … so nothing goes into the air,” he says.

More Than Recycling: Art, Education, and … Falcons?

(Left) The Borroco Series #2 by Ellen Babcock is made from Styrofoam, construction sealant, asphalt patch, rebar, cement, and gold foil. (Right) Cara Cara by Bill Basquin is a photo of orange peels. (By E.Q. Lam)

Recology also runs related programs that might not be expected. One is an artist-in-residence program, started in 1990, from which a variety of surprisingly creative artwork has been produced and exhibited. One might not even be aware of the materials that the artists had salvaged from the waste collected by Recology. The purpose of the program is to get people to see garbage in a new way, says Reed.

“They cross the line between beauty and grotesque,” says Deborah Munk, who oversees the artist-in-residence program. “It’s just really interesting. … There’s that notion. In fact, I still expect recycled art to look like bottles and cans.”

Recology also welcomes about 4,000 children a year to its Environmental Learning Center. These kids, generally seventh graders, listen to workers talk about their jobs and receive an education on shopping choices. The idea is to start the education young and also to influence the children’s parents.

“It’s important to direct a good portion of the communication, the outreach, to young people,” says Reed, who also points out that children have less deep-rooted habits. “So kids start to recycle, and hopefully they carry that behavior through [as] adults.”

Bicycle Table by Mike Farruggia. (By E.Q. Lam)

Reed sees education and awareness as a key to changing people’s habits in how they discard their waste: “It’s really not laziness. It takes the same amount of energy to put it in the recycling bins as garbage. It’s ignorance.” He estimates that 66 percent of what goes into the garbage bin is recoverable. The company collects from more than 200,000 bins around the city, providing ample opportunity for people to recycle, Reed says. He would like to see a National Walk the Landfill Day so that people can get a true sense of what happens to their throwaways.

“Other cities hide the garbage. We’re trying to get people to look at garbage,” Reed says. “Garbage isn’t garbage at all but a mix of resources.”

Another surprising program from Recology is the falcon program. Because Recology is located along the bay, seagulls are attracted to the collected waste. “We don’t want the birds to eat what they don’t naturally,” says Indigo Redondo, company falconer, adding that seagulls also may carry diseases. The presence of trained falcons, currently three, are used to scare away the seagulls around the facilities

“We’re trying to keep a balance here within nature between predator and prey,” Redondo says. “There’s no killing involved.”

The falcons are kept well fed so that they have no interest in killing the seagulls, Redondo explains. The falcons simply patrol the area, fly around, and stand on the roof.

For related article, see:
Top 10 Reasons to Compost

Check out more articles by E.Q. Lam.

Panasonic’s Novel Japanese Recycling Plant

E.Q. Lam — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:50:04 +0000

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The history of Panasonic began with its first products, a light bulb plug and double sockets. (By E.Q. Lam)

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series looking at Panasonic and its ecological strategies and technological developments.

Story and photos by E.Q. Lam

In Japan, nearly everyone practices the Shinto religion, which worships nature as millions of gods. Also in Japan, a man named Konosuke Matsushita started a company in 1918 that would become Panasonic. The name Matsushita means “below the pine tree,” and pine is an evergreen.

Perhaps it is a stretch to link the above facts to make sense of Panasonic’s embrace of eco-centric business. But Panasonic often cites its founder’s philosophy, which encourages valuing nature and resources, as the basis for its recent adoption of the theme “eco ideas” and the strategy to be the number one green innovation company in the electronics industry by its 100th anniversary in 2018.

A fitting example of its green business is the Panasonic Eco Technology Center (PETEC), in Kato City, near Osaka. It is Panasonic’s home appliance recycling plant, but it is unusual to be located among high-tech companies in Yashiro Science Park, says Kazuyuki Tomita, PETEC’s president. Recycling centers in Japan are usually located in a coastal area landfill or deep in the mountains where there are no residents, he says.

(E.Q. Lam)

Location is not the only unusual thing about PETEC. The walls along the stairway are decorated for a preschool, with fun colors and cartoonish images. Its motto is “treasure hunting”—finding the recoverable materials within the end-of-life appliances.

“So we try to hunt for treasure or gems to recover the resources,” Tomita says, adding jokingly that little gold has been found, however.

“From product to product” is another PETEC concept, meaning that the recovered materials are used in new products. Of 49 recycling facilities in Japan, PETEC boasts that it is the only one with a research and development division. PETEC offers feedback for product development and lets engineers experience how to dismantle a product, so that they learn the value of recovered resources and can apply that understanding in designing products. For example, the material that an air conditioning label is made of can interfere with the ease of recycling the AC panel material, so the type of label and its printing were changed.

Take a mini-tour of PETEC:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to last year’s special factors where the value of resources increased drastically, PETEC is in the black, Tomita says. “Our [Panasonic Group] president said, ‘You don’t have to make a profit,’ but he did not say make a loss!” he jokes. And PETEC expects its role in promoting recycling-oriented technology to grow more significantly.

“Recycling activity will improve radically through these small [design] changes,” Tomita says. “… Our target is to conduct 3R designing—to incorporate the recycling performance or easiness into the [product] design.”

PETEC also is remarkable because it is a clean recycling facility, with little debris or particles in the air and does not appear from the outside to be a recycling center. It uses a dust collecting system for the environment of its 230 employees. PETEC (which has 250 solar panels that produce 50 kilowatts to power all the lights) has developed advanced recycling technology—such as a high-precision resin selection system and an organic decomposition system—combined with manual dismantling of appliances. Decomposition uses titanium oxide, which decomposes one part and allows for the recovery of what is left of the materials. PETEC uses magnetism to separate iron, and gravity and vibration to recover copper and aluminum. Plastics are sorted in a high-precision air system, where infrared light can pick out a single resin.

(E.Q. Lam)

A total of more than 8 million units have gone through PETEC since the facility began operations in April 2001. PETEC accepts refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and televisions (the older cathode-ray tubes and LCD flat panel TVs) from 23 manufacturers. It recycles 85 percent of the materials on average, says Takae Tsuchida, plant tour guide. In the past couple years, Japan has switched from cathode-ray tube TVs to flat panel TVs, which has helped to increase the annual number of units recycled from an average 650,000 to more than 1 million units.

Here are the amount of recovered resources converted to more-meaningful data:

129,903 tons of iron = 158,417 cars
20,249 tons of copper = 81 Great Buddha of Nara statues (the statue stands 49 feet tall)
10,928 tons of aluminum = 95 jumbo jet aircraft

: (E.Q. Lam)

Education and involvement in the community are important, Tomita says. PETEC formed an environmental conservation council and works with local government and residents; it also outsources some work to another group which employs physically challenged workers. PETEC offers tours to the public, receiving more than 12,000 visitors a year (with only about 1,000 from overseas). It has had 100,000 visitors since tours started in August 2010.

Tomita says there is a NIMBY attitude among consumers. “Everybody understands that we need recycling, but everybody thinks ‘not in my back yard, no way,’” he says.

Japan mandates by law the recycling of end-of-life appliances and electronics, which is unique in the world, Tomita says. “The aim of this unique home appliances recycling law is because Japan, we are not blessed with [lots of] resources,” he says.

The law requires consumers to deliver the products to retailers or manufacturers, which must accept them at designated collection points. Manufacturers must develop methods for recycling and recovery of materials, says Tomita. Consumers pay a recycling fee, which ranges from about $17 to $48 dollars depending on the product and is set every four years by the recycling facilities. But consumers bear only a portion of the costs for the recycling process; manufacturers also face a cost in handling the products. Manufacturers aim to reduce the recycling cost to consumers to zero, Tomita says.

PETEC, as a recycling center, sells the recovered resources. The panel cullet from cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs are given to glass manufacturers; a new application in Japan is to make cement-like blocks for use on pathways such as outside PETEC, in parks, and at schools, says Tsuchida. Materials from LCD TVs and washing machines are reused in new versions of the same types of products. PETEC also worked with Panasonic’s Home Appliances Company to develop a way to make glass wool from CRT materials.

(E.Q. Lam)

“So we are making every effort to recover these to use in an efficient manner,” Tsuchida says.

Some recovered materials are shipped overseas, if there is no use in new products for them in Japan. “However, our idea is to use the recovered resources as much as possible in Japan,” Tomita says, “because Japan has less resources.”

PETEC also wants to expand recycling in Panasonic locations overseas, Tomita says. “I think we have to localize the recycling factory to fit the law of each country.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Panasonic Corporation.

Check out more articles by E.Q. Lam.

Technology for Smart Homes, Smart Cities

E.Q. Lam — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 04:15:19 +0000

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Design of Fujisawa sustainable smart town in Japan, to be realized in 2013. (Courtesy of Panasonic)

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series looking at Panasonic and its ecological strategies and technological developments.

By E.Q. Lam

Japan is known for being high tech, and thanks to companies such as Panasonic, its high tech is going green. Take a look at Panasonic’s eco innovations for appliances and electronics, both those currently on the market as well as those the company hopes to introduce in the near future. The company’s various divisions have public venues which showcase the products for complete energy solutions for the home. In addition, Panasonic is spearheading entire smart town projects in Japan and other parts of Asia.

The Eco Ideas House, located at Panasonic Center Tokyo, welcomes tour groups such as students and on weekends is open to the public without an appointment. The House models products and appliances for daily living for the home of the future—one with zero carbon emissions. Panasonic is focusing on three areas for a sustainable lifestyle: ways to save energy, create energy, and store energy. Check out the quick tour below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Among the features at the Eco Ideas House are the following:

A Home energy management system (HEMS), which will even tell you when the best time to do laundry is, according to the weather forecast.
Standard household electric vehicle charging station, which plugs into a regular outlet.
LED lighting system, with LED light bulbs that use seven watts (one-sixth that of incandescent bulbs, which consume 45 watts of power, but with the same brightness). The lighting system can be adjusted by shade or color quality (from warm to cool).
Home office technology for “e-work,” to cut out travel (daily commutes as well as long-distance business trips). The Japanese government estimates that 2 million tele-workers could reduce CO2 emissions by 4 million tons, according to Naomi Tomaru, Eco Ideas House guide. The technology features no noticeable time lapse between sound and images, so the communication is as natural as speaking to someone physically present. For document exchange, high-quality image capability means documents appear clear enough to read when shown to the camera.
The house of the future will create energy with fuel cells and solar power generators (5,060-watt capacity for 22 modules on the roof of an average Japanese home), and store the energy in a storage battery. In an emergency (e.g., a power outage), you can reverse charge a home from your electric vehicle to the home.
The ventilation system takes in cool air in the summer and warm air in the winter through the floor, where the air temperature is more stable.
U-Vacua super-thin insulation material will be used as building materials for the home itself as well as in appliances such as refrigerators and bath tubs. Panasonic achieves 20 times more energy efficiency than foam with the thinner insulation.
A washing machine with a tilted drum, which allows the same amount of clothes in a load to be washed using 50 percent less water, because the tilted angle of the drum extends the water level.
A sit-down shower system which uses only one-eighth the amount of hot water in a typical bath.

Also, in 2008 Panasonic began to create eco home products under the product group ECO NAVI: to help you navigate energy management. Check out the Osaka-area ECO NAVI House, a showcase of the latest technology developed by Panasonic to help consumers navigate their home’s use of resources. The company also encourages do-it-yourself methods to reduce energy use. Find out the famous Japanese home product that inspired nearly 30 more products:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Besides providing technology solutions for smart homes and businesses, Panasonic is collaborating with the local city government to develop a sustainable smart city in Fujisawa, east of Tokyo, on land that formerly held a Panasonic factory. The project is expected to provide 1,000 homes as well as small businesses, medical centers, community centers, and mobility services such as shared electric vehicles. The town will have a community grid and equipment and systems for optimal energy, security, and information. The smart town is set to open in 2013 and has a target of 70 percent CO2 emissions reductions.

Panasonic also is involved in smart city projects elsewhere, including Tianjin Eco-City and Dalian Best-City (both in China) and a pilot project for total energy solutions for residential buildings in Singapore. For these projects in Japan and Asia, Panasonic is addressing two concerns: lack of raw materials and a growing population in urban areas—particularly in China, Japan, Europe, and the United States.

“We need many, many resources to maintain our living,” says Haruyuki Ishio, Panasonic’s director for the Corporate Division for Promoting Energy Solutions Business. “The ordinary or old cities cannot serve the concentration of populations. We believe the smart cities can be an answer to this global picture.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Panasonic Corporation.

Check out more articles by E.Q. Lam.