Innovative Kiosk Gives Users Money for Returning Recycled Electronics

Check out this fascinating article on how an innovative start-up company called EcoATM created a profitable kiosk that gives customers an instant cash incentive to recycle their used electronics (used MP3, finished ink cartridges, video games, cameras and much more).

How does it work? You first insert your electronic item into the EcoATM machine. The EcoATM machine then scans the item, classifies the electronic good, and estimates its value.

What’s more, EcoATM offers customers competitive rates instantaneously; however, the real value lies in the gratification you get from recycling. Read the article for more details and check out EcoATM’s website here.  You can also find a video demonstrating how the machine works here.

From Trevor S.

Helping Teenagers Escape the Downward Spiral of Drugs

Drug addiction costs - not only for addicts, but also for society (treatment costs, public-damage costs, etc). What's the best way to prevent teenagers from becoming drug-addicts? As this article implies, education is about making people understand, not drilling points into their heads. It's about seeing, not looking. It's about listening, not hearing. It's about feeling, not regurgitating.

From Ralph Y.

Greening Our Economy

Another proposed solution to our environmental challenges without directly focusing on them...this one's from the UN: greening our economy. This would allow us to maintain economic growth to enable continued development, as well as ensuring that development lasts us long into the future.

From Yan Y.

How Google Uses Goats to Reduce Its Environmental Impact

I came across this fascinating article by Mashable which shares 10 fun facts about Google. 

Fact #5 (Google Rents Goats) was the most interesting in my opinion. Google rents goats from a company called California Grazing to reduce the amount of weeds and brush at its Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google currently has 200 goats, a herder and a border collie, and it argues this unconventional method is "kinder" to the environment.  

From Trevor S.

Canadian Health Hullabaloos

The Senate will be reviewing Canada's healthcare system. Our healthcare system definitely needs change, and talks like these are important to direct where change occurs. Hopefully they will find some major problems so that we can really move somewhere!

For more details please click here.

From Emma T.

Queen's reduces its Greenhouse gas emissions

Hopefully the trend continues! Check out this article for more details.

 

From Yan Y.

Sustainable food systems: solving environmental issues when politics can't.

"Foodies Can Eclipse (and Save) the Green Movement: Why the Food movement is becoming an environmental force"

(link to TIME article contributed by Elaine P.)

Summary and thoughts of the article:

• The environmental movement may face political blockades, but the healthy/sustainable food movement sure isn't! Because of food's direct relevance to people's personal tastes and health, it has a lot more traction with people than the distant issues of environmentalism that many see as making people give up their quality of lives. In fact, the food revolution has gained in popularity so drastically that it may actually be a two-birds-one-stone solution, solving both environmental and food issues!
• This is actually not a far-fetched idea at all. One simple statistic: food production uses about 25-30% of all the world's energy. If we can make the food production process more efficient, and also waste less with more streamlined supply-chain mechanisms, then we'll have made a huge contribution to solving the world's environmental issues as well. Not to mention all the secondary benefits of healthy food which can also improve societal sustainability (i.e. more veggies in diet --> healthier lives --> less obesity --> less demand for costly healthcare services --> less demand for the energy, the plastic, and all the other resources that go into healthcare services).
• Everything's connected in this world...oftentimes that's a bad thing (bad positive feedback loops and such), but sometimes such interrelationships work out in our favor!!

From Yan Yu