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Laundry detergent, toilet paper and toothpaste are not items consumers typically buy online, as the grocery stores, Wal-Marts and big box outlets of the world can attest. A new e-commerce site aims to change all that, however, by providing free shipping, streamlined reordering and a platform that allows consumers and manufacturers to connect.
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Many businesses are discovering that they can reduce disposal costs, save paper costs, earn money, and preserve our natural resources by reducing, reusing, and recycling office paper. Paper is probably the biggest source of waste in most offices and usage is rising by around 20% every year, with the average office worker using approximately 50 sheets of paper every day in the typical office. That is aside from other paper waste such as newspapers and magazines that they may read.
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Oil spills happen when people make mistakes or are careless and cause an oil tanker to leak oil into the ocean. These spills are usually dispersed but not cleaned up with detergents which makes oil settle to the bottom. Oils that are denser than water, such as Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), can be more difficult to clean as they make the seabed toxic.
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Every year, around 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. That's a lot of bags. So many that over one million bags are being used every minute and they're damaging our environment. They are difficult and costly to recycle and most end up on landfill sites where they take around 300 years to photo degrade. They break down into tiny toxic particles that contaminate the soil and waterways and enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them.
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100 million pigs are slaughtered each year in the USA alone, producing 110 million tons of waste. Much of these ends up in rivers and fed the expansion of a New Jersey-sized dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Billions of dollars are spent on waste transportation and treatment, and regulations continue to become more stringent and cost-intensive to satisfy our desire for a clean environment. Meanwhile, we have a growing need for biofuels that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and the world's finite supply of crude petroleum.
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More than 2,6 billion of people around the world has no access to basic sanitation. That means that 40% of the Earth's population lacks even the most simple latrine to perform their needs. This causes contamination of fresh water and ground water because human faces contain viruses, bacteria, worms and parasites which kills and infects people with serious diseases. One child in the world dies every 15 seconds due to contaminated water.
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Manufacturing plants, combined heat and power plants, paper mills, oil and gas and other companies commonly have low-grade heat as a by-product. This energy goes to waste or in the worst-case scenario the company pays to cool it. It is estimated that 15 to 20 percent of all the energy used in the USA is lost just to this 'low-grade' waste heat. This presents a great opportunity that is too good to pass up, specially for some brilliant engineering outfits.
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Are you looking for a green job and wondering where they are? While everybody is looking at the usual sectors such as solar and wind companies with tons of applications, you might fair better in unexpected sectors. In these turmoil times, “green jobs” has become one of the hottest phrases. President Obama promised 5 million new green jobs as part of his stimulus plans. States across the USA, from Indiana to Washington, are considering bills to develop more green jobs.
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In the USA alone, restaurants and other food operations pump out more than 285 tons of particulate matter every day, and 41 tons of volatile organic compounds. By far the bulk of it comes from underfired charbroilers. Particulate matter (aka “black carbon” ) is as a key contributor to rapid polar melting. When they’re covered with a layer of soot, glaciers absorb more heat. An estimated 321,000 underfired charbroilers are responsible for 94% of current restaurant emissions.
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There are about 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone and they will be decommissioned during the next 100 years. The current method of rig removal is by explosives, costing millions of dollars and destroying great quantities of marine life. These structures represent a potential of over 80 million square feet of programmable space just off the coast of the USA.
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