The building, in the famous rue Beaubourg close to the Pompidou museum, is currently under renovation, said the city’s largest owner of social housing.

“Luckily, it is connected to the metro through a staircase,” said Francois Wachnick from Paris Habitat.

The calories emitted by passengers, around 100 watts per person, combined with the heat from trains moving along tracks and the underground location of the metro mean that corridor temperatures are 14 to 20 degrees Celsius all year around.

The project, which is based on geothermal technology, plans to draw heat from subterranean passages and move it to heat exchangers before supplying heating pipes. The system will complement district heating.

It is expected to slash carbon dioxide emissions by a third compared to using a boiler room connected to district heating, Wachnick said.

A tender for the experimental project, which is expected to heat 17 flats, will be launched before year-end, and work is expected to start in 2011.

If you look around at any given time in your house, how many of the things you see are non-toxic or non-recyclable? You may be amazed at the percentage of environmentally hazardous stuff lying in your living rooms, kitchens, garages and bathrooms. Unused and unwanted materials such as paints, brake fluids, pesticides, batteries, light bulbs and cleaning chemicals ought to disposed of at a proper waste management facility.

With little or no effort, you could save water by properly closing the faucet, using a high-efficiency toilet and taking a ’slightly’ quicker shower. You can even keep the environment clean through regular maintenance programs, such as using a septic tank cleaner for less tank pumping. That is also an effective to being more earth-friendly.

Bales of crushed aluminum cans ready for recycling at the Novelis plant in Oswego, NY. Each bale contains approximately 34,000 used beverage cans.
(PRNewsFoto/Novelis Inc.) Location: Atlanta, GA, USA

That led me to try and find out what if EVERYONE recycled their aluminum cans?

Thankfully, Novelis Recycling provides a ‘recycling calculator‘ to find stats about just that.

Assuming 100 people lived in your neighborhood, this is what the calculator says:

(These statistics are based on US data, assuming 100% recycling rate.)

Total Cans Recycled: 29,900
Total Weight Recycled: 874 LBS
Amount of Greenhouse Gases (C02e) Saved vs Using New Aluminum: 4 Metric Tons
Energy Saved: 56 MBTUs
Barrels of Oil with Equivalent Energy: 10 Barrels
Equivalent GHG Emissions from Cars Not Driven in One Year: 1 Car(s)
Length of Cans if Stacked End to End: 2 Miles
Value of Aluminum: $656
Water Saved: 2 Cubic Meters

Use the calculator to see what if everyone in NYC recycled all their aluminum cans? (Population: 18,800,000)

When can we start?

Do-it-yourselfers do it exactly that way — they know how to fix a dripping faucet. Then again, there’s no need to wait until then; you could take preventive measures such as checking washers and gaskets for wear and/or cracks, and in cases where necessary replace them with Watersense models. That would not be a daunting task, for a search for faucets online would yield some quality, leak-proof, life-time warranty faucets and hoses products.

It was also interesting to read about Purdue’s thoughts on an environmentally friendly campus. They came up with two concepts — automated faucets and hand dryers.

Incredible EcoGear is just about to change forever the way we think about our clothes. Robert Hii, a 20-year veteran of Toronto’s garment industry, began researching the possibility of creating a 100% recycled fabric in 2007, following a string of devastating natural disasters around the world. His research led to the possibility that a wide range of clothes could be created for even the fashion-conscious, and that was when Hii struck out with Incredible EcoGear.

The fabric is created from leftover cuttings from the floor of clothing factories. The cuttings are separated by color and shade, then cut into ultra-fine fibers and attached to a continuous strand of polyester thread made from recycled plastic bottles. The resulting yarn is then spun into EcoGear clothing products. The process is free of dyes, bleaches and other harsh chemicals. To top it, the inks used on EcoGear labels are organic, and garments’ hang tags are printed in soy inks on recycled paper.

“EcoGear clothing is the first 100% recycled clothing available to consumers,” said Hii. “We realized that any difference in climate change will have to start with you and me, and that is the founding principle of EcoGear.”

Incredible EcoGear’s commitment to environment doesn’t end with producing eco-friendly clothing. It also donates 1% of sales to environmental organizations, including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the Toronto Zoo to name a few.

SOURCE Incredible EcoGear