This year for Earth Day, Global Citizen wants to challenge you to take an action a day for a week straight to protect our environment. The challenge is simple. Starting April 22, 2017, you will receive an email a day with an action of the day for seven days. Once you complete the challenge, you will have been a part of protecting the environment for generations to come. Continue reading
Turning waves into freshwater is one of the technological solutions that can help solve water crises. Water crises has been identified by the World Economic Forum as the top global risk to industry and society over the next decade. There are now over 633 million people without access to fresh water.
A large part of the water scarcity issue is occurring around islands and coastal regions, with 233 million people living in these areas and experiencing water shortage conditions. In addition, many other areas are in search of a sustainable water solution. Existing desalination plants devour huge amounts of energy and belch out concentrated brine into oceans, jeopardising marine ecosystems.
Current desalination efforts trend toward large-scale plants or pump technologies requiring electricity and/or fossil fuels and many regions rely on imported water, exposing them to high costs and market volatility.
A new device could create drinking water from the sea using wave power. The SAROS desalination buoy is the brainchild of two graduates from the US University of North Carolina. Their device pressurises water and performs reverse osmosis to purify brine. It currently produces 500 gallons a day.
They’re now scaling up to produce 5,000 gallons per buoy in waves that are only 2.5 feet high. A US demonstration project will be in place by early-2017 with pilot projects in Puerto Rico and Nicaragua towards the middle of next year. It could one day provide clean drinking water for remote islands.
SAROS targets these areas where typical solutions are unfeasible or undesirable and a small scale, efficient technology is needed.
With this technology, the economic advantages of an increased water supply do not come at the cost of environmental harm or prohibitively expensive and complicated systems. SAROS produces no emissions and minimal salt brine concentration, drastically reducing the environmental impact of desalination.
SAROS provides a consistent supply of new, fresh water, rather than reusing current water reserve and brings desalination to areas that otherwise lacked access. By removing the dependency of outside resources, communities will be able to focus on other day to day tasks.
A year ago (exactly September 25th, 2015), 193 leaders of the world made a promise of the Global Goals. A promise to the seven and a half billion people on this planet that our lives will get a lot better over the next 15 years. They came together to agree on 17 Global Goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things in the next 15 years: end extreme poverty, reduce inequality, and protect the planet. Continue reading
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is in the list of billionaires who engage in projects focused on environmental issues, and he is certainly not alone. As part of the United Nations’ climate talks in Paris (November 30 to December 11, 2015), Gates will announce the creation of a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund allocated for the development of and research on clean energy. Together with Gates, developed and developing nations will launch the Clean Tech Initiative. Countries will pledge that by 2020, they will double their budget and research on the development of clean technology. Private companies will also increase their investments in the clean energy fund. Continue reading
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