A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The company, Calstar, says it wants to open several U.S. plants which would use fly ash in making bricks for construction and paving. The California firm says its method uses far less energy that traditional clay bricks that have to be heated at high temperatures.
Luke Pustejovsky is a Calstar executive. He insists the quality of fly ash brick meets industry standards.
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars on durability testing with our own labs, with outside third party labs, and this is a brick that’s built to last.”
But a trade group, the Brick Industry Association, is cool to fly ash brick. The group says the product has not yet met the test of time. The group is concerned any problems that come up could discourage customers from using brick.
If you have shade trees on the south or west sides of your home,
those trees reduce your electricity use by five percent (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)
Shade trees can save you
money on your energy bill. Now,
for the first time, researchers
have figured out just how much.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Shade trees can save you
money on your energy bill. Now,
for the first time, researchers
have figured out just how much.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Economists looked at utility bills of homes in California on the hottest days
of the year.
Geoffrey Donovan is with the Forest Service Research Station.
He says, if you have shade trees on the south or west sides of your home,
those trees reduce your electricity use by five percent.
“So putting a tree somewhere it’s going to cast shadows at the warmest time
of the day. The other thing you want to think about is winter sunshine.
Particularly on the south side of a house you may want to put a deciduous
tree as opposed to an evergreen tree so in wintertime you’ll get some
sunshine through that.”
Donovan says how close you put those trees to your house matters too. For
the most energy savings, shade trees should be within 40 to 60 feet of your
home.
Artist Christopher Griffin, the owner of the house, uses a long
smooth bone to draw a picture after each swipe of the trowel
(Photo by Karen Kelly)
(Photo by Karen Kelly)
(Photo by Karen Kelly)
Sometimes cities can seem like drab, impersonal places. But every once in a
while, you see a building that stops you in your tracks. Karen Kelly tells a story about a house designed to do just that:
Transcript
Sometimes cities can seem like drab, impersonal places. But, every once in a
while, you see a building that stops you in your tracks. Karen Kelly tells a story
about a house designed to do just that:
(sound of construction and trucks)
When you first see it, you’re just not sure.
A two-story house is being covered with marks etched in concrete.
Is it intentional? Or just a layer of construction?
Then you see a large black figure on the west side of the house and realize- oh, it’s
a whale. Waves are etched in the concrete around it. Walk around the corner and
you see flocks of birds flying over roughly drawn buildings.
(sound of scraping)
And just past the birds, there are three men working silently on a platform. Two
are spreading layers of fresh concrete.
The third is artist Christopher Griffin, the owner of the house. He uses a long
smooth bone to draw a picture after each swipe of the trowel – and before the
concrete sets.
He says he has to work fast.
“They would scrape the mud on and I would be going around them, over top of
them, actually right behind their trowel and there’s no chance to stand back; there’s
no chance to second guess.”
Griffin has been a professional artist in Ottawa, Canada for almost twenty years.
Griffin’s motivation was simple: his house really needed a new exterior. But the
regular stuff that people put on their houses didn’t feel right to him.
Instead, he thought he’d try some drawings like he’d seen in a photo of mud huts in
Africa.
“It was irregular; it was organic; it wasn’t pristine; it wasn’t crisp; it wasn’t
heartless. And that sort of quality was something I was after.”
(sound of chatting and scraping)
But while Griffin had this vision of giant sunflowers and caribou, contractors had
no idea what he was talking about.
Several told him it couldn’t be done.
Dan Charette is part of a team that was willing to give it a try.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity to bring our craftsmanship to a different level. There’s
a whole other creative level to what we do here with constructive behaviors, so it’s
really a lot of fun.”
For instance, the contractors suggested adding fly ash to the cement. It’s a
byproduct of burning coal and it also makes the cement more elastic.
Griffin liked that it was more environmentally friendly.
He also recycled building materials and added solar panels. But usually that’s not
what people see.
He says what really makes him feel good is when people just stop and stare.
“Absolute strangers stopping their cars, getting out and having a look. There’s a
teenage skateboarder who stopped and said, ‘Wow, awesome house.’”
Griffin says, in that way, his house has become a public space.
In fact, he argues everyone’s house is a public space.
And he suggests people think about what they want their house to say to someone
walking by.
The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:
Cement plants emit mercury from both the coal they burn and from processing limestone, an ingredient of cement. But the EPA has never regulated the mercury emissions. The agency said it would be too costly for the industry. Cement manufacturers say they plan to voluntarily reduce mercury emissions over time.
But Michael Wall of the Natural Resources Defense Council says the EPA needs to exert control over the plants now.
“It would be as if we took a segment of the coal-fired power plant industry and just said ’emit mercury freely, we’re not going to do anything about it.’ That makes really bad policy and it’s really bad for our public health.”
An EPA spokesman says the agency is taking a second look at the issue, in light of stack tests showing some plants may have been grossly underestimating their mercury emissions.
A new electric barrier is being built, but some worry that flooding might help Asian carp to sneak past it into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (photo courtesy of USGS)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building a nine million dollar electric barrier to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. But now the Corps is warning the fence in Romeoville, Illinois, might not be enough. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lynette Kalsnes reports:
Transcript
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building a nine million dollar electric barrier to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. But now the Corps is warning the fence in Romeoville, Illinois, might not be enough. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lynette Kalsnes reports:
The Army Corps is building the electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal. But the Des Plaines River runs near the canal, and it often floods in the spring. Chuck Shea is the project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers. He says they might need to build a flood wall or levee so high waters can’t sweep fish past the new barrier.
“It’s possible that water from the Des Plaines River could run into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. And if it was a large enough flood and there were fish in the right place, they might be able to use that as a pathway to enter the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.”
Shea says while this possibility is unlikely, it still will be an important issue to study down the road. He says the more pressing concern is that an existing temporary barrier could wear out before construction on the permanent barrier is finished.
Asian carp have been spotted about twenty miles downstream from the electric fence. The giant fish are considered a threat to sport and commercial fishing. Shea says state officials are working to find money for the last phase of the electric barrier project.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lynette Kalsnes.
A recent Wall Street Journal article has again raised the issue of
plastic food wraps used in microwave ovens. Citing a recent study by
Consumer Reports, the Journal cast doubt on the safety of plastics that
can leak chemicals into foods–some of these chemicals can interfere with
our body’s hormones. While scientists differ in their assessment of the
risks, most agree that consumer caution is warranted. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Haven Miller has more:
Fly ash particles at 2,000x magnification.
