burning down the house

Cape Town, 1985: Tyres are burning in the streets in protest against apartheid laws.

Cape Town, 2007: Tyres are burning in the streets to extract scrap metal that can be sold to dealers for recycling.

The air pollution is horrendous, and South Africa has now published draft waste tyre regulations for comment. There are at least two possibilities for disposing of the 11 million scrapped tyres each year in South Africa. One is to grind them for use in rubber carpets, athletic tracks and tarmac. The other is to burn them in kilns as an alternative energy source.

[Source: Cape Times, 12 March 2007]

small-time goes mainstream

Ontario's Standard Offer Program helps Ontario meet its renewable energy supply targets by providing small renewable electricity generators a standard pricing regime and a streamlined process for setting up contracts for delivery to the grid. Qualifying technologies include solar, water power, biomass and wind.

pressure to perform

Run a car on compressed air? Not likely. But hey - green points for trying.