Someone very important to me that I do not see often enough has sent me an e-mail reminder about why we must recycle. This is a subject I happen to know a bit about. However, we as humans get lazy and fall into bad habits easily. So this is a reminder of why it is so important to process our waste responsibly as well as minimize it. Reducing waste by minimizing packaging, using your own containers when you shop, finding ways to reuse items or re-purpose items, repair instead of replace and ultimately recycle items is crucial to a healthy environment for generations to come.

The following information may be new to some, but it is certainly a reminder of how important this is and a very real display of some of the mess we have already made.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is currently studying the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Follow the link below to find out more about it. I have also included a link to the Wikipedia entry on the subject and a quote from the introduction.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Site
Wikipedia Entry for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

From Wikipedia: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean ... and estimated to be twice the size of Texas.[1] The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography because most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean."

Practice your RRRRR's - Renew, Reuse, Repair, Recycle, Re-purpose.

Clearly we want to do this via legitimate websites. The impact on the environment that is removed by this process is significant. A recent Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University study confirms what we already assumed: Downloading music cuts energy consumption and CO2 emissions compared to shopping at your local record store.

The study found that buying digital music results in a 40 to 80 percent reduction in energy use and carbon emissions compared to distributing CDs, and that factors in the energy used to download the files over the Internet.

The study compared four different ways of obtaining and listening to music, listed from most energy intensive to the least: Buying a CD in-person at a record store, buying a CD online, downloading an album and then burning it to a CD (both with and without a jewel case), and downloading an album and listening to it digitally.

There were some situations that blurred the lines. If you walked to the music store instead of driving, that would equal the energy and emissions of downloading and then burning an album to disc, meaning the driving to the store is the worst part of buying music in person.

To find out more, check out the related link below.

As you will see if you look back just a few posts, I just wrote about this same subject. However, this is not a multicrystalline cell as I was writing about in the previous article.

This breakthrough came in the multi-cell combination category. This means that we are not talking about the cells people are used to seeing on roof tops, calculators, toys and other daily items. This is the super high efficiency stuff that costs too much for production use. This is the research that helps lead to breakthroughs and ultimately more power for less money somewhere in the future.

This record was set by the University of New South Wales in Australia. In this category, the previous record was 42.7 percent conversion efficiency. This new record is 43 percent conversion efficiency and requires gallium, indium, phosphorus and arsenic. This magic recipe is a long way from production, but every step forward helps.

Follow the related link for more information.

PS - I think someone may have jumbled their numbers, the University website lists last years record at 24.7 and the new record at 25 percent. I think someone transposed the first numbers and remembered it was the next whole number for the new record. This would also fit better with my somewhat long running knowledge on the subject. Although I am not an expert. I did check several other websites who are listing the 42.7 and 43 percent values.

University Article from Oct 2008 lists 24.7 percent efficiency. This is why I like to check the source and include a link for you.

Wow, it is less than a week away. Yahoo Green had a nice article about starting school. They cover everything from keeping Swine Flu in perspective to healthy lunches, recess, backpacks, vaccinations, and references to other good sources of information.

Check out the related link below.

On August 4th I wrote about a solar company claiming 800x improvement on the power generated and made some points about how that was attained. The article is here "Solar Cell Power Production is Increased 800x?!?".

This article is about a breakthrough regarding the actual solar cell as normally exposed to light. The world record conversion efficiency was accepted by the scientific journal - Progress in Photovoltaics (PIP), which offers a forum for reporting advances in the PV industry and independently tested by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Germany.

This is a new world record conversion efficiency of 15.6% on a commercial-grade multi-crystalline silicon PV module. This conversion efficiency surpasses the previous record of 15.5% set by Sandia National Labs 15 years ago.

You can see that this is significant, but without a breakthrough, we are very much at the limit for current PV technology. This increase took 15 years to achieve and represents a 0.1% increase in efficiency.

You can see why I was so quick to point out that in the previous article claiming 800x, it was not the solar cell but the light delivery that was actually increased.

For more information on this article, click the related link below.