Parks, not Parking

253 words Then there are the colossal tracts of sheer space, the oceans of real estate —a precious commodity in cities especially—that cars have taken from us. Most automobiles are parked 95 percent of the time, just sitting, immobile and unused, doing nothing except hogging up space. From an economic perspective, this is absurd. The … Read more

Embodied Energy

591 words Humanity’s insatiable appetite for energy created the climate-change crisis. The same appetite is now impelling us into an energy transition which carries its own tremendous costs. Switching from fossil fuels to renewables is an improvement, but it’s not nearly enough. It’s necessary, but not sufficient as a solution. To create a truly sustainable … Read more

How Amsterdam got its cycle tracks

426 words One morning in October of 1971, a six-year-old girl named Simone Langenhoff was riding her bike down a road in the southern Netherlands. Suddenly, a careless driver whipped around a blind corner and crashed into her. In an instant, Simone became one of some 450 children killed by automobiles in the Netherlands that … Read more

Right to Repair – Part 2

676 words Manufacturers argued that their restrictions were necessary to safeguard trade secrets and to protect people from hurting themselves by messing with their machines. “Apple told Nebraska lawmakers that the bill would turn the state into a ‘Mecca for bad actors,’ predicting that hackers and other nefarious figures would flock to the state to … Read more

Battery Recycling

554 words Li-Cycle’s original Kingston operation is relatively small, but it encompasses much of the battery recycling process. On the day of my visit, a truckload of consumer batteries from laptops, cell phones, and power tools has come in, delivered by a “recycling” company that picked them up from a big hardware store. It all … Read more

Phone Recycling in Nigeria

674 words Abubakar buys and sells all manner of e-waste, but he specializes in mobile phones. It’s a solid twenty-first-century business. All over the developing world, mobile phones have become as common as T-shirts. There is just shy of one registered mobile account for every single one of Nigeria’s 220 million people. “Everybody has a … Read more