Japanese Cottage Industry Churning Out Green Cars
While auto manufacturing giants spend millions to develop environmentally-friendly electric cars, one Japanese company has taken a more low-key approach, crafting hand-made “green” cars. The family-run business makes its cars from scratch in a garage workshop in the snowy foothills in the northwest of the country.
Karyn Poupee for AFP (7 March 2010:
While auto manufacturing giants spend millions to develop environmentally-friendly electric cars, one Japanese company has taken a more low-key approach, crafting hand-made “green” cars.
Takeoka Jidosha Kogei may be the antithesis of the world’s Hondas and Nissans. The family-run business makes its cars from scratch in a garage workshop in the snowy foothills in the northwest of the country.
There are no industrial robots or assembly lines in sight. Instead just a dozen mechanics crafting each model by hand, right up to the finishing touch of adding a set of beady headlights to their “Milieu” range.
The cars seem to owe much of their design to Japan’s manga cartoon tradition – their one-seater T-10 seems barely large enough for an adult driver, with just enough extra room left for a small pet, as requested by customers.
The box-shaped two-door car – which is dubbed the “Eco-beagle” and comes in green, white, red and canary yellow – has a relatively affordable price tag of 856,000 yen ($A10,665).
Company head Manabu Takeoka said he wants to change the image of minicars, which he said “are generally viewed as cars for the elderly, or for drivers who had their normal licences removed due to drunken driving”.
“We’ve improved the shape of our latest model to make it cuter, to attract younger clients,” he said.
Like other electric cars, it runs on a lithium-ion battery and can be charged from a conventional wall socket.
The latest model can drive up to 70 kilometres (45 miles) at 60 kilometres per hour when fully charged.
Takeoka’s cars are aimed at rural households, which often have more than one car, as opposed to the cities, where more people opt for public transport to avoid the cost of parking.
The Takeoka lineup includes six models made from lightweight fibre-reinforced plastic, ranging from one- to four-seater cars. They measure less than three metres (10 feet) and weigh between 300 and 740 kilograms (660 to 1,600 pounds).
“People who buy our cars use them primarily to run errands or go shopping a few hundred metres from their homes. They don’t need to charge the cars on the road if they already did so at home,” said Takeoka.
Takeoka began its business in 1981 by building minicars for the disabled.
It started developing the electric cars in the 1990s with help from the local electricity company. Nearby Toyama University has since come on board, helping design the models.
The company also makes electric minicars specially designed for railway companies to inspect tunnels.
The electric cars may be a novelty, but they are unlikely to take the world by storm anytime soon, with sales currently at around 100 vehicles per year.
Asked whether there are plans to ramp up production, Takeoka exclaimed: “The company cannot build that many!”
Source: www.news.theage.com.au

Project Kaisei To Turn 100 million Tonnes of Pacific Waste To Fuel
Conservationists are hoping to turn into fuel up to 100 million tonnes of plastic waste floating in the Pacific. The giant waste collection, known as the ”Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or Plastic Vortex, lies in the between California and Hawaii and has been growing for 60 years as a result of currents. Sydney “plastic man” Ed Kosior is one of the advisors on the Project Kaisei team.
A report from Los Angeles in The Age (9 March 2010):
Conservationists are hoping to turn into fuel up to 100 million tonnes of plastic waste floating in the Pacific.
The giant waste collection, known as the ”Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, lies between California and Hawaii and has been growing for 60 years as a result of currents.
It now covers an area twice as large as Texas and contains everything from shampoo bottles, children’s toys, and tyres to plastic swimming pools.
Volunteers from Project Kaisei, a conservation project based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, plan to use two ships to bring back some of the waste. Australian filmmaker Richard Pain plans to cross the rubbish patch in a craft made of plastic bottles to raise awareness of the problem.
Source: www.theage.com.au
Project Kaisei is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean-up.
Our main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.
Kaisei means “Ocean Planet” in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition. The other was the New Horizon, a Scripps Oceanography vessel that was arranged via a new collaboration between Project Kaisei and Scripps to provide additional research on the impacts of debris in the gyre. Each vessel obtained a wide variety of samples from this part of the ocean which are now being analyzed. What was evident was the pervasiveness of small plastic debris that was found in every surface sample net that was used for regular sampling over 3,500 miles between the two vessels.
In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second Expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research, and in particular, to test an array of marine debris collection systems. Debris collected will be used to further study the feasibility of converting this to fuel or other useable material. As a collaborative action program, Project Kaisei is seeking sponsors, participants and leaders in their respective industries who can help to make a difference, on land, or at sea, in reducing marine debris.
Why is the Plastic Vortex a problem?
Plastics and other wastes in the oceans:
• Can kill marine life;
• May be entering our food chain (studies on this issue will be undertaken by the Project Kaisei Science Team and other researchers);
• Continues to increase due to poor waste management practices on land and sea; and
• Can have a negative effect on people’s health and safety.
It is estimated that over 60% of the plastic and other wastes (including rubber and aluminum) in the ocean come from land-based sources, and once in the sea, they are at the mercy of the confluence of tides, currents and winds because they are buoyant. Over time through exposure to the sun and heat, some plastic materials can disintegrate into ever smaller pieces due to weather and UV impact.
Ed Kosior – Sydney

Edward Kosior has been involved in Plastics and Rubber technology for the past 30 years. In 2004 he established NEXTEK Pty Ltd to provide new technical solutions to the environmental and recycling challenges facing the polymer industry. Currently he is the Technical Director of Closed Loop London which is establishing London’s first plastics recycling plant (http://www.visyclosedloop.com/index.) He is also an Adjunct Professor of Polymer Engineering and Recycling at Swinburne University, Melbourne. Since 1997, at Visy Industries Pty, he has been involved in the planning, construction, commissioning and expansion of Australia’s foremost post-consumer plastics recycling plants where he developed a wide range of markets for PCR plastics.
He is especially interested in developing career paths for young people through education and employment in the international plastics and rubber industries. He has won numerous awards in the plastics recycling industry, has 6 patents, 82 conference papers, two books and has specific expertise in the following: food grade approval of polymers, sustainable technology applied to polymer packaging, design for recycling and minimal environment impact, and computer-aided engineering applied to polymer processing. He has a Masters of Engineering Science in Polymer Engineering from Monash University, Australia, 1985.
Source: www.projectkaisei.org

Lucky Last ….Sustainability Showcase
By the time many of our readers see this the latest issue of abc carbon express (and it is a little later than usual this week) Queensland’s first Sustainability Showcase will be about to get underway in Parliament Buildings in Brisbane (Thursday 11 March at 12 noon Brisbane time).
And Queensland’s Minister of Climate Change and Sustainability Kate Jones is expected to deliver a suitably sustainable speech to Parliament, which will go something like this:
“Queensland has a growing population which is placing ever greater pressure on our resources while at the same time the effects of climate change mean we must move to a low carbon economy and we must get on with it without delay.
“The business community understands that and today I’m hosting a Sustainability Showcase in the Premier’s Hall to highlight some of our most innovative and exciting companies who are leading the way in developing green technologies.
“Queensland is not only a leading centre for climate change and sustainability research, it’s also full of enterprising, energetic and innovative organisations determined to design and market products and services for the new low carbon economy.
“The Sustainability Showcase features more than 40 Queensland organisations from as far afield as Mackay, Townsville, Dalby, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Brisbane. Their ideas and innovations are just as varied.
“VRM Biologic from Townsville is using biological solutions to improve soils on farms and capture and manage carbon.
“Natures Paper of Brisbane is using left over wheat straw to make paper that is both environmentally and economically friendly.
“And Fumunda Marine from the Sunshine Coast has developed a device which is simply attached to commercial fishing nets to warn save dolphins and whales from getting tangled in nets.
“These are just a very few of the exciting new developments in green technology that will be showcased today.
“I’d like to thank Ken Hickson of ABC Carbon, who has played a pivotal role in bringing these organisations together and I encourage this House to visit the Premier’s Hall this afternoon and meet these exciting Queensland innovators.
“Also this afternoon I will be welcoming 11 Queensland companies as ecoBiz partners.
“ecoBiz is an initiative of this Government that actively assists Queensland businesses to save water, waste and energy.
“There are now 65 ecoBiz partners who together are saving 35,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and 555 megalitres of water every year.”
Here is a full list of the 40 organisations, in addition to ABC Carbon, including businesses, not for profits and industry groups, which will be part of the Sustainability Challenge:
All Safe, Australian Green Infrastructure Council, Biofuels Association of Australia, Calthorpe Consulting, Carinya Corporate & Commercialisation, Climate First, Dynamic Eco Solutions, EC3 Global, Ecokinetics, Eco System Homes, Ecospecifier, Enerwise, Envirofriendly, EXlites, Fumunda Marine, Funnel, FWR Group, Green Roofs Australia, Ingenero, IQ Agribusines, My Clean Sky/SEA 02, NAC Consulting, Natures Paper, Norton Associates, OFB Corporation, Phil Little Sustainable Design Foundation, Prime Carbon, RBL Management Consulting, Soil Carbon, Start Innovation Centre, Strategic Directions, SuperGreenMe, Sustain Asia, Sustainability Challenge, Sustainable Jamboree, Sustainable Insight, VRM Biologic, Waterwise International, Wind Power Queensland and Zingspace.
Source: www.abccarbon.com