The brickbats may keep flying out at the organisers of the forthecoming CommonWealth Games, but the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has not lost heart. It has come up with yet another novel idea to make the Games more spectacular. It plans to build rows of waterless toilets at the venues for the first time ever in India. The MCD Standing Committee has assigned Rs. 50 crore for setting up 1,000 waterless urinal kiosks, each comprising four units. These will be strategically placed at all the important venues during the Games.
MCD claims that it will save approximately 200,000 litres of water per usage.“The heart of the system is the cartridge which is fitted in the ceramic bowl and filled with biodegradable sealant that acts as a barrier. Due to absence of water and contact with air, urine does not form any gas and the toilet remains odour-free and reduces the burden on the sewage system”, a senior MCD official said.
After the Games are over, the MCD expects to earn Rs.5 crore annually by leasing the loos for 5 years. A corporate partner has been given the task of site maintenance and security.
Rumours are rife that the MCD plans to convert urine collected in these urinals into electricity. It has roped in a US company, SIDKAR, which vends technology to produce 1 KW per litre of urine! This is the latest incentive being offered to Delhites for not peeing in public.
There are a little over a 100 Natural Gas flares covering the oil producing areas of Nigeria, filling the atmosphere with toxins, seeding the clouds with acid rain and polluting the soil.
The gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s, are even distinctly visible from space!. In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply, the satellite images show the flares burning more brightly than the lights of Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos.
Medical studies have shown the gas burners contribute to an average life expectancy in the Delta region of 43 years. The area also has Nigeria’s highest infant mortality rate – a devastating 12 per cent of newborns fail to live beyond their first year.
The process of burning off unwanted “associated gas”, brought up when oil is pumped out of the ground, has been banned by law in Nigeria since 1984. The government has till date set three separate deadlines for stopping the practice – the last due at the end of this year..
Did you know that a skyscraper can save tonnes of money on cooling simply by turning itself into a giant refrigerator instead of using A/C?
The Metropolitan Life building, constructed way back in 1907, when air conditioning was not so easily available, has continued to operate without this modern commodity. Instead the building creates giant blocks of ice at night, then pipes that cool air into the above-ground offices during the day. Because it uses off-peak energy, this quirky system saves the company an average of US $1 million per year.
There is no sure way of evaluating the actual environmental impact, but the bottomline is that it saves electricity, and curbs greenhousegas emissions. And there is an additional air quality benefit because electricity generated at night creates fewer smog-forming pollutants than electricity made during the day.
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