- Paper or Plastic? How about reusable bags or bags made from recycled materials? How many times do you have to reuse them before they make sense?
- Let’s dig up some areas of landfill and see what is happening under there? I learned in college about how well contained they are, but do the items within the landfill decontaminate well or not?
- Where does my trash go? What if I put a homing beacon in my trash and then tracked it? What would I learn?
- I remember a guy who created a template for a “I’m changing the environment, ask me how” bumper stickers, but his website is down. Should I continue his work, or is there a more clever way to shame people.
- Commando Projects: I would like to come up with a few projects where I act like some type of environmental commando, but what should I do.
- Properly inflate people’s car tires?
- Shut off unused TV sets
- Put fake out of order signs on bottled water vending machines (done!)
- Place environmentally friendly foods in with the bad stuff at the supermarket.
- Bike vs. Moped vs. Segway in a commuting efficiency challenge.
- How dry do your clothes really have to be before you can take them out of the dryer?
- How much extra energy does the dishwasher use to dry the dishes? How about the pots and pans wash?
- Cold water wash vs. Hot water wash? How much more efficient and/or costly is it.
- Is opening the fridge door really bad or just bad?
- How about running the faucet while you brush your teeth? Will it kill us all?
- Shower or bath or does it matter?
- How and why did everyone start drinking bottled water? Can we stop them?
- Drive around the neighborhood with a thermal-imaging camera and give trophies to people with the most efficient homes.
- A look at the environmental impact of different types of recreation.
- Taking the bus? How long would it really take me, a suburban person to take the bus to work? What percentage of the population does mass transit really work for?
- Some insight into why people drive SUV’s (I have some useful information about this from my prior career) and ideas to combat these reasons.
- Bicycles as a car alternative? How many miles would I have to ride a bike to make up for the resources required to make that same bike?
- How expensive (and useful) are solar panels?
- How expensive (and useful) are wind turbines?
- Coal, Hydro, Natural Gas, Nuclear, what is best for us?
- How much would you have to filter your urine before you could drink it? How much would you have to filter it before you could tell the difference between it and water? What if you made two batches of gatorade with it and water, how hard would it be to tell?
- Craft Projects:
- Making a shopping bag from an old t-shirt
- Trying to make a moped look cool?
- A timer for the fridge door.
- A slow, solar lawn mower
- Backpack-mounted tire filling tank
- How To Make A Recycled Hot Tub
- Recycling Cart
- Ultra-efficient can and bottle rinser-outer
- Making a hybrid sound cool with a V8 soundtrack.
E-mail me if you like the sound of any of these projects. If some projects get more e-mail than others, I’ll work on those first.
I do have some pertinent experience with Environmental Studies. While going for my Masters in Engineering, I did some graduate work in environmental engineering. It was fun and interesting and from what I learned, these issues are never as cut and dried as people make them seem. Hopefully, in the course of this project I’ll be able to show every side of the issues.