Green your stadium – behind-the-scenes tour of Air Canada Center

“…reduce our carbon footprint by 30%, utilities by 30%, and waste by 100%.”

 

More details from the Air Canada Center:

The Air Canada Center…has identified three areas where it can most affect its impact on the environment: Energy, Waste and Water.

Energy
Energy is the largest component of MLSE’s footprint. It is a required commodity, but we do not take its management lightly. We endeavour to minimize our environmental impact through:

  • Deep-lake water cooling which eliminates the need for air conditioning compressors
  • Using steam produced centrally instead of using many boilers
  • Lighting controls on office floors to reduce light levels
  • Overnight temperature set back
  • Variable speed drives on pumps and fans
  • Updating fridges to Energy Star
  • Aggressive plans to upgrade lighting throughout the venue and office tower
  • Proactive internal program aimed at reducing electricity usage and plug load in office tower


Waste
Over a one year period, Air Canada Centre holds on average 180 ticketed events with 2.75 million attendees coming through the building. This amount of traffic combined with the amenities of a sports and entertainment facility, produces a large volume of waste.  MLSE is cognizant of its waste and in 2009 alone will be diverting over 500 metric tonnes of organic material from landfills to farms where it is converted into clean soil (compost). We are also recycling 375 metric tonnes of material per year. Some of our successes are:

Water
MLSE is always looking at ways to reduce water usage and to ensure our business does not contaminate our water system. Some of the ways we have done this are:

  • Utilizing environmentally friendly cleaning supplies and chemicals
  • Installing faucet sensors in our washrooms
  • Installing aerators on taps
  • Filtering the water that makes our ice through reverse osmosis, instead of treating it chemically
  • Treating the water in our ice making plant with “”anode technology”” instead of with chemicals

You want lower gas prices – here is what it takes

The U.S. Navy is upgrading its defensive and offensive capabilities in the Persian Gulf to counter threats from Iran to seize the Strait of Hormuz and block the flow of oil, the chief of naval operations said Friday.

Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert told reporters in Washington that the Navy will add four more mine-sweeping ships and four more CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters with mine-detection capability. The Navy is also sending more underwater unmanned mine-neutralization units to the region.

Greenert said he plans to assign more  patrol craft to the gulf, possibly armed with Mark 38 Gatling guns.

The narrow Strait of Hormuz is a key transit way for oil tankers. Any closure of the strait could send oil prices skyrocketing, officials say.

via World Now – LA Times

 

Makes riding a bike for those “70 percent of Americans’ car trips are less than two miles long,” seem like a better idea.

Dynamically priced seats – Baseball is using big data to improve ticket sales

“We work with half of baseball right now,” said Barry Kahn, CEO of Qcue, a company that helps teams sell dynamically priced tickets. That’s up from just four teams at the start of last season (2011). In all, 17 of 30 Major League teams will use dynamic pricing this season, according to Ticket News.

via NPR

What is “dynamic pricing”?

From the website of Qcue, an Austin, TX, based start-up:

“50% of tickets are never sold, while 10% are resold for twice the face value”

Dynamic pricing is smart pricing. It considers all the available data points to price tickets more accurately before they go on sale. Once tickets begin to move, dynamic pricing applies advanced analysis to adjust prices based on sales and other measures of shifting demand.

  • Determines what drives sales using variables such as start time, opponents, etc. to set more accurate prices from the onset and maximize demand across the house.
  • Captures opportunity for markups and encourages sales across every section of the stadium.
  • Recognizes shifting values even before fans do by constantly evaluating weather, players, playoffs, promotions, etc.
  • Improves business efficiency and optimizes revenue opportunities through automation of valuable business intelligence.

Sophisticated algorithms analyze real-time sales data and other external factors to generate forecasts based on various pricing strategies.

 

More from NPR

Baseball teams are finally doing what airlines have been doing for decades: changing ticket prices on the fly, based on demand.

At ballparks around the country this year, ticket prices will fall when rain is in the forecast and rise when a superstar comes to town.

From an economic standpoint, the only question is why they didn’t do it sooner. Why not sell seats on the cheap if they’d sit empty otherwise? Why not charge a premium for sellouts?

 

Personally, I’m happy that MLB owners are picking up on this technology, maximizing revenue, cutting into scalpers, even though it may end up in higher ticket prices for me:

They (Qcue) estimate that a team can generate an additional $900,000 in incremental revenue over the course of a season by making one additional change to each of its section prices.

  • Average price change per seat: $1.55 increase
  • Average percentage change per seat: 3% increase
  • Average price decrease: -$13.63
  • Average price increase: $3.27

via The Business of Sports

Indian Institute of Technology – spins off a start-up, EnNatura, working on green ink

BY 2017 printing presses around the world will lap up 3.7m tonnes of ink, worth some $18 billion. Most of it will contain hydrocarbon-based solvents resulting in emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), an undesirable by-product of the manufacturing process. But not all. EnNatura, a company spun out of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi has created a formula for making ink that is environmentally friendly.

In the creation of ink, the current “mixture is spiked with petroleum distillates…EnNatura’s proprietary resin chemistry does the same thing using castor oil, a natural purgative.”

Other companies, especially in America, make biodegradable ink. But most use petrochemicals to clean the resin from printing plates once the printing job is complete, which defeats the purpose. EnNatura, by contrast, employs a liquid concentrate made from a surfactant, a substance which, when mixed with water, eats into the resin and scrapes it off the printer.

via The Economist

 

What’s more exciting about this, the new environmentally friendly ink or the fact that India is creating this kind of start-up?

Who are the best green characters of all-time?

  1. Yoda
  2. The Hulk
  3. Frankenstein
  4. Wicked Witch of the West
  5. Kermit
  6. Shrek & Fiona
  7. The Grinch
  8. Oscar the Grouch
  9. Godzilla
  10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  11. Jolly Green Giant
  12. Gumby…

Check out pics of all 15 via LA Times – Top 15 green characters in pop culture

The stars as viewed from the International Space Station

Multitudinous stars but what is really awesome are the shots or Earth. The atmosphere glows faintly while the surface is lined with an array of lights, lightning storms, and mountains.

Makes me feel like we are an advanced civilization, even a planet in a Star Wars movie (that’s Coruscant for you geeks).

Timelapse videos depicting the stars from low earth orbit, as viewed from the International Space Station. Images edited using Adobe Lightroom with some cropping to make the stars the focal point of each shot, and with manipulation of the contrast to bring out the stars a bit more.

The video plays best if you let it load a bit first.

Via interesting, video at Vimeo

Chew – NY Times best seller about a Cibopath (one who gets psychic impressions from food)

Tony Chu is a cop with a secret. A weird secret. Tony Chu is Cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. It also means he’s a hell of a detective, as long as he doesn’t mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit, and why.

It’s a dirty job, and Tony has to eat terrible things in the name of justice. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the government has figured out Tony Chu’s secret. They have plans for him… whether he likes it or not.

Written by John Layman with brilliant art by Rob Guillory.

via Official Chew Blog

 

This comic book series about cops, crooks, cooks, cannibals and clairvoyants has won multiple awards including several Eisners (Academy Awards of Oscars) and is a NY Times best seller.

The series is about 25 books in and still as engaging and hilarious as ever. You will love it if you give it a chance. Start with the latest book on the shelves now, or pick up one of the anthologies.

Even better you can read the first issue online in two places. Via Newsarama, or if you want to create an account via Comixology (which has a superior viewer, hit log-in on top right).