Your Daily Greens: Sixth-Grader Recycling Guru, Canada Greens India, and Cheapest Green Car

Photos: Adrian Hucal Recycling, Indias Tata Nano and Panasonic’s Hybrid Power System

Sixth-Grader Recycling Guru: Adrian Hucal, a young boy from Hamilton, Ontario, was surprised to find out via a neighborhood survey he conducted that 76 percent still did not know the rules for what should be put into a blue bin. He soon found out why, after calling City Hall and going online to check the Hamilton website. Everything was so confusing and even contradictory. So he went on a mission to change that. What did he do? What any whiz kid would do on his path to green geekdom: he entered his survey results into the school science fair. Then, after displaying at an Earth Day event, he met up with Dennis Guy from Hamilton’s waste management division who was smart enough to listen to Adrian’s advice to clean up their website and simplify the url so blue bin information can be easily found. Hucal has now been chosen by Sunlight Detergent as one of Canada’s 10 Greenest Kids and will help advise on giving funding to environmental projects headed by young, super-green kids.

Canada Offers Green Tech to India: Canada is offering India access to a wide range of earth-friendly technologies to encourage sustainable development and environment protection on an upcoming visit to the country. Dalton McGuinty will lead a “Clean Technology Trade Mission” to India on December 6th and plans to visit Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. More than 100 leaders who represent 26 companies, universities and other organizations will also participate in the ‘green aid’ trip.

Leading in fields of water treatment, air pollution, site and brown field remediation, green building solutions and renewable energy, Ontario has scientists who are among the best and brightest, workers who have the best skills and knowledge on the continent and industries that are among the most productive and innovative in the world. – Dalton McGuinty

World’s Cheapest Car May Soon Be Green: Tata Motors, India’s largest vehicle producer, has announced plans to green the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, by producing a hybrid version. A base model Nano costs the equivalent of $2,155, and these low-end cheap vehicles are what Tata expects will drive up sales, rather than high-end products. Ratan Tata, chairman of the motor company, disclosed the plan on a visit to South Korea, but details regarding the launch of a cheap hybrid Nano are not yet forthcoming.

Panasonic Shifts Focus to Solar and Energy-Saving Technology: As certain locales teeter on the brink of banning large, energy-guzzling plasma TV’s, Panasonic, the number one plasma TV maker, plans to shift its focus and make solar and energy-saving technologies a household reality. President Fumio Ohtsubo admits that competition with Samsung Electronics Co. is tough and says that his company will invest $1 billion by 2012 into this new and lucrative field of green technology. Within two to three years, Panasonic hopes to market technology that lets consumers monitor their own electricity use which can be displayed on television sets, according to Ohtsubo. The system will connect and monitor all appliances in a home, with solar panels possibly producing enough power to offset any CO2 created from other power the appliances use.

Tagged as: Business, Canada, Electronics, India, Recycle, Science