May 17, 2018

PostNL tells man to move to avoid van fumes

Filed under: General,Health,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

Mailboxes-495x286

An Amsterdam resident asked on Twitter why PostNL’s delivery personnel leave their van on his street with the motor running, which is bad for the environment. PostNL’s Twitter team decided to mention their environmentally friendly plans to replace the diesel vans with zero-emission ones, but that it takes time. To drive their point home, PostNL told the man to shop for a new house in the country if he was worried about his one-year-boy inhaling diesel fumes. That’s corporate Dutch speak for “fuck you”.

A classic comment you’ll hear often in Amsterdam is ‘if you don’t like the noise or nuisance or whatever big city problem you’re whinging about, move to the country’. Many people, some with children some without, enjoy the big city vibe Amsterdam offers, but deep down inside would like their street or neighbourhood to be some sort of mini-village where the big city problems only affect the people living in the city centre, where most of the merriment and the tourists are. However unrealistic that is, the van has no good reason to leave its motor running and PostNL was not very customer friendly with their answer.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl)

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January 19, 2016

Prototype back pack filters the air using plants

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 3:17 pm

Aloe Vera

Five Dutch students of the Delft University of Technology are designing a back pack with a plant in it which would replace the use of gas masks in polluted cities. “The bag allows fine particles to be filtered out and cleans the air,” said team leader Marnix de Kroon. It provides instant fresh air to the wearer thanks to a filter that sifts it through the roots of a plant inside the back pack.

Plant-wise, “it seems that aloe vera may be a possibility,” De Kroon explained. An expert was quick to cut the plant bag idea down, claiming it wouldn’t be useful and the filter itself could ‘weed out’ 99.9 percent of the fine particles.

The team still believes that in cities like Beijing and Tehran, which have serious pollution problems, could be their main market. After all, the prototype did bag a Dutch design prize.

(Link: thepeninsulaqatar.com, Photo of Aloe vera by Tom Parnell, some rights reserved)

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