Out of the box thinking

Scandinavian company U-Cont is well-known for modular filling station systems and its new above ground tank solution developed in partnership with UNicontain recently caught our attention, being highly flexible and offering significant cost savings for many forecourt retailers.

From the lab to the design studio

The coming age of shmeat: lab-grown, cultured meat options on sale at your local supermarket or convenience store is nearing, making real food festivals like Meatopia resonate all the more — the festival's UK launch last weekend comes just a month after the world's first lab-grown burger was unveiled at a taste testing in London. Are we ready to embrace a future eating lab grown meat?

No more better place

Image credit: Better Place Facebook

Following the success of the Toyota Prius and other hybrid vehicles over recent years, the next generation of exclusively electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and almost fully electric Chevy Volt have entered the mass market. Good timing you would think for Better Place, the $850 million start up with some of the world’s keenest business brains at the helm to bring their battery exchange offer to market.

Wrong. Better Place filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Why could such and enterprise fail? There are many suggestions, all of course with the benefit of hindsight and in the spirit of “Success is about learning from failure” then here are our top ten reasons:

Are eco petrol stations credible?

Concept sketch for a single skin geodesic architecture with embedded solar PVs | © Minale Tattersfield

Compared with conventional designs, eco petrol stations offer two major benefits for fuel retailers:

• Financial in terms of reduced costs to run the eco petrol stations and therefore a lower life time cost, which should more than outweigh any higher initial expenditure or incremental capital costs to build them.

Lighting the way to energy savings

Uniform illumination courtesy of CREE

When specifying optimal luminaires for a forecourt design project, you would assume a higher power lighting fixture offers better subject illumination and visibility for safe circulation. However, a lower power solution offering more even uniform light can outperform some of the more powerful light fixtures. How is this possible you might wonder?

Benefits 'in store' for heat recovery chillers

Image courtesy of Daikin

Discussing chilled technology during a cold snap in Northern Europe makes sense when it involves utilising heat recovered from the chilling process to warm the ambient areas of a convenience store.

Eka goes eco with latest forecourt design

This isn't the first EV charging station in outer Moscow area, nor is it by any means the last. The new Eka station located on Moscow's fast Ring Road (MKAD-26km) is special for another reason. It's the first petrol station to include rapid charging EV infrastructure and thus offers a credible way forward to improving Moscow's environmental situation.

Sungai Perak rest service area

During my tour of vernacular Malay architecture, I made a point of stopping off at Sungai Perak's Rest and Service Area. The highway rest stop, under licence from Petronas, is located on the North-South Expressway (NSE) Northern Route (E1) – a 772 kilometre stretch linking Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok and the longest expressway in Malaysia.

MOL promotes eco-sustainability with solar tree petrol station

Hungary's leading energy provider MOL has allowed a local Budapest firm to branch away from conventional forecourt design and adopt a radically green initiative.

Beyond words... Bringing substance to eco-designs

Over the years Minale Tattersfield has designed a range of branded interior environments from unique retail spaces, like La Maison des Maîtres Chocolatiers Belges through to museum spaces and innovative petrol forecourts designs. When designing for a specific environment, our 3D design teams need to continually update their knowledge of the latest trends in surface design technologies including flooring and interior surfaces,

Eco-friendly technologies take root

With emission reduction high on the agenda of governments worldwide, titanium dioxide based technologies offer a glimpse of a greener future. From pavements to tunnels, buildings, petrol stations and skylight glass applications, new titanium-dioxide coated products offer the world a potential way of alleviating the effects of harmful pollutants.

Examples are springing up from around the world of new architectural designs employing titanium dioxide based technologies – one such example is the Iceberg project in Aarhus, Denmark where a product called Eco-clean has been used extensively.

BP rebrand: beyond the pretty petal

An iconoclastic throwback to the misguided optimism of the 60s – that was my first impression on seeing BP's new corporate identity back in 2000.

The sunflower, the latest incarnation, was conceived by design agency Landor Associates and launched in the summer of a new millennium. It caused quite a stir. It carries some elements of the former green shield logo, but goes a lot further in re-positioning BP as a more eco-conscious and progressive company.

Eco-friendly bus that runs off champagne

A three month test project is currently underway in Reims to trial an ethanol-powered bus. Interestingly, the biofuel is produced from grape pomace, waste matter during the champagne production process.

Two partners Veolia-Transdev and the manufacturer Scania developed the idea, and if the trial proves successful, the project will not only benefit the local economy but also spur innovation and development by companies elsewhere in Europe.

Eco Pak uses 75% less plastic

Repsol Solar Water Heating Car Wash

Outside Barajas airport in Madrid can be seen solar panels on top of the Repsol jet wash bays. Look closer and it’s clear that these are not solar PV electricity generators which have appeared on petrol station canopies over recent years but water heaters for supplying warm water at the jet wash nozzle.

Solar Energy Review

Italy
Agip’s part solar PhotoVoltaic (PV) powered petrol station is a particularly attractive green energy proposition since Italy has moderately high solar radiation but also high energy prices where conventional energy source prices and solar energy prices are roughly equal per kW/hour.

Spain

The Repsol car wash outside Madrid airport features flat plate solar thermal panels which preheat the water used for washing cars. Using this relatively low tech, low cost solar thermal energy collecting device, Repsol are able to save the cost of heating the water by conventional means (electric or gas) and therefore also reduce carbon emissions and as a bonus gain a valuable PR advantage. How simple and effective but also quite obvious for a nation famous for its sunny climate.

Spain have also invested heavily in solar PV as illustrated above with a sophisticated solar tracking device on a Galp petrol station.

Corporate Social Responsibility - what it really means

In my previous article in this series I argued strongly that the main determinant of a company's reputation was its behaviour not its rhetoric. The ongoing calamity of BP's Deepwater Horizon continues to put corporate reputation as a subject very much in the spotlight and, hardly surprisingly, many commentators contrast BP's past attempts to claim the moral highground on environmental matters with the stark reality of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea that corporations should be "socially responsible" whilst fashionable is not new - and it remains an extremely controversial concept. In this article I will try and delve into what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) really means - and argue that all too often CSR has been just a tool of a company's reputation management/Public Relations activities rather than something that sets strict behavioural norms. In all too many cases CSR reports are selective, partial and glossy window-dressing - leading to charges of "Greenwash" - rather than true reflections of a corporation's actual non-financial (Health, Safety, Environment etc.) performance.

Sir Terry Leahy's Environmental Credentials

Sir Terry Leahy, environmentalist extraordinaire or tough CEO of a global fortune 500 company driven by increasing shareholder value? Listen to Sir Terry's speech at the Politics of Climate Change Conference ahead of the Copenhagen Earth summit in Nov 09 you may think the former option. Look at Sir Terry's track record at managing cost at Tesco you would think the second.

Ecosheet

Ecosheet is a new UK manufactured product that claims to be a recycled alternative to plywood or foam board for use in exterior applications in the building and sign industry. Interior use approval is awaited. Available currently in black 8’ x 4’ x 18mm panels Ecosheets are made from 100% recycled plastic that would otherwise go to landfill. Plastic waste is ground into fine particles and then remoulded into sheet. The surface can be easily painted or otherwise decorated.

For a proven interior recycled panel material, Dufaylite has existed since 1955. The strong but light honeycomb sandwich panel is made from recycled paper

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Honda Begins Operation of New Solar Hydrogen Station

Honda began operation of a next generation solar hydrogen station prototype at the Los Angeles Center of Honda R&D Americas, Inc., intended for ultimate use as a home refueling appliance capable of an overnight refill of fuel cell electric vehicles.

source from: Honda
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