MJ over at Dyslexic Research is giving away two ReJAVAnate bags as part of his 9 Days of Dyslexic Research’s Guide to Green.  All you have to do is post a comment either on his blog or on The Corner Office Blog between May23 and May 31.

I’ll spare you the details of the givaway, as MJ has them lined out here.

Effectively, these bags are similar to the ones you’d buy at the grocery store instead of using paper or plastic bags that jam up our landfills.  They’re made from burlap bags used in the coffee industry.  They’re completely biodegradable, so there’s really little effect on the environment.

Tune in for MJ’s 9 Days of Dyslexic Research’s Guide to Green and get yourself some free swag!

Environment Environment, free stuff

According to a report out on Bloomberg today, China is continuing its curb on vehicles put in place on July 20th to help with the pollution problem ahead of the Beijing Olympics, which apparently was quite effective.  The air quality is better now than it has been in over a decade, and in fact, pollutant levels dropped by as much as 50% during the Olympics.

The city will “seal off” 30 percent of government and Communist Party-registered vehicles Oct. 1, the Beijing government said on its Web site today. It will also limit the time the remaining government vehicles, as well as company- registered and private cars will be allowed on the roads, it said. -Source

The city of Beijing also put a stop to building work and shut down factories during that same time frame.

The effort is actually quite elaborate.  For instance, the last number of a license plate of each car will determine which days that car will be disallowed from the roads in Beijing. Social organizations and various businesses are shifting work schedules to stagger the traffic flow.

Unfortunately, this means that I won’t be able to gauge what effect this curtailment has on oil prices.  A while back, I mentioned that around the same time China took the cars off the road and shut in manufacturing facilities, the price of crude oil started dropping.

Now that Beijing is going to keep the curb in place, it will be tough to tell if this was all simply coincidence or if China’s demand for crude is actually a measurable quantity in this regard.

Crude oil is down $30 since the curb went into effect.

Energy, Environment China, crude oil, Environment, Olympics, pollution