Toyota develops new flower species to offset CO2 at Prius plant

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by Danny, Oct 28, 2009.

  • by Danny, Oct 28, 2009 at 10:02 AM
  • Offline
    • Admin/Founder

    Danny Admin/Founder

    Member Since:
    Nov 24, 2003
    Posts:
    6,090
    Likes Received:
    830
    Location:
    Charlotte, NC
    Your Vehicle Year:
    Other Non-Hybrid
    Model:
    N/A
    Pretty interesting article over on The Age about Toyota's efforts to decrease CO2 emissions at it's Prius plant in Japan.
    Toyota has created a new plant species designed to offset the CO2 created by its Prius assembly operations.
    Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere.
    The flowers, derivatives of the cherry sage plant and the gardenia, were specially developed for the grounds of Toyota’s Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan.
    The sage derivative’s leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia’s leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide (CO2).
    The two new plants are part of a wide-ranging plan to reduce the impact of Prius manufacture on the environment.
    Since 1990, the plant has reduced CO2 emissions by 55 per cent.
    Toyota also keeps their office air conditioning set at 82 degrees in the summer to reduce CO2 output, and <gasp> white-collar workers are allowed to wear short sleeve shirts and no ties to make up for sweating their butts off.

    Rest of the article here: The Age

    Photo from Jalopnik and is of the Prius marketing flower campaign, not the actual flower species Toyota created.
    1 people like this.
  • Categories: Uncategorized

Comments

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by Danny, Oct 28, 2009.

  1. Rybold
    Awesome! :)

    When I was in school, I worked on research for genetically-modified rice plants that produce more starch per plant (and therefore remove more CO2 from the atmosphere - but our main goal was just to produce more food per plant). It's awesome stuff and very do-able. It's very complex and requires complete dedication (it needs to be your full occupation in life), but it's certainly do-able.
    I had no idea Toyota would be involved in this. I'm assuming they simply wrote a check (grant) to a university that was already working on this in exchange for allowing Toyota to advertise that they were a part of it. :D

Share This Page