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Sustainable Environment
What do an office building, a potato chip plant, and a train station have in common? They all include new technology that uses energy and other resources sustainably.
An office building in Waltham, Massachusetts, saves hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 and millions of gallons of water per year! National Grid's corporate center has solar panels on the rooftop, energy-efficient lighting, water-saving fixtures, and recycled furniture and floors. This building earned an international award for energy-efficient construction inside and out.
A potato chip manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, runs mostly on solar power and recycles water from potatoes.
Frito Lay’s plant uses special solar concentrators to heat water into steam to turn a turbine or cook the potatoes. It reuses the water from fresh potatoes to clean other potatoes. And the potato chips are packaged into compostable bags.
A Tokyo train station uses special floor tiles to harness energy from people passing through ticket gates.
The East Japan Railway Company installed piezoelectric tiles to convert the kinetic energy from millions of commuters’ footsteps into 1400 kW of electricity each day. The electricity is used to power the station’s electronic signs, lights, and ticket gates.
