Recycling has become part of everyday life in many parts of the world, but that usually means recycling things like plastics, glass and paper. We often forget to recycle valuable materials that we actually really need, like metals. A new report from the UN says less than one third of the earth’s metals have a recycling rate more than 50%.

That creates a big–and ironic–problem: the green technology we want to invest in for the future depends on those materials, so if we don’t do a better job recycling them, we might not have enough to produce the clean energy we want. The metals used in semi-conductors, LED lights, hybrid car batteries or magnets in wind turbines are all precious materials that are disappearing fast.

The message from the European Environment Agency is clear: improve the recycling rates. So how can we do a better job recycling important metals? Tell us what you think!

Welectricity, the innovative social network, that we have mentioned before in GLOBAL IDEAS, has won an award at the prestigious Knowledge@Wharton/Wipro Technologies Innovation Tournament. The competition was held at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania on April 27th 2011. Welectricity has excelled and beat 44 other teams, that also made it to the semifinals. Welectricity’s web-based service was judged to be the “Best New Sustainability Innovation” (full press-release here). Well, congrats for the award! The idea behind Welectricity is absolutly worth it in our opinion. It allows users to track, compare and reduce their electricity consumption at home. Users from 86 countries worldwide are participating already.

We would like to give you the opportunity to watch the report that GLOBAL IDEAS made with the help of Welectricity again. In this post you will also find an interview we did during the filming in Kingstown, St. Vincent.

Germany is going electric in a big way. The government announced this week that it’s pouring 1 billion Euros in subsidies over the next two years to help develop the electric car industry.

Chancellor Angela Merkel announced she wants the country to become the world leader in electromobility with a million electric cars zooming around the roads in Germany by the year 2020.

And what’s more, the government is thinking about creating incentives for people who buy electric cars, like special parking and fast lanes as well as tax breaks. And it looks like the big carmakers will step up to the challenge. BMW is planning to release its an all-electric urban car – called the ActiveE – by 2013, and Audi, too, plans to unveil a series of electric cars.

Is electromobility the future of the auto industry? How long will it take for electric cars to dominate the roads? Tell us what you think!

If you haven’t heard of guerrilla gardening, it’s a pretty simple concept: find an empty plot of land, any plot (even if it’s public property) and start planting. It doesn’t matter what: flowers, herbs, fruit, etc. The idea is to transform often abandoned or neglected patches of grass or shrub into rich, verdant vegetation, especially in an urban atmosphere.

According to The Local, Germany’s capital Berlin is actually the perfect example of guerrilla gardening catching on and taking off. Because Berlin is such a green metropolis (more than 40% of the city is covered in water, forests and green spaces), there’s a lot of space for guerrilla gardening enthusiasts.

If you’re a guerrilla gardener yourself, share some stories and pictures with us!

We have won! Again!
GLOBAL IDEAS reporter Vanessa Fischer, who you can see in the picture above, received the AIDB World Award today for “Science and Environment.” The trophy was awarded by the Asia-Pacific Europe Partnership Committee in Hanoi. Vanessas report “Energy-efficient refrigerators in Brazil” was called the “Best Programme Protecting Ozone Layer and Combating Climate Change.” As you can imagine, we all are over the moon about that award. 🙂