What if….

09 Apr 2010, Posted by Rupam in awareness, 0 Comments

A Dwell Magazine Survey reported that the top two concerns when consumers make decisions today are the economy and sustainability. Based on that fact, here are some of CO-OP’s thoughts. Tell us yours!

In 2009 the New York City subway delivered approximately 1.5 billion rides approximately. Lets say the number of cards subway cards printed were even a fourth of the number of rides (taking into account people that buy monthly/weekly passes) that number at 375 million is significantly high number of metro cards being printed.

In the world of smart phones with m-wallets, phones are being used to transfer money and as credit cards and probably very soon as keys to your home. We think that the NYC subway system and other public transportation should consider using a paperless subway card.

One may argue that the smart card phones are predominantly in Asia and are not being used in the US. However, all cell phones have a picture display capability – the MTA can simply text message an image of the subway card with a unique barcode that can be scanned by commuters at the turnstile.

To add to the elimination of paper waste – time is money! We often hear that and in NYC we live and breathe that. With my I-Phone I can access information and news at my finger tips, I can join a live sale online at GILT, but if I forget to re-charge my subway card, I have to stand in a long line and possibly get delayed on my way to work!

It’s a simple solution MTA.

I’m a commuter and I spend about 3 hours in a train daily between the NJ Transit and the NYC subway system. There are plenty of people that do the same coming from other parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and even Pennsylvania. Agreed I get a lot of reading done on the train, but I often wonder how much more I would get accomplished if I could only access the internet on my laptop (you can only do so much on your phone).

The NJ transit alone provides nearly 223 million rides a year, which equals about 610,000 rides a day. The trains could provide internet service for free or at an additional cost – which could help them generate revenue and lead to a happier rider!

Cheers to Acela trains that have recently started providing free wifi for all commuters.

Think of all the movements that you go through in a day – from walking, to running, to driving your car or your bicycle, to typing on your key board. What if we could capture the energy created by all those motions to power your home? What if we could use the energy created by people using public areas to power public areas?

In the last few years, fast food companies have received a lot of criticism and it has been blasted all over the media. Well, if I were to head McDonalds or Burger King, I would be looking into getting wasted food fat EPA tested so people around the world can use it as biodiesel to power their cars.