I Want Cotton Candy

Also in today’s links: trees transform plastics, Google plans to transform the energy sector, and more.

• A German company has developed a biodegradable plastic substitute made from the substance that gives trees strength. I love this sentence: “This past holiday season, nativity figurines made from Tecnaro’s “liquid wood” raised eyebrows among the bioplastic community.” Is the bioplastic community known to be normally unflappable?!
• Google, along with General Electric, is hoping to be the one to develop a network of renewable energy sources and a feasible “smart grid.” If they want to really take over, they’ll need to create a specific name for this system so that it, like Google, can become a verb.
• The recent bushfires in Australia released nearly as much carbon dioxide as the country’s annual industrial emissions, prompting a researcher to raise the issue of whether such a carbon load needs to be addressed in the international agreements on climate change.