Bellona Foundation, a premier environmental solutions-based organization headquartered in Norway, hosted a boat trip to view the windmills outside of Copenhagen on Sunday, December 13. This day was otherwise a “day off” for media, NGOs, and other conference participants. Heading out to sea with a fleeting view of sunshine and below-freezing winds, we braved the elements for this unique opportunity to see some of Scandanavia’s clean energy technology. On shipboard was Bingbing Li, World Wildlife Fund’s newly-appointed Earth Hour Ambassador for China. Bingbing feels passionate about saving the planet, and despite her acclaim as a film star (most recently in the Forbidden Kingdom), she is perhaps more excited about her new brand, L.O.V.E. with a mission of “responsible life”. Bingbing says, “If one day I ever give up acting, I hope to spend the rest of my life doing charity and environmental work.” Bingbing went on to say, “On behalf of people of this planet, I think everyone has a responsibility to do a little thing – it is not that difficult.”
Bingbing was accompanied by China’s winners of the 2009 Sustainable Innovation Student Competition: Xi Zhang, Da Huo, and Silva Shum. Xi Zhang and Da Huo partnered to develop green credit cards for Chinese banks, using fingerprints instead of toxic plastic materials. Millions of credit cards are produced around the planet, and they hope to eliminate this product. Silva Shum from Hong Kong has pioneered new ideas for reducing the lights of laptops and desktop computers, which use enormous amounts of electricity with no apparent benefit.
Frederick Hauge, Founder and President of the Bellona Foundation, kindly sponsored the boat trip for this international group of clean energy fans. Under Hauge’s leadership, Bellona is launching a new Sahara project as well as continuing their highly acclaimed work with Russia, Europe, and elsewhere working with both clean and dirty industries to help them work more efficiently and sustainably. More on the Bellona Foundation tomorrow, after they present their Sahara report at COP15!
