Adelaide "Green" Connector

One of the Adelaide City Council's (ACC) initiative is to provide a free bus service, the Adelaide Connector, which links North Adelaide and the CBD. To my knowledge this bus service has been in operation since 2001. It really is a convenient service as its routes (the Red route and Green route) include streets not plied by the regular public buses. Plus, it's free! The Red route (nicknamed the Red bus) starts at 8.00am in North Adelaide and heads towards the City. Whereas, the Green route or the Green bus would commence the service from the city to North Adelaide. I would use the service every morning to go to work and I take the Red bus.

This morning, the Red bus has turned "green". Today was the inaugural service of the world's first solar electric bus. Launched in December 2007, the green "Tindo" (Kaurna Aboriginal word for 'sun') bus with plates "Tindo 1" now plies the Red route of the Adelaide Connector. Hooray for the ACC! I took part in history by being one of the first to use the world's first solar electric bus. Being a fully electric vehicle, the bright green bus with quirky exterior design is very quiet. Read more about Tindo here.



In thinking of going 'green', one wonders if factors of embodied energy and embodied water in product manufacturing are taken as criteria for sustainability. More often than not, in aiming for being green or sustainable, we have become more end-product oriented. The process to get to that end-result, which is crucial in the holistic assessment if indeed the product is deemed a 'green initiative' is often relegated to the side. Among the questions perhaps that needs to be asked is whether in the production of Tindo, green measures have likewise been considered.