Happy new years to ya’ll! If you’re jotting down a resolution list, I’d highly recommend going out and buying compact fluorescent bulbs for your house. My housemates and I did it last year, and our bills have gone down dramatically. The new bulbs use %75 less energy, are more environmentally friendly, last 10 times longer, and don’t cost that much more. I know the chart above says they cost 2-4 bucks, but my roommate bought a handful of them for a buck each. The great news is that Wal-Mart is pushing to get these bulbs into over 100 million households which should help drive the cost down. Go buy the bulbs, get your friends to buy them, save money, and be feel great doing good for your environment. Full story via nytimes.
I just treated myself to a refreshing glass of POM Juice Tea (Pomegranate Lychee Green Tea to be exact). Besides the zesty taste I’d like to point out the simple and sustainable container, which is shaped like a glass cup! Yup, it’s that simple. You pop off the top, and enjoy it like a fresh glass of juice. Better yet is that you can add it to your shelf for reuse. It’s a good thickness glass which I like more than most of the glass cups I have anyways. If your more of a herbs person, the cap pops back on airtight. Extra points for POM, their wonderful juices, and now their sweet sustainable glass containers!
Wow! What an amazing story, idea, and kick-butt revolutionary company. Terracycle delivers the most eco-friendly consumer product in big box retail shelves made entirely by garbage, yet with a higher quality than most competitors and at a lower price! So, how they they do it? They use garbage!!! Founder Tom Szaky(23 yrs old when he founded TerraCycle and a freshmen Princeton dropout), explains, they get paid to take garbage away and they get paid to sell their new products. Their main product is a liquid worm poop fertilizer which is created by feeding red worms organic waste in return for their castings which get mixed with water to create a rich organic fertilizer that’s proven to be better than MiricleGro or various other competitors which are chemically driven rather than organic.(or as they claim, “The proof is in the poop!”)
Now with a great product came the task of packaging it. When they first started up, they had no money to purchase fresh bottles, hence another innovation…they ran around town collecting used soda bottles, cleaned them, added labels, and used that! They saved tons of money this way and also did something new in the product world; every single bottle was different, be it an old Pepsi bottle, Coke, Water, Sprite, etc. Their spray tops are even extras that have been dumped by manufacturers of other spray-on products and even the boxes that the plant-food is shipped in are misprinted rejects from major companies. Yup, it’s garbage made into huge profits at its best!
TerraCycle is a definite company to watch out for in our sustainably driven world. I’ve seen many companies re-use recycled goods, but I’ve never seen one come out with a product that can be used again, cost less, and is better than competiing products. They also have a pretty cool name tag concept to get kids pumped about recycling. Watch that video here.
A bunch of ya’ll that have met me have asked me about my card-holder. Well, here it is. I grabbed a few of those free paint chips ya find at paint stores (home depot), made a few bends here and there, and bahm, you have your very own colorful hand-made paint chip card holder. I made a DIY guide after the jump, though the template’s custom to my cards size (3.5″x1.9/16″). The the home depot chips I used can just barely fit a basic 3.5″x2.5″ card with some changes in the template. Lots of pics after the jump along with the DIY instructions.
World Initiatives, Huge Ideas, Global Problems, Collective Solutions, a life changing book no matter what field your in!
A must buy and read book I picked up at PopTech this past weekend filled with an immense amount of inspiring, resourceful, and mind-blowing chapters of information on green sustainability in all aspects with write ups from over 60 authors and a collection of provoking and inspirational images. As Alex Steffen from WorldChanging quotes:
“The debate [over climate change] is over: You’re either on board, or you’re just wrong.â€
Go buy this book(book tour), spread the knowledge, and become part of this global transformation. More here.
It’s about time some people started working on this… generating power through our footsteps! Yup, kinetic energy! British engineers are converting street vibrations into electricity and predict a working prototype by Christmas capable of powering facility lights in the busiest areas of a city.
“We can harvest between 5 to 7 watts of energy per footstep that is currently being wasted into the ground,” says Claire Price, director of The Facility Architects, the British firm heading up the Pacesetters Project. And a passing train can generate very useful energy to run signaling or to power lights.”
update: Now a sustainable night club dance floor in which the dancers transfer their disco lovin enegry through the floor to whatever powere the bar, dj, speakers, toilets, or lights need!
Having read William McDonough & Michael Braungarts book Cradle to Cradle, then watching Inconvenient Truth, I’ve become more of an environmentalists to some degree. Being an Industrial Designer, I’m familiar with the tons of products, materials, and manufacturing techniques that are incredibly destructive to our environment, but I never knew how major companies ranked in this destruction. Well, Greenpeace recently issued a “Guide to Greener Electronics” report card which offers a detailed ranking of some very well known tech firms based on a criteria. Dell and Nokia ranked well(kudos to them), but tech giants Apple, Motorola , Acer, and Toshiba ranked as some of the worst! However true or untrue this chart is, it puts a definite ding into those brands the next time I buy some electronics. Read the rest of the Cnet article here, or read some comments on engadget here.
Having read Cradle to Cradle, listened to Jack JohnsonsCurious George CD (3 r’s, reduce, reuse, recycle), and watched Inconvenient Truth, I’ve noticed a rebirth in more products based on reused or broken materials which is awesome! Recycled materials was a mini trend some years ago, which is actually somewhat bad for the earth, but reusing is another option which I hope stays a trend. Posted are three products that fit the “reuse” part of things. First off, is the beautiful Transglass Carafes+Tumblers, made from perhaps broken or thrown away bottles. Next is a “open tote bag” from Shawn Parks made from “safety fence plastic” that pretty much all construction sites use then discard. (Shawns a RISD alum, wohhooo!) Third is a is a clever use of a broken ceramic cat, sold to be a 3D puzzle.
Another video to follow from 1998, Water Power Car.
I’m a huge advocate for greener cars but my question is where are they? These videos are 8 years old. I’d pay well over 100k for a car now that just needed water as fuel. Hopefully I’ll see them soon, cause we need them. If your not motivated, you should watch the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Lot-ek has always been a favorite in the realms of sustainable architecture along with an assortment of incredible projects dealing with art, architecture, information, urban reality, and technology woven into our everyday lives. Recently they introduced an astonishing concept for a library using over 200 Boeing 727 and 737 fuselages. The fuselage is the ONLY part of a decommissioned airplane that cannot be effectively recycled. Check out their site for some very inspirational ideas, especially their use of cargo vessels.
OPD, Ocean Power Delivery, creates an amazing system for generating up to 750 kilowatts of electricty from the movement of offshore waves. Renewable energy is a huge topic into our near future and OPD is one very unique option to follow. I wonder if theres a system to renew energy through roads, highways, or the freakin shaking floors in malls when you just stand still. Perhaps malls will one day be partially powered by the traffic they get.
Watch this preview for the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” about the troubling Climate Crisis. I had the great opportunity to hear, listen to, and interact with Al Gore at the TED conference where he spoke passionately about this global issue. His personality during the conference was incredible. The content that he presented was mind-boggling. I can’t wait for this movie to reach a larger audience in hope for changes that must be made.
I just treated myself to a refreshing glass of 
OPD, 
Watch this