Archive for the ‘green’ Category

Moss Tiles

Disclaimer: I don’t usually post the spam green product ads that I get inundated with, but I kinda wanna my this for my home. Think fuzzy walls - perfect in the event you decide to smoke a jeffrey. I’m not gonna link to their site and further plug these guys, but if you wanna check out the moss tiles, click the pic to enlarge.

Reposted from: GreenMNP

The Eco Turntable

With 45% fiberboard (which is recyclable and biodegradable), a metal body that is easily recycled and a built-in amp, Sennheiser has made something great. (Source)

Reinventing the Shipping Container Part 10

Podponics, from Atlanta has recently raised $725,000 in seed funding to use recycled shipping containers (grow pods) to grow food hydroponically. This means no shipping costs and no wasted energy.

Image source

Earth

Scaling the US Economy

Economists are considering past elections as the recent debt problem of the United States seemed to have gotten people thinking about what would really happen if a default occurred. For further insight about the challenges, read a physicist’s opinion on scaling the economy through 2100.

Take the EIA Energy Quiz

Think you know all there is to know about the energy industry in America and abroad? Well take the EIA Energy Quiz. It only takes a second and it’s hella informative.

I’ll even give you a freebie:

Trash to Clothes

Ethnopolitical Garbage

Located below is an article about the politics of the placement of waste transfer stations.  Residents of Boston may also be familiar with this issues as one of the smallest poor neighborhoods, Roxbury, is home to a few of the largest waste transfer stations in the area.  Surrounding, more affluent neighborhoods largely have none.  Anyway, read on.

A great read from Motherboard on the politics of garbage placement:

In New York, as everywhere else, one neighborhood’s trash is often another neighborhood’s terror. And that other neighborhood tends be poorer. Garbage from the well-to-do Upper East Side, for instance, now ends up being sent to mostly poor neighborhoods in outer boroughs. At these places, of course, its easier for other trucks, or train cars or barges, to take it even farther away, to points south (In 2001, Mayor Giuliani closed Fresh Kills, once the world"s largest landfill, on Staten Island, a predominantly white community). And these places also make it easier to build garbage stations without the hassle of the legal battles or political campaigns often wielded by wealthier neighborhoods. […continue reading…]

Electricity from Exercise?

From NPR, a story about converting gym use to usable electrical energy.

If only all the speed and strength of youth could be channeled into power. Turns out, it can. Some colleges and universities have started converting energy from exercise equipment into electricity.

One of those schools is Drexel University in Philadelphia, where student power runs straight into their buildings’ power grids. Dan Simmons, director of recreation at Drexel, says a typical 30-minute workout on a treadmill can generate enough energy to hold a light bulb for 2.5 hours.

A company called ReRev has retrofitted cardio elliptical machines in a portion of the university’s gym to generate electricity for that area. The energy can be stored, so it’s not necessary for someone to pedal a stationary bicycle to keep the lights on. (…continue reading…)