Babcock Ranch, Florida 
What better place than the Sunshine State for the world’s first solar-powered city? Called Babcock Ranch, the 17,000-acres-large community will have its energy needs supplied by a $300 million, 75 megawatt solar-powered generator. The city will also integrate a Smart Grid for powering electric vehicles. (Pics)

A Touchy Subject

A friend of mine told me that while she was a student at Bennington College in Vermont, sea sponges were popular alternatives to tampons and pads. I should have gone to Bennington. It was organic shrooms, not sea sponges, going around at UCSB!
Now that I’m no longer in the dark about the sponges [...]

The Renewable House is a timber frame house with hemp-lime walls.
Britain’s University of Bath’s Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, its Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Building Research Establishment Ltd (BRE)  formed a partnership in 2006 to conduct research on innovative and sustainable construction materials and to provide knowledge and leadership to the building [...]

 
The Eco-Lamp
Satish Behera is a design student in India who has been exploring the ancient craft of paper maché as an ecological design material.  His style is so unique, his designs so impressionable that they are hard to forget.  His has created a style that is very professional and objects that are very desirable. (Pics)

Before ReCycling Try UpCycling

The recyclers are out in force. Whether it’s using a local recycle centre or a council-provided green bin, it’s never been easier to get your household waste processed back into useful raw materials. But that takes energy – and why spend that energy when this “rubbish” can be turned into something useful [...]

Concept DOT 
Certain design elements of the Concept DOT remind us of the stackable cars concept, and well, it does appear to have functions similar to MIT’s concept as well. The zero emission vehicle moves on three wheels and uses electromagnetic motors to propel itself. While on the road, it is capable of networking with other [...]

 
Amazingly light and efficient fuel cells
Samsung’s been toying around with fuel cell batteries for about three years, but now it means business. Rolling out first to the military, this ethanol-powered fuel cell is set to power military paraphernalia next year. But it’s not going to run laptops for a month as originally promised. (Pics)

Kyoto Box 
A $6 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food, sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, has won a $75,000 prize for ideas to fight global warming.

 The flexible solar module is as small as the page of a book.
In the race to renewable energy, organic solar cells are now really starting to take off. They can be manufactured easily and cheaply, they have low environmental impact, and since they are compatible with flexible substrates, they could be used in many applications [...]

Rolling Stone Eco-Capsule 
Luxury campers with blossoming eco-consciousness would not mind switching away from Airstream luxuries to the decent eco-capsule for their next adventure trip in the woods. (Pics)

Remember the Prius Waiting Lists?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you know that car sales are down. Way down. The light duty vehicle sales stats for March 2009 show a 36.8% drop by volume compared to March 2008, and March 2008 probably didn’t break any records in the first [...]

A healthier earth friendly option for gum

It is an environmental scourge that saddles local government with clean-up bills running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. But today the world’s first biodegradable chewing gum is arriving on British supermarket shelves, potentially putting to an end the sticky mess caused by the conventional product.
Chicza Rainforest Gum is manufactured [...]

Hyundai’s BLUE-WILL 
So what if Hyundai is a little late to the plug-in hybrid car market? It’s designed the oddly-named BLUE-WILL, a bizarre-looking car that resembles a grimacing beaver, all dolled up in eco-friendly plastics and powered by a 100kw electric motor lashed onto a 1.6-liter gas engine.

Biodegradable packaging designed by University of the Arts graduate student, Andrew Millar 
Have you ever eaten at a fast food restaurant and noticed how much trash comes with your burger, drink and fries? University of the Arts graduate student, Andrew Millar has noticed the amount of trash and has designed an alternative eco-solution to this wasteful [...]

Something fishy this way comes
Something fishy is going on in northern Spain. The waters of the port of Gijon are shortly to be invaded – by robots.

Zymetis is testing genetically modified bacteria that efficiently convert biomass into sugar.  
A tiny microbe found in the Chesapeake Bay is the focus of intense study for a biotech startup in College Park, MD. Zymetis has genetically modified a rare, cellulose-eating bacterium to break down and convert cellulose into sugars necessary to make ethanol, and it [...]

Veranda Solar Panels 
Solar start-up Veranda Solar wants to change the world of solar power the way Apple changed computers. Veranda got a big head-start on financing the start-up when the company was awarded 100,000€ as runner-up in the PICNIC Green Challenge, funded by the Dutch postcode lottery. The solar panels Veranda uses are nothing special. [...]

Pixies With A Purpose

Meet the Planet Pixies, a trio of eco-friendly soft dolls for ages 3 and up that are designed to raise your ankle biter’s awareness about the environment-and encourage him or her to make pro-planet decisions. In other words, the Bratz they ain’t and we are quite thankful for that.

 Vertical farms of the future
Thought up by Italian architecture firm Studiomobile, vertical seawater farms sticking up out of the water could covert the salt-laden liquid into freshwater for crops. It’s all about producing humidity. A series of vents would gather humidity from the seawater to cool the greenhouses and, as it collects, irrigate the crops [...]

Does the smell of spent oil make you feel relaxed?
“Here’s an innovative reuse for those old abandoned oil rigs littering the ocean – convert them into eco resorts. Morris Architects’ Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a [...]

Potentially Affecting Climate And Crops
The leaves of soybeans grown at the elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels predicted for the year 2050 respire more than those grown under current atmospheric conditions, researchers report, a finding that will help fine-tune climate models and could point to increased crop yields as CO2 levels rise.

Imagine spending your life savings on an invention you are sure will someday be successful, even if skeptics think it is impossible. It’s pretty risky right? Well Adam Fuller from Racine, Wisconsin has done this very thing. He has spent his life savings designing an invention he believes in, a vertical wind turbine. Will it [...]

 
 Micro Fueler
Beer fueling cars? Cars now competing for beer that you should be guzzling? Yep. And your car won’t get a beer gut or wake up next to Quasimodo the next morning. Don’t sweat it though, we’re talking leftovers. Sierra Nevada has purchased a MicroFueler, which produces ethanol from water, sugar and yeast. As you [...]

The application of Dye Solar Cells (DSC’s) in many technologies and new products is at least a year away, according to Dyesol, the leading company in the fast-growing DSC sector. DSC technology still has a way to go to catch up with nature. You see, DSC technology is based on the process whereby plants convert [...]