Green Design
Solar Car Kits for Kids
A sample solar car concept
Conversely, people who begin learning additional languages as children tend to make a lot less mistakes common to later-learners and in addition, pick up the same languages much faster. Knowledge becomes more deeply rooted if it’s learned early, and bearing these facts in mind, one can also see why many professionals are able to trace their own passions as adults back to what they were brought up with.
With this in mind, it makes sense that the best way to instill green values in society would be to focus on the youth. That said, young kids won’t be too excited to read a dense non-fiction title on all the mistakes made by ourselves and our predecessors. They also wouldn’t be too keen on keeping up with environmental trends and gadgets. But few kids would shy away from being bought a new toy.
Solar Plane Begins 24-Hour Test Flight
Seven years of hard-work recently culminated in the beginning of a 24-hour test flight of the HB-SIA, an experimental solar-energy powered aircraft. This unveiling comes with a sigh of relief as the flight has already been delayed once due to technical issues with the communications equipment. The intentions of the team are to take the plane up to an altitude of approximately 28,000 feet after which the pilot will determine whether the plane can successfully fly during the night with the energy stored during the day’s sunlight.
Powered by 12,000 solar cells, the group hopes that the plane will be a harbinger of things to come – “to have a solar-powered plane flying day and night without fuel,” as the team’s co-founder Bertrand Piccard puts it. Though the group recognizes that solar airplanes won’t be replacing commercial airplanes with jet propulsion engines any time soon, the hope is that the project will be a means of moving towards a world with newer, cleaner technology.
And the Winners (of the MIT Clean Energy Prize) Are…
The results are in; C3Nano Inc., a team from Stanford University, has won a competition amongst peers, the coveted MIT Clean Energy Prize. Barely three years old, the competition has brought some of the brightest minds from around the world, working with their respective teams, for a single common objective: becoming pioneers in the advancement of (relatively) clean energy.
Solar panels - from ncsc.ncsu.edu
A good idea isn’t enough to change the world, a good idea backed by significant capital and popular support is. The people behind the competition and the participants are well-aware of this reality, leading to the high turn-out of academics with futuristic ideas. And that’s where the competition comes in; the winning team earns $200,000, but more importantly, their idea gains wide recognition beyond the scholarly circle resulting in sponsorships from established organizations.
Understanding Sustainability Conference – Portland
It seems that it’s conference season these days. Another interesting Green event that would definitely be worth checking out is the Understanding Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities Conference. The event takes place May 20th through the 22nd in Portland, Oregon. It’s free and open to the public, and sure to be very educational.
Acknowledging the varied understandings of the term “sustainability,” the Understanding Sustainability conference seeks to discuss the way in which the term might be approached in a truly useful and efficient way. Through innovative dialogue and debate, the conference seeks to create or improve on green frameworks for environmental scholarship, activism, research, and policy. › Continue reading
Eco-Chic Expo Seattle
Now for a local, small business and community centric alternative to the Seattle 2010 Go Green Conference. Seattle’s Eco-Chic Expo is being held on Saturday, May 1st, at the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center located in Northeast Seattle. A self described “interactive green lifestyle event”, the event is put together to provide the general public with an interactive day of tips, tricks and products to help people live greener, yet fashionable, lives. The Expo is free to the public and features a number of local companies dedicated to sustainable lifestyles. › Continue reading
Green Silence
Exercise is great for the body, but with the right adjustments, we can off-set the waste we produce in powering our TVs and Mp3 players that help satiate our need for a distraction from the fact that we’re working out, as well as the tools we use for the work out itself (i.e. treadmills). That’s how we normally think of waste anyways. Another form of overlooked waste is something much closer and far more vital to most aerobic workouts, namely, what we’re wearing.
Courtesy Maloney & Fox
A company that’s been heralded as a champion for the cause of athletic footwear with a less noticeable carbon footprint is none other than the local Brooks Sports, inc. Amongst their line up of shoes is one that would catch the eye of any avid environmentalist, the Green Silence. Like similar companies going eco with their shoes such as the New Balance eco shoe and biodegradable Simple brand shoes, these shoes are tapping the athletic market. The shoes, consisting of over 75% post-consumer recycled material, also boast a biodegradable insole and collar foams. For a more detailed listing of features, go here.
Solar Razor
I’ve recently come across the coolest little gadget for men, and perhaps even for women. It may be old news but it’s worth being brought up again: the Sol Shaver and other solar razors like it. These electric razors are solar powered, something I didn’t actually ever expect to see on the production line because most people only use their razors behind closed doors, in bathrooms, in the morning.
Sol Shaver
But for those of us with busy schedules, constantly moving around, often traveling, this device is simply perfect. If you go camping, you can’t really say no to bringing one of these along. Likewise, spring break is coming along quite soon and many of us will be taking a long road trip ending up on a beach somewhere (plenty of sun). Wouldn’t this be the handiest thing to have?
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Eco-Development and Sustainable Renovation
I’ve noticed an interesting trend lately. The renovation of old buildings. Gorgeous old buildings gutted and rebuilt from the inside-out, as green and sustainable new structures.
An exciting (and well-publicized) example of this is the Sanctuary development on Capital Hill in Seattle.
The original church was built in the early 1900s and has been a distinctive landmark of the neighborhood for years. Through the renovation of this historical icon, ecological- minded urban residences are being created.
The preservation of the beautiful building was a cornerstone of the project planning. Architectural details, bricks, wooden pews, flooring and windows were repurposed and used within the new residential development as stairs, detailing, in-fill and patching. New sustainable aspects of the housing itself include dual flush toilets and tankless water heaters. › Continue reading
An Alternative to Lead-based Solder
Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of electronics, especially the person that habitually tinkers with and “fixes” the various appliances at home will know how regularly solder is used and needed, even more so for those in the industry.
Up till just recently though, solder wasn’t exactly a milestone of technological achievement. Rather, the basic premise behind solder has remained unchanged; it is still simply a little bit of lead (or other metal substance with a low melting point) which, after being melted, acts as an adhesive, holding together important parts of circuit. These parts being essentially an integral and regularly used component of those everyday tools like cell-phones and computers that we take for granted. Naturally, something so universal, and so small as to be oft-overlooked, is bound to have far-reaching consequences over time.
These consequences were not taken lightly by Ainissa Ramirez‘ and her team at Yale, who like many other scientists around the world had sought out a greener alternative for quite some time. Recently, the culmination of this teams research is to be published. An essential summary of the idea is that new tin-silver solder with iron particles will present a viable alternative to replace the afore-mentioned lead-based solder. But there’s more, asserts Ramirez, as “in addition to helping make the fabrication of microelectronics more environmentally responsible, these new solders have the potential to solve technological challenges.”
USGBC’s Green Home Guide Beta
Margarido Home, LEED Platinum Certified.
Many of us are familiar with the LEED rating system from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), which is a third party green building rating system for commercial and residential buildings. The LEED rating system has been adopted by the U.S. government and is used with all new construction and major renovation of federal buildings. LEED certifies buildings on a point based system in the areas of Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, Locations & Linkages, Awareness & Education, Innovation in Design, and Regional Priority. Points are then added up to achieve Silver, Gold, or preferably Platinum certification. While mainly regarded as a tool for commercial building, there is also a LEED for Homes section that allows you to certify your home or neighborhood.
Recently, USGBC has launched a Green Home Guide. The site is an awesome resource for those of you looking to remodel or build a home in the near future. The site contains a myriad of resources for the casual and the serious green homemaker alike. The “Know How” section guides you through green building advice and educational articles to help you make better-informed decisions. They cover a diverse range of topics, and the content is growing everyday. With the rapid growth in the green building world, it’s a great resource if you need to get an idea of what’s out there.
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It’s Time to go Green
That sounds corny, right? It gets worse though. I almost said that as a response to somebody at a bus stop asking me if I had the time. It wasn’t without reason though, and it’s not as if absurd environmental phrases are constantly running through my head. The real reason is that I have a fairly decent-sized assortment of watches for somebody on a college student budget. Occasionally, one of them stands out – like today. A friend of mine, after noticing it and passing a quick compliment, noting my interest in green technology, suggested I check out a series of watches from the Citizen brand.
I
was never a believer when it came to solar-powered watches. Self-winding watches perform a relatively similar task albeit with some inaccuracy and cut the battery out of the equation completely. But it’s not that I thought this long-existent technology wasn’t feasible, I simply hadn’t heard much in terms of innovations in the market so I was never reminded about it and didn’t have enough initiative to give it much thought. The technology is relatively simple as these watches use solar panels not unlike those found in other common items like solar-powered calculators, the only difference being that a much greater amount of energy is than stored. I continued to be a skeptic though. I had always felt that these watches wouldn’t be at par with the ones I already owned. An inflated ego from a minor compliment and an all-to-human feeling of having to reciprocate for it forced me to give this concept some more thought and take the advice.
