Green design Archive

Recyclable “Fold Your Own” Furniture Made from Cardboard

A Paperpedic bedroomThe Karton Group in Australia has a new take on cardboard packaging. Instead of shipping furniture in cardboard, their furniture IS the cardboard. Imagine picking up a bedroom set for the cost of a typical end table—0r drawers, desks, chairs, even a children's play set. Aside from being appropriately inexpensive, all of Karton's products are completely recyclable.

Check out the video below of the assembly instructions for Karton's Paperpedic Bed—a system of cleverly folded cardboard panels which connect to form an incredibly strong and beautiful bed base. The Paperpedic Bed can morph from a cute single to a mega king-sized affair in minutes. With a load capacity of close to a ton, this paper bed sleeps 1-10 comfortably.

Perfect for students or people who frequently move, if this furniture gets too beat up, you can just fold it up, toss it in the recycle bin and get a new set.

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Solar Windows: Turning Buildings into Energy Producers

by Dave Levitan, via Yale Environment 360

Imagine if all these glass surfaces were solar panelsIf you picture the glittering glass skyscrapers that dot America’s cities, it becomes clear why the idea of using that vast window space to generate solar power is gaining traction. In 2009 alone, 437 million square feet of windows were installed in non-residential buildings in the United States. That many square feet of standard solar panels would generate around 4 gigawatts of power, roughly the total installed solar capacity in the U.S. today.

Such potential is leading engineers and entrepreneurs to more intensively explore the idea of turning windows into solar-power producers. Solar windows, a subset of the growing field known as building-integrated photovoltaics, are based on the concept that a window doesn’t need to be 100 percent transparent, and a solar panel doesn’t need to be 100 percent opaque. Several ways currently exist to turn a window into a power-generating device, from thin-film silicon, to dye-sensitized solar cells, to tiny organic cells.

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Battling Illness on Public Transportation

via Rice University

UV Air filter systemThe best place to enjoy a breath of fresh air may be a city bus, if Rice University students have their way. A team of graduating seniors has created a system for public transit that would continually clear the air of pathogens that can lead to tuberculosis (TB), flu and pneumonia.

The CityBusters—Joseph Spinella, Jerry Lue, Sundeep Mandava, Grace Ching and Shidong Chen, all seniors—have installed a $500 device on a METRO bus in Houston that has proven effective at killing 99.8 percent of the pathogens that circulate through the air-filtering system. The device, called FluProof, incorporates high-powered ultraviolet lamps that sterilize the air on the fly.

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Improving Solar Panel Efficiency by Imitating Leaves

via Princeton University, Engineering School

Microscopic folds increase the power output and durability of solar cells. Credit: Frank WojciechowskiTaking their cue from the humble leaf, researchers have used microscopic folds on the surface of photovoltaic material to significantly increase the power output of flexible, low-cost solar cells.

The team, led by scientists from Princeton University, reported online April 22 in the journal Nature Photonics that the folds resulted in a 47 percent increase in electricity generation. Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, the principal investigator, said the finely calibrated folds on the surface of the panels channel light waves and increase the photovoltaic material's exposure to light.

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The Art of Domestic Microfarming

Jenna Spevack and one of her microfarmsJenna Spevack is an artist and designer and an art professor at City University of New York. She is also an environmental advocate, with an art exhibition titled 8 Extraordinary Greens.

The gallery show consists of a series of furniture objects converted into what Spevack calls domestic microfarms. “My art studio landlord collects objects from junkyards,” Spevack explained to Organic Connections. “I’ve taken these salvaged objects and turned them into little microfarms—outfitting them with lights and a sub-irrigated planter that I developed.” The objects include bookcases, tables and other items, neatly fitted with planters sprouting the likes of beets, chard, arugula, cress and kale.

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The Evolution of Green Roofs

by Lorena Galliot, via PhysOrg.com

Chicago City Hall roofGreen roofs—rooftops covered with a layer of vegetation—are getting a lot of credit for providing environmental benefits. They have been found to reduce storm water runoff from buildings, conserve energy by moderating rooftop temperatures, restore fragile ecosystems and beautify urban spaces. From Toronto to New York, cities are investing billions in green infrastructure programs that rely on this kind of technology and ongoing research is helping refine its application.

Researchers are now looking at how the types of vegetation used in affect their functioning. To date, many designers have used sedum—a genus of low-growing succulent plants that hold water in their leaves—to cover rooftops. Sedum, also known as stonecrop, is found throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and has been favored for its hardiness, shallow root systems and low maintenance requirements.

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Liquid Batteries: Rethinking Our Power Grid

Donald Sadoway. Photo: M. Scott BrauerDonald Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT, has earned a crescendo of recognition this year for his pioneering work on an entirely new type of battery, one based on floating layers of high-temperature molten metal and salt.

The battery could provide electricity storage on a scale useful to major electric utilities—allowing them to store energy whenever it’s available and cheap, and then pump it back into the grid when it’s most needed. Such storage capability could be the key to making intermittent sources of power—such as sun, wind and tides—a reliable part of the world’s energy supply.

The innovative approach earned Sadoway a coveted spot at this year’s TED talks; a video of his remarks [below] garnered more than 440,000 views in its first three weeks online.

What's the key to using alternative energy, like solar and wind? Storage—so we can have power on tap even when the sun's not out and the wind's not blowing. In this accessible, inspiring talk, Donald Sadoway takes to the blackboard to show us the future of large-scale batteries that store renewable energy. As he says: "We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap."

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Source: MIT News Office

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The Motorcycle Reinvented—Electrtic and Untippable

Lit Motors C1Lit Motors CEO Daniel Kim decided to reinvent the motorcycle as we know it today. His idea? To design and manufacture a fully enclosed, two-wheeled motorcycle that runs purely on battery power. Check out the C1-concept vehicle and its patented gyroscopic stability technology that helps prevent it from tipping over.

With a projected range of 200 miles and a top speed of 120 mhp, this vehicle has real practical uses in mind.

Lit Motors calls the C1 "The world’s first gyroscopically stabilized rolling smart phone. This vehicle combines the efficiency and freedom of a motorcycle with the safety and convenience of a car. Offering the alternated to alternatives on an exciting and safe platform, the C-1 transforms your daily commute into something to look forward to."

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Singapore Debuts a Park Featuring Solar-Powered Supertrees

Singapore's new SupertreesGardens by the Bay will be Singapore’s largest garden project and is central to the country’s continued development of Marina Bay. The gardens will feature two cooled conservatories—the Flower Dome (cool dry biome) and Cloud Forest (cool moist biome), as well as themed horticulture gardens, heritage gardens, and hundreds of thousands of  plants from around the world. UK landscape architects Grant Associates are responsible for all the gardens in the Bay South area.

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Disaster Resilient Construction and Sustainability

by Bill Lascher, Miller-McCune, via AtlerNet.org

UCSF building. Photo Credit: Rafael Vinoly Architects

As eco-savvy as the earthquake-prone Left Coast might be, it’s probably safe to bet that going green won’t be the first thing to come to mind when the Big One hits Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco.

Nevertheless, green-building advocates and disaster planners are finding common ground as they try to convince cost-conscious building owners that keeping a building operational after a punishing quake or other disaster makes economic and environmental sense. Developers and architects already earn green-building kudos for outfitting structures with solar panels and energy-scrimping lighting. Now some builders wonder whether keeping a building standing should earn them similar credit.

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New Wind Turbine Produces Electricity and Water in the Desert

via RechargeNews

Eole Water's WMS1000 turbine. Photograph: Eole WaterFrench technology start-up Eole Water is on track to erect a wind turbine in the United Arab Emirates that can produce hundreds of litres of drinking water a day from the dry desert air.

Tests on a ground-mounted prototype of its water maker system (WMS), which began in October in Mussafah, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, have shown it to be capable of flowing 500-800 litres daily. But Eole Water believes this volume can be tuned up to levels of well over 1,000 litres with a tower-top system, and the company has hopes of scaling up the technology for use by industry and off-grid communities.

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Solar Energy Takes on a Third Dimension

by David L. Chandler, via MIT News Office

Two small-scale versions of three-dimensional photovoltaic arrays were among those tested by Jeffrey Grossman and his team on an MIT rooftop to measure their actual electrical output throughout the day. Photo: Allegra BovermanIntensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky.

Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.

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Butterfly Wings and Renewable Energy

via American Chemical Society

Black Swallowtail butterflyButterfly wings may rank among the most delicate structures in nature, but they have given researchers powerful inspiration for new technology that doubles production of hydrogen gas—a green fuel of the future—from water and sunlight. The researchers presented their findings here today at the American Chemical Society's (ACS') 243rd National Meeting & Exposition.

Tongxiang Fan, Ph.D., who reported on the use of two swallowtail butterflies—Troides aeacus (Heng-chun birdwing butterfly) and Papilio helenus Linnaeus (Red Helen)—as models, explained that finding renewable sources of energy is one of the great global challenges of the 21st century. One promising technology involves producing clean-burning hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water. It can be done in devices that use sunlight to kick up the activity of catalysts that split water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Better solar collectors are the key to making the technology practical, and Fan's team turned to butterfly wings in their search for making solar collectors that gather more useful light.

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Fire Safety and the Chemicals in Your Couch

by Valeri Pacino, via Grist.org

Burning couch. Photo by S. F. Pitman.Eureka! In a legislative dogfight of global significance, the California legislature will consider a bill this spring to modernize the “12-second rule,” the state’s obscure furniture flammability standard that fails to protect us from fires even while it poisons homes across North America.

Late last month, Rep. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) introduced AB 2197 [PDF], a bill that will bring California’s flammability standard into line with 35 years of independent fire safety science and 20 years of research by the U.S. government.

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Occupy Your Garden: Ten Ways

by Annie Spiegeleman, via The Huffington Post

Annie Spiegelman and her soil scientist pal, Professor Stephen Andrews. Photo courtesy of Anita Jones. 1.Grow Your Own
I grew up in NYC in an apartment building, yet somehow I can now grow organic fruits and vegetables. And so can the 6th-graders I work with in school gardens. If we can do it, trust me, ANYONE can! It's not rocket science. All you need is sunshine for six to eight hours a day and healthy soil (full of life-compost). When you grow your own food organically you'll be eliminating pesticides and herbicides that are ubiquitously used in commercially grown food. Visit Pesticide Action Network's www.whatsonmyfood.org to see how many pesticides are used on your supermarket fruits and vegetables. That should scare you into growing your own. Bon appetite!

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Finding an Underground Home for Greenhouse Gases

by David Chandler, MIT News Office

Using tiny glass beads, the researchers simulated the way liquified carbon dioxide would spread through salty water in the pores of deep rock formations. Image: Michael Szulczewski, of the Juanes Research Group, MITA new study by researchers at MIT shows that there is enough capacity in deep saline aquifers in the United States to store at least a century’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s coal-fired powerplants. Though questions remain about the economics of systems to capture and store such gases, this study addresses a major issue that has overshadowed such proposals.

The MIT team’s analysis — led by Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and part of the doctoral thesis work of graduate students Christopher MacMinn PhD ’12 and Michael Szulczewski — is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Suckin’ It Up: Capturing Carbon from the Atmosphere

by Marc Gunther, via Grist.org

CO2 emissionWhat if, in addition to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, we could capture them from the air? That’s the question that prompted Marc Gunther, an author and contributing editor at Fortune magazine, to write the e-book Suck It Up, a Kindle Single. Below is an excerpt from the book on the history of the start-up Kilimanjaro Energy, a private company that is seeking to solve the carbon extraction equation.

Working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the 1990s, Klaus Lackner had numerous interests: the behavior of high explosives, nuclear fusion, and self-replicating machine systems. At some point, he turned his attention to the technology used to capture CO2 from the smokestacks of coal plants—technology in which the U.S. government has invested billions of dollars, with little to show for it. He began to wonder whether it might make more sense to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. So when his daughter Claire asked for help with a science project, he asked her: “Why don’t you pull CO2 out of the air?”

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Can Demolishing Urban Freeways Help Revive Cities?

by Matt Bevilacqua, via Grist.org

The Westside Highway, New York. Photo by m.joedickeOne of John Norquist’s best-known achievements as mayor of Milwaukee—an office he held from 1988 to 2004—was demolishing the Park East Freeway, a 1960s-era expressway that restricted access to the city’s downtown. Today, he is CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization that promotes urban highway removal and walkable, mixed-use urban development.

Norquist, who is also author of The Wealth of Cities, an argument for using the free market to achieve urbanist goals, will be one of the featured speakers at the Congress’ 20th annual gathering in West Palm Beach, Fla., this May. Here, he discusses urban highway removal—where it’s been done, where it will happen next, and why we as a nation must overcome our obsession with reducing congestion.

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Achieving True Sustainability: Economics for a Blue Planet

by Jurriaan Kamp and Marco Visscher, via ODE Magazine

Gunter PauliArmed with an MBA from the French business school INSEAD, Gunter Pauli was in his mid-30s when he took the reins at Ecover, the Belgian cleaning products manufacturer that ran into financial difficulties when it expanded internationally too quickly. Pauli, who was responsible for construction of Europe’s first “ecological factory,” left Ecover in 1994 after discovering that cultivation of the palm oil for his products was damaging Indonesia’s primary forests.

Since then, he has been living “on a path that pursues a sustainable world,” he says. The 55-year-old Belgian, fluent in seven languages, has lived on four continents and set up 10 companies. He also supports initiatives that develop sustainable production methods via his foundation ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). Pauli has written 15 books published in 30 languages, including short stories for children about science and technology.

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Energy Management: White Is the New Black for Roofs

via Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center

A study of how different white roofing materials performed “in the field” in New York City years found that even the least expensive white roof coating reduced peak rooftop temperatures in summer by an average of 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Image credit: Patrick Theiner, Creative CommonsOn the hottest day of the New York City summer in 2011, a white roof covering was measured at 42 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the traditional black roof it was being compared to, according to a study including NASA scientists that details the first scientific results from the city's unprecedented effort to brighten rooftops and reduce its "urban heat island" effect.

The dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces of some New York City roofs reached 170 degrees Fahrenheit on July 22, 2011, a day that set a city record for electricity usage during the peak of a heat wave. But in the largest discrepancy of that day, a white roofing material was measured at about 42 degrees cooler. The white roof being tested was a low-cost covering promoted as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030.

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A Power Company President Talks Green Energy

by Fen Montaigne, via Yale Environment 360

NRG’s solar system outside FedExField in Washington, D.C. can meet 20 percent of the stadium’s power needs.David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, is not your typical power company executive, as becomes clear when he calls climate change a “slow-moving catastrophe” and “the fundamental issue of our day.” As head of a Fortune 500 company that produces electricity for up to 20 million U.S. households, he is still neck-deep in hydrocarbons, with more than 90 percent of NRG’s electricity production coming from natural gas, coal, and oil. But the future, vows Crane, will look radically different.

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Turning Carbon Dioxide into an Asset

by Marc Gunther, via Yale Environment 360

Carbon capture and sequestrationWith global greenhouse gas emissions still on the rise, despite decades of talk about curbing them, maybe the time has come to think differently about the climate crisis. Yes, we need to burn less coal, oil and natural gas, but clearly fossil fuels are going to be around for awhile. So why not try to clean up the mess they make?

That’s what a handful of prominent scientists are trying to do by developing technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air. These scientists have launched start-up companies and attracted well-to-do investors — most notably Bill Gates — along with venture capital and, most recently, the attention of Wall Street. They say their technology does not need government support, though it would help. What it needs, above all, is a mindset that regards CO2 not simply as a pollutant but as a valuable commodity.

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Sevenly—Using Social Media for Charity

Sevenly TeeAt twenty-seven years old, Dale Partridge has already done more than some people will do in a lifetime. He started his first company at 17, and ended up selling it two years later for $50,000. He then established several other companies, including a faith-based entrepreneurial conference and a chain of rock-climbing gyms that still produce considerable revenue. But his heart truly lies in his current venture, Sevenly, which, since its opening in 2011, has raised nearly $250,000 for charitable causes around the world.

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How We Can Dump Fossil Fuels Without Help From Congress

by Fen Montaigne, Yale Environment 360, via AlterNet.org

Solar arrayAmory B. Lovins is fond of referring to the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he serves as chairman and chief scientist, as a “think and do” tank, and it’s clear that to Lovins the doing is every bit as important as the thinking. Hardly lacking in confidence or ambition, Lovins — in conjunction with his colleagues at the institute — has published Reinventing Fire, his step-by-step blueprint for how to transition to a renewable energy economy by mid-century. 

Impressive in both its scope and detail — Lovins discusses everything from how to redesign heavy trucks to make them more fuel efficient to ways to change factory pipes to conserve energy — the book lays out a plan for the U.S. to achieve the following by 2050: cars completely powered by hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, and biofuels; 84 percent of trucks and airplanes running on biomass fuels; 80 percent of the nation’s electricity produced by renewable power; $5 trillion in savings; and an economy that has grown by 158 percent.

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Liquid Batteries: The Solution Intermittent Renewable Energy

by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

Professor Donald Sadoway and Materials Processing Center Research Affiliate David Bradwell observe one of their small test batteries in the lab. The battery itself is inside the heavily insulated metal cylinder at center, which heats it to 700 degrees Celsius. Photo: Patrick GilloolyThe biggest drawback to many real or proposed sources of clean, renewable energy is their intermittency: The wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine, and so the power they produce may not be available at the times it’s needed. A major goal of energy research has been to find ways to help smooth out these erratic supplies.

New results from an ongoing research program at MIT, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, show a promising technology that could provide that long-sought way of leveling the load — at far lower cost and with greater longevity than previous methods. The system uses high-temperature batteries whose liquid components, like some novelty cocktails, naturally settle into distinct layers because of their different densities.

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