Yan's Earth

Billboards and commercial messages dominate the public space like never before. Can we reverse this visual pollution? This Space Available looks at diverse activists from the worlds of advertising, street art, and politics. http://thisspaceavailablefilm.com/

Gonna take a look at this...

A beautifully written summary of how and why Aquaponics is changing the face of both farming and food in our cities, from The Atlantic Cities and TED Books. 

These days, any designer worth his or her salt is grappling with ideas of waste and sustainability, trying to come up with ways to do more with less. This is especially pressing in the realm of product packaging: According to the EPA, Americans alone throw away some 70 million tons of boxes, bags, containers, and inserts each year. It’s a staggering statistic, and any place where we can cut back will help stem the tide. But Aaron Mickelsonhas a more radical idea. Why not get rid of packaging completely?

That lofty ambition served as the basis for Mickelson’s thesis project at Pratt Institute last semester, where the designer earned his masters in package design. The project, which Mickelson dubs "The Disappearing Package," shows zero-waste solutions for five different products, from trash bags to shower soap. And the craziest part of it all is that the designs really aren’t that crazy.

Most of the solutions stem from streamlining the packages of products that are, in some way, packages themselves--or are products that already include many individually packaged parts. Tide Pods, for example, are single-use detergent pouches typically sold in a plastic jug or stand-up bag. Mickelson’s proposal is a simple one: Arrange the pods in a single, perforated sheet; print on them directly with soap-soluble ink; and roll them up into a tight cylinder for grocery store shelves. At home, customers would simply tear off one pod at a time, as needed, until the last one was used, taking the last traces of the product to the washing machine along with it. Mickelson’s idea for tea bags is similarly elegant--instead of putting all the individual, wax-sealed packets in a tin or cardboard box, simply attach them together accordion-style and let the customer tear off one at a time.

The designer’s proposal for Glad trash bags seems even more feasible--and perhaps even a bit more clever. The idea is to roll up the bags into a self-contained tube, with the product information printed directly on the outside bag. But the best part is that customers draw bags not from the outside of the roll but from the inside, Kleenex-style, which dispenses one bag at a time while keeping the rest in one tidy unit. Not only does the design eliminate the need for the superfluous cardboard box but it also adds a bit of quick-grab usability as well. Reducing waste is worthwhile enough; the added utility is just a victory lap.

The WINDHUNTER SYSTEM concept is an offshore, floating system that uses several wind turbines for power output to produce hydrogen by electrolyzing water. This continuously manned, safe and stable system will be easily maintained on-board while relocating to the best wind conditions for the wind turbines. The produced hydrogen gas may be compressed and stored as gas or liquefied and placed in insulated tanks. The compressed or liquefied hydrogen may be transferred by helicopter, surface ships or by other means.

Martin Mittelmark, CEO of Phytofilter Technologies, explained that NASA was researching how plants purify air because of its interest in long-term habitat in outer space. The scientists found that carbon-eating microbes around a plant’s root system digest impurities in air. If they grew plants in porous soil and put an induction fan below the filter, they could get 100 times more polluted air down to the microbes.

By leveraging the microbes around the plant, “they (NASA) found these plant purifiers were taking just about every contaminant out of the air,” said Mittelmark. The soil around the plant acts as a filter bed through which indoor air passes and pollutants are trapped, and the filter never needs replacing.

Daaamnnn :O 

Designed by Vincent Callebaut Architecture, the 455,000-square-foot Agora Tower will have an orchard, a vegetable garden, space for aromatic and medicinal plants, and a compost and rainwater capture system.

Progettato per imitare la struttura elicoidale del DNA, le torri sono organizzate intorno ad un nucleo centrale che ha permesso la realizzare un "iper-abbondanza di giardini sospesi." Questi traboccano di piante commestibili e decorative, che consentono ai residenti dei 40 appartamenti di lusso di raccogliere una grande quantità di cibo. Inoltre, un sistema di raccolta delle acque piovane allevia il peso sulla rete idrica comunale e dà indipendenza al complesso.

 Potentiellement renouvelable

Rescooped by Digital Sustainability from Vertical Farm - Food Factory onto Digital Sustainability

Awesome, isn't :-)

How's this for innovating?

The Colorado researchers have stepped up the microbial fuel cell – wastewater connection to include a desalination capability, and that’s where it gets interesting. They were stumped for a while on how to get the whole operation to run efficiently, until they investigated the potential for storing the hydrogen waste gas from the process. Building on research conducted at Penn State University, the team produced a study demonstrating that the process results in enough hydrogen to run the desalination component. Not only that, it creates excess hydrogen that can be put to other uses.

The Office of Naval Research is behind the Colorado study, which should come as no surprise.  For obvious reasons, the U.S. Navy has a long term interest in developing high efficiency desalination processes, and now it foresees a future in which entire ships are powered by microbial fuel cells which can scavenge energy on-the-go from seawater. Bio-based fuel cells and batteries are also of great interest to other branches of the armed services, so it’s a safe bet that microbial fuel cells will cross over into mainstream civilian use…especially if the incoming Congress continues funding for new energy research.

In a Net-Zero energy building, the remaining (low) energy consumption is dominated not by heating and colling, but plug loads. So occupant behavior change should be the next focus. Confirmed by this 100 engineers and architects from the design and build community.

Occupants in Net-Zero energy buildings are usually measured as a plug load.  Monitoring & limiting plug loads are methods of managing energy use in a building.

We've made tremendous strides in conserving energy in buildings using new technologies like dynamic glass and advanced insulation materials. But there is still far to go. 

Greenbiz.com reports on panel of engineers, architects and other experts in Net Zero buildings who say the next front on energy efficiency will be changing the behavior of occupants. 

To these panelists, paying more attention to the occupant means paying attention to plug loads. That's the amount of energy consumed by devices plugged into electrical sockets.

"Occupant behavior change plus creative ideas equals Net Zero," says Humphrey of DPR Construction.

Read the story here: 

The price of solar panels has declined 60% since the beginning of 2011, according to SEIA. Lower prices for silicon -- a main ingredient in the panels -- and massive investments in manufacturing capacity, especially by the Chinese, have helped push down prices.