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“The lights are off all day! 1,200 students of the Friends School of Baltimore eat, socialize, and study as part of a tight knit community without the use of a single light bulb. Their new Dining Hall, designed by Ziger/Snead Architects, uses an array of 21 skylights to bathe the entire room in 100% natural daylight – creating a clean, elegant place for students and faculty. Even on heavily overcast days, exterior ambient light can provide enough illumination to completely replace artificial lighting – reducing electricity consumption and providing occupants with all the other proven benefits natural daylight.” Design solutions like this prove their is a sustainable solution to most problems and that we do not need to waste energy unnecessarily.

“Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we’re trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.

Biomimicry is quickly becoming a cornerstone of sustainable design, but for designers who want to incorporate biomimicry into their work, many don’t know where to start. Some famous biomimetic solutions have gotten passed around the mainstream press–including examples like self-cleaning surfaces modeled on lotus flowers, or the sticky repositionable tape inspired by gecko feet–but biomimicry isn’t as easy as using nature as a crib sheet. “One of the big realizations that designers have when they play with biomimicry is that it’s not a tool, it’s a mindset shift,” says Dayna Baumeister, who co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Benyus in 1998. “Because of that–because of the fundamentally different way of thinking–it’s hard.”

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Similar to the earlier entry that ejects your power cable when the device is charged, this product makes you more aware of the power you are using.
“Power strips are used on a daily basis in most homes as a means of ‘transporting’ energy to the products we use every day. The ‘Power-Aware Cord’ is a re-designed electrical power strip in which the cord is designed to visualize the energy rather than hiding it. The current use of electricity is represented through glowing pulses, flow, and intensity of light. Expressing the presence of energy through light can inspire people to explore and reflect upon the energy consumption of electrical devices in their home. “

“Scientists at UCLA have developed synthetic crystals that trap gasses like a smart sponge. The crystals are highly selective, allowing them to achieve a 400% improvement in CO2 capture over current technologies.

The crystals are three-dimensional and code information in the same manner as DNA. While not as sophisticated as DNA, the developers consider it a significant advancement in chemistry and materials science.

The scientists hope the technology could be used to capture CO2 from both large sources like power plants, and smaller ones like vehicle exhausts and smaller factories. The material could also potentially be used to convert CO2 into a fuel.

Ideally, these highly efficient crystals could be used for CO2 capture in lots of different settings while we try to transition to cleaner technologies.”

This is a nice idea, made from one piece of wood and laser etched for durability. Just the price that lets it down, $950

“Gates spoke about his commitment to using his massive philanthropic resources (the Gates Foundation is the world’s largest) to make life better for people through public health and poverty alleviation (“vaccines and seeds” as he put it). Then he said something he’s never said before: that is it because he’s committed to improving life for the world’s vulnerable people that he now believes that climate change is the most important challenge on the planet.

Even more importantly, he acknowledged the only sensible goal, when it comes to climate emissions, is to eliminate them: we should be aiming for a civilization that produces no net emissions, and we should be aiming to live in that civilization here in the developed world by 2050.”

We still have a long way to go but, with America on board and it’s enormous access to research within the scientific community, this has to be a better thing?

The PlayPump® uses a specially crafted children’s roundabout to pump water from deep underground. So, as children spin on the roundabout, fresh, clean water is pumped from a borehole into a storage tank for use by the entire community.

It’s a simple idea but one that is changing the lives of thousands of African people. Now, instead of walking for hours to collect water, children can go to school and the entire community benefits from access to fresh drinking water.

A PlayPump® provides much more than clean water. It provides a community with a sustainable resource that saves time and energy and facilitates education, hygiene and health. Plus, excess water can be used to irrigate vegetable gardens, giving communities the opportunity to grow and sell their own crops. “