Home & Garden

Small Storage Green House

There is one active Dutch designer named Daniel Schipper who created the foldable greenhouse for city gardens and rooftop terrariums. These gardens are made from recycled plastics, the greenhouse roof folds up flat for easy storage and transience. The base is also made from recycled plastic composite and its lack of framework or support materials makes it a minimalist no-fuss appliance. Just unfold, snap, and water.

Schipper’s foldable greenhouse has been causing quite a stir in the Netherlands as he searches for a production partnership to bring it to the global market. It’s just one of many innovative creations from his Amsterdam studio which focuses on concept, research and design having completed. Many of Schipper’s projects emphasize sustainability, functionality and fold-ability.

Rocking Chair Powers Its Attached OLED Lamp

The Murakami chair’s attached lamp is powered by kinetic energy produced from the chair’s rocking back and forth deliciously simple and elegant. Oh, and that lampshade? Not a lampshade. That’s the actual OLED light source, shaped like a lampshade. The OLED lamp even senses when it’s light or dark out, and if it’s light, stores the energy produced by rocking in a battery pack until nightfall. The chair, designed by Rochus Jacob, rightfully shared first prize at the DesignBoom Green Life Competition.

The Environment or a Chaffed Ass?

A friend directed us to an interesting article in the guardian.co.uk Posted on February 26, 2009. It turns out that American’s Love for a soft tissue to wipe there buttocks with is worse for the environment than their love for driving gas guzzling Hummers.

According to Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk,”The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.”

She goes on to quote Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council”This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous,” he goes on to say, “Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin woodis a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.” Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.”

Susan also points out that Paper manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark have identified luxury brands such as three-ply tissues or tissues infused with hand lotion as the fastest-growing market share in a highly competitive industry. Its latest television advertisements show a woman caressing tissue infused with hand lotion.

The New York Times reported a 40% rise in sales of luxury brands of toilet paper in 2008. Paper companies are anxious to keep those percentages up, even as the recession bites. And Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark spent $25m in its third quarter on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their bottoms to cheaper brands.

But Kimberly-Clark, which touts its green credentials on its website, rejects the idea that it is pushing destructive products on an unwitting American public.

Americans already consume vastly more paper than any other country — about three times more per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China.

Barely a third of the paper products sold in America are from recycled sources — most of it comes from virgin forests.

“I really do think it is overwhelmingly an American phenomenom,” said Hershkowitz. “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”

Source & images Courtesy of guardian.co.uk

Algae Batteries

Algae is considered the next big break through in bio fuels. That slimy, slippery stuff might also be a key to paper thin biodegradable batteries according to researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden. These batteries could soon compete with commercial lithium-ion batteries.

According to Inhabitat.:”Conducting polymers have long been thought to be a solution in developing lightweight, flexible, nonmetal batteries. But up until now, these polymers have had been impractical because regular paper can’t hold enough of them work effectively. Now Uppsala researcher Maria Stromme and her team has found that the smelly algae species that clumps on beaches, known as Cladophora, can also be used to make a type of cellulose that has 100 times the surface area of cellulose found in paper. That means it can hold enough conducting polymers to effectively recharge and hold electricity for long amounts of time.”

“The algae-based paper sheet batteries hold up to 200% more charge than regular paper-based cellulose batteries, and they can recharge in as little as 11 seconds. Eventually, they could be used in any application that requires flexible electronics — for example, clothing or packaging that lights up. Perhaps most importantly, the algae batteries could one day cut down on e-waste from conventional metal batteries.”