Tony Fadell invented the iPod. Okay, he didn't do it singlehandedly--but the former Apple executive conceived it, got Apple on board, and then went on to shepherd the development of 18 (!) generations of the company's signature pre-iPhone product. In 2008 he left Apple and several years later founded a stealth startup called Nest Labs, which was revealed this year to be in the... thermostat business. Wait, what?
Yeah, you read that right. But not just a thermostat--the iPod of thermostats: a device so desirable and intuitive that it'll turn home energy management into a must-have symbol of sustainable living. Fadell told Co.Design he intends the Nest Learning Thermostat, which will retail for $249.99 starting in November, to be "a jewel on the wall... most people try to hide the thermostat, but we're trying to make it sexy and coveted so that you cherish it, and at parties people ask you about it and you're proud of it." Big talk--but watch this teaser video and you just might become a believer:
Only 6% of programmable thermostats are actually programmed. That's a massive design problem.
The Nest thermostat actually is iPod-like: The display and primary interaction are instantly intuitive and physically irresistible. To adjust the temperature, turn a ring on the rim of the device--if you're making it cooler, the display turns blue, and if you're making it warmer, it turns red. The temperature itself is displayed in a clear, bright numeric readout--no more squinting at tick marks on a dusty dial. There's also a little green leaf that appears on the screen to guide to you into tweaking your settings for optimal energy savings. And Fadell, no stranger to the importance of a good "unboxing" experience, even went so far as to include a high-quality, custom branded screwdriver with every unit. "When you take it out of the box you want it to be easy to install," Fadell says. "Apple taught me not to cut corners, and that you don't give up on user experience--ever."
As Fadell notes, the thermostat business was ripe for disruption, and a tantalizing business opportunity as well. He stumbled upon it when he was building his own dream home, an experiment in cutting edge green design in Lake Tahoe. As he considered spending tens of thousands of dollars on a heating and cooling system, it just seemed wrong to link all that tech up to a $90 thermostat from Home Depot that barely worked as advertised, simply because its design was so poor. He waited for a better product to come along, but it didn't. Upon investigating the market further, he discovered that 10 million thermostats are sold every year. Meanwhile, only 6% of programmable thermostats are actually programmed, even though a programmed thermostat can save 30-40% in heating and cooling costs. That's was clearly a serious design problem.
So for users, the best thing about the Nest Learning Thermostat is under that gleaming case. It's equipped with software that analyzes and tracks your usage patterns over time, so that you only have to twist that dial a dozen times before the thermostat can simply anticipate your climate-control needs and take care of it automatically. "Instead of programming their thermostats, most people have given up and treat it like a light switch," Fadell says. "But you have to make those manual adjustments about 1,500 times a year if you want to see any real energy savings." Nest's version elegantly lets you set it and forget it--at least after that initial learning period. But this thermostat is so sexy, you probably won't mind.
by: Environmental Leader, 2011-10-25 12:34:44 UTC Carbon Disclosure Project recently released its Canada 2011 report at the Toronto Stock Exchange. More Canadian companies than ever publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. Contrary to the common belief that going green slows growth, businesses who take the lead into a low carbon economy delivered twice the financial return compared to their peers. The [...]
by: The Design blog, 2011-10-24 09:51:12 UTC
Satyajit Bera:
Sustainable Fire placeThese fireplace provide warmth in eco friendly way.
When the winter gets freezing, anyone wants to feel warm, cozy and comfortable by his/her indoor fireplace. With the advancement of technology, it’s time to say a goodbye to the old modeled, smoky fireplaces fueled by lumps of coal or big logs of wood. Nowadays, the fireplaces have turned sleek, stylish, portable and eco friendly. Here are seven eco-smart and energy efficient fireplaces that will add a vibrant mood to your interior decor.
1. Wall-mountable fireplaces from Arkaine
ArkaineThe glass doors of the fireplaces can be opened or kept closed depending on the requirements and the temperature outside.
Arkaine has recently launched two sleek and efficient fireplace models - the Icoi and the Yan-Li. These are non-electric highly efficient fireplaces which can easily be mounted on the walls of your living room. This used dried wood as fuel for burning. The non-electric model gives you a considerable amount of saving in your electricity bill. The front portion is covered by glass which can be removed on requirement depending upon the ambient room temperature. The model is a sleek one and adds an extra mark to your home decors. One drawback of this product is that it is not provided with a chimney for capturing the heat from the emerged smoke and hence a lot of heat energy gets wasted.
2. Acquaefuoco’s Tube bioethanol fireplace
Acquaefuoco’sDesigned by Mario Mazzer for Acquaefuoco wellness mood, the stunning Tube fireplace enjoys a harmonic appearance that is obtained from a tube with a single laser cutting.
Designed by Mario Mazzer, the Acquaefuoco Tube is an extremely stylish fireplace model and winner of the red dot design award, 2010. This model is fueled by bioethanol which makes it’s flames fume-less. The flames produced are fantastic to look at owing to their smooth and brilliant glare. The entire structure is made out of a single laser-cut pipe with a circular burner mounted near the bottom. Multiple units can be mounted on the wall to warm up your room. The available jet black color looks stunning, sure to attract the attention of the onlookers.
3. Smokeless fireplace from Blomus
BlomusJust like most of the fireplaces available on the eco-shelves today, this one too is fueled by clean and smokeless ethanol.
This is again a concept of an ethanol fuel based fireplace. German company Blomus has brought forward this unique shelf-like fireplace design. The flames produced in invisible in nature and fume-less. This is also available in a 22” version. Two glass guards provided on either side prevents loss of heat laterally and throws the entire heat upwards. The flames come out from a thin slot like oven through which ethanol vapors jet out. This model is quite heavy for your wallet (around $1,200). This fireplace is inappropriate to keep in rooms having bright lights owing to it’s invisible flames.
4. Ethanol-fueled ‘Fusion’ fireplace
FusionDesigned by Marc Philipp Veenendaal, the “Fusion” fireplace is a product you’ll be interested in possessing even if this day is the warmest so far.
The ‘Fusion’ fireplace has been designed by Marc Philipp Veenendaal, blendig the eco friendly concept and interior decor concept. This model is an denatured ethanol fueled one and thus is produces almost no pollution in you home. Moreover, this model is available in a wide range of colors so as to blend and cope up with your house’s interior decor. As ethanol burns with an invisible flame, the back portion of this fireplace has been guarded with tough glass panel for safety and a flame cover made of glass in the front, to make the flame static. This one is priced around $7,000.
5. Eco chic Duo liquid fuel fireplace table
Eco chic DuoYou can get that much-needed warmth in winter with the help of this fireplace.
This model is another eco friendly fireplace which burns bio-ethanol to produce heat. It has got a fantastic look and a bottle holder coupled with it. You can use this to warm up any part of the indoors you want, may it be your study table or your office or your home-pub. The fuel tank capacity of this model is about 2 liters which eliminates the hassle of frequent fuel refilling. Ethanol is a highly energy efficient fuel and environment friendly in nature. It doesn’t leave back any ashes after being burnt. Neither it produces any fumes or smoke while burning. Thus, this maintenance free fireplace keeps your home pollution free and clean. The price of this product is about $14,000.
6. Zeta Stylish Eco-Friendly Fireplace
ZetaZeta is a flue less and portable fireplace that no need any installation, fueled by environment friendly and renewable energy
John Dimopoulos from Australia has designed this beautiful eco friendly fireplace called “Zeta” with a sleek and smart outlook. The entire setup resembles a half opened laptop. This one is fueled by denatured ethanol which makes the heating pollution free and smoke-less. The flame is covered on either sides with toughened glass walls to make it static and admirable to look at. This model comes in brilliant colors to match with your interior decors. The “Zeta” is completely portable, thus cutting off any installation charges as in many wall mounted fireplace models.
7. Fireplaces from Condo Flare
Condo FlareCondo Flare’s fireplaces are eco friendly in materials as well as the manufacturing process
Condo Flare fireplaces come in numerous models with vibrant colors and designs that easily cope up with your interior decors. Each product of this company is made from eco friendly stuff and they are fueled by ethanol for ash-free and smoke-free flames. The price of the various models differ according to their flexibility and compatibility to be used as complements to your interior decorations. Their “Lenko fireplace” model is designed strong enough to hold your T.V. whereas the “Loft” model gives you a multilevel shelving option. Similarly there are other stylish models with wall mounting options which increase the beauty of your interiors.
Leaves are the ultimate solar panel. If we're going to power more of the world with the sun, we're going to need to imitate plants, one way or another.
Enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power our civilization for a year, and futurists like Ray Kurzweil see us moving to an all-solar civilization in the span of a single human lifetime.
But getting to a civilization powered entirely by renewables isn't going to happen with current technology. Traditional solar panels might become cheaper, but the laws of physics say they can't become that much more efficient. Not to mention that the resources required to build the kind of desert-spanning solar farms that would be required to replace even a percentage point or two of our current energy mix boggle the mind.
But there is another way, and it borrows directly from nature: "solar leaves." They've become a shorthand for the idea that if we can only make solar panels cheap enough, no one will bother to use anything else ever again.
There are a number of competing visions for how a solar leaf will work and what it might be made from. Daniel Nocera at MIT is working on a combination of catalysts that use sunlight to--like a leaf--directly convert water into hydrogen . (Which can then be burned or used in a fuel cell.) Another group of MIT researchers have successfully printed solar cells onto paper, conjuring visions of a future in which solar cells are as cheap as the morning paper.
But making these kinds of solar cells into a true replacement for our current energy system will require technology that isn't merely cheap; in some sense, it needs to be disposable. (Obviously, a closed production cycle where 100 percent of its recyclable components are reclaimed would be optimal.)
In addition to price, disposability respects the fact that all energy infrastructure, and especially parts of it that are continually exposed to the sun's powerful radiation, has to be periodically replaced. And while Nocera's vision of a water-bathed, hydrogen-spewing lozenge is tempting, this may be a case where it's more important to imitate the form of nature rather than its exact mechanism.
This is the vision of researchers at Germany's University of Technology Chemnitz, who have just published work on durable solar cells that could be printed with traditional processes. Imagine a copy shop in Nairobi spooling out a continuous ribbon of "solar leaves" at up to 15 meters per second on a single machine and you've got the idea. These solar leaves could be cut to whatever length the user prefers, then connected to a battery or home with simple alligator clips.
Printed solar cells still require some kind of substrate (usually metallic) whose widespread adoption might deplete world reserves. But what if we could make solar leaves out of nothing but carbon?
Jiaxing Huang and colleagues at Northwestern University are working on a solar cell that is made out of nothing but three different forms of carbon: balls (fullerenes), sheets (graphene), and tubes (carbon nanotubes). Best of all, all three can be mixed up in a test tube full of water. It's what chemists call aqueous chemistry. This makes the production of these solar cells biomimetic from start to finish, and implies that some day we'll be making solar panels on paper with little more than graphite as a feedstock.
Of course, we don't have to wait decades to see what effect solar leaves will have on the success of solar power. Already, solar panels known as thin film solar, which are produced by something like a traditional printing process, are a $3 billion business. One research firm projects that this market could explode to $44 billion by 2017.
Thin film isn't as efficient as silicion solar cells, but the world's abundance of sunshine makes that irrelevant. These days, it's all about finding an patch of ground and throwing up inexpensive panels. Plants have been covering every inch of earth's surface with what are essentially solar panels for billions of years--now it's our turn.
by: Environmental Leader, 2011-10-24 14:04:54 UTC Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. is aiming for a 20 percent per vehicle cut in its operational CO2 emissions by 2016, compared with 2005, under a six-year environmental plan unveiled today. The Nissan Green Program 2016, the company’s third environmental mid-term plan, also calls for the company to become the world’s number one seller of zero-emission [...]
The Andrea Air Purifier is a brilliant partnership between man and plant that accelerates nature’s natural ability to clean air in order to detoxify the atmosphere inside your home. We had a chance to sit down with Tom Hadfield from Andrea to talk about how this amazing gadget is able to clean the air in your home 1,000 times better than a normal houseplant. Check out our video interview above!
Shipping containers are intriguing artifacts of global consumer culture. While they are meant to be reusable, there is such an imbalance of trade that frequently they do not return to their country of origin, and shipping empty containers is inefficient for the shipping lines. So, while a small number of the containers end up being re-purposed, many more do not.
To address this problem, the Staxxon container can be folded up small enough that five empty containers will fit in the space normally filled by one ordinary container. Because the Staxxon containers are as strong as conventional containers, and since they can be moved and handled without changes to how containers are normally handled, they have the potential to make inroads in the shipping industry.
Several stacked containers are no heavier than a full container, so there are no special handling requirements in that regard, and operationally, fewer crane lifts and truck trips would be needed to move bundles of empty containers, so there are time and energy efficiencies to be gained with the adoption of these containers.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-12 10:54:43 UTC
McKinsey, since last year, holds a yearly survey on sustainability. "The outcome this year":http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_business_of_sustainability_McKinsey_Global_Survey_results_2867 ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-09 08:02:04 UTC
A business card made using an autumn leaf from the garden. Fallen leaves are gathered in the autumn, and dried. The letters are not ink-printed but ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-05 06:23:45 UTC
The drinking fountain is a ceramic water cooler that is connected to the existing water supply. it can be placed in a public environment, in- or outdoor. ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-03 06:29:13 UTC
GOOD DESIGN Award for Ben in Bad! from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art design ...
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