Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University recently demonstrated an aviation first by cruising the sky in a hybrid propulsion aircraft. A team of nearly 200 students spent the last year and a half designing, manufacturing, testing, and flying the hybrid plane dubbed ‘Eco Eagle’. The new aircraft challenges everything we know about efficient flight technology.

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Committed to making theater productions as green as possible, Simple 8 is the group behind London’s first ecologically sustainable theater piece. The London based company’s production of The Living Unknown Soldier kept sustainability at its core, showing us that it is possible to put on great theater while keeping environmental impact low.

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Read the rest of INTERVIEW: We Talk Repurposed Tire Rubber Sandals With Kyle Parsons of IndoSole

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Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a clever way to make our smartphones up to 44% more energy efficient without changing how we interact with them. They found that when your smartphone goes into “power saving mode” it isn’t actually saving much power – it’s really just shutting its screen off. That’s because a smartphone is coded to constantly search for a clear signal to make sure that you receive messages as quickly as possible. The University of Michigan team found that they were able to recode this “idle mode” to slow down to 1/16 the speed normally needed to receive messages without compromising data sync times. They call their new smartphone hardware E-MiLi — short for Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening — and it promises to make your smartphone’s battery last a whole lot longer.

Read the rest of E-MiLi: New Idle Technology Could Make Smartphones 44% More Energy Efficient

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", i-mili, idle technology, iphone battery life, phone battery life, renewable energy, smartphone battery, smartphone battery life, smartphone battery technology, smartphone energy technology, university of michigan

In the wake of strict new fuel-efficiency legislation in the United States and Europe, the latest international auto show continues the trend of big green solutions. Here's how physics meets sustainability making cars greener.

An African bike company builds bikes for the poor, funded by selling you a super-light sweet bamboo ride.

In Zambia, bicycles grow on trees, or rather bamboo, the primary building material for many Zambikes. Groves of it grow outside the company's factory, which is run by two Zambians and two Americans on a quest to build a local bike for Africans, and employ the "uneducated and underprivileged" to make them for the rest of the world.

So far, Zambike has cranked out at least 8,000 metal bicycles and 900 bicycle ambulances and cargo carts in Southern Africa; they've sold 200 bamboo bicycle frames worldwide. The company's goal, besides benefiting communities around it, is to sell affordable, effective transportation throughout Zambia, a country where the average life expectancy is 47 years old, and infant mortality approaches one in 10 births. The for-profit firm was founded in a a partnership with U.S. nonprofit Akerfa, and has employed more than 100 people, says Zambikes cofounder Vaughn Spethmann. 

"Our products are saving and changing lives," said Spethmann during an interview with SOCAP Europe. "We are creating opportunity and employment. "Our goal of having Zambikes be run by Zambian nationals will ensure that Zambikes will be a catalyst for change for decades to come."

The design is relatively straightforward, though labor intensive. Three-year-old bamboo is cut, preserved, and cured for several months before being cut to size. The frame is then bound with wood glue and plant fiber cords soaked in epoxy, and affixed to the metal components. The whole process takes as long as a week, but produces a 95% bamboo bike that is "one of the classiest, comfortable rides in the bike industry" with almost "magical" vibration absorption, says the company. Models have fetched about $900 abroad, and a messenger bike version is now available for export. 

But you may soon have pick of bamboo bikes. While Zambike has perhaps the strongest environmental and social credentials, a growing number of shops and designers are crafting bicycles out of the material and some are even expanding into solid wood. Renovo, inspired by wooden WWII fighter planes, handcraft their frames from hardwood simply because it's a superior material, says the company, with "engineering properties suit the requirements of most bicycle applications better than any other material." Although not a good candidate for large-scale manufacturing, "where production is limited, and the properties of wood are matched to the product, it is difficult to surpass."

[Image: KKTourAfrica]

Reach Michael J. Coren via Twitter or email.

For a moment just forget the device presented here and the technicalities for working it. Focus on the idea; Re-Q is an eco-friendly soap maker that recycles domestic wastewater and the last wedges of used soap to make you a brand new soap bar! Essentially it is a brilliant idea! In a three-step process, the machine purifies greywater, mixes it with soap bits and then processes the mixture into new soap cakes! How radical is that!

Designers: Jung Hwan Song & Kim Jong Won

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