Volvo Tests A Road That Can Charge Cars And Trucks
by: fast company, 2013-08-22 12:30:00 UTC

Charging electric vehicles while they are on the move may seem a bit out–there. But, in fact, we already do it for major groups of vehicles––trams and trains, for instance. French cities have completely wireless trams, and their record is good. After 10 years and about 7.5 million miles, they haven't reported serious problems.

In Sweden, Volvo is applying the same technology to roads, opening up the possibility that people would no longer have to fear getting stranded by a dead battery––a major hurdle to people's willingness to buy an electric car. Led by Mats Alaküla, researchers are looking at two types of "conductive charging," both where vehicles would stay in continuous contact with the power supply. One method charges via lines overhead; the other, like the French trams, uses two metal bars in the road.

Alaküla says the important part of the second system is "the pick–up": The connector between the vehicle and the ground. It needs to compensate for drivers who move about the lane (unlike trams that stay in a fixed position). He describes the set–up as an "industrial robot sitting upside down––it adjusts to movements, one meter each way, and retracts completely if drivers move outside the lane.

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dan corson’s solar powered flower installation: sonic bloom
by: Designboom - Weblog, 2013-08-22 21:59:31 UTC

five giant singing flowers in 'sonic bloom' by dan corson, make an interactive sculpture that absorbs the sun's energy, reflecting it at night with patterned LED lighting.

The post dan corson’s solar powered flower installation: sonic bloom appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Lamps Made of Seaweed by Nir Meiri
by: design milk, 2013-08-22 19:00:41 UTC

In April at Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan, Nir Meiri launched a series of lamps made of seaweed and has just added pendants to the line, which will be part of an exhibition called Pre-Production at Tiroche Gallery.

Inspired by the sea, seaweed is used as the main material for these lamps as it is applied over metal strips while still wet. As it dries, it shrinks and forms the lamp’s shade. A finishing coat is applies to preserve it. As the light shines through, it feels very much like you’re underwater… and throws interesting shapes onto the walls. They also kind of look like green glass.

Watch how they’re made:

Photos by Shay Ben Efrayim, Aviram Ohad

Five story all-wood house built with zero chemicals
by: TreeHugger Design, 2013-08-21 10:27:08 UTC
Binding together thin wood walls with wood plugs, construction artist Matthias Korff makes a five-story building with no other insulation and no chemical glues.

Can Sustainable Consumerism Work?
by: Co.Exist, 2013-08-20 13:30:00 UTC

As market shares of "green" products grow, so does debate about their true impacts. Certification and labeling of environmentally and socially sustainable goods have exploded in the last 10 years, coinciding with hotter, more extreme weather, continued deforestation and biodiversity loss, and accelerated depletion of many natural resources.

So it's fair to ask, is green consumerism working? The idea that we can consume our way to sustainability as long as the label says it's "green" has deservedly been lampooned for years. More recently, the questioning is getting more serious and soul–searching, because environmentalists themselves are often the ones doing the asking.

"Today, precisely because the world is so increasingly out of balance, the sustainability regime is being quietly challenged, not from without, but from within," writes Pop!Tech's Andrew Zolli. The Worldwatch Institute report, "Is Sustainability Still Possible?" asks "with so much labeled as 'sustainable' … is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure [it]?" Greenpeace is publishing case studies to examine whether the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council––which it helped found––are getting "watered down" as the program grows. Environmental scientist Maurie Cohen, co–founder of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, categorizes certification, eco–labeling, and consumer education as 'weak' sustainable consumption. They "all tend to induce rebound effects and other perverse outcomes," she says.

Such critiques are generally thoughtful, and the questioning is healthy. Some of them, like Greenpeace's scrutiny of FSC, clearly aim to improve performance. And new conceptual frameworks related to ideas about resilience and "post–consumerism" are all to the good. Critics are right to expose and decry greenwashing, and to point out that self–professed corporate sustainability is no guarantee of real–world impact (one study found that 86% of companies surveyed reported compliance with key sustainability criteria, while only 11% actually met them). They are also right to point out certification is no panacea for workers. It needs to be accompanied by broad government policy changes to address issues like minimum wage and child labor, but those changes don't seem to be forthcoming.

To conclude from these critiques, however, that sustainable consumerism is "weak" or doesn't work would be a colossal mistake. Independent, accredited certification programs are scaling up sustainable practices worldwide and demonstrating huge benefits for the environment, workers, and communities. So why do critics often ignore them?

Perhaps it's because it's such a specialized branch of knowledge. If you haven't spent the last 20 years inspecting farms and forests throughout the tropics, you're unlikely to know how bananas were grown or what coffee farmers did with their waste in the early 1990s, so you can't appreciate the transformation that certification has accomplished since then.

Academic and policy studies tend naturally to focus on macro indicators and prescriptions, rather than grapple with actual practices and impacts on millions of acres of farms and forests in a hundred countries. The 2011 study "Solutions for a Cultivated Planet" brilliantly makes the macro case that to meet rising global food demand, we'll have to raise yields dramatically on existing cropland without clearing more forests. But it ignores the fact that independent programs, like Rainforest Alliance Certified agriculture, have been doing exactly that on many thousands of farms for many years, and have made significant, measurable progress towards the goal.

Gathering and aggregating data from all those far–flung farms and forests is difficult, expensive and takes years. Research results are slow in coming, and the field hasn't made a priority of synthesizing and communicating them. But that's starting to change.

A growing body of accredited studies reveals enormous differences between certified operations and non–certified ones. Certified operations have double and higher rates of protecting wildlife and habitats, including in mega–diverse hotspots. They dramatically reduce harmful impacts and dramatically improve the lives of workers, families and communities. They're providing sustainable livelihoods in some of the world's poorest countries and achieving life–changing increases in yields and incomes using sustainable methods.

This research is publicly available: There's a 2012 roundup of some of it here. More is emerging all the time, like these newly published studies showing that Colombia's 2,100 certified coffee farms shelter endangered species, have higher biodiversity and healthier streams, net higher revenue, and are twice as productive as non–certified farms. If you're ever stung by the accusation that drinking certified coffee eases consumer guilt without helping the planet or the farmers, facts like these are good to have.

No standard or certification system is perfect––in fact, by design they are iterative programs that require constant learning and improvement from producers and certifiers alike. But there's abundant evidence that despite some bad actors or self–serving programs, consumers who choose certified products and services are making a huge difference. They're the reason smallholding farmers worldwide are rapidly adopting sustainable practices, and why industry giants are eliminating deforestation and other harms from their global supply chains.

Skepticism is healthy, but don't doubt the power of consumers to drive positive, scalable environmental and social impacts. It's one of the few things that does.

The Biomimicry Manual: What Can the Tree Shrew Teach Us About Addiction?
by: Inhabitat , 2013-08-20 21:27:06 UTC

In our newest series, The Biomimicry Manual, we are thinking about design in a different way and asking ourselves “How would nature do it?“. Nature’s designs are tried and true, and there are a number of creatures on this planet that have a few tricks we can study and borrow from to make life on earth better. Take, for instance, this tiny party animal seen above. The pen-tailed tree-shrew (Ptilocercus lowii) is a beautiful, bright-eyed social climber, with a lovely naked tail ending in a fabulous feathery fringe. It spends its days sleeping, but by night, this little creature indulges its taste for naturally fermented palm wine. A lot of it. In fact, booze is pretty much what they live on. So what can we learn from them?

Read the rest of The Biomimicry Manual: What Can the Tree Shrew Teach Us About Addiction?

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Book: Design for Emotion
by: mocoloco, 2013-08-14 15:49:54 UTC


Life Cycle Costing ‘Key Benchmark’ for Smart Building Industry
by: Environmental Leader, 2013-08-16 14:20:55 UTC
Purchases in the intelligent building industry are most often based on the lowest costs and relationships with past vendors rather than cost evaluations, according to findings from a collaborative research project that will be published in October. But industry insiders do agree that the use and adoption of life cycle costing as a prerequisite for [...]

Nissan is ramping up LEAF electric car production in the U.S.
by: TreeHugger Transportation, 2013-08-09 20:08:23 UTC
Nissan is ready to shift production of the LEAF electric car into higher gear if demand from buyers stays high.

Clever customizable bike basket storage system uses elastics
by: TreeHugger Transportation, 2013-08-10 11:00:00 UTC
This intriguing concept employs bright-colored elastics as a carrier system for your bike: perfect for outsized items.