All things green and planet saving.
If it was any other time or place, we’d laugh at the idea of re-visiting the Roman gladiator death races with an electric vehicle, but in this case we’re going to suspend our disbelief and just imagine this T3 Powersport Electric Chariot barreling down the road to Costco on a Black Friday with razor knives attached to the wheel hubs. Then it all becomes very possible indeed.
If you spend your life sitting in front of a computer (who, me?) you’ll know how important it is for your environment to be just right. A nice comfy chair? Check. A suitably ergonomic desk height and keyboard mouse layout? Check. Proper lighting? Check. But what about another, probably even more important factor, namely the quality of the air you’re breathing in as you work?
A bunch of wonderfully insane clever quirky chaps in Japan have come up with a solution to all our road traffic accident problems. The one where we regularly kill off the population of a small town every year through bad, unlucky or plain stupid driving mistakes. They’ve decided to ignore the high tech solutions like self-driving or radar equipped vehicles and instead have gone for the most basic, obvious solution of all. Genius or madmen?
Every time we do a web search we indirectly create 0.2g of CO2, sending an email equals 4g, make a 1 min cell phone call and we’re talking 57g. And so on and so forth… Ever wanted to know just how much you’re contributing to the global warming everyone’s talking about? Nope, we’re not that enthusiastic either, but it’s fascinating info. Anyway, just for posterity here it is, all set out in an easy to use, interactive chart called How…
Even as more plastic waste accumulates in our oceans, creative minds are devising innovative ways to reuse post-consumer plastic to help our environment. Such is the case of the German REWE Group which plans to create plastic floating islands planted with papyrus, then use them to help rebuild the ecosystem of Africa’s Lake Naivasha. The papyrus restoration partnership between UK-owned tea producer and flower grower Finlays and Dr David Harper, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester, is intended…
Owning valuable stuff is a blessing and a curse of the modern world. It’s great when you’re using it, but a real pain when you’re worrying about keeping it safe. Double that if you run a small business or live somewhere that has a crime rate above zero. Sure there’s options, insurance, alarm systems, a very large unfriendly German Shepherd of the canine kind, but these cost money, lots of money.
The good folk at Renault, purveyors of quirky French automobiles and such, have decided to invest heavily in solar power for their production and distribution operations. How big? Well they’ve just announced an initial 40 hectare commitment, which is the equivalent of 60 football pitches. The solar installations, all located in La Belle France, will produce 52,600 MWh of power every year, enough for a town of 15,000 people.
The electric bicycle market is growing apace, and part of that involves a splintering into distinct sales segments. At one end of the scale there’s the truckloads of cheap, clunky Chinese electric bicycles, sold on price and basic functionality. They’re utilitarian all right, but hardly something you’d call a work of art. At the other end you’ll find real labors of love, crafted to deliver more than just a ride. But at a price.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could charge up our handheld gadgets simply by moving around? The boffins call it kinetic energy – energy derived from movement – but we call it cheap or almost free power. Sure there’s lots of different types, but have you ever tried winding up one of those cheap flashlights? You get about 20 seconds of light from 3 years of winding. It hurts.
An innovative European product could point to the future of the modern home, as we move into an era of more expensive energy and space constraints due population pressures. The Japanese have faced these issues for a long time already, but now it seems as though the rest of the developed world may also have to come to terms with more efficient living spaces…and sooner rather than later.
The problem with saving money is it’s so much hard work. You’ve got to plan here, research there, hunt down bargains, sniff out deals. It goes on and on. Who’s got the time or the energy? Luckily there’s a bunch of clever people out there who are working hard to help us save cash without breaking a sweat, which is nice to know, right?
One of the biggest problems with most of these solar charger products on the market at the moment is they don’t work. Simply put, it’s almost impossible to generate enough power from the sun’s rays on a small solar panel to keep the battery topped up on anything other than tiny devices. The result is people get fed up and simply charge the battery from the mains power socket instead.
If there’s one thing certain in life, it’s death, taxes and the increasing cost of electricity. Unless you’re lucky enough to be able to afford expensive solar panels (and live in a sunny climate) or you have access to hydro or geo-thermal power, you’re going to keep seeing power price rises for a long time yet.
When you buy a watch, you might be buying for a specific brand, or because it has some sort of awesome way of telling time that you haven’t seen anywhere else. Of course, you’re buying a watch more as a present for yourself or someone else anymore, what with the availability of phones that tell time every which way you look. What if you turned the tables and bought a watch that was helping someone else rather than just you?
A team of engineering students and their professor at Middle Tennessee University in the US have come up with a hybrid retro-fit electric kit for any standard car, which they claim can cut fuel consumption in half on city journeys. Unlike other similar concepts, this invention makes no alteration to the vehicle’s existing suspension, brakes or other transmission parts.
