Source: BBC Bill Gates is, in a manner of speaking, flushing his money down the toilet. His charitable organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is looking for future loos that can improve sanitation around the world. At the Reinvent the Toilet fair, hosted at its Seattle campus this week, designs included a lavatory that used microwave energy to turn poo into electricity. Another turned excrement … Continue reading The Big Necessity
All energy scenarios show a shift toward an increased percentage of renewable energy sources, including biomass. This study gives an overview of water footprints (WFs) of bioenergy from 12 crops that currently contribute the most to global agricultural production: barley, cassava, maize, potato, rapeseed, rice, rye, sorghum, soybean, sugar beet, sugar cane, and wheat. In addition, this study includes jatropha, a suitable energy crop. Since climate and production circumstances differ among regions, … Continue reading The water footprint of bioenergy
Source: The Guardian Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages. Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to … Continue reading Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism
In a national online survey, 505 participants reported their perceptions of energy consumption and savings for a variety of household, transportation, and recycling activities. When asked for the most effective strategy they could implement to conserve energy, most participants mentioned curtailment (e.g., turning off lights, driving less) rather than efficiency improvements (e.g., installing more efficient light bulbs and appliances), in contrast to experts’ recommendations. For a sample of 15 activities, participants … Continue reading Public perceptions of energy consumption
The Nocera lab at the chemistry department at MIT studies the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. On advice he received from Kurt Vonnegut: “He told me, ‘stop worrying about the planet dying. When you have a big organism and you become irritating to it, the immunological system just kicks in and kills the invading organism’. And he assured me that we have just … Continue reading Personalized Energy
Source: The New Yorker ANNALS OF DESIGN about Jay Shafer and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Tiny houses are built on trailer platforms. Typically, they are between a hundred and a hundred and thirty square feet, roughly the size of a covered wagon. They aren’t toys or playhouses or aesthetic gestures, and they aren’t shacks or cottages, either. Shacks don’t have kitchens and bathrooms, and … Continue reading Tiny Houses
A fantastic book for anyone who wants to learn about the basics of sustainability and do some simple calculations on energy usage. David John Cameron MacKay, FRS, is the professor of natural philosophy in the department of Physics at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Before being appointed to the DECC, MacKay was most well known as author of the book Sustainable Energy — Without the … Continue reading Sustainability without the hot air
Source: The New Yorker If you’re like many people, you’ve probably come across Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures in videos online. Jansen, aged sixty-three, is a Dutch artist who lives in Delft, near the North Sea. For the past twenty-one years, he has devoted himself to constructing animals that can walk on the beach powered only by the wind. His name for his animals is Strandbeests, … Continue reading Wind Powered Sculpture
This was the topic for the Marks & Spencer and Cranfield University school of Management’s sustainable retailing challenge 2012. This video was made by the Warwick Business School’s distance learning MBA students and students have to address the issue of sourcing roses keeping the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit) in mind. What I found interesting is the way in which the issue was addressed … Continue reading Sustainably sourcing UK Roses
Tomas Uribe is a member of the Class of 2012 at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is part of the LOWkeynotes initiative (Lives, organisations and the world). He says ‘recycling is a simple habit that has changed the world for good and can change it again’. Continue reading Tomas Uribe’s love story with recycling
Perpetual Motion of Thought 