Sustainable Energy

Recycle and Reuse All in One

2009-09-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

I love this brilliant idea by Julien Bergignat, an industrial designer. A trash can can be a flower pot, takes the most advantage from recycling.

Picture source: YankoDesign

15 Easy Ways to Really Cut Your Consumption

2009-09-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

This blog post is cited from LOHAS.com, I make a digest some of them that are easy for me to practice in my busy life:

image source: jilliandana.files.wordpress.com

1) Food:
1. Ditch the processed food. It takes unnecessary energy to produce it, as well as tons of packaging.

2. Don't drink milk. Livestock consumes much of the land on the planet, whether for meat or dairy, and creates literally tons and tons of pollution, estimates are in the 1/5th of all greenhouse gases range.

3. Drink less bottled water, try to drink none. The U.S. sends two million tons of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottled water packaging to the landfill each year. Just drink the tap.

4. Skip Starbucks and brew your own coffee. Once we factor in the cost of the gourmet coffee and the cost of driving there, each time we brew a cup at home, we save about the equivalent of a gallon of gas.

2) live:
1. Wash your clothes in cold water. About 90 percent of the energy used for washing clothes is for heating the water.

2. Bring a reusable bag wherever you go.

Continue Reading

Coffee cup recycle: finally Starbucks is on the right track

2009-09-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Finally Starbucks is now doing coffee cup recycling; it reminds me one of my initial sustainable project:

Where did this come from
When I was working at a Morgan Stanley as a user experience designer, it was my job to I observed people's behavior, and I found out an "inconvenient truth": people use a lot of paper cups everyday. Although I was very busy doing research and making website in Morgan Stanley, I still want to do something to improve this bad situation.

And one day I figure out a very simple way to remind people how many paper cups we're dumping everyday, so I started to collect paper cups and the cup holders.

What can it change
A cup holder may not be able to something important, other than keep you hands from burning hot cup, but how about a tons of cup holders? How about a tons of cup holders, and each of them has it's own story?

Based on this idea, I started to make each cup holder a bit different, and tried to give them life, give them emotion and thinking, as a story that can tell people, and reminds people that we shouldn't just dump everything we don't want.

This project is in the initial status, because I'm no longer working for Morgan Stanley, now it's hard to get plain cup holders. However, I'd love to continue this as a art project, to remind people recycling and consuming less.

p.s. if you're interested in cup holders, here is a collection of cup holders

Copenhagen Bike Share Competition

2009-09-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

I recently became a cyclist again after 10 years. I feel so excited about exercising with my new Giant Cypress:

Because I'm so excited about my bike and everything related, I started to do research about Cycling, then, I found this: Copenhagen Bike Share Competition

It's a design competition about creating "an attractive and modern bike share system," to make Copenhagen an eco-friendly city through this global design competition.

What do you have in your mind? Submit your great idea to the competition? Everyone can contribute to the world, don't be shy, and try it out!

Solar Roads

2009-09-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

U.S. Department of Transportation awards Solar Roadways $100K contract

"Recently, the DoE handed over a $100,000 contract to Solar Roadways, which is just enough to build a prototype of the "first ever Solar Road panel." The 12- x 12-foot panels could theoretically be embedded into roads, and when shined upon, could pipe good, clean electricity straight into the grid." -from Engadget.com

[Original Article]

Sustainable Ferris Wheel

2007-04-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Our Children
When I thought about sustainable education issue, a question came to my mind: If we want to teach kids some knowledge about sustainability, what is the first word, the first point we should mention? Children love toys, comics, and dolls, how could a boy be interested in sustainable issue, which is not even interesting to an adult? Though we know it is an important topic, most children do not care much about global warming, energy consumption, recycling material.

Sustainable Toy
If I can make something that can attract children's attention, and make them wonder what is sustainability, then I already made a successful first step. If kids can have fun and learn about responsibility toward a toy at the same time, the toy will be very very valuable. Following this principle, I start drawing sketches about interactive toys. The most fascinating one is a ferris wheel, something that boys and girls all love it, even young couple are interested in. Simply by combining the ideas of playing a small ferris wheel and taking care a plant, I want to create an interaction that helps kids learn about responsibility toward playing.

Marvelous Ferris Wheel
"If you can water these grass and take them to the sunlight everyday, they will respond you by start rotating the wheel!"

This ferris wheel with real grass doesn't take power plug in or battery to rotate, instead, it takes tender loving care. Taking care of it in form of watering it and sun it will generate kinetic power and solar power to make wonderful thing happen: it start rotating!

Working Mechanism
The wheel rotation is driven by two power source. The first one is solar power, with solar cell on it.

for project presentation, please click here:
http://www.itp.nyu.edu/~htt213/Sustainable_Energy/Toy_Presentation01.ppt.htm

Sustainable Toy

2007-03-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

Environmental Friendly:
Taking Care of Your Flower

Enjoy the experience of taking care an interactive artificial flower!!

This toy the Flower, is mainly for kids around 8~12 years old, it also serves the function of education, to teach kids about responsibility and the concept of sustainable energy

inspired by coolhouse:
http://coolhouse.itri.org.tw/cyclopedia/roof-2.htm
http://coolhouse.itri.org.tw/cyclopedia/plant.htm

a) Sunshine: Charging

Every day kids take the flower to balcony to sun the flower in sunlight, as giving it enough time exposing sunlight to charge the battery in it.

REWARD: Dim Light
if you properly sun the flower(with enough electricity generated by solar cell on it), at night the flower serves like a dim light in your room staying with you while you fall asleep.

b) Watering: Filtering

The toy encourage kids to take used water(e.g. the water the has rinsed fruits or vegetables, face or hands washing) to water the flower. The water poured into the flower will go through an filter, and then become clean water that we can drink (???)

Reward: Happy Shaking
it has an water level indicator, once the water level is higher than certain amount, the flower will shake for seconds as an feedback.

STAIRWAY To DIET

2007-03-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Wanna lose some weight?
Easy and cost-free plan for everyone and for you!

Here's a device help you burn your body fat. Every time you 're going to take elevator, this device located in front of elevator will remind you to do take stairs instead. Specifically, the idea is that every time you approach an elevator, the device will detect your approaching and light up LED to remind you to take stairs.

By often taking stairs, it doesn't only strengthens your heart and lung capacity, but also helps you to burn your extra body fat (See Related Article Here). This is the most easy way to do exercise and obtain the benefit of it. Health expert said that if we take stairs 10 minutes a day, we'll lose around 5 kg a year. Not only that, we reinforce our bone density and heighten muscularity by taking stairs.

Save, for the future

In respect of sustainability, this device not only saves electricity by less using an elevator, but also itself is a self power generating machine which doesn't consume any outsource power. It takes advantage of solar power, transforming sunlight into electricity. The electricity will charge the AA chargeable battery and make those LED blinking. No battery changing, no power plug in, this device simply serves where their is sunshine.

For Healthy Body, For Healthy Planet

For a better environment, we should:
-Stop over-consuming natural resources
-Start using body energy

We live together, we work together, we save together.

This project is produced by Roger H.T. TSAI and Ai-Chen Lin for the class of Sustainable Energy in ITP. Comments are welcome.

Contact us:
yesrogeryes@gmail.com