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
10:37 AM
5:00 PM
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
4:39 PM
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
6:39 AM
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!
8:51 AM
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]
9:13 PM
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
6:50 AM
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.
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