10:37 AM

Recycle and Reuse All in One

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

5:00 PM

15 Easy Ways to Really Cut Your Consumption

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:

consumption image
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

Coffee cup recycle: finally Starbucks is on the right track

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

Copenhagen Bike Share Competition

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

Roger TSAI bike: 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

Solar Roads

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]