EcoGeek has the lowdown on a high-rise design that supposedly can power itself and up to ten other office buildings. The tower is designed to have spinning floors and will act like a giant windmill, don’t worry all the essentials like elevators are in a central non-rotating concrete core. A neat idea, but one that I do question.
The video shows the spinning in action:
I’m a sucker for nice long hot showers and I can’t help but think that it’s wasteful and an exercise of pure luxury that a lot of the world can’t afford. This all doesn’t stop me from spending 10 minutes enjoying hot water. A new invention may help me ween off my wastefulness though.
The iSave is a shower head (or a faucet fixture) that tracks how much water you’re using. It’s powered by the water itself, genius!
Toronto is looking to green their buildings, and what better place to start than city hall?
Putting small wind turbines on the roof at city hall was one of several ideas presented yesterday to reduce the building’s $3 million annual energy bill.
“Personally, I think it’s a really neat way of increasing the renewable energy footprint for the city hall,” consultant Paul Leitch told about 50 experts meeting yesterday to ponder ways of greening the 42-year-old twin towers.
Leitch said it would cost about $125,000 to install six of the devices – three on each tower – to produce enough electricity to power about nine homes.
Thanks, Lindsay!
In Australia these days scientists and Foster’s beer producers are finding other ways to use beer, or what’s left of it. The waste water from the beer has recently been used to make a fuel cell.Â
“The fuel cell is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol.” The byproduct is clean water!
What will people discover next?
You can check out the story at the CBC.
Peak oil is coming, probably soon than you think. We sort of all know this, but we never really talk about it. What are we going to do when it actually happens? Will we be caught totally unawares?
A new alternate reality game (read: online story-driven community-based game) aims to make people think about this unthinkable topic. World Without Oil is being funded by a number of media companies and being produced by a team of experienced game makers. Their goal? To simulate a global oil shock, applying “collective intelligence” to the problem in advance, and create a record that can help people anticipate the future. The means to accomplish all this is player-contributed blogs, videos, etc.
Tell us your story. Fuel prices are sky high and the ripple effects are pulling at the seams of our society. Everyone’s life has taken a hit – but how much of a hit are you taking? How much pain are you in? No one will know if you don’t add your voice to the collective shout. And who knows? If enough people speak up, maybe the force of collective truth will help prevent this crisis from ever happening again.
For more information, start at the official homepage.