Medical-membrane technology was used by Dr. Yuichi Mori to grow agricultural crops with minimized water and soil consumption which he presented at TEDx. Seeing this “hydromembrane”, a gel plastic wrap looking material interestingly enough supports plant growth so that they are safe for consumption.
A video of Dr. Mori with the Imec membrane and cress that grew from it can be seen here:
This short (under 4 minute) film illustrates a full cycle, mixed use table that lets people cultivate, garden, cook, eat, wash dishes and repeat.
If you don’t have the time to watch the whole cycle unfold, then here’s the CliffsNotes, Wiki, or actually StudioGorm version of it:
Source: http://www.studiogorm.com/flow2.html
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Bill Nye Did a Reddit #AMA (ask me anything) on Tuesday along with two others to talk about Jupiter’s moon Europa which might have had, or might still have extraterrestrial life! Bill fans have been talking all week about his inspiring answers, the way that he got them interested in science as youngsters, Europa and much anticipated new Bill shows that he hinted at!
The entire AMA conversation is here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2arlx5/i_am_bill_nye_the_science_guy_and_ceo_of_the/
Bill tells hilarious jokes, like this one:
And really sheds light on how important it is to discover more about Mars.
Bill also let people know what he’s been up to lately. Bill is the CEO of the Planetary Society, he’s talked about having another Science Guy show, his new book that comes out in November, and many more highlights that can be seen here:
Bill is a beloved teacher who’s series lives strong in classrooms. We’re eager to see what Europa has up its sleeve.
Source: http://www.themarysue.com/bill-nye-europa-ama/
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Kornit launched two awesome products in 2005 and the reason that they are so noteworthy is because they were the first printers to offer a direct to garment printing in a much more eco-friendly way than traditional textile production.
There are initiatives from groups such as Greenpeace’s Detox which look into the environmental ethicacy of fabrics and their production process. Kornit manufactures their own textile printing ink which is 100% non-toxic, organic, vegan-friendly and safe for infants and young children. Kornit’s system doesn’t require any pre-treatment of the fabrics like cotton, satin, leather, synthetic leather, linen, microfiber, silk and other fabrics that their technology can print on.
The traditional method of dying fabrics using a lot of water that gets contaminated and wasted as a result. Kornit’s technology prints on fabric in a dry process so that less water is wasted.
In this video you can see for yourself how awesome their digital prints turnout and it is also easy to imagine how much safer this work environment is for employees too!
Source: http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2014/07/15/israels-kornit-offers-green-fabric-printing/
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Did you know that 99% of the molecules inside of your body are water? Drinking water is huge! That’s why when we read about contaminates that are in water nowadays that can’t be removed with current water processing plant technologies it felt devastating. Across some regions such as India it’s essential that everyone purify their own water and for this reason, bottles of purified water are often toted around town wherever people go.
It seems like this article focuses on U.S. water treatment, and it pointed out that common medication such as anti-depressants, birth control and antibiotics do not get filtered out of our tap water! This leaves the responsibility up to the consumer if they don’t want to drink water filled with chemicals. In addition to medication pollution in tap water, other contaminates in municipal water and well-water may include pesticides, herbicides, and volatile organic chemicals.
Our source also has a list of good filters to buy that can get rid of these chemicals. The best water filtration system is a carbon block filter because it will “remove all the bad stuff” and reverse osmosis filtration systems are another option. The main difference between these two filters is mainly that the reverse osmosis filtration system will remove trace minerals from what which over time can be problematic.
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Bet you’ve never seen anything like this before…
The new FLEXLAB at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is open for business! It is the world’s first energy use lab that will help builders and manufactures test entire building systems down to the component level on a significant scale. The FLEXLAB’s ribbon cutting ceremony was on July 10, 2014.
Photo by Eric Soladay
According to the FLEXLAB, there is a problem that buildings are designed to be energy efficient, but once they are being used they end up using a lot more energy than was planned. A new study even pointed out that energy efficient buildings sometimes use more than twice the energy than was expected based on their design. This lab offers solutions for people who bring products to test out and want to use all of the lab’s equipment to do so, to people who want to bring their product to test out with their own machinery and equipment.
Current projects involve measuring energy usage for the Genentech building, PG&E and more!
The lab has 4 stations (shown in the video above) to accommodate a variety of testing scenarios including:
1. “Test-drive technologies”
2. “Individual circuits and meters”
3. “Lighting and plug-load elements”
4. “On-site training”
5. “Compression testing”
and more.
Here’s an except from the lab’s website about what they offer:
FLEXLAB is the first test bed in the world that can evaluate the energy efficiency of major building systems, as an integrated system, under real-world conditions. Stakeholders can evaluate energy-efficient building technologies individually or as integrated systems in advance of building projects or retrofits, in order to:
( Source: http://flexlab.lbl.gov/ )
Earlier this week, we posted about a how you can vermicompost and create, rich, anti-fungal earth for your gardening! Well, the info graphic that we posted is Sustainable America’s most popular infographic this year, so they made a trouble shooting worm bin guide and sent is to us!
For those of you who struggle to keep your worms happy or have questions about gardening with this compost or worm casings, please see this article.
It’s not news that certain parts of the world have drought emergencies right now but Xeros has an new invention that is helping reduce the travesty. Xeros came out with a polymer bead laundry system which comes with enormous savings and benefits that currently attracts mainly commercial locations. This new laundry system is currently impacting the hotel, gym, and hospital industries in a great ways.
By reducing consumption in commercial laundry, hotels can conserve valuable resources, gain competitive advantages, market themselves as green to increase their brand value and improve customer loyalty in addition to reducing costs.
The Xeros washer works by utilizing the hydrophilic properties of polymer beads. Scientists at the University of Leeds School of Textiles discovered that these beads, mixed with a small amount of water and a special detergent act as magnets for stains and dirt to clean laundry better and more gently than traditional methods. These reusable polymer beads also last for hundreds of washes before they need to be recycled and the Xeros polymer bead laundry system uses 80% less water, 50% less energy, about 50% less detergent and results in better cleaning results compared to traditional methods.
(Sources: http://www.waterworld.com/articles/iww/print/volume-14/issue-3/features/wiser-washing.html
And
This infographic is paperless and shows us why we should stop drinking from plastic water bottles:
Thanks to: http://www.naturalmat.co.uk/for providing this infographic!
David Littschwager won the Word Press Photo Award 2008, and he’s a National Geographic photographer who photographed a single drop of sea water times 25 times! The amount of sea life contained here is eye opening as it contains all sorts of life from crab larva to bacteria.
A breakdown of the sea life in the drop of water can be found here:
http://dive-shield.us/infonewspages/Underthemicroscopejustasplashofseawater.html
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