Sustainable house

Sustainable house designed to maximize the use of natural sources.

Designed by OBRA Architects the Centrifugal Villa is an energy-saving house that maximizes the use of natural sources for sustainability. The house is arranged around a hollow center to increase indoor space and provides a string of subsequent spaces indoors.

Santander Building to be the first zero CO2 office

Solar-powered building designed to be carbon neutral.

Designed by MarioCucinella Architects, the Eco Santander Building is designed to be the first carbon neutral building in Milan. The Eco Santander Building is equipped with 4000-square-meters of photovoltaic panels on its roof, which generates all the energy the building needs to satisfy its cooling demands.
Santander Building

The Eco building is on the outskirts of the city and is raised 13 meters above the ground with piazzas, pathways and green areas below. The carbon neutral building maximizes the use of natural light and ventilation to further reduce the energy required by the eco building

Land Pollution Monsters

Land pollution is claiming land twice as fast as Genghis khan did. Land fills are major contributors towards land pollution. Our careless waste disposal methods have been found quite addictive and there toxic nectars are steadily feeding the ugly monster of Land pollution. Land pollution produced by landfills and their leachate (water) seeps into and ground and hits water table making it unfit for human consumption. Land pollution the action of environmental contamination with man-made waste on land.

Land pollution & United States:

Land pollution monster in USA is as epic as God Father; USA has 3091 active landfills and over 10000 old municipal landfills. Land pollution In USA has entered in an era when a chemical spill can kill thousands, wastes buried 20 years earlier can contaminate community water supplies, and environmental ignorance is planting the seeds for later diseases. An average American generates five pounds of solid waste every day, thus creating one ton of Land pollution each year. In an average day in the USA, people throw out 200,000 tons of organic Land pollutants and throw 1 million bushels of litter out of their automobiles. The main human contributor to land pollution is landfills.

Land pollution & China:

Land pollution in china is as big as its industrial might. Due to Land pollution approximately 28 % of China’s landmass has been stripped. Land pollution has also been caused due to acid rain. Land pollution is expanding by approximately two million hectares each year. Land is also heavily polluted with heavy metals and toxic substances.
Land pollution has also claimed about 90 % of China’s grasslands to a degradation of varying degrees. Land Pollution has lead to series of public health hazard and loss of land for useful purposes. China is in severe need of proper solid waste management system.

Land pollution & India:

The Kali of Land pollution has been taking millions of lives silently for decades in India now. Land pollution in India is due to pesticides and fertilizers as well as corrosion. Industrial wastes and lack of sanitation with an ever exploding population has stressed India’s eco system to its limits. Nearly every natural water body in India is now unfit for human consumption. 1,000 Indian children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day.

Land pollution in Pakistan, Brazil & Peru:

Land pollution in Pakistan is mainly caused of filth on streets and almost no sanitation. Land pollution is taking over Pakistani Cities and the country side way faster then the American brand of Taliban’s. Land pollution in Peru is caused by deforestation, soil erosion, soil pollution, water pollution and air pollution, while the phobia of bio fuel is the major cause of land pollution in brazil, where hectors and hectors of Amazon is being chopped for growing sugarcane to produce ethanol.

Heroes of the Environment 2009

From saving wild mountain rivers in China to measuring the Arctic's icy expanse, from protecting the lush forests of Africa to conducting a feisty online debate, our green heroes are informed by this simple notion: We can all make a difference

As they searched for glimmers of hope in the wreckage of the world economy earlier this year, politicians, economists and commentators used one phrase so repeatedly it became something of a mantra for our times: In crisis, opportunity. Nowhere does that maxim apply more than to the problem of climate change. The financial crisis only crippled a global system; climate change is hurting the globe itself.

This December, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to discuss new goals to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that fuel global warming. With a new President in the White House, there is a chance the U.S. will finally inspire progress on climate change — and not just frustration. But nothing's certain, and the real leap forward won't happen until China and India both sign on to the idea that the economic growth they need and want will be worthless if their citizens are constantly fighting off natural disasters or don't have enough water to drink or to irrigate their crops.

It's easy to think that all the hard decisions are in the hands of our leaders alone. Not true. As the men and women in the following pages prove, we can all make a difference. Pen Hadow, leader of a daring survey across the Arctic to measure the thickness of sea ice, puts it this way: "Turning off a standby light once won't make a difference. Do it for the rest of your life and that amounts to something. And if everybody's doing something, then we're moving in the right direction." We hope our environmental heroes provide both inspiration and action. Like financial pundits, most of them embrace the idea that a crisis also presents opportunity. They are heroes because they set out to discover what that opportunity might be.

Louisiana preps hurricane-resistant home

Green home runs on solar power.

After working for two years on a home that gets powered by solar energy, students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have finally unveiled their solar-powered home designed for the Solar Decathlon competition to be held next month.

Dubbed BeauSoleil, the home will be one of the 20 homes that will be competing in the competition. More than 500 partners supported the projects through donations ranging from $4 to $100,000, along with tools and professional help.

The BeauSoleil home incorporates the outdoors to maximize the space. A wrap-around deck offers an additional 1,700 square feet. The hurricane-resistant dwelling uses hardwood harvested from a sustainable forest, out of which nothing was wasted.

Lightcatcher

Lightcatcher structure to bring in natural light and ventilation to the Whatcom Museum.

Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects have designed the “Lightcatcher” at the Whatcom Museum in Seattle, which will add 42,000-square-feet of space to the museum, which will be used to house state-of-the-art galleries for art exhibitions.



The structure is made from a translucent wall, 37-feet high and 180-feet long and captures sunlight to illuminate the interiors in an ecofriendly and energy-efficient manner. The $11.6 million addition gently curves to form a spacious exterior courtyard, bridging the museum’s interior and exterior spaces. After dark the translucent wall glows with changing colors of the structure’s interior illumination

garden furniture

Furniture made from recycled garden waste.

While garden waste is no more than trash for most people, who mostly hide it behind a bunch of plants, Craig McPherson is one designer who brings this trash to the limelight in the form of garden furniture.

The designer is exhibiting his work, the “Mulch Chair,” which has been made entirely from garden waste. The materials have been bonded with latex, which also gives the chair a rubber cushioned feel.

Nepalese teenager replaces silicon with human hair for cheap solar energy

Solar panel made using human hair costs 75% less than conventional solar cells.

Milan Karki, born in one of the poorest countries in the world - Nepal, has tried to end energy crisis in the country and the world with a solar panel that is about 75% cheaper than industrial made solar panels of comparable capacity.

The secret to this low-cost solar panel is not as hi-tech as one would imagine as all the teenage inventor did was to replace the expensive silicon normally used in solar cells with a comparably cheaper product – human hair. The young inventor says that human hair due to the presence of Melanin is sensitive to light and also acts as a type of conductor.

human hair solar panels_2

The panel produced using this technique costs around £23 and produces 18W of power at 9V.The inventor believes that if the product is mass produced, the panel could be made available in developing countries at half that price, which would make it four times cheaper than other panels available on the market today.

Eco-Luxury Sedan

Zero emission concept electric vehicle harnesses solar power to extend its range.

While the world is looking forward for cars that are inexpensive and run on clean fuels, industrial designer Ankit Prashar has something in store for the upmarket custromers as well. A graduate of Coventry University’s Transportation Design course, Ankit has come up with a concept car aimed for the Citroen brand, which will definitely lure people with deep pockets.

The Citroen Eco-Luxury Sedan utilizes lightweight materials to better the vehicle’s overall efficiency. The propulsion system of the car includes a hydrogen fuel cell element, which charges the car’s onboard battery pack. The zero-emission vehicle also makes use of photovoltaic panels integrated into the bodywork to charge the batteries on the move.


The interior of the Eco-Luxury Sedan boasts a 1+2 seating layout, since most luxury cars are chauffeur driven and carry a maximum of 2 passengers on the rear seat.

Electronic Tree

Researchers harness potential difference between a tree and the soil to power tiny electrical circuits.

Trees are known to provide cooling, oxygen and shade, but a new research conducted by scientists at the University of Washington has proved that trees can provide something that not many would have thought of before – electricity. The scientists have successfully powered tiny electrical circuits with nothing more than the energy they harnessed from bigleaf maples.

A similar research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants generate a voltage of about 200mV when one electrode is placed in the plant and the other in the surrounding soil. The UW team carried the research forward by connecting a custom boost converter that works for input voltages of as little as 20mV and produces an output of about 1.1V, which is enough to run low-power sensors.


While the new research won’t end the energy crisis anytime soon, it can be used as a low-cost option for powering tree sensors that might be used to detect environmental conditions, forest fires or simply the health of the tree.

T-shirts with the green message

Are you struggling to find the right way to get the green message across? One of the best ways to show and promote green values is a T-shirt with a green message imprinted. The shelves today are flooded with T-shirts with the green message and you can simply spread the word by wearing them. Here are a few T-shirts that encourage green living for a cleaner environment and a better tomorrow.

Melbourne Rectangular Stadium

Sustainably designed stadium harvests rainwater and natural light.

Trying to grace the sports world with a green stadium, Cox Architects has designed the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium that combines state-of-the-art engineering with sustainability. The stadium has a bubble-like façade and is expected to be completed in 2010.


The stadium will have enough space to seat about 30,000 spectators and features a unique cantilever design, which coupled with a triangular panelized façade uses 50% less steel than a typical cantilevered roof structure.

The envelope will be composed of a combination of glass, metal and louvers, and the architects are planning a photovoltaic thin-film integration that will help power the stadium’s LED lighting units. The dome will also feature a rainwater harvesting system, natural lighting and natural ventilation to lower the structure’s dependence on grid electricity.

Nature furniture for fresh indoor air

Indoor furniture equipped with air plants for air purification.

The rise in outdoor pollution has made health conscious homeowners make use of the hi-tech air purification systems that are good for their own health, but not actually so good for the environment, especially because of the amount of energy they consume to keep the air inside your house clean.

When it comes to air purification, nothing beats nature, and industrial designer Mingling Wang has tried to bring nature inside your house to provide fresh air to the inhabitants. The Oxygen of Green indoor furniture concept is designed by combining air plants with a living room table.



The system produces a decent amount of oxygen, especially after dark and does that at the place where it’s most needed – the center-section of the house. Air Plants (Tillandsias) grow without soil, since water and nutrients are absorbed through the leaves and absorb CO2 from the air and produce oxygen in the night time.

School gets a shipping container sports hall

Sports hall for a school made from recycled shipping containers.

Using old shipping containers as bones for a new building isn’t a new idea in construction, as the advantages of the structure are many. Apart from being easy to construct and maintain, the structure developed is also cost-effective and has a lower carbon footprint than buildings made from conventional materials.


Dunraven School in London saw the advantages of shipping containers and utilized the same to build a new sports hall and gymnasium for the students in just three days. The building was constructed by SCABEL Architects and Urban Space Management.

The recycled shipping container gym was developed at the cost of only £1.5 million, which is about half the cost of a traditional gym. The shipping containers make three sides of the building and the fourth side, which is the entrance, features a translucent polycarbonate construction.

Greenest building

Well, “possibly” never belittles the claim as the monastery utilizes earth’s renewable resources in construction and sustenance as well. The 30,000 square foot, Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison touts some really green credentials such as, geothermal heating and cooling systems, active solar energy generation and reduced water usage. Moreover, it has green roofs, rain gardens, rain barrels and prairie restoration facilities to ensure storm water runoff.

The custom-designed windows and photovoltaic panels provide 15 percent of the monastery’s energy. Making the most of the internet, the digital heating and cooling systems generate automatic emails to the occupants to make them open windows when temperature exceeds 74 degrees. So, natural ventilation cuts down on energy costs.

Super city in Korea

Sustainable city to be developed by Fosters + Partners.

Following in the footsteps of Masdar City, a sustainable city to be developed in the UAE, Fosters + Partners have unveiled plans for a sustainable super city that will overshadow the size of Masdar in UAE. Dubbed Incheon, the development will serve as an epicenter for the development of green technologies in South Korea.

The development will be house to over 320,000 residents that will be centered around a spine of transportation and green industry. The city will also become a research and development center for next-generation green technologies. The city is slated to be completed in the next 10-15 years.

Car of the future

Concept vehicle for the year 2020 designed to run on electromagnetic wheels.

Working to design cars for the future, Indian auto designer Nanish K R has come up with a car design aimed to revolutionize transport in the year 2020. The simple, yet stylish car is powered by four independent electromagnetic wheels, which allows the car to do without a conventional power train.

futuristic concept nanish kr

The wheels of this zero-emission car are made up of two sliding rings, one of which is the electromagnet and the other is a permanent one. The electromagnet gets powered by the lithium-ion batteries installed on the vehicle’s chassis and gets the same polarity as the permanent magnet. This creates a repulsive force between the rings which is then converted into motion.

While braking, the opposite poles of the magnets face each other and the attractive force generated as a result is used to stop the vehicle. The body panels of the car are made from polycarbonate to keep the vehicle’s weight to a minimum. The car also carries rearview mirrors, LED lamps and a touchscreen controlled on the dashboard.

BioLogic FreeCharge uses your bike to make your gadgets green

Sustainable charger harnesses the energy of motion to offer an ecofriendly charge.

Inventors have already surprised us with ways bikes can be used to help us in our daily chores and Dahon, a company specialized in making folding bikes is giving another opportunity to help you get more from your bike. The company has shown off a neat little device that can be hooked up to your bike’s generator frame to harness the energy of motion for electricity to charge your portable electronic gear.

The unit comes with a battery and some electronics to store electricity and also remove the bumps and spikes from the output. The stored electricity can be used to charge a variety of gadgets. The $100 device takes about 3 hours of biking to fully charge a gadget and will be available in March 2010.

energy saving tips

recycle billboards

As Target targets to bring down its huge billboards at 7 Times Square after the National Design Week in October, Anna Sui will transform them into 1,600 tote bags. Four NY artists, Michael Anderson, Josh Goldstein, Laurie Rosenwald and Charles Wilkin, will create 6 arty ads on billboards before the final recyclart. Customers will have the choice to select any particular billboard image on their bags.

Target is hopeful to receive ample attention from its prospect customers. Not compromising on promotion, it will place its ads in print and online outlets like Daily Candy New York, New York, The New York Times and Time Out New York. Moreover, the billboard will itself promote the cause it stands for, reading: