Considering that the oceans hold more garbage than fish by now, this might be the right time to retrain our fishermen and let them hunt for litter. Several companies offer equipment to fish garbage out of rivers, lakes and harbours. They say they could build larger dustcarts for seas and oceans, too. Send the bill to the disposables industry - and let the cleanup begin.
Continue reading "Fighting marine debris: the dustcarts of the sea" »
Energy hungry America teaches the world how to build ecological houses.
A dirt cheap and 100 percent ecological house that has all the comforts of an ordinary home, without being connected to the electricity grid, waterworks, sewer system or the natural gas network. It does exist, but in most countries, building one is not allowed.
An Earthship is a completely self-sufficient house that has a natural temperature regulation, without the use of a heating system. The building also generates its own electricity, collects and filters its own drinking water and cleans its own effluent water. The house is partly buried into the earth and is constructed mainly with waste materials; car tyres, aluminium cans and glass bottles. This low-tech building approach is ecologically as well as economically advantageous.
This autumn, the British coastal city of Brighton approved the construction of 16 Earthships. It’s the first time that a European city council has given builders the green light to mass construct this radical ecological housing form. In the United States nearly one thousand Earthships have been built, most of them in the desert of New Mexico. (Pictures: Michael Reynolds)
Continue reading "Heat your house with car tyres and earth" »
From the earliest civilisations right up to the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans used sheer muscle power, organisation skills and ingenious mechanics to lift weights that would be impossible to handle by most power cranes in operation today.
We don't need better batteries, we need better cars.
