Matthew Sparkes
Latest Stories from Matthew Sparkes - Page 4
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Make a Solar Water Heater for Under $5
Instructables user, TheNaib, has written a tutorial on how to create a solar thermal water heater for under five dollars. It will involve a fair amount of DIY, but nothing too complicated. It's designed as a fun project, but with some tweaking it could
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Bike Vending Machine
This is the urban bicycle-rental stand, which won an award at this year's Spark Design & Architecture Awards. It's designed to allow one-way journeys, with drop off and pick-up points in various locations around a city. Each bike would be fitted with
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Tesla CEO Steps Down, Roadster Delays Possible
The founder of Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard, has stepped down as CEO of the company, worrying some that delays with Tesla production are possible. He explained in an email to customers that he will carry on in the organization as chief technology
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Nissan Commited to Green Gears
Nissan has said that it will remain dedicated to it's efficient continuously variable automatic transmission systems, despite other manufacturers dropping the technology. Director of Nissan's product planning, Mark Perry, told reporters that the system
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Ikea Management to Get Hybrid Company Cars
Ikea has announced that all management staff in Spain who have company cars will be switched over to Toyota Prius' as soon as the current leasing period expires. The number of cars changing isn't huge, but is another small step for the increasingly
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Green Your Death - Efficient Cremations
A crematorium in Bath, in the UK, is taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint by making their cremation schedule more efficient. New burners have been installed, and cremations are only undertaken when enough bodies are waiting. Rosemary Tiley, the
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Die Moto - 130mph on Bio-Diesel
Made from a BMW motorbike and a BMW car engine mashed together, the DIE Moto emits 78% percent less net CO2 than a standard diesel engine and can hit 130mph. Who said being green had to mean not having fun? It will run on standard diesel, biodiesel, or
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5 Safest Hybrids - Save the Planet, and Yourself
If you want to save the planet, you can buy a hybrid, but what if you want to save the plant and yourself, too? Auto Blog Green collected together safety figures for various hybrid models on the market today, created a list of the top 5 safest
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Car Journalist: Why I Don't Drive a Hybrid
Jim Motavalli is editor of E/The Environmental Magazine and writes car reviews for the New York Times. You could easily assume that he drives a Prius or some other car commonly perceived to be green. However, he drives a normal car with a normal
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Paris Hilton (not) Getting Hummer Hybrid
Paris Hilton's claim to environmentalism seems to have got bogged down in the sand by a comment over a fictional Hummer hybrid. She was recently given a free hybrid by Ford, and apparently later told press that she had also ordered a hybrid Hummer. She
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Location of First Tesla Store Revealed
The first Tesla store will open in... Menlo Park, in the Bay Area. It will be in a property owned by Stanford University, which used to house a Chevrolet dealer. Not only is the world getting a green car dealership, but it's losing a non-green one. The
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Bazura Aprons from Billboard Banners
If you like Freitag and cooking, then you'll love these. Bazura Bags, a Canadian company whose bags we've written about before, now make these cooking aprons from discarded billboard banners. Because the material is used as-is, every item is different.
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Homer May be Yellow, but Groening is Green
Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons, seems to be the latest in a string of celebrity Prius drivers. It came out in an interesting piece on him in the Times, which doesn't focus on green issues per se, but does mention the real motivation for picking
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Carbon Trust Award £1 Million in Green Grants
The UK government has just awarded grants totaling £1 million to seven green projects. Ok, that's not a lot of money, especially in the world of Government contracts, but if they are well targeted then it could make a large difference. The money will be
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Carbon Footprint of Tap Water
No, we're not saying that water is something to avoid. But, out of curiosity, what is the carbon footprint of tap water? This was the question posed to the Guardian today by a reader, "Watching those pictures of water being pumped out of flood-stricken
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Recycle a Prius
MAKE blog have a post about buying a wrecked Prius and taking the drive train to use in some other hacked creation. If you have a car lying around which you think would make a great hybrid, and a whole lot more mechanical expertise than I do, then this
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London Stations Lose Fair-Trade Shops
AMT are a chain of cafes that operate out of London train stations. They serve only fair-trade coffee, which we like - both for its ethical sourcing and its early morning caffeine kick. Unfortunately though, they have lost the contract to work out of
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4 Million Children Die Each Year from Enviro-Hazards
Environmental hazards are killing four million children every year. The World Health Organisation claims that problems such as polluted air and water are causing poisonings, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea diseases and malaria due to thriving
