Berkana said:
"Great tits may be coping well with global warming, but regular tits may need support.
^.~..." [read]
verdeluz said:
"love it.
I have someone in Puerto Rico that's interested. Will you have a model available for Puerto Rico???
..." [read]
Perry said:
"They don't technically have a negative carbon emission. During the combustion process the fuel (whatever it may be switchgrass, corn, etc.) release..." [read]
emily.aitken said:
"talk about brids and the BEES..." [read]
Big Al said:
"I am gonna start my own carbon credit scam so I can make some $$$ of this stupidity...." [read]
brownjeans said:
"Negative gas emission? I've got that too... kind of like an imploding fart. It must be from smoking my pointless hemp...." [read]
If you are not familiar with Microsoft Surface, view said video; you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll see Peak Tech has arrived. Because what you are seeing, in action, is a $10,000 table where you can (a) watch video, (b) make maps, and (c) finger paint. These must be the strong points; they are in the ad.
The underlying "Multi-Touch" technology in Surface was invented in 1982; it's old, old wine, and the "table" concept is a helluva lot older than that. At one time, neat things were done - Donkey Kong comes to mind - but the $10,000 videotastic table seems limited. You might be able realize the dream of putting your PC desktop on a real desktop; me, I'm an oak man.
When we said that that iPhone (or in-kind multitude) is the last phone you will ever buy, we meant it. Somewhere slightly south of this acme we have Surface; you'll be buying other tables.
And people think blogging is a safe job. A microbiologist working for Which? Magazine has found keyboards with 150 times the recommended limit of bacteria. It was also five times as filthy as a toilet seat swabbed at the same time.
"[It] was increasing the risk of its user becoming ill," said the microbiologist, James Francis. "I haven't seen a reading like that in a very long time - it was off the scale."
The main cause appears to be eating lunch at your desk and filling it with crumbs, which encourage the growth of bacteria. The design of keyboards creates nice warm spaces safe from disturbance and easy cleaning, except the occasional pounding down; it would be interesting to find out if the bacteria count is higher under the tilde key than under the e or a. Another source may be from not washing your hands after going to the toilet.
Sarah Kidner of Which? says "Most people don't give much thought to the grime that builds up on their PC, but if you don't clean your computer, you might as well eat your lunch off the toilet."
With its unique touchscreen and potentially hazardous materials lurking behind it, is the iPhone a small green leap forward?
This post goes out to Alan, the intrepid community moderator over at Planet Green and here at TreeHugger, who's expertise and deft touch I admire.
Recently I wrote a post entitled NYC Bicycle Shelter Parking iPhone Photos: How Street It Is wherein I put up some snaps I grabbed on the fly using said technology. The comments, excerpted below, found my mention of the iPhone by turns "ridiculous," "pretentious," and "lame." So why on (protect the) earth would I even include the word iPhone? Could it be because it is a greener gadget?
Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, has a really cool idea and TreeHugger is helping to spread the word; it's a contest to help enable more effective electronics recycling, with the help of the big-time companies who design and manufacture the phones, provide cell service, or help both ship these phones around the world. Stay tuned for more; for now, take it away, Tim!
Boba Fett was always my favorite Star Wars character. Here’s your chance to emulate him and become a bounty hunter. Prizes go to the bold.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 125 million cell phones are thrown away each year, which amounts to about 65,000 tons of waste. That’s just in the U.S.
As far back as 2004, we were writing about 'phantom power', all that energy used by your electronics to make sure that they catch the 'power on' signal from the remote and come back to life fast enough, and how to combat it.
A new computer monitor by Fujitsu Siemens Computers breaks with its brethren and uses no power at all in idle mode. It works with a clever switch that shuts down the monitor when there's no signal from the computer, and turns it back on when there is one.
Latest in wood design at the Milan Furniture Salon (MocoLoco here) is this wood-clad Fujitsu notebook with the catchy name FMV-BIBLO NX95Y/D, also known as the "Woodshell." It is covered in "forest-thinned" cedar and 30% of the housing and plastic parts are made from corn-based bioplastics.
The proportions look clunky and the canvas carrying case looks like it was made from hats left over from Beau Geste. It does not look nearly as sexy as last year's Asus Bamboo number, but we do love PC's that are "not merely an environmentally friendly tool but an object of enduring style and utility-" Let's just hope that cedar is FSC certified and that corn is organic. ::Fujitsu via ::Unplggd
Mike Millikin, the uber-editor of Green Car Congress, played professor and handed out grades to 12 battery and ultracapacitor companies in an article published by EnergyTechStocks. Because the article was written for a financial site, we can assume that part of the criteria used to rate the companies has to do with commercial potential, but that's not necessarily a bad thing since to make an environmental difference, these companies need to get huge and stay profitable.
We have covered Leah Beuchley's turn signal jacket for cylists; the New York Times covers the subject of the integration of clothing and computers and includes her LilyPad Arduino, "a small flower-shaped disk with a computer chip at the center, which can be sewn into clothes. Sensors like accelerometers, for measuring acceleration or detecting and measuring vibrations, and light detectors are attached with wires to the “petals,” so the chip can track the wearer’s motion." The article notes that "While there are many opportunities for fun, Dr. Buechley said the real market could be devices to help the elderly. She is exploring how to knit clothes that monitor a person’s heart rate, breathing and joint movement." ::New York Times, complete with ::photo essay by Kevin Moloney
So says Dr. Vini Khurana, an Australian neurosurgeon. His recent 15-month critical review of the link between mobile phones and malignant brain tumors concludes that the phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, that people should avoid using them wherever possible, and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.
According to the Independent, Dr. Khurana says "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade. Read his advisory on a brain surgery website and Medical News Today.
Not surprisingly, the Australian Mobile Operators Association calls the study "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual."
See TreeHugger on WiMax on the Brain: Is "WiFi on Steroids" Safe? and Planet Green on how to Reduce Your Risks From Cellphones, Microwaves, Wi-FiUPDATE: Reader Stef informs us of posts debunking this story, including one from the very respectable Denialism Blog...
When we first spied Potenco's pull-cord power generator it was a 3D rendering and not much more. Since then, we got to see one up close at chat with Colin Bulthaup, the startup's CEO, about where they were heading, and were glad to see they were making progress; the device had even been tapped to provide juice for the One Laptop Per Child project (now also known as the XO laptop). It's always a good thing when we see products go from the drawing board to real life existence.
Now, thanks to the guys at Wired, we can see they've made even more improvements. Perhaps most notably is the amount of energy generated by the device; before, it averaged between 12W and 15W, peaking at about 20W. Thanks to some engineering improvements, the average is up to about 25W, peaking at about 40W; with these numbers, one minute of pulling nets 20 minutes of cell phone talk time, one hour of LED flashlight use, or 3 hours of play time on an iPod Shuffle (that's about one pull per song). Hit the jump to see Wired's video of it in action....
Most people know that computers and appliances are often rated Energy Star compliant, but how many of us consider our own home audio systems? You might be surprised to know that according to Energy Star "Americans spend more money to power home audio products when turned off than when actually in use." ...
If you're haunted by phantom power (and who hasn't been pierced by vampire power?), the Climatised Objects Project has an answer: Standy, the monster surge protector. Since it's always in the middle of the room, the prototype solves the pesky problem of having to duck behind the couch or reach behind the TV to flip the surge protector off. All of your plugs are in plain sight, so pulling them out will be a snap.
As much fun as it might be, though, we think the "Conserve" surge protector, smart power strip or whole house switch might be a better bet. Hit the jump for more pics, and to see a video of what happens when art school filmmaking and monster surge protectors meet. ::MoMA via ::DVICE...
Xerox is a company that, to paraphrase Abba Eban, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It owned the xerox copier market (even the name), and lost it to the Japanese because it was so addicted to leasing instead of sales. It invented the graphical user interface (the Xerox Star) and invited Steve Jobs in to have a look at it. It developed the first multifunction printer/fax/copier (the Hydra) and sold it for ten thousand bucks. Now, faced with following Eastman Kodak into technological irrelevance, it is at last making some smart moves.
Patricia Calkins, Vice President of environment, health and safety at Xerox, seems to get it; she says “What gets measured gets managed.” They have just introduced a calculator that tracks the energy usage and environmental impact of printing and copying documents. (::earth2tech)...
Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are much more energy efficient than the "inorganic" kind. Its' quite likely that OLED's will one day make for ultra-thin TeeVees, lit architectural fascia, interior lighting, or back-lit signage. But, there has to be a fast, inexpensive way to manufacture OLEDs before the technology can spread to diverse consumer applications. Let's say it another way: before regular people can afford it. Wisely, GE is on the case.
They are using roll-printing techniques similar to that used for thin film photo-voltaic manufacturing. Somewhat similar to a paper-making machine. Amazing how one thing leads to another.
GE Global Research has reached a milestone in next-generation lighting, demonstrating the world's first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light emitting diodes.
The research group said the newspaper printing-like process is key to making the next-generation lighting technology low-cost and commercially viable.
Image courtesy of CMP73 via flickr
While they still only account for a minute fraction of total yearly emissions, the carbon emissions produced by computers have been on the rise - buffeted by the likes of Google and other computing-heavy firms - and are set to increase dramatically over the coming decades. However, because computing power need not be centrally located to achieve its functions, server farms could potentially be moved to areas where renewable energy - in the form of wind or solar - is plentiful to mitigate their carbon footprint.
That was the point made by Andy Hopper, a computer expert at Cambridge University, at a recent Royal Society meeting in London. Speaking to The Guardian's James Randerson, he said that computing power could "be moved around the world and can be done anywhere in the world where energy is available."...
David Pogue starts off with the typical New York Times attempt at green humor :"Yeah, yeah, O.K., so the glaciers are melting, polar bears are becoming extinct and oceanfront property will soon open up in Philadelphia. But c’mon, people, try to look at the bright side." and then reviews two off-the-grid music players. One, the Media Street eMotion, runs for nine hours after 12 to 15 hours of charging; in direct sunlight it can play all day.
The Eco-Player cranks out 40 minutes of playing after one minute of cranking. However they are no iPods in the design department- "All right, let’s just admit it: next to the highly refined software and hardware design of the iPod and the Zune, these players look positively Neanderthal. The menus are crude and claustrophobic; on both players, messages appear in the Courier-ish font of an I.B.M. Selectric; and there’s no scroll wheel or touch pad for navigation. You walk through lists by pressing up/down arrow buttons." ::New York Times...
Many years ago, when my 1972 Sherwood amp and records filled a wall unit, a friend replaced all of his gear with a Walkman and a tiny amplifier; I was seriously impressed. The records and cassettes are history and CDs are following as we move to dematerialized music in our little green iPods; I still plug mine into my Sherwood but like the looks of this little green docking station and amplifier.
It replaces 80% of the plastic with sustainably harvested cherry, is screwed together for disassembly, uses half the power of a conventional amp and comes in recycled packaging. They also claim that it sounds better: "There's a reason why many musical instruments are still made of wood; nothing sounds as warm, as rich - or as natural." Not cheap at $159 but Vers claims "The hand craftsmanship required to create a Vers system takes time - more than a week to build one cabinet." Now if only it were solar powered. ::Vers via ::Hippyshopper...
MIT, light of my life, fire of my brains. My sin, my soul. Em-eye-tee: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Em. Eye. Tee. Or so might russian writer Vladimir Nabokov say if he had as much interest in electric cars as we do. Why? The Lab for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is getting close to a big breakthrough in capacitor technology.
Currently, ultracapacitors can only hold a small fraction of the electrical charge that batteries can hold (about 5%), but they do have many very important advantages over their chemical cousins, such as no battery memory caused by partial discharging, no reduction in capacity with each charge (they last almost forever), and much faster charge-discharge times. If only we could improve their capacity... Well, we're getting there. Read on!...
That small rechargeable battery, yes the one you can charge from the side of your computer, is having quite big a week. Having come away with a UK Energy Efficiency Award in December praise for the ingenuity of the USBCELL has been flooding in, culminating this week with two more prestigious awards. Last Wednesday Simon Daniel, co-designer of the USBCELL, was awarded New Energy Entrepreneur of the Year and this afternoon it was announced that USBCELL has won Gold in the IF Product Design Awards at the Cebit conference in Germany. Simon Daniel is particularly excited about this award because as he says:...
So you have your little hotplate of a CPU cooking away in your computer and have to mount a heat sink and a fan on it. Usually that is yet another power drain. Then along comes MSI with the best idea ever (other than using an efficient and cool CPU with a fanless cooler)- use the heat to run a Stirling engine that turns the fan. The hotter the chip, the faster the fan. ...
Wood Turner, Project Director, Climate Counts is going to be guest posting with us for a bit. His focus is on voluntary corporate climate change efforts. Please join us in welcoming Wood and his team!
Climate Counts is a non-profit campaign that scores companies annually on the basis of their voluntary action to reverse climate change. The Climate Counts Company Scorecard -- launched in June 2007 -- helps people vote with their dollars by making climate-conscious purchasing and investing choices that put pressure on the world's most well-known companies to take the issue of climate change seriously. Launched by organics pioneer Stonyfield Farm, Climate Counts functions as a proxy for the average consumer in tracking the world's largest companies and believes everyday consumers can be the most important activists in the fight against global warming. New Climate Counts company scores will be available in April 2008....
According to our stats, 17.5% of TreeHugger readers are using Macs (0.05% on iPhones!). They might be happy to learn, as we are, that Apple has improved its recycling program. You can now send your old iPods and cell phones (of any brand or model, not just iPhones) for free recycling.
Apple writes: "All the e-waste we collect in North America is processed there and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal. Apple meets the requirements of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundry Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. In addition to annual compliance audits of our recycling vendors, we review the performance of their downstream vendors. Recyclers must comply with all applicable health and safety laws, and we do not allow the use of prison labor at any stage of the recycling process. Apple does not allow the disposal of hazardous electronic waste in solid waste landfills or incinerators, including waste-to-energy incinerators."...
Having adopted a noticeably greener tack - unveiling both the Remade and Evolve 3110 phones within the past 3 months - Nokia is pushing the envelope with a new nanotechnology concept to be launched alongside MoMA's "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition - the Morph. A joint collaboration between the Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, it promises to provide a versatile user experience: its flexible materials would allow you to stretch and bend it to your heart's content, and its self-cleaning surfaces would help make upkeep much easier. ...
When we talk about going off-grid, or otherwise unplugging from traditional power sources, it usually involves solar or wind power, or some other alternative that doesn't involved your local utility. Young designer Clay Moulton has figured out how to harness a different source to create electricity: gravity.
"Gravia" is his LED-lit floor lamp that combines human power and gravity to create a lighting source that will work for 200 years or so, and never need to be plugged in. The lamp has a weight that's raised every four hours or so; as it slowly descends, the downward motion is converted to torque via a high-efficiency ball screw. The torque is overdriven (at 1:160 for those of you scoring at home) by a harmonic drive gear hand, and the output from that spins a set of 12 high-strength neodymium magnets (which act as the rotor), spinning to power 10 high-output LEDs. Simple, no?...
We wrote about the safe disposal of CFLs before. Here are the 10 steps to dealing with a broken light bulb, according to the UK government (see image).
In addition, if you break a low energy light bulb you should evacuate the room for at least fifteen minutes. It is not recommended to use a vacuum cleaner to get rid of broken pieces and you should not inhale any dust. The British authorities want to replace all incandescent light bulbs by 2011 in order to fight climate change but professor John Hawk, spokesman of the British Dermatology Foundation, warns that low energy light bulbs can cause severe problems for people with skin sensitive to light, who already can’t spend a lot of time in places illuminated with fluorescent lighting such as hospitals or factories. ...
OEMtek can turn your Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid. Concretely, this means adding a battery pack in the spare tire trunk of the car (without removing it) to extend the battery capacity* of the vehicle. The 9 kWh BREEZ battery can be recharged from the grid and is composed of standard-size cylindrical lithium-phosphate cells and can give the Prius an all-electric range of 30-35 miles (48-56 kilometers) per full charge. This increases fuel economy to 90 miles per gallon on the first 47 miles on the highway, and more than 150 mpg in low-speed urban driving for about the first 30-35 miles. OEMtek has been getting 125 mpg in combined driving during their own test (~7000 miles in 90 days)....
Discovery owns TreeHugger, so reporting on this story is a bit delicate. We'll limit ourselves to saying that we're proud of what Discovery is doing, with its LEED headquarters, with its groundbreaking upcoming 24/7 green TV channel Planet Green (in the meantime you can check out the Planet Green website), with its IT department, and many other things.
To keep some objectivity, we'll just quote ComputerWorld: "Discovery's approach is ahead of the curve. A recent Forrester Research Inc. survey found that just 15% of U.S. companies have green-IT plans [...] The company conducts regular audits of its server, storage and network equipment to make sure everything is fully utilized. It has consolidated storage into a single shared pool [...] and it used virtualization software to reduce its server count from 850 to 535 physical machines. Disk-to-disk backups have replaced backup tapes, eliminating the need to transport those tapes off-site."...
Like so many others, this TreeHugger made the switch to Gmail a while back, and has never looked back. He immediately started making use of its massive storage capabilities, and stopped deleting anything but the most obviously pointless emails. His email inbox is rapidly approaching the 11,000 messages mark. Being the technologically-challenged individual that he is, it took him some time to realise that there might be consequences to these actions – namely data retained means storage space used, and storage space used means energy consumed. The more tech savvy reader is probably shaking her head right now, amazed at how it can take this long to realise such things, but the fact remains that many of us still see digital files as existing in some kind of limbo – if they are not using up paper, or taking up storage space in our filing cabinets, what kind of impact can they have? As Lloyd pointed out in his post on the paperless home, moving from paper to digital storage is leading to major increases in energy consumption, and Google itself acknowledges it is "as much of an energy glutton as heavy industry". But just how much energy are we using up by not keeping our Gmail inboxes in order?
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
TreeHugger breaks it down for you in a series of in depth how-to articles that will help you green your life. No time like the present!
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.treehugger.com/nav-commenters.gif)
Mike Millikin, the uber-editor of 
We have covered Leah Beuchley's 
So says Dr. Vini Khurana, an Australian neurosurgeon. His recent 15-month critical review of the link between mobile phones and malignant brain tumors concludes that the phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, that people should avoid using them wherever possible, and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.
According to the 
When we 
If you're 
Xerox is a company that, to paraphrase Abba Eban, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It owned the 
Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are much more energy efficient than the "inorganic" kind. Its' quite likely that OLED's will one day make for ultra-thin TeeVees, lit architectural fascia, interior lighting, or back-lit signage. But, there has to be a fast, inexpensive way to manufacture OLEDs before the technology can spread to diverse consumer applications. Let's say it another way: before regular people can afford it. Wisely, GE is on the case.
They are using roll-printing techniques similar to that used for thin film photo-voltaic manufacturing. Somewhat similar to a paper-making machine. Amazing how one thing leads to another.
Image courtesy of 
David Pogue starts off with the typical New York Times attempt at green humor :"Yeah, yeah, O.K., so the glaciers are melting, polar bears are becoming extinct and oceanfront property will soon open up in Philadelphia. But c’mon, people, try to look at the bright side." and then reviews two off-the-grid music players. One, the Media Street eMotion, runs for nine hours after 12 to 15 hours of charging; in direct sunlight it can play all day.
The Eco-Player cranks out 40 minutes of playing after one minute of cranking. However they are no iPods in the design department- "All right, let’s just admit it: next to the highly refined software and hardware design of the iPod and the Zune, these players look positively Neanderthal. The menus are crude and claustrophobic; on both players, messages appear in the Courier-ish font of an I.B.M. Selectric; and there’s no scroll wheel or touch pad for navigation. You walk through lists by pressing up/down arrow buttons." 
Many years ago, when my 1972 Sherwood amp and records filled a wall unit, a friend replaced all of his gear with a Walkman and a tiny amplifier; I was seriously impressed. The records and cassettes are history and CDs are following as we move to dematerialized music in our 
MIT, light of my life, fire of my brains. My sin, my soul. Em-eye-tee: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Em. Eye. Tee. Or so might russian writer 
That 
Wood Turner, Project Director, Climate Counts is going to be guest posting with us for a bit. His focus is on voluntary corporate climate change efforts. Please join us in welcoming Wood and his team!
Climate Counts is a non-profit campaign that scores companies annually on the basis of their voluntary action to reverse climate change. The Climate Counts Company Scorecard -- launched in June 2007 -- helps people vote with their dollars by making climate-conscious purchasing and investing choices that put pressure on the world's most well-known companies to take the issue of climate change seriously. Launched by organics pioneer Stonyfield Farm, Climate Counts functions as a proxy for the average consumer in tracking the world's largest companies and believes everyday consumers can be the most important activists in the fight against global warming. New Climate Counts company scores will be available in April 2008....
According to our stats, 17.5% of TreeHugger readers are using Macs (0.05% on iPhones!). They might be happy to learn, as we are, that Apple has improved its recycling program. You can now send your old iPods and cell phones (of any brand or model, not just iPhones) for free recycling.
Apple writes: "All the e-waste we collect in North America is processed there and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal. Apple meets the requirements of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundry Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. In addition to annual compliance audits of our recycling vendors, we review the performance of their downstream vendors. Recyclers must comply with all applicable health and safety laws, and we do not allow the use of prison labor at any stage of the recycling process. Apple does not allow the disposal of hazardous electronic waste in solid waste landfills or incinerators, including waste-to-energy incinerators."...
Having adopted a noticeably greener tack - unveiling both the 
When we talk about going off-grid, or otherwise unplugging from traditional power sources, it usually involves 
We wrote about 
OEMtek can turn your Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid. Concretely, this means adding a battery pack in the spare tire trunk of the car (without removing it) to extend the battery capacity* of the vehicle. The 9 kWh BREEZ battery can be recharged from the grid and is composed of standard-size cylindrical lithium-phosphate cells and can give the Prius an all-electric range of 30-35 miles (48-56 kilometers) per full charge. This increases fuel economy to 90 miles per gallon on the first 47 miles on the highway, and more than 150 mpg in low-speed urban driving for about the first 30-35 miles. OEMtek has been getting 125 mpg in combined driving during their own test (~7000 miles in 90 days)....
Discovery owns TreeHugger, so reporting on this story is a bit delicate. We'll limit ourselves to saying that we're proud of what Discovery is doing, with its 
Like 
