As you can imagine TreeHugger is always keen to hear of someone taking influential climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg down a peg or two, whether it’s Stephen Colbert or Joe Romm or, as happened most recently, the British architect Michael Pawlyn of Exploration. Pawlyn, he of
Original post by Philip Proefrock
Tremont Electric has created a kinetic energy-based charger called the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator). What’s nifty about this charger compared to other kinetic energy harvesters is that it immediately converts kinetic energy to electricity and feeds it to your gadgets instead of storing the energy and then charging.
The PEG can charge the average portable device up to 80 percent with an hour’s worth of movement. What’s better is that you don’t need to strap the PEG onto yourself to harness the kinetic energy. It can be placed in your backpack or purse or strapped to your bike or kayak and derive the same energy. You can even use it while standing on the subway or bus.
The device weighs 9 ounces and is 9 inches long by 1.5 inches in diameter. To use it, you simply plug your phone, MP3 player or other device directly into the PEG via USB cable and start moving.
Tremont claims that if everyone with portable devices used the PEG for an hour every day instead of plugging into the grid, enough energy would be saved to power 21,000 households for a year.
You can sign up to be notified when the PEG is available for pre-order here.
via CNET
Original post by Megan Treacy
Photo credit: Kiehl’s Hang on to your empties, Kiehl’s lovers—the hallowed New York apothecary is rewarding its faithful with a recycling scheme that doles out products in exchange for depleted Kiehl’s bottles, tubes, and jars. Available at any Kiehl’s free-standing store, the good-for-the-environment, good-for-you outreach program will dispense complimentary samples that get progressively more generous the more packaging you turn in. (Check your labels before going hog-wild on a buying spree, however; some products still contain parabens, PEG, and other dubious ingredients.) …
Original post by blogs@bobvila.com (Dave)
Photo credit: Little Sapling Toys True classics never go out of style, and these handcrafted wooden toys from Little Sapling Toys hearken to a simpler, quieter time, when childhood wasn’t a discordant cacophony of electronic—and lead-contaminated—distractions. Made in California from reclaimed or Forestry Stewardship Council-certified wood, these charming, no-frills rattles, teething rings, blocks, peg boards, and stacking rings are a…
Original post by blogs@bobvila.com (Yumi)
It’s nice when two environmental issues can be tackled simultaneously. In this case, those issues are implementing solar technology, and saving a threatened bat population.
Bats in the northeastern parts of Canada and the United States are dying in alarming numbers, and researchers believe that a newly discovered fungus is responsible. The fungus, they say, leads to a condition known as white-nose syndrome. Since white-nose syndrome was first detected in 2006 in New York, the fungus has spread across the border to Ontario and six other states. The fungus has killed hundreds of thousands of bats - as much as 80% of the bat population in some areas. This is of particular concern to farmers who rely on bats as a way of controlling the insect population.
But now with the help of solar cells, the bats may have a way to sleep through this deadly disease. White-nose syndrome is thought to kill the bats by waking them up during their winter hibernation. Bats need to sleep through this period because the insects they need to eat to survive aren’t around during the cold season. When they wake up prematurely, they have nothing to eat and subsequently starve.
Researchers at the University of Winnipeg and Indiana State University theorize that if the bats are kept in a warm place, they will remain in hibernation. They therefore propose using solar powered insulated boxes (that would hold about 200 bats each) to keep the mammals warm – and asleep. The boxes would be powered by car batteries linked to solar cells. Their computer-stimulated model shows that using these boxes could drop mortality rates to as low as eight per cent.
Original post by Peg Fong
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