What do you normally do with your leftover food? The Japanese don’t waste anything as they have recently developed a way to use leftover school lunches to create energy - approximately 200 kilograms of collected waste from half a dozen local schools are used to create biofuels, and the ethanol collected will then be used as a teaching aid for alcohol lamps while the methane has been targeted to generate electricity inside the experiment facility. While the amount of energy collected isn’t much, it is still better than letting it waste away.

Source: Far East Gizmos

When selecting their gadgets, some people will go all-out to make sure that the product they purchase is “green.” Unfortunately, what this means a good deal of the time that they pay a hefty premium, and the wonderful gadget is actually more of a pain to use than the other power-hungry options. This new Spin N Snap camera from Sony definitely falls into the “pain to use” category.

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It’s become almost trendy to be green these days. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, in fact there is little to complain about when it comes to saving the environment. I have to admit that I don’t go as far out of my way as some people to use alternative fuels and conserve energy. Though I did switch all of my monitors out to LCD screens, which we all know use far less power than the old CRTs. I also use rechargeable batteries, rather than throwing out AAs every month or two. If you’re concerned about the energy that’s required to recharge those batteries, then you might look into this solar battery charger.

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While sprinklers in your garden are convenient, they aren’t exactly eco friendly unless you keep an extremely close eye on them.

Integrate sprinkler or watering system control into your UPB home automation system with the UPB Rain8, a full-featured, 8-zone irrigation controller that accepts and reacts to standard UPB commands. This opens up the world of sprinkler and irrigation system control to anyone with UPB timers, remote controls, even over-the-Internet control using PC-based automation software. The UPB Rain8 was designed for installation in a water-protected location or in a weatherproof enclosure. The sprinkler wiring termination block easily separates from the main UPB Rain8 controller, allowing you to easily modify UPB Rain8 programming without tedious rewiring. Multiple UPB Rain8 modules can be networked together, requiring only one AC transformer and PLC interface.

Those who love to go green will definitely find the UPB Rain8 Sprinkler Controller a worthy addition to their homes for $114.99.

This is a cool kit to teach children about the environment and renewable energy sources, Power House: Sustainable Living in the 21st Century Science Kit.

• Build a model of the ultimate “green” house ? energy efficient and self-sustaining
• Complete house kit includes windmill, greenhouse and desalination system
• Includes more than 70 experiments and 20 building projects
• Build and operate an electric train, solar cooker, solar hot water tank, electric motor, sail car and more
• Includes 96-page illustrated experiment book

You can buy the Power House kit from Amazon for $149.95, found via Boing Boing.

I’ve been hearing a lot these days about BioFuels, and in an age where our gas prices are just getting higher, it may be time to start thinking about seriously putting them into operation.

In fact, I once heard of a process that could convert ordinary fatty waste, like the stuff used in deep-fat fryers into fuel. You know what that means. All that stuff at McDonalds could be used to power our cars.

Fortunately, there is the FuelPod2. I have no idea if there is any improvement from the original FuelPod, but this one does something pretty amazing: convert greasy waste into ecologically safe biodiesel. Not only that, the biodiesel is good enough to run in a standard diesel engine without any modifications.

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Think of all the gadgets that you own. Now think of all the different types of memory cards that you have for those gadgets: Sony Memory Stick Pro, SD Card, Mini SD Card, Micro SD Card, MMC card, and so on. How do you store and/or organize all these different cards that can easily be lost?

Designer Tom Kenworthy has come up with the design for a Sustainable Flash Memory Card Holder, which is a sustainable 3-tier sliding holder made from recycled vending cups. Remarkably, it only takes 7 plastic cups to make one holder. It’s lightweight, small, and can be colored to suit your tastes. I’m not sure if you can use any possible color in the rainbow, but why not?

I think this would be perfect for not carrying your memory cards around with you, but as a place to store all of your cards in one convenient place. No more “where’s my Mini SD Card?” and “crap, I lost my Memory Stick Pro again!” Read the rest of this entry »

I believe that there is or was some show done by Ed Begley (formerly of St. Elsewhere) and Bill Nye the Science Guy did some show about a house they were building that is completely self-sustainable and can even give energy back.

I don’t know how that worked out for those two gentlemen, but we are constantly being told that we really need to save energy. And, if we aren’t going to do it, then we need to train the next generation to do so.

Hence the Power House kit. This is a toy probably designed for children, but one that adults need to learn from. This toy teaches some excellent principles about regenerative energy sources including solar power, wind power, even electrochemical and plant energy.

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