The good people at Osaka University has come up with a prototype of a robotic buoy that has a very specific and special purpose in life - it is meant to combat sea pollution in the event of large scale environmental disasters the world has known as oil spills. The prototype known as SOTAB (Spilled Oil Tracking Autonomous Buoy) is but a 110kg GPS-equipped robot. It will feature a cylindrical buoy length of 2.7m and a diameter of 27cm, and the whole idea is to have these buoys installed aboard oil tankers, enabling them to be dropped into the sea automatically whenever there is an accident. Unfortunately, oil tankers will have to be a whole lot more vigilant and careful for the next three years (at least) since it will take that amount of time at best to roll out from the laboratory.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every day, millions of people take to the roads as solitary drivers in their automobiles. This seems to be a complete waste of energy as most cars have room for at least three other passengers. Assuming the solitary driver can’t find an convenient carpool, why not switch to a speedy, energy-efficient vehicle that can hold just one driver?

This is the concept behind the Bricycle, a three-wheeled wonder designed by someone named Brian. Yes, he named it after himself, but see the name as a descriptor, and not as a reflection of ego. After all, this isn’t any normal bicycle or tricycle, but a motorized trike that is like no other.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although solar bags are nice since they charge up all of our little gadgets through the sun.  Not all of them are made out of the greatest materials.  It’s always nice to come across a solar bag that is all around good for the environment.  As opposed to just having the solar element going for it.  Well this line of bags from Sakku uses old sails for the material of the bag itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

We know all about fast, exotic cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but this piece of news really irks me. In an age where most people are working together to preserve what’s left of the earth by minimizing our carbon footprint, along comes a sheikh who has more money than sense to fly his Lamborghini all the way fro Qatar to Britain - for an oil change. Of course, he had the help of Qatar Airways in shipping his Murcielago LP640 for approximately a 6,500 mile round trip that cost him around $39,000, but that obscene waste of money is the least of his concerns - what about the environmental crater he left behind? Ironically, the servicing cost a “mere” $7,030.47. I know this isn’t really tech-related, but the next time we go out and buy our next gadget, let’s try to make an environmentally positive choice, why don’t we?

Source: Wired

In an effort to use renewable energy sources and less polluting products, I’m surprised that I never see barbecues being targeted. Everyone always thinks of cars or big industrial factories as the ones that leave the huge carbon footprint, but no one thinks about grilling. I mean, if you’re burning something, that smoke has to go somewhere. And I’m certain that propane is some sort of pollutant because it smells so funny.

Designer Sean McGreevy has addressed this issue with the Helios, an energy-efficient outdoor cooker. The dish that you see is not designed to pick up 400 stations, but for collecting solar energy. The solar dish, which is safely pointed away from you while cooking, is designed to heat a coil inside the barbeque and cook food.

Read the rest of this entry »

Everything and everyone’s going green these days, making me think that going green is the new black. I suppose we all want to do our part by helping keep the environment clean in a passive manner, hence the deluge of green products being released by manufacturers left and right. Fabrik is one of them, shipping what it touts to be the most eco-friendly hard drive in the world, although there aren’t any official benchmarks or studies done to affirm that self-proclaimed statement. I wouldn’t go up against it though, since the materials it is made from is already much greener compared to your regular hard drive. Known as the [re]drive, it uses bamboo as a design element and comes with low-impact packaging. Internally, you will find a 500GB hard drive for you to store all your precious files.

Read the rest of this entry »

D-Link wants to do their part for the environment with a new range of Wi-Fi routers that are actually smart enough to help you save up to 40% in power usage - this is made possible as the routers are capable of detecting cable length as well as link status, adjusting power accordingly instead of running at full steam all the time as most of the other routers currently do. Heck, the routers can also be programmed to shut down the Wi-Fi radio when it is not in use so that power can be saved. The three Wi-Fi routers to feature D-Link’s Green Ethernet technology are the D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router DIR-665, Xtreme N Duo Media Router DIR-855, and the Xtreme N Gaming Router DGL-4500. The routers alone are not new, but they’ve been updated with such green technology, they’re practically reborn.

Source: Slippery Brick

Alternative energy is being held back by a lack of innovation. We have the ideas. It’s about integrating those ideas into everyday life and producing enough energy to power our needs. In fact, we can even use our own energy to produce power for other electronic gadgets, and electricity might very well be the main fuel for the future of transportation.

The POWERleap Tiles harness all of the energy we use simply by walking around. What might be the future flooring in our homes and businesses, the POWERleap uses our daily walking and converts that energy into electricity. So you could literally walk and charge at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry »