Like Max, concerned about the accumulation of plastic rubbish and also BPA leaching into my water, I picked up two new sigg bottles. One as a gift, the other for myself. Pretty sweet lookin eh? The one that says “I am not plastic” is a special edition available from mysigg.com. But I just checked, and they have sold out! Boy, that gift just got about 1000 times cooler! These swiss made bottles are simply superb. Great paint and build quality. It really feels like something I’ll have for many years to come.

Anyhow, you can find other sigg bottles all over the net, at local brick-and-mortar stores, as well as at some grocery stores like Whole Foods.

Filed under: Clothing | Accessories, Green | Sustainable, Home | Garden — Santi @ 8:02 pm

I love motorcycles. I love how they look, I love to ride them, I love how passionate people get about them, and I love Suzuki’s new concept: The fuel cell driven Crosscage. This concept trades in the traditional small displacement gasoline motor for a fuel cell and electric motor. As a consequence, it has no gears, no engine noise, no tailpipe, and no pollution. While the sound of a bike holds a large amount of appeal, this high-brow technology in a motorcycle holds a whole different appeal. To add to its already stunning technology, its styling is simply phenomenal. The name obviously comes from its unique structure covering the “engine” area. The single sided swing-arm, and single sided front fork (never seen that one on a motorcycle before) make this bike quite asymmetric looking. But Suzuki manages to pull off a brute, punk, mean, street-fighter look with the bike, that I think is to die for. No word on the release, but as you can see from the picture, they have at least one made for testing :)

More pictures below.

Continue reading Fuel cells gone wild: The Suzuki Crosscage Motorcycle

Filed under: Art | Design, Cars | Transportation, Green | Sustainable — Santi @ 6:07 am

So I’m moving into a Dome Home. That’s right, an Epcot Center, living in the future, geodesic dome home.

Continue reading Tensegrity Domes? whoa…

Filed under: Art | Design, Green | Sustainable, Home | Garden — Santi @ 8:32 pm

This will make for an interesting conversation starter, if nothing else. The DIY Kyoto Wattson, while from a company with a misleading name, is simple in theory. You connect some included doodads to your electricity meter and those doodads communicate wirelessly with the box, displaying your current usage in watts and the amount you will spend in a year at the current usage. It’s a great device for nagging your cohabitants about blasting the AC on November evenings or, if your roommates are anything like mine, leaving the lights on in vacant rooms. Even better, you get to nag with colors as the Wattson changes the hue of its soft glow depending on your usage. Now, you get all the fun of the Federal government’s color-coded threat level system in your home. Imagine, calling a house meeting (a la Real World) to announce the current energy level and things that should be done to bring that level back down to a less fear-inducing color. I shudder to think of the possibilities.

Continue reading I Want One V: DIY Kyoto Wattson

Filed under: Gadgets | Technology, Green | Sustainable — Roy @ 9:21 am

This weekend, Santi & I headed over to CABoom. There was a lot of good stuff and I’ll be throwing some of it up for the next few days. I’m going to start with Loll Designs Modern Outdoor Furniture.

Loll designs makes stylish outdoor furniture from recycled milk cartons. Because it is made out of plastic, the furniture doesn’t need to be repainted, as often is the case with furniture which is exposed to the sun, rain, and the elements.

Continue reading Lollygagging Furniture: Made in Duluth for You!

Filed under: Art | Design, Green | Sustainable — Pilar @ 10:34 am

I’m no Al Gore or anything, but I think the environment is of at least passing importance. While I’m really excited about Moon-based habitats and I don’t think we’ll make a serious push for them until our species is on the brink of extinction, we should be making every effort to keep what we’ve got nice. (If for no other reason than to charge the Martians exorbitant amounts of money in tourism) To that end, I stumbled across this gem on Amazon. It is a stapler…wait for it…without any staples!

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Normal humans probably don’t care about this sort of stuff, but hey, I’m a big nerd, so inventive ways of doing totally uninventive things get me excited. Anyway, it works by punching a hole in the paper and folding the punched part back up through another hole made in the above pages. Essentially, it weaves the top part of your paper.

At the very least, you’ll amaze your coworkers or professors with the technique, causing them to tear the papers apart in curiosity, forcing them to staple them back together later with more 20th century means, defeating the whole purpose of saving the environment by using fewer staples. But hey, you tried right?

*Warning: 5 page maximum*

Filed under: Gadgets | Technology, Green | Sustainable — Roy @ 9:28 pm

More from the MWC, Nokia’s got a new concept phone that is literally a piece of trash. Nokia’s Remade is a concept designed and made from all recycled components. Recycled cans, old tires and plastic bottles all go to make this phone that contains no new parts. As it’s a concept, there’s no specs and it doesn’t even make call as of yet, but still, a pretty cool idea, even if it’s nothing revolutionary. It’s not too bad looking, either.

Source Treehugger
Image from Engadget

Filed under: Green | Sustainable, Phones — Roy @ 10:43 am

       I thought the Telsa Electric Roadster had been scrapped, but I was wrong! Gizmodo has a nice little roundup of reviews. The overall message? 211 ft-lbs of torque at 0 RPM is awful news for a transmission, but also an awful lot of fun.

Source: Gizmodo

Filed under: Cars | Transportation, Green | Sustainable — Max @ 9:21 am

Designed by Singgih Kartono, I found this wooden radio to be quite the eye catcher. His previous design was also quite impressive, but not available in the US. This very cool looking retro radio is made from sustainably grown woods and includes the “most current mp3 player compatible electronics”… hmmm, not exactly sure what the latter means. It also has FM, AM, and even two short wave band receivers.

While I think aesthetically Singgih Kartono has really hit something here, it may be missing something in the technology department. I’m assuming their “mp3 player electronics” is simply a line in jack on the back, but i haven’t seen any photos of the rear to confirm this. I also didn’t notice any mention of HD radio. However, I suspect this was designed for Japanese domestic market sale, and I guess that they can’t be faulted as I’m not aware that the Japanese have implemented the same digital radio format. I haven’t had a chance to hear or play with this device, but I hope it at least has a very nice radio receiver. I love the focus on design, but as an audio nut, I’d hope it performs on par with it’s looks.

I’d also like to hear more details about where/how the electronics are made. It’s nice that the wood is sustainably grown, but it would also be nice if the electronics were made with thought into reducing certain hazardous substances.

Overall though, it is a pretty radio.

[source: TreeHugger]
[source: areaware]

Filed under: Art | Design, Gadgets | Technology, Green | Sustainable, Home Audio, Portable Audio — Santi @ 10:10 am

There are many advantages of consuming Grass-Fed cows. One is supporting fair treatment of livestock so that the beef you eat is from–as we say in California–happy cows.

The BBC’s Viewpoint has a succinct explanation of some simple reasons to consider grass-fed beef including some nutritional reasons:

“Research has shown that, in contrast to most supermarket meat, this beef contains more anti-oxidants including vitamin E, more iron and other minerals, more omega-3 fatty acids and more of the powerful anti-cancer compound known as conjugated linoleic acid.

As a result, it doesn’t simply supply high-quality protein and other nutrients; It can actually help protect the body against heart disease, cancer and a host of other diseases.”

The article also helps to bring it back to the U.S. point of view by reminding us that before large-scale grain farming, the breadbasket used to provide for “50 million bison.” Plus, by adding the possibilities of rarer breeds, could our beef consumption have added competition? Think of your burger as not just being “beef” but Kobe, Black Angus, or whatever rarer breeds are up for consumption.

But more to the point, I got so distracted by the prettiest cow I had ever seen. I couldn’t eat a fuzzy, cute cow like that–could I?

Link: BBC News Viewpoint “Farming Should Return to its Roots”
Picture Courtesy of BBC

Filed under: Green | Sustainable — Pilar @ 10:33 pm