From people-powered gadgets to gyms and dance clubs operated by human energy, Ecoble has featured a number of fascinating human-powered innovations in past posts. Technology is advancing so fast, it’s time to highlight a few more intriguing ways people are making use of the power of humans.
Editor’s note: This is first guest post from Max Gladwell.
Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.
World’s fastest wind-powered car – the Greenbird
Wind power is slowly finding a role in our sustainable future – and the possibilities are endless! The United States doubled their wind-power facilities in 2008, now creating over 25,000 MW of wind-generated electricity each year. But the potential of the wind as a renewable energy source reaches much further than typical wind farms – check out these innovative wind-powered creations…
Last week, we featured 10 projects that reuse and recycle plastic bottles – this week, we’re looking at some amazing things created with reused cardboard. From bridges and bikes to furniture and homes, cardboard is becoming a preferred material for innovative recyclable products. We’ve even included a few cardboard reuse projects you can make at home!
Image by fhemerick
Plastic bottles are produced, consumed, and trashed each and every day. Of the 28 billion bottles of water bought by Americans each year, more than 22 billion sit in landfills. Only 13% of our plastic bottles are recycled.
Those statistics on plastic bottles don’t include the ones that have been rescued for amazing reuse projects! We’ve discovered more than 340,000 plastic bottles in the creations below – from chic plastic vests to floating islands, the possibilities for reusing bottles are endless …
Over-packaging seems to be the norm in our excessive society but too much packaging causes problems for the consumer, as well as the planet. It’s frustrating to tear through huge boxes filled with endless packaging foam to finally unwrap the tiny iPod you’ve been waiting on – getting rid of all that waste is an entirely new battle, not to mention all the unnecessary space required during shipping for too much packaging. We’ve gathered some of the most ridiculous examples of over-packaging and included a few ways you can help diminish the excess.
No matter how hard we try, a paperless world just doesn’t seem possible. From newspapers and magazines to printed memos and note-taking, we still depend on paper – so why not find an alternative to our traditional tree-based paper? Here’s what a few innovative companies are doing to solve the paper problem…
Robotics are quickly becoming a normal part of our everyday life. There are cleaning robots, military and space assistants, and medical robotics; some look like odd machines while others strangely resemble humans and animals. Whatever form they may take, robotics will play a big role in our future as well as sustainability. Take a look at these ecobots and the tasks they are designed to perform….