Source – yesmagazine.org – 3 Simple Ideas That Are Making Cities Sustainable – An app that combines the affordability of ride sharing with the reliability of taxis. Playgrounds built as sponges for reusable greywater. From Finland to California, the cities of the future are here. 1. A bus that will pick you up anywhere in…
Source – .fastcoexist.com – A unique conveyer belt design allows the three-story greenhouse to be efficient and sustainable, providing jobs and fresh produce to the Jackson community. Jackson, Wyoming, is an unlikely place for urban farming: At an altitude over a mile high, with snow that can last until May, the growing season is…
Source – trueactivist.com – Lucid Energy, a Portland-based energy company, has come up with a brilliant idea to harness electricity from the water that flows through a city’s pipes. Small turbines are installed into the pipes which send the energy collected from the flowing water into a power generator. “It’s pretty rare to find a…
Source – higherperspective.com – Nissan has reported recently that Japan now has more electric car charging stations than they do gas stations. Nissan states that the country has over 40,000 electric car charging stations and 34,000 traditional gas stations. “An important element of the continued market growth is the development of the charging infrastructure,” Nissan’s…
Source – wakingtimes.com – Riding the full force GMO backlash of 2014, communities and individuals alike are breaking down the door with Black Friday-urgency in search of better access to better food. Yet in a country where we continue to be limited by the bottom line of big corporate influences and their overarching monetary reach,…
Source – .globalpossibilities.org – An extraordinarily scaled-down home and garden for a couple and their 2 kids fosters sustainability and togetherness Interior designer Jessica Helgerson and her family had every intention of spending only a few nights in their new summer home. But the weekend turned into a few weeks, and up until this day,…
Source – foodisfreeproject.org – “When life gives you lemons, share them with neighbors!” enthuses the Food is Free Project, a grassroots organization based out of Austin, Texas. The project isn’t advocating sharing bad luck; instead, it’s championing the idea of connecting neighbors and communities with a bounty of free, homegrown fresh produce. It all began…
Source – resilientcommunities.com – Building a rocket stove doesn’t get simpler than this. Four concrete blocks is all it takes to build this wind- and rain resistant rocket stove. The cost? $5.16. The stove is fuelled by small sticks, twigs and leaves, and it funnels all the heat up under the bottom of the pan,…
Source – trueactivist.com – NFL star Jason Brown has quit playing football professionally, and now spends his days as a farmer, who harvests free food for the hungry. Jason Brown was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the fourth round of the 2005 NFL Draft, and played college football at North Carolina. On February 28,…
Source – trueactivist.com – These emergency homes from i-Beam Design are truly amazing and can be assembled using commonly available materials and can be built by almost anyone. These Designs have have been made available to the general public from their website. Architects Suzan Wines and Azin Valy were trying to come up with the ideal building…
Source – trueactivist.com – All you need is around $2000 to begin building one of these epic homes – made from recycled shipping containers! Check out some of these amazing creations! A luxury home doesn’t always necessarily mean thousands of square footage, towering great rooms and gilded toilets. Take these homes for example: to begin…
Source – wisdompills.com – Luther Standing Bear was an Oglala Lakota Sioux Chief who, among a few rare others such as Charles Eastman, Black Elk and Gertrude Bonnin occupied the rift between the way of life of the Indigenous people of the Great Plains before, and during, the arrival and subsequent spread of the European pioneers. Raised in…
Source – wakingtimes.com – Here’s an amazing, inspirational video of how The Urban Farming Guys transformed one of the poorest, most dangerous zip codes in the US into a thriving, almost crime-free, sustainable community. Now, former drug addicts, thieves and criminals are the ones who are helping to rebuild what they once lost. The same community…
Source – trueactivist.com – In Irvine, California, a 7.5 acre plot of land was turned into “The Incredible Edible Park”, a community garden that feeds 200,000 people each month. Every year, over 15,000 volunteers come through to help plant and harvest the food. The once unused plot of land was donated and is now run by an organization…
Source – ecowatch.com – You’ve most likely heard one of the arguments leveled at wind power: turbines are ugly. And while you might not agree, it’s true that the tall turbines that are increasingly appearing all over the landscape stand out among their surroundings. French entrepreneur Jérôme Michaud-Larivière decided to do something about that. His…
Source – naturalsociety.com – Imagine raising a vegetable garden right in front of your local police station, and not a single officer inquires about what you are doing. Or, plucking a few cherries from outside your doctors’ office before you go in for an annual check-up. How about harvesting some apples and pears from along…
Source – preventdisease.com – We are creatures of habit and when things go wrong we play the blame game, whether it be directed to ourselves or others. The coming year will be shaped by an increased sense of personal responsibility and rising numbers of people divided on critical issues related to our food supply, our…
Source – geneco.uk.com – We’ve launched the first UK bus powered on gas generated from recycling food waste and treating sewage – the Bio-Bus! Television personality Stefan Gates took the first journey on the bus, which is refuelled at GENeco’s gas to grid plant at Bristol sewage treatment works. GENeco produces enough biomethane at the…
Source – nationofchange.org – A little odd to say it’s the first completely self-sustaining place, since people were already doing that thousands of years ago, but interesting nonetheless! It is possible to live in harmony with the Planet. Virescent mountains, verdant valleys, and clean energy. Sound like a scene from The Sound of Music or a fictional…
Source – transitionnetwork.org – Pandora Thomas is a teacher, writer, speaker and designer. She currently lives in Berkeley, California and is a board member of Transition US, a founder of the Black Permaculture Network, a co-founder of Earthseed Consulting, and co-creator of the Pathways to Resilience programme. We’ve been trying to get an interview with her…
Source – growingpower.org – Dear Friends, As I write this letter, the year is drawing to a close and our farmers are still harvesting vegetables from the greenhouses. As we head in to the new year, we must continue to build the infrastructure of our farms so that we can continue to eat nutritious food…
Source – naturalsociety.com – Can earthquakes and tsunamis put the Japanese food producer down? Apparently not. Sanriku Fukko National Park now hosts the world’s largest indoor farm. It was built inside an old, 25,000-square-foot semiconductor factory and uses 100 times less water than an outdoor farm. What’s more, they claim that their produce contains 8…
Source – minds.com – The National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Program will cost about $200 million, which is basically nothing in the scheme of most international budgets. Peru also leads the way in national dedication to organic food and doesn’t allow GMO. The program plans to install about 12,500 photovoltaic solar systems to provide for…
Source – collective-evolution.com – A team at IBM recently developed what they call a High Concentration Photo Voltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system that is capable of concentrating the power of 2,000 suns, they are even claiming to be able to concentrate energy safely up to 5,000X, that’s huge. The process of trapping the sunlight produces water…
Source – avfallsverige.se – Imagine a world where pollution is a non-issue, cities are pristine, healthy environments to live in, and little to no entanglements from discarded trash injures wildlife or clogs the oceans. In Sweden, this is almost a reality, yet it’s causing a paradoxical predicament for the recycle-happy country that relies on waste…
Source – sciencedaily.com – UNSW Australia’s solar researchers have converted over 40% of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported. The record efficiency was achieved in outdoor tests in Sydney, before being independently confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at their outdoor test facility in the United…
Source – greenhouseofthefuture.com – The Greenhouse of the Future is an innovative and strategic design, built of recycled and natural materials, that interacts with the natural phenomena of the planet in order to create the ideal environment for growth and abundance. The technologies and concepts that have inspired the design of this greenhouse have been…
Source – themindunleashed.org – Funding has just been secured to break ground on the world’s largest ocean current-driven power plant on the shores of Scotland. The plant is expected to supply the electrical needs of 175,000 homes once completed, with the initial delivery of electricity expected by 2016. The first phase of the project will…
Source – themindunleashed.org – Luminescent solar concentrators (LSC) produce electricity by focusing sunlight on a small area, which works in a similar way as setting fire to dry leaves using a magnifying glass. However, the problem is that they are quite large and not so attractive, as they have the function, but lack beauty. There…
Small vegetables–many leaf crops and even compact and miniature varieties of fruiting crops such as tomatoes and peppers–can be grown indoors in a sunny, bright windowsill year round. Vegetable gardening indoors has most of the same requirements as an outdoor garden: bright light, water, nutrients, and protection from pests and diseases. Since space is likely…
Source – wakeup-world.com – Ever heard of the Cradle to Cradle principle? Or of “everything is food”? Imagine littering as something beneficial, where what you throw out actually fertilizes soil or breaks down completely. Where throwing away things helps instead of damages. Where everything is truly recycled, or better, upcycled and reused. Where buildings double…
Source – higherperspective.com -In Madison, Wisconsin, the homeless population has grown by 7% in the last four years, rising to around 3,370. Occupy Madison, frustrated by lack of movement on behalf of city leaders opted to develop their own solution. It’s called Occupy Madison Inc. It’s a nonprofit organization, and their mission is to house…
Source – inhabitat.com – Seawer is a self-supported hydroelectric power station that can generate electricity using seawater at the same time that it cleans up plastic waste. The huge structure separates plastic particles and fluids, recycles seawater and releases it back into the ocean. The structure receives energy from the sun, ocean and plastics and…
RIELPOLITIK 