London-based Ravensbourne University student Holly Grounds has developed ramen noodle packaging that dissolves in hot water in order to help cut down on plastic waste. That’s a great idea! Also, I wonder if her parents had any idea they were *this close* to naming their daughter Holy Grounds.
The biofilm is made entirely from safe-to-consume potato starch, glycerin, and water and is embedded with herbs and spices to season the noodles inside when it dissolves. How about that! If I were Nissin Top Ramen, I would be snatching up the patent rights to this faster than you can boil water.
I can’t even tell you how many packets of Ramen noodles I’ve eaten in my lifetime, but you could easily build a mountain out of the sodium I’ve ingested, no question. Ramen noodles and $1 personal frozen pizzas – those were my entire culinary life in college. I mean, they still are now, but they were back then too. My wife says I’m gross, and she isn’t wrong.
Not too long ago, I visited with Toyota in Tokyo to learn about their plans to transform from an automotive company into a mobility company – concerning themselves with all of the different ways that people need to get around, and not just cars and trucks anymore. As part of this massive initiative, Toyota now plans on building out an entire prototype city of the future.
The company has announced it will create its Woven City at the foot of Japan’s iconic Mt. Fuji, on a 175-acre parcel of land. The plan is to build the small city in such a way that it can be used as a testbed for all kinds of new technologies, including autonomy, robotics, personal mobility, smart homes, alternative energy, and artificial intelligence.
The city is being designed by Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels pf Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), whose team also worked on 2 World Trade Center, the LEGO House, and Google’s headquarters. Sustainability will be a key component of its design, from its construction materials and techniques, to its energy and food supplies.
At this point, Toyota hasn’t shared too many specifics, but the city will act as what the company calls a “living laboratory,” which will also test things like a hydrogen-powered infrastructure, and high-tech construction and manufacturing technologies.
In many ways, this prototype community is what Walt Disney originally envisioned for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), though we all know that project ended up turning into a World’s Fair style theme park, rather than a living and working city. Toyota’s project looks to be much more of a true research community, initially starting with 2000 residents, and then growing from there.
Of course, with a project this ambitious, Toyota will partner up with other companies who want to test out their technologies as well, and to that end they are accepting inquiries from potential partners on the Woven City website.
Toyota hasn’t given any indication yet as to how long it might take to build Woven City, but the groundbreaking is set for 2021. I’m really excited to see this come together, and what kind of innovation comes out of the city of the future.
As much as we love or LEGO sets, these building blocks are made of plastics, which are byproducts of crude oil and natural gases. And while we’re not tossing LEGO bricks in the trash like drinking straws, making them still isn’t great for the environment. That said, LEGO wants to be more sustainable, and it is starting with this set called the LEGO 10268 Creator Expert Vestas Wind Turbine.
The set is based on Vestas’ wind turbine which is installed in over 80 countries. What makes this set unique is its use of plant-based plastic. The tiny trees in the set are made from all-new sustainably sourced plant-based plastic. The plastic used to make the spruce trees are made from sugarcane. The rest of the plastic elements of this set still uses plastics from conventional sources, but I guess LEGO needed to start small to see how this goes before ramping up.
The 826-piece set has a Vestas Wind Turbine that stands 3.3 feet tall, and comes with the ‘Plants from Plants’ spruce trees, along with a house with a working porch light. You also get three LEGO Vestas servicemen minifigures and a LEGO dog. This is one pretty cool and innovative LEGO set. I’d really like to own this one. You can order yours for $199.99 starting on November 23, 2018 in the LEGO Shop.
The PhotonGrill is an inflatable, portable BBQ that uses the power of the sun to cook your food. It’s great for places where you’re not allowed to start a fire, since it uses no flames and no fuel to get the cooking pan scorching hot. It’ll reach temperatures of 500F/260C in as little as 5 minutes, which is faster than charcoal grills. It does this by letting you unfurl and inflate a parabolic mirror that focuses the sun’s rays exactly where the pan itself sits. The entire setup takes 3 minutes, and the pan provided with the kit is “solar-optimized”, whatever that means. The PhotonGrill neatly folds away into a backpack, making it easy to take with you on your adventures. If the idea of cooking your food with the planet’s only true source of extra-terrestrial energy tickles you, you’ll have to pledge around $225 to their Kickstarter campaign.
Want to save energy? This tiny gadget can not only reduce your electric usage, but can help you keep track of how much energy your devices are using.
The Revogi Smart Meter plugs into any standard 3-prong U.S. outlet, and provides you with the ability to schedule on and off times for outlets. You can also control them remotely (while in Bluetooth range). It also works with a wireless app which lets you track energy consumption in Watts (real-time) and kWh (over time).
They connect to Android and iOS devices via Bluetooth, and you can control and track up to 10 Smart Meter Outlets from a single smartphone. They’re perfect for things like coffee makers, toasters, lamps and fans. They’re normally priced at $35, but you can grab them for $5 off each over at the Technabob Shop now.
For a while the only personal mobility device you could get was a Segway. Or at least, the only high-tech, electric such vehicle. But now the marketplace is flooding with new electric scooters, and skateboards, and the WalkCar is an interesting addition. Its claim to fame is how small it is. Barely bigger than a laptop, the WalkCar is able to propel a person weighing up to 120 kg (265 lb) at up to 10 km/h (6.2 mph), on a distance of about 12 km (7.5 miles). It will then take 3 hours to charge via USB before it’s ready to take you on another strip. Steering is achieved by leaning forward, and since it doesn’t go very fast, stopping involves simply stepping off.
There’s a Kickstarter planned for October, with a reported asking price of $800. That may seem like a lot, but for those of you unwilling to walk a few miles, it’s a valuable convenience.
When the largest toy company in the world says it’s making a major effort to make its products more environmentally friendly, the impact could be huge.
The LEGO Group, which made more than 60 billion pieces of its classic bricks in 2014, has set as a goal to eliminate the current plastic it uses for its products (oil-based acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) in favor of a “sustainable material” by 2030.
Wait, 2030? That sounds like a long time to make that kind of switch. Why could it take so long? Allan Rasmussen, LEGO’s senior project manager, gave some insight into the lengthy timeframe when speaking at a recent conference: “When I get to a conference like this, I always hear people say: ‘Oh, LEGO. That’s great. I played with LEGO when I was a kid, and now I’ve passed it on to my son and to his son now, and it lasts. It’s perfect.’ And I’m really torn between that. On the one side, I want to say: ‘Thank you. We make a good product.’ On the other side, I want to say: ‘You’ve just shown why my job is so damn difficult.’”
To make this switch, the company is investing $150 million and hiring some 100 people to work in their new LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre in the company’s home country of Denmark. In a release the company said their end goal is to “significantly reduce [their] impact on the planet.” And with the people and money they are pumping into this project, success seems pretty assured.
We’re all for doing things that’ll help the planet stay a little greener, and increasing our use of solar energy is without a doubt a step in the right direction. While we may not have the motivation to go protest or do anything too meaningful, we certainly wouldn’t mind getting our hands on this cool Ginko Solar Tree.
he Ginkgo Solar Tree charging station for the iPhone and iPad is a astonishing solar charger. Ginkgo comes with a extra large 4.000 mAh rechargeable lithium battery to store your clean energy. This unique design is based on the Japanese Ginkgo tree. This design solar charger is made from eco-friendly plastic and bamboo. On the aluminum base there is a small black grip located to use as phone or tablet standard while charging. A green LED light will pop up when charging the Ginkgo. With one push on the indicator the other 4 blue lights will display the status of the battery.
The GravityLight is powered by, well, gravity. You attach it to a strong beam, tie a 12kg weight to it (made from rocks or sand), and let gravity pull it down. As it does, it powers a set of gears inside, which drive a DC generator that produces one-tenth of a Watt. That’s enough to power the LED for up to 25 minutes at a time. When that’s over, just hoist the weight back up and keep going. This is great for developing nations which often rely on Kerosene lamps that are not only polluting, but noxious, and potentially dangerous. The makers of the GravityLight already made one last year, but this new model is brighter, more robust, easier to use, and can provide light even as it is being charged. More importantly perhaps, it is being assembled right in Kenya, which will provide some jobs to the very people it is meant to help. You can get one yourself for a $70 pledge, all the while knowing you’re contributing to a good cause.
We live in a disposable society, or at the very least a society that seems too comfortable with the idea of throwing away things once they’ve outlived their apparent usefulness. But Portland-based designer Jessica Chan created the WINKpen as a way to go against our throwaway trend, and promoting sustainability, by creating the WINKpen. The writing implement can use any staining liquid as ink, like beer, tea, and even wine.
Unlike other fountain pens, where the ink usually comes out of a metal nib, WINKpen’s nib is made of glass. Spiraled grooves in the glass nib feed “ink” to the paper, producing a more pleasant aesthetic effect. Additionally, using glass offers the advantage of avoiding corrosion, plus it’s easier to clean.
It’s an interesting concept, if only a little unnecessary and unfortunately a bit overpriced. A WINKpen will cost you a rather hefty $60 pledge.
