While jetting to Inverness today I found an eco-label for airplanes in my Flybe in-flight magazine. The airline – proud of its fleet of new planes – publishes the environmental impact of its aircraft in terms of fuel, carbon dioxide, pollution and noise. Even without being widely disseminated these labels help to engender environmental literacy, […]
Category Archives: energy
naturalness
Bio-pens are made of 80% cellulose acetate, a material that was invented in 1865 and is now most commonly used in cigarette filters. It is a biopolymer made from wood pulp with an embodied energy of 100 MJ/kg – about six times higher than glass and and twice as much as PET, although it’s biodegradable […]
Also posted in environment, marketing, materials, possessed products, product design
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watts up
Saul Griffith has just released WattzOn, a personal footprint calculator that allows you to account for everything in your life – including taxes and the embodied energy of the products you own. You can then compare your impact with other people in the world and start to understand how much alternative energy is needed to […]
Also posted in blogogracy, customization, environment, materials, possessed products, visualization
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wash me please
The Greenwashing Index is a mashup of advertisements submitted by users and ranked on how much they lie about the sustainability of products. Watching ads through a critical lens has a very different impact than their broadcasting on television or in print; the only problem is that they tend to disappear from the web once […]
Also posted in blogogracy, environment, marketing
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farm map 2
With the growing interest in eating local and community-supported agriculture there is a real demand for enabling technology to let small producers and community markets advertise their ever-changing menu. Otoyk (Kyoto backwards) is the newest entry in this field; it allows users to submit links to community farms and markets, and visitors can find directions […]
Also posted in blogogracy, conviviality, environment, food, futurecraft, marketing, supply chain
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lap sack
HP announced it would start shipping laptops in reusable cloth bags instead of the usual cardboard boxes, a step toward reducing materials that have nowhere to go but away. via
Also posted in environment, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, product design, soft/glowing, supply chain
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monolithic shoes
I couldn’t resist these Puma Injex shoes injection molded in one piece from non-PVC (presumably Polyurethane) foam rubber: they’re light and cushy and they appear to waste less material than typical shoes. In reality these are just attractive crocs, and they made me wonder whether they represent any benefit over traditional sneakers. They weigh about […]
Also posted in fabrication, fashion, product design, soft/glowing
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green walls 2
While in Paris I was fortunate to come across two green walls in the city: the first is a massive three-story vertical jungle atop a loading dock for a department store in the Marais by Patrick Blanc (above), the second was a billboard for a green cleaning product near the Sorbonne (below). While I generally […]
Also posted in architecture, environment, livingbreathing, marketing, possessed products, retail
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