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Inhabitat's Week in Green: terra-cotta heaters, edible snow globes and 3D-printed dog legs
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. In a big win for the environment, New York just became the first state in the country to ban hydraulic fracturing, the controversial natural gas drilling technique also known as fracking. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the decision this week following the release of a report that raised concerns about the health effects of fracking. In other green energy news, Australian households are beefing up their use of solar energy at an impressive rate -- one in five Australian homes is now powered by the sun. (By comparison, just 0.4 percent of homes in the US have solar panels.)
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Fusion power, Drop-a-Brick and settlements on Mars
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Why can't Tesla's sales model catch a break? The automaker is paving the way for the future of electric vehicles, however states keep stepping in the way. This week, Michigan passed legislation that essentially bans Tesla from selling cars in the state due to a last-minute addition by a legislator who receives contributions from the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association. In other transportation news, Italy has long been the Mecca of souped-up sports cars, but surprisingly the country has never produced a fully electric supercar. That all could change soon, now that the Italian company Tecnicar has unveiled a new electric car with a 789-horsepower electric motor.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: solar hourglass, urban tornadoes and the world's tallest garden
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Japan is the birthplace of high-speed rail, and it continues to be a leader train travel -- officials just unveiled the nation's new magnetic-levitation train to the public for the first time! The new train can hit speeds of up to 311 MPH using "L-Zero" technology, and it will be able to zip passengers from Tokyo to Nagoya in just 40 minutes. In other transportation news, Tesla is gearing up to unveil something big this week -- Elon Musk recently tweeted a mysterious photo of the upcoming project, although we'll have to wait until Thursday for the full details. China's Foxconn may be best known as the manufacturer of Apple products, however the company is getting ready to throw its hat into the EV ring with a $15,000 electric car. And Spanish firm Opbrid is aiming to revolutionize public transportation with a new system that can recharge an entire electric bus in five to eight minutes flat.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: dinosaur bicycle, 3D-printed shoes and a lightning-proof dress
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Energy and clean water are two essential resources that we're running critically low on in the 21st century -- fortunately, a 17-year-old girl from Australia has invented a device that could solve both of these challenges. Cynthia Sin Nga Lam, a finalist in this year's Google Science Fair, has created a machine that purifies wastewater and produces electricity from hydrogen. In other green innovation news, workers just finished building a rainwater-harvesting soccer and volleyball stadium at a school in Kenya that can store more than 1.5 million liters of fresh water. The field is part of a larger trend of "waterbanking" structures that harvest and store rainwater.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: stadiums with modular housing, Tesla Model 3 and a tower of mushrooms
Soccer fans around the world are going through withdrawal now that the World Cup is over, and in Brazil, people are beginning to think about what should be done with the 12 stadiums that were built or renovated for the tournament. A pair of French architects has come up with a brilliant idea: Convert the stadiums into affordable housing. Solar panels come in all shapes and sizes -- but rarely do they come in the shape of a huge duck. A team of London-based designers has submitted a proposal to build a 12-story duck-shaped renewable energy generator for the Land Art Generator Initiative, which will be held later this year in Copenhagen.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: 'Eyeronman' vest, eco hobbit home and a labyrinth of plastic waste
Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of emissions in the US, so greening our architecture will go a long way toward curbing climate change. In Singapore, a developer built the world's largest vertical garden on the exterior of a building, setting a new Guinness World Record for the nearly 25,000-square-foot green wall. On the green energy front, Germany is blazing a trail by smashing three solar energy records in just two weeks. We also featured the world's first integrated solar system, which generates both heat and electricity. The system was installed on a house in suburban Sydney. The new technology could be a game changer for the solar energy industry. That sounds like a big deal, but this could be even bigger: Researchers appear to be on the brink of developing paint-on solar cells that could make renewable energy cheap and widely accessible.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Ocean Cleanup Array, ForceShoes and a warp-capable spacecraft
Innovative design has the power to save the world. Case in point: Last year, teenage inventor Boyan Slat announced plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove up to 7 million tons of plastic trash from the world's oceans. The plan was met with a fair bit of skepticism, but a new yearlong study confirms Slat's claims. The hefty report goes as far as to suggest that a single array could remove half of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a decade. Slat isn't the only youngster turning heads: A 14-year-old Indian girl recently invented a pedal-powered washing machine that doubles as an exercise bike, which she uses to wash her family's clothes. Google just announced that an 11-year-old girl won the 2014 Doodle 4 Google competition by dreaming up a fantastical water purifier that turns dirty polluted water into fresh, clean H2O. And a team of Dutch architects is building the world's first 3D-printed house using a massive printer contained within a shipping container!
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Terrafugia, Urban Skyfarm and a motorized 'home in a box'
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast in the fall of 2012, causing widespread devastation and billions of dollars in damages -- and future superstorms will likely be worse. But the US government is doing something about it, providing nearly $1 billion in federal funding for projects that will make the coast more resilient in the face of climate change. HUD announced six winning proposals this week, and they include some of the world's top design firms. OMA, the firm founded by Rem Koolhaas, received $230 million to rebuild the damaged areas of Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken and protect them from future superstorms. Bjarke Ingels' BIG Architects was awarded $335 million to create a series of protective planted berms and flood walls in lower Manhattan's flood zones to make them more resilient to storm surges. SCAPE/Landscape Architecture won funding for its Living Breakwaters project, which will provide a buffer against wave damage on Staten Island. A team from MIT also won funding for its plan to transform and protect the Meadowlands basin in New Jersey and expand current marshland restoration efforts. And Walter Meyer has developed a proposal for creating a 50-acre nature park with sunken forest that could protect the Rockaways from future storms.
Inhabitat's Week In Green: Google's new car, ice walls and the future of bamboo
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. It's 2014 and even though we can 3D print entire buildings and create jewelry from Beijing's smog, we're still struggling to fix our transportation system and transition away from polluting fossil fuels. It'll be a while before flying electric cars take to the skies, but there are concepts in the works that suggest we may not be crawling through toxic traffic forever. In a major breakthrough for its self-driving car project, Google recently unveiled a pod-like vehicle it built from scratch. Creating its own car instead of modifying an existing one enabled Google to pursue some interesting design choices such as, well, the lack of a steering wheel -- for a start! In an effort to make current automobiles more efficient, some experts have suggested that bamboo could soon upstage carbon fiber as the material of the future. But as we all know, the greenest car is no car at all. Worried that it might not meet its pollution reduction targets in 2015, the Chinese government announced plans to take at least 5 million old cars off the road. For those that prefer their transportation with two wheels, IKEA is branching out into the transportation arena with a brand-new electric bicycle that will feature six different driving modes and a pedal-assisted range of up to 45 miles.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: hybrid Batmobile, self-cleaning fish tank and an anatomical Barbie
Clean tech fans were thrilled this week when Germany proved it's possible to power the world with greener energy by announcing that 74 percent of its energy was recently met with renewable sources. But if you still have doubts about the future of renewable energy, a new report from the International Energy Agency predicts that solar energy could become the biggest generator of electricity worldwide by 2050 if the right policies are put in place. Meanwhile in Baltimore, they are using solar energy to help tackle pollution. The new solar-powered Water Wheel Trash Interceptor is ready to pull a whopping 50,000 pounds out of the water, which the city hopes will make its harbor swimmable again. In developing countries that lack access to any kind of fossil fuels, this solar-powered pump is helping to produce clean, drinkable water.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Aero-X hoverbike, vertical forest towers and a braille robot
Climate change is already causing serious problems, including extreme weather events, drought and wildfires like the massive fire that displaced thousands of people in San Diego County this week. But one of the most concerning effects of climate change is sea level rise. This week, the world got some sobering news when we learned that a large section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed. Although scientists have warned that we've already reached the point of no return with climate change, transitioning to green design and technology is more urgent than ever. Transportation accounts for more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, so we were pleased to learn that an electric bus produced by the South Carolina-based company Proterra broke the world record for most miles traveled in a day when it traveled over 700 miles in 24 hours. And file this one in the "We'll believe it when we see it" drawer: China plans to build an 8,000-plus mile railroad connecting China, Russia, Canada and the US. The plan includes a 125-mile undersea tunnel spanning the Bering Strait.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Flux, smart parking meters and 1,600 paper pandas
Climate change isn't some abstract future -- it's already here. And the federal government is finally acknowledging that. Last week, the White House issued a landmark 1,300-page report identifying climate change as a clear and imminent danger. The US government isn't the only body that's concerned about climate change; the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is calling on countries around the world to take strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming. In higher education, Stanford University is leading the charge, becoming the first major US university to divest from coal companies. It will take significant investment in alternative energy to reverse course, and several major projects are paving the way. An American energy company is planning to build a gigantic tower on the Arizona-Mexico border that could tap solar and wind resources to generate 500 megawatts of energy. And a Spanish island with 10,000 residents is planning to sever ties with the traditional power grid and move to 100 percent renewable energy, making it entirely energy independent.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: spasers, battery-powered airplanes and phones printed on clothes
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Technology is getting small -- this week, Inhabitat took a look at LIX, the world's smallest 3D-printing pen, which is powered by a USB port. Meanwhile, a team of British neuroscientists strapped the world's tiniest pair of 3D glasses onto a praying mantis, and then exposed the bug to a series of weird 3D videos. The study aims to learn more about 3D vision. Cellphones could soon be shrinking, too. Researchers at Monash University have developed the world's first spaser, which is basically a laser on the nanoscale. The development could lead to phones so small that they can be printed on clothes. And the musician Imogen Heap has created an interactive glove that turns gestures into music.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: energy from toilets, Legoland Florida and 6K tons of pistachios
Earth Week is coming to a close, and to mark the occasion, Inhabitat showcased 14 awe-inspiring aerial photos of the Earth and 14 photos that remind us how important it is to protect the planet we live on. The week was also met with a bit of good news, as a report surfaced stating that President Barack Obama will most likely reject the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. Apple took the opportunity to revamp its environmental-responsibility website, highlighting its new green initiatives -- including building a new campus that will be entirely powered by renewable energy. Google announced its biggest renewable-energy purchase to date, investing $100 million to make solar panels more affordable for American homeowners. And Legoland Florida became the country's first theme park to be entirely powered by solar power.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: flexible circuit boards, BMW i3 and the world's first urban algae canopy
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. When you think about transportation innovations, highways probably aren't the first things that come to mind. But Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde recently rolled out the first "smart" highway in the Netherlands -- and it utilizes glow-in-the-dark lane lines, interactive lights and smart road signs to make roadways safer and more sustainable. The skincare company Foreo has come up with a far less practical plan to lessen our need for streetlights: Increase the moon's reflectivity to make the night sky brighter. The bizarre idea calls for coating part of the moon in a reflective surface in order to increase the amount of light it reflects back to the Earth at night.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: sun-powered plane, Baobed treehouse and modular furniture
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Airplanes are major CO2 emitters, but it doesn't need to be that way. For the past several years, two Swiss innovators, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, have been flying around the world in a sun-powered plane, spreading the word about solar power. Last week, the duo announced the debut of the new and improved Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, which they'll use to attempt a flight around the globe. While the Solar Impulse is charting new territory in the skies, Tesla is changing the game on the roads. Last month Tesla sold 1,493 Model S sedans in Norway, breaking a 28-year-old monthly sales record and outselling every other vehicle in the country. Thanks in part to Tesla's success, electric cars are selling at a furious pace: A recent report shows that EV sales are currently growing by more than 100 percent per year. Smaller is better when it comes to urban cars -- especially for parking -- but there are drawbacks to owning a pint-size car. In San Francisco, vandals recently went on a Smart Car-tipping spree, flipping the tiny cars upside down in the middle of the night. A bicycle is still best way to get around the city, both for your health and the health of the planet. In Boston, doctors are now prescribing bike share memberships to obese patients, encouraging exercise instead of medication.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: WarkaWater Tower, kangaroo-like robot and an energy-generating carousel
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. The world is flooded with electronic devices, which add up to a huge e-waste problem -- but if a team of MIT researchers has its way, the gadgets of the future could be made from living cells. The team is working on hybrid materials made from bacteria that could grow anything from solar cells to smartphones. The German engineering company Festo is known for its biomimetic creations, producing everything from flying seagulls to wind turbines that flap their wings like birds. Now the company has developed an energy-efficient robot that hops around like a kangaroo. In green lighting news, Torafu Architects has created a series of recycled glass pendant lamps that are inspired by droplets of water. And Philips has developed a new LED bulb that looks and feels like an incandescent. And for those travelers who just can't seem to fit everything in their carry-on luggage, we present you with the JakToGo, a new jacket that stores up to 10 kg of goods, freeing up space in your suitcase.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Juggernaut Bike, Project Blue and a skyscraper made of desert sand
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. It's been a big week for architecture -- especially the futuristic kind. First, winners were announced for the 2014 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, a contest that challenges designers to create buildings that are beautiful as well as problem-solvers. Top honors were earned by Sand Babel: a twisting, solar-powered, 3D-printed skyscraper built from desert sand. Then there's the extraordinary Hyper Filter Skyscraper, which is designed to inhale carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and exhale oxygen. China's ongoing air-pollution crisis seems to have inspired more than one designer, as an honorable mention also went to Project Blue, a skyscraper that could actually transform air pollution into green energy.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: floating skate ramp, foldable electric bicycle and a 3D-printed sneaker
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. The Earth is a mysterious place. Scientists recently discovered a small, rough diamond that reveals the existence of an ocean of water more than 250 miles below the Earth's surface. But that's not all: A German company has figured out how to produce super-strong spider silk from genetically modified E. Coli bacteria. Electric vehicles have been picking up steam around the world. Case in point: Norway is set to become the first country in the world with one electric vehicle on the road for every 100 cars.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: human diamonds, floating farm and a 13-year-old nuclear fusioneer
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Ever wish you could take a bite out of Kanye West? A new (possibly satirical) startup is taking meat alternatives to an absurd new level, with plans to make salami from animal meat and human tissue from celebrities. No word yet on what Kanye thinks of the venture. In other weird science news, a Swiss company says it is creating diamonds from cremated human remains. The company claims that its so-called memorial diamonds are almost indistinguishable from a typical diamond.