Green Options

It’s not surprising that Outside Lands, a three-day music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, wants to bill itself as being “green”. After all, the fest takes place in one of the country’s most beautiful parks. But does the festival, now in it’s second year, succeed in its aspirations of sustainability? Read below to find out.

Even with increased numbers of hybrid vehicles hitting the road, UPS and FedEx trucks guzzle lots of gas. What if we could take them off the streets altogether? The Urban Mole system, developed by designer Philip Hermes, attempts to do that.

The Army knows that extensive alternative energy installations are the best way to ensure continuous, reliable electricity production. That’s why the military organization is building the Department of Defense’s largest ever solar project at the Fort Irwin Base in California’s Mojave Desert.

Our race to find alternative fuels is critical not only because gasoline-powered vehicles emit lots of CO2–it’s also important because we’re running out of the sticky stuff. But what if the Earth could produce fossil fuels without the fossils?

Quick: what do cows and algae have in common? You can milk them both–sort of. L.A.-based OriginOil has developed a technique called LiveExtraction that uses electrical pulses to extract oil from inside of algae without actually killing the algae itself–in other words, OriginOil milks the algae for its oil.

Solar power seems to be the most logical renewable choice in Africa, but that hasn’t stopped the African Development Bank from initiating the Lake Turkana Wind Power project (LTWP)–a $755 million, 66,000 hectare project on the edge of the world’s biggest permanent desert lake. The site is ideal for wind power, as volcanic soil is swept up into the air year round through the channel.

Even the most ardent environmentalists sometimes forget that color-infused fabrics are some of the biggest water users around, sucking up dozens of gallons of water for a single pound of clothing. In a resource-constrained world, that’s no longer acceptable. Colorep., a California sustainable technology company, is trying to make fabric dyeing a water-free prospect with its AirDye process, which uses air instead of water to assist dye in penetrating fiber in products like swimsuits, drapes, and t-shirts.

Those of us who don’t live in developing countries might not always remember that the majority of the world still uses biomass-fired cookstoves that produce smoke and other toxins. It’s a serious problem–indoor air pollution kills 1.6 million people yearly. Enter the SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration, and Electricity), a $33 cookstove developed by researchers at the University of Nottingham that doubles as an electrical generator.

The old saying “step on a crack, break your mother’s back” may not apply to sidewalks for much longer now that MIT researchers have figured out why concrete breaks down. As a result of the discovery, structures like buildings, bridges, and yes, sidewalks, could last for hundreds of years longer than they currently do. A nuclear waste container built to last 100 years could, for example, last 16,000 years.

San Francisco’s new solar-powered bus stops may not make the bus come any faster, but they will at least make the wait a bit more pleasant. The first solar-powered shelter, unveiled last week, contains photovoltaic cells on its roof that power LEDs for night-time vision. Excess power is sent back to the grid.