Green Options » tricycle

Innovate or Die: Aquaduct Water Filtration Tricycle

Rhonda Winter — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:10:51 +0000

Over a billion of our fellow world citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. Over three million people die annually as a result of waterborne diseases, making them the leading cause of death on our planet. Often when clean water is available, it is located miles away and takes hours and much effort to transport. An innovative new tricycle has been invented that could potentially help to solve some of these life-threatening problems.

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The Aquaduct is a pedal-powered vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water. It is the winning design in the “Innovate or Die” contest, which asked people to create pedal-powered solutions to help combat climate change. The novel competition was sponsored by Specialized Bicycles, Google and Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

Mini Cooper Turned Into Rickshaw

Max Lindberg — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:39:28 +0000

Who would have imagined, a luxury rickshaw in Beijing. China’s Legal Evening Post says the tricycle, dubbed “The Other Rickshaw”, was designed and produced by BMW.

The company that owns the vehicle, Chen De Bao, says it’s the only rickshaw of its kind in the world.

According to the article, the passenger area is the original rear half of a Mini car body, completely equipped with safety belts, gold-plated dragons and various other Chinese decorations. In other words, it’s a bicycle pulling a two-wheeled car body.

The driver of the rickshaw, Song, put it mildly, saying it’s “rather” heavy and takes a lot of effort to run.”

Can you imagine a pair of 300-pounders asking for a tour of the city? All downhill, of course.

Posts related to alternative transportation

Image: Ananova

Weekend

serenity_ii — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:26:32 +0000

So I wouldn’t say we were incredibly green this weekend, but we were relatively green.

The dude who lives on the other side of Mr. Obsessively Mowing hadn’t mowed in a long time–longer than it had been for us. So on the weekend, he mowed his yard. . .with a riding mower. . .then used a weedwhacker. . .then used a leafblower. . .then mowed again. . .while smoking. Way to cancel out your lack of pollution, dude.

Bill mowed too–with our reel mower, of course. He is much faster at that than I am. It’s nice to have all the leaves to enrich our soil.

We drove about 40 miles in an old pickup to go on a bike/trike ride. The colors were beautiful, we got to see some cool stuff, and it was a blast! In the beginning I was pulling the kiddo and was having trouble keeping up with Bill, but on the way back he pulled the kiddo and I got up in the 20 MPH range three times (I wouldn’t be utterly shocked to learn I was going 30 the first time, although it was probably more like 25).

We had a picnic. It wasn’t completely environmentally friendly, but we did pretty well. I used baby food containers to hold the pumpkin seeds we scooped out of our pumpkins when we made jack-o’-lanterns. We have two kinds of seeds–salted and sugar & spice. We took pudding (containers are recyclable), applesauce (organic, again in a baby food container), sandwiches (reusable containers), juice (in reused juice bottles), tap water (in Klean Kanteens), baby food (recyclable containers), organic chocolate, not-so-organic chocolate, fruit strips, granola bites, and I don’t know what all. It was an awesome feast, if I do say so myself. I did take a Ziploc bag to hold the silverware so it wouldn’t get the picnic bag messy. We used one recycled napkin.

I gave my son one of my old toys this weekend. Well, really it’s more like four of my old toys that are compatible.

We went to Goodwill to donate a whole bunch of stuff. Clothes, chairs, cookware, drinkware. . .so now there’s more space for the stuff we’ll actually use, which is nice. . .especially in the cookware department. Led to some interesting discussion:

Bill: Why did we get rid of the silicone brownie pan?

Karen: Because we have two glass ones now, so we don’t need to use something that gives off a smell when I use it.

Bill: But we kept our silicone muffin pan.

Karen: That’s because that’s the only one we have left, so if we give it away and I have a cupcake emergency, I’m in trouble. Don’t worry, there’s an iron one on my Christmas list.

Bill: That sounds light.

Karen: But good for us!

Bill: Until somebody drops it on a toe.

Karen: Well, would you rather have a broken toe or cancer?!

Bill: Well. . .either one would take a long time to heal. . .

He does raise a good point. Our gorgeous stainless steel pots and pans are pretty lightweight, but the other stuff we’re converting to is all pretty heavy. I have trouble holding my terra cotta roasting pan steady in one hand (it weighs about nine pounds), which makes it hard to scrape stuff out of it into a container. The glass stuff isn’t too bad, but the iron stuff is heavy and slightly complicated to take care of, since it can’t go in the dishwasher and has to be seasoned. Still, I’m sure it’s worth it. I’ve been smiling a lot in the kitchen lately.