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Entries Tagged as 'sustainability'

u.k. crematorium plans to convert corpses into electricity

December 11th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Burning corpses generates a lot of heat, and a crematorium in East Sussex plans to convert that energy into usable electricity to reduce its own power costs — essentially turning dead bodies into a renewable energy source.
“A crematorium uses vast amounts of energy,” says Hastings Borough Council amenities manager Peter Mead. “We buy about £25,000 […]

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Tags: curio · energy · environment · invention · neato · sustainability · tech

50 cars recycled to make one “bus”

May 11th, 2009 · No Comments

Sweden’s Flygbussarna bus company has built a 300-ton “bus” out of 50 crushed cars, to highlight the fact that each of its buses can potentially take 50 cars worth of emissions out of our air. They’re calling it a bus, but it’s really more a rectangular heap of twisted metal, with wheels tacked on […]

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Tags: art · consumer · curio · do something · environment · europe · neato · sustainability · transport

list of metals we’ll run out of in 42 years (with bonus wacko cult)

April 24th, 2009 · No Comments

The New Scientist has put together a neat-o graphic detailing how many years we can sustain our current consumption of lead, zinc, aluminum and other metals. If they’re right, we’ll run out of chromium, copper, antimony, zinc, uranium, tin, tantalum, silver, platinum, lead, indium and gold within the next 42 years, with huge implications […]

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Tags: do something · scary · stats · sustainability

gorgeous buddhist beer-bottle temple

November 26th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Knowing that this story combines three of my favourite things — beer, Eastern philosophy and neat-o whatnot — a buddy of mine sent me some info about this most postworthy endeavour.

Lloyd Alter at Treehugger reports:

Fifty years ago the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building block. It […]

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Tags: art · asia · beautiful · curio · design · images · neato · religion · sustainability · whatnot

recipe for disaster: 2 nuclear-armed countries, 1 water crisis, 1 cup shallots

November 24th, 2008 · No Comments

Why shallots? Why not shallots?
From the Times of India:

India would make Pakistan a barren land in the next six years by blocking its water through construction of dams in violation of the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan Indus Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah said on Monday.
[…] Dismissing India’s claim that it had stopped Pakistan’s water […]

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Tags: asia · energy · history · holy crap · india · news · opinion · scary · sustainability · war

student-built car gets 420 miles to the gallon

October 20th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Incidentally, 420 miles is the distance from New York to Boston and back again. In (an admittedly unfair) comparison, Toyota advertises 45mpg (highway) for its Prius.
And the engineering students, by the way, don’t attend classes at M.I.T., Stanford or Cambridge, but rather at the Rashtreeya Vidhyalaya College of Engineering, Bangalore.
From the Times of India:

The […]

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Tags: design · energy · environment · india · invention · neato · sustainability · tech · transport

“drill baby drill” vs. “new energy for america”

September 5th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Not to be a jerk or anything, but it kind of seems like a stupid question: should we find new ways to feed and maintain our addiction to oil, or decrease our reliance on the fossil fuels that are empoverishing our people and altering our fragile climate?
These folks think they have the answer:

I work in […]

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Tags: americas · darn tootin' · dumb · election · energy · environment · government · mccain · movies/tv/video · news · obama · opinion · politics · sustainability · usa

indian buses cut speed, gas and emissions

September 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

Gas prices through the roof? Trust a practical country to come up with a practical solution.

From the Times of India:

The engines of the buses have been tuned to allow a maximum speed of 60 km only, an official said here on Wednesday.
The tuning of the engines would give 0.40 km mileage per litre. “The […]

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Tags: energy · environment · india · neato · sustainability · transport

10,000-year clock billed as “world’s slowest computer”

July 22nd, 2008 · No Comments

For the last little while, vacation time, jet lag and three weeks worth of e-mail/voice mail have joined their sinister forces to create a great sucking whirlpool of unproductiveness and exhaustion — one that pulled my desire to post down to the deepest darkest abysses of the undersea. As of today, I’ve returned home, […]

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Tags: art · beautiful · design · neato · sustainability · tech

microfibre rag makes household cleaners obsolete

June 2nd, 2008 · No Comments

According to BusinessWeek, microfibre rags can remove both dirt and germs, and clean “surfaces mechanically, not chemically, by scraping them with microscopic precision.” In fact, they completely eliminate the need for harsh chemicals like Tilex, Clorox, Windex, Ajax and all those other nasty cleaners that end in “x.” So why are the cabinets […]

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Tags: consumer · environment · neato · sustainability