Category:Sustainability

What kind of solutions can we implement?

Appropriate Technology

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith (video) details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for converting farm waste into cleaner-burning fuel.

In this five minute TEDTalk, William Kamkwamba, a 14 year old African discusses how he built windmill video

Afrigadget site

Tech Museum of Innovation gives awards for great uses of technology to solve problems

Nick Moon & Martin Fisher. Project: ApproTEC (Appropriate Technology for Enterprise Creation).

Nick Moon and Martin Fisher founded ApproTEC out of their belief that poor people don't need handouts, they need concrete opportunities to use their skills and initiative. ApproTEC provides these opportunities by specially designing and manufacturing tools that help people work more productively, allowing them to break the cycle of poverty. Full Video: The New Heroes (ucsc owns: DVD2816)

Green Design

Architecture

Building with recycled materials Michael Reynolds, Earthship Biotechture

Cameron Sinclair, after training as an architect, (then age 24) joined Kate Stohr to found Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit that helps architects apply their skills to humanitarian efforts. Starting with just $700 and a simple web site in 1999, AFH has grown into an international hub for humanitarian design, offering innovative solutions to housing problems in all corners of the globe. TEDTalk video

Whether rebuilding earthquake-ravaged Bam in Iran, designing a soccer field doubling as an HIV/AIDS clinic in Africa, housing refugees on the Afghan border, or helping Katrina victims rebuild, Architecture for Humanity works by Sinclair's mantra: "Design like you give a damn." (Sinclair and Stohr cowrote a book by the same name, released in 2006.)

Cameron Sinclair is a regular contributor to the sustainability blog Worldchanging

Manufacturing

William McDonough (co-author of Cradle to Cradle) TEDTalk video ***

Terry Swack, Founder & CEO, Clean Culture. PARC talk on Sustainable Product Desig

Janine Benyus (TEDtalk video) provides fascinating examples of biomimicry -- the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment.