Category:Sustainability
What kind of solutions can we implement? See also Design Challenges , Economics and Consumption, Education, Energy, also Land Use and Systems Thinking, as well as Solid Waste Entrepreneurship also Transportation and Population. New page: Urban Agriculture
Contents
Big Picture Overview
“A Message from the Future with AOC”: New Film Imagines World Transformed by the Green New Deal video 4/19.
How do we set ourselves on the path to a truly sustainable future? State of the World 2013, the latest in the Worldwatch Institute's annual series, offers the latest and most comprehensive picture of how we can achieve it.
UCSC Sustainability initiatives, including a new Minor, also see Facebook page.
300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds and what to do now ***
World Leaders Say Addressing Climate Change Offers Unprecedented Opportunities for Economic Growth 9/14.
Transition Towns is a worldwide movement originally to cope with climate change and peak oil, but have become more than that. local resources main site.
The Lexicon of Sustainability is a PBS web series based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability. It begins with local, eggs and foraging. 7.12
The first Short Attention Span Science Notebook, the Elements of Sustainability video, demystifies ecological sustainability - the basis for the green movement around the world. What is sustainability? What promotes it? Threatens it? What are the tipping points that push an ecosystem into ruin, or keep it functioning forever? This section explains the basic elements of sustainability and explains how they apply to marine ecosystems.
Time Magazine's Top 20 green ideas.
Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen argues that reducing humanity's ecological footprint is incredibly vital now, as the western consumer lifestyle spreads to developing countries. TEDtalk.
How to Design Our World for Happiness free e-book.
Worldwatch Institutehas yearly State of the Planet reports
More Signs of ‘Peak Us’ in New Study of ‘Peak Oil Demand’ 7/13.
Origins
Victor Papanek was a Vienna born designer and educator widely admired for his advocacy of ecologically and socially responsible designs of products, tools and other objects. His ideas can be summed up as a union of designs that are people centered without neglecting the limits imposed by ecology. Design for a Real World: Human Ecology and Social change (1969). UCSC Library call number: TS171.4.P37 1984
The Green Imperative: Ecology and ethics in design and architecture. (1995). UCSC Library call number TS171.4 .P375 1995
This review on the provides a good background on Papanek’s Green Imperative (1995), including Papanek’s philosophies on scale and economy. The article helps people think through the political economy of going small scale, while generously presenting Papanek’s work. Recommended reading for students thinking about attachment to place.
E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful has also been enormously influential. UCSC HB171 .S384 1999 (we have multiple copies with different call#). online excerpt. E.F. Schumacher. Small is Beautiful Importance of the principle of smallness as being a good thing. David Brower evokes him here (video). Adbusters celebrates him.
Buckminster Fuller (by E.J. Applewhite) Buckminster Fuller had one of the most fascinating and original minds of his century. His essential idea is that even this tiny fragile "Spaceship Earth" has enough resources for everyone if we use them fairly and intelligently. Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts, he was the latest--if not the last--of the New England Transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson. Like the transcendentalists, Fuller rejected the established religious and political notions of the past and adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on the essential unity of the natural world and the use of experiment and intuition as a means of understanding it. But, departing from the pattern of his New England predecessors, he proposed that only an understanding of technology in the deepest sense would afford humans a proper guide to individual conduct and the eventual salvation of society. New anthology also a new collection of scholarly essays New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller including one by Fred Turner, who spoke on the continuing significance of the counterculture at College 8.
Ironically, the creator of fracking was influenced by Fuller: George P. Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability as well as Ken Boulding ansd Schumacher, see Jurgen Schmandt 2010 (UCSC ebook).
Books
(See also Book Recommendations
New sustainability books from Island Press include Straight Up by Joe Romm tackles the hurdles to sustainable energy, also Acting as if Tomorrow Matters. Resilience Thinking, by scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt, presents an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. See also Systems Thinking.
The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth Jeremy Rifkin audio interview 9/19.
David Suzuki has a new book (audio interview) "a, brief, astonishingly readable and uplifting book called The Legacy: An Elder's Vision for our Sustainable Future."
Sustainable Energy-- Without the Hot Air with David MacKayvideo talk); website recommended by Saul Griffith. See Energy.
The Nature of Design: ecology, culture, and human intention by David W. Orr, also Design on the Edge: The Making of a High-Performance Building
Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution by Edward Humes.
How do population, water, energy, food, and climate issues impact one another? What can we do to address one problem without making the others worse? The Post Carbon Reader features essays by some of the world’s most provocative thinkers on the key issues shaping our new century, from renewable energy and urban agriculture to social justice and community resilience. (chapter downloads).
Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman.
American-style consumer capitalism is simply unsustainable, warns former White House adviser James Gustave Speth in his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. (video interview at UC Berzerkely) (another video on economy vs ecology). A co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Speth has been an environmentalist for more than three decades. Speth is dean and professor in the practice of environmental policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. audio interview
Prosperity without Growth? - The Transition to a Sustainable Economy (2009 report). Ahead of the G20 Summit in London, the report calls on leaders to adopt a 12-step plan to make the transition to a fair, sustainable, low-carbon economy.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins (Back Bay Books, 1999). Its simple message—we can save the planet and make money at the same time—laid the blueprint for the 21st-century sustainability movement. Download free chapters.
Environment and Sustainable Development, Spring 2007 This course examines policy responses to environmental problems caused by economic development with special attention to innovation. The central topic of the course is innovation for the environment. (Lecture slides).
To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. In a new book, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, engineer Henry Petroski chronicles disasters from the sinking of the Titanic to the destruction of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Petroski discusses why these accidents are often caused by factors other than a design flaw. audio interview
Video
“A Message from the Future with AOC”: New Film Imagines World Transformed by the Green New Deal video 4/19.
TEDtalks on design and TEDtalks on Green Design.
A Better Planet (video) Yale environmental law professor Daniel Esty presents 40 ideas to move toward ecological sustainability. 1/20
Design Like you Give a Damn and architectural inspiration TEDtalks.
Avery Lovins Rocky Mountain Institute, new report ReInventing Fire on how to get off oil 6/14.
Waste = Food Details the work done by American architect/designer William McDonough and German ecological chemist Michael Braungart, who are attempting to make architecture and manufacturing more eco-friendly. Highlights several companies' efforts to implement these principles into their production methods. McHenry DVD7135. Recommended *** McDonough is part of Google funded CA green design institute. video of Cradle to Cradle Institute and McDonough interview on Hubculture. Bioneers 2000 talk still relevant (other videos here also). [Stanford 2009 talk] in-depth 2009 Bioneers talk. 2009 UC talk 90 min. Fantastic 2007 TEDtalk on design. Update of Chinese eco-city travails.
The Top Five Climate Videos of 2017 12/17 see Global Warming.
The Microtopia documentary explores the ideas of moving toward a more reasonable and appropriate approach to lower-impact living, especially in a world that's increasingly focused on mobile and portable solutions.
The PostCarbon Institute has great resources about how to build a resilient future, including videos on fracking etc.
Energy from floating algae pods Call it "fuel without fossils": Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities.
Dan Phillips: Creative houses from reclaimed stuff.
Yale's 10 minute video presents highlights of an interview with Dr. Paul Raskin about his views on the pathways necessary to achieve a sustainable planetary civilization in the near-term future.
In Carbon Nation, "director Peter Byck covers an impressively wide range of ground within his film's compact running time as he introduces us to a stirring cross-section of pioneers, researchers and innovators committed to helping the world reduce its carbon footprint."
e² is a critically acclaimed, multipart PBS series about the innovators and pioneers who envision a better quality of life on earth: socially, culturally, economically and ecologically. e2 design also available on snagfilms.
Joel Salatin, featured in Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, on relocalization.
No Impact Man is the story of a family in New York that does an experiment: live for a year without impacting the environment. Surprisingly entertaining and enlightening.
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. (TEDtalk video).
Green Builders PBS 2009
Planet Forward is where experts and engaged citizens weigh in on energy, climate and sustainability. We're looking for your innovative ideas, informed opinion and first-hand experience. We take the best ideas and feature them online and on TV. The series explores attainable solutions to pressing environmental and social challenges, and its stories are culled from a variety of fields including design, energy, transport, water, food and urban development. Episodes have profiled Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus’s efforts to bring renewable energy to Bangladesh’s rural poor through microfinance; architect William McDonough and his “cradle-to-cradle” design philosophy; and former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa’s sweeping redesign of that city’s transportation network, emphasizing alternatives to automobile culture.
Denmark’s Samso Island, in 1998, population 4,000, won a national contest with a bold plan to completely switch to renewable energy. In just ten short years, the island has achieved its goal of becoming carbon-neutral. Residents use wind, sun — and even rapeseed oil — to power their homes and cars.
Mathieu Lehanneur shows a selection of his ingenious designs -- an interactive noise-neutralizing ball, an antibiotic course in one layered pill, asthma treatment that reminds kids to take it, a living air filter, a living-room fish farm and more. TEDtalk
Think you've faced some tough design challenges? Try a ten thousand year clock (video overview)
Humorous examples of bad design.
Paul MacCready, an aircraft designer and environmentalist, is a pioneer of human-powered flight, alternative energy for transportation, and environmentally responsible design. TEDtalk video.
Aquaponics combines fish with organic gardening. TEDtalk video.
Designer Emily Pilloton moved to rural Bertie County, in North Carolina, to engage in a bold experiment of design-led community transformation. She's teaching a design-build class called Studio H that engages high schoolers' minds and bodies while bringing smart design and new opportunities to the poorest county in the state. TEDtalk (video). She works at inhabitat.com. She founded Project H Design has a YouTube Channel, a good intro. Her book: Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Vimeo.
Amos Winter: The cheap all-terrain wheelchair. How do you build a wheelchair ready to blaze through mud and sand, all for under $200? MIT engineer Amos Winter guides us through the mechanics of an all-terrain wheelchair that’s cheap and easy to build -- for true accessibility -- and gives us some lessons he learned along the road. TEDtalk.
Dr. Dariush Rafinejad discusses the opportunities and challenges in sustainable product innovation. Link 1/11
Tom Szaky visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business." This event took place on May 21, 2009, as part of the Green@Google series.***
Entrepreneur Ray Anderson visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his new book "Confessions of a Radical Industrialist." October 2009. His TEDtalk and book excerpt. interview.
What Your Designs Say About You. Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and what the good life is are reflected in the design of objects around us.
Are We the Designers or the Designed? with Jason Silva. Whether we're conscious of it or not, the things we design can design us as well.(from BigThink). Important because some people misinterpret that Ecotopians are these saintly beings who are better than we are, but they ARE us. Silva echoes Douglas Engelbart that we ca make better tools to make us smarter to make better tools until we can take on "wicked problems like climate change.
Audio
Designing for Sea Level Rise LOE 9/10
Solar cookers 7.12
Infrastructure in the United States is under-funded and woefully outdated. NPR's Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood hears two different views on how to reform our ailing grid. Nick Rosen, author of “Off the Grid,” suggests decentralizing utilities, while Scott Huler, who wrote “On the Grid,” wants to stay plugged in and work to improve the system. audio and text
Strategy for Sustainability At age 23, environmentalist Adam Werbach became the youngest-ever president of The Sierra Club. Werbach is also the founder and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, the world's largest green PR and consulting firm. He joins the program for a discussion on sustainability and other green ideas. 7/09
Sustainability, part of the Global Challenges Series from the Purdue University College of Engineering. (audio) 4/09
General Ideas on Design and Creativity
(See also Real-izing your Dream)
Infographic on creative process Play, and innovation.
Design as democracy:Techniques for collective creativity Allen, Diane, et al. (Eds.). (2017). Island Press.
2014 Impact! Design for Social Change webinar series–a collaborative production by the School of Visual Arts, Design Ignites Change, and Worldstudio includes Project H's Emily Pilloton.
Big Think Design for Good blog example: invisible bike helmet, eco-bricks and Spirit Tree.
How to brainstorm and how NOT to, from the Stanford d-School(video overview, see also below). Stanford crash courseon Design Thinking (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test): 90 minutes hands-on, video. ****
Jack Hitt is the author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character; he recommends a TEDx talk by Meredith Perry on why you don't need a engineering degree to be a designer. (video)
Bruce Mau has been inspired by nature, wants to redesign the world, and he may well rock yours. Another profile Interactive version of his "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" Here's a text excerpt. Here's a downloadable complete version. Video compilation. Longer interview.
Jonah Lehrer's new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, audio interview and excerpt (full text interview) podcast.
TEDtalks on design (curated) all.most viewed
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the internet -- that her agency has created by not worrying that they might fail. (TEDtalk video)
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. I am a strong advocate of serious play. Play and school—as well as play and work—are often treated as contradictory ideas, yet it is though play—and games—that we explore, discover, and learn. The authors of Gamestorming get that. There are 83 games introduced in the book that are explained clearly and simply. You can choose the games to fit your needs and your situation.
As a creative director at Ideo, Paul Bennett reminds us that design need not invoke grand gestures or sweeping statements to be successful, but instead can focus on the little things in life. TEDtalk video. IDEO, the hottest design firm around (60 Minutes profile), has a Social Impact] design group that has created a free downloadable Human Centered Design Toolkit, a free innovation guide for NGOs and Social Enterprises. You can search their projects. IDEO, the hottest design firm around, has a Social Impact design group that has created a free downloadable Human Centered Design Toolkit, a free innovation guide for NGOs and Social Enterprises. You can search their projects. Method cards/app. Examples: clean water and hearing aid (video). IDEO's Tim Brown on creativity and play (TEDtalk video). TEDxSanJoseCA - Chris Waugh - Can we Use Design to Make Life More Interesting?.
Journalist John Hockenberry tells a personal story inspired by a pair of flashy wheels in a wheelchair-parts catalogue -- and how they showed him the value of designing a life of intent. (Tedtalk video).
Tim Brown on creativity and play (TEDtalk video).
Yves Behar has produced some of the new millennium's most coveted objects, like the Leaf lamp, the Jawbone headset, and the XO laptop for One Laptop per Child. (TEDtalk video).
Stanford Seminar on People, Computers, and Design (CS547) video
Dean Kamen, inventor of Segway, speaks about creation of prosthetic limbs. TEDtalk video. he has also created an amazing power source and water distiller for Third World countries TEDtalk video.
Kelli Anderson re-designs commonplace objects to go beyond their ordinary functions and create surprising experiences, from wedding invitations to Utopian newspapers. TEDtalk video.
Inspired By Nature (Bio-mimicry)
Includes Bio-remediation
Overviews:
Overview from Yes magazine cites William McDonough (see elsewhere on this page as well as Eco-Heroes) provides a fine foundation in his Bioneers 2000 talk still relevant (other videos also).Waste = Food, a brilliant documentary featuring William McDonough (co-author of Cradle to Cradle) and:
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus TEDtalk video.. More recent audio interview.
Amory Lovins and Janine Benyus, cofounder of the Biomimicry Institute, “Abundance by Design: Lessons from Nature,” which explores how an integrative design approach that emulates nature’s time-tested strategies can help us create energy policies and systems that are truly sustainable. 7/18 video.
Examples
How a Plastic-Eating Caterpillar Could Help Solve the World’s Waste Crisis 3/20
Researchers Turn Algae Into a Material as Hard as Steel 10/19.
Pollution Doesn’t Stand a Chance Against This Living Technology An early experiment at a city landfill showed how algae and sunlight can repair environmental damage. 3/19
IT’S TIME TO TAKE PHYTOREMEDIATION SERIOUSLY 2/16.
Biophilic design is a term elevated by famed evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, based on our innate emotional attachment to and affinity for nature.
How an Ecological Approach to Architecture Can Help Reinvent Urban Food Systems 12/17 By weaving together infrastructure, urbanism and ecology, architecture is a perfect medium to envision the sustainable food systems of the future. see food.
UCSC Folk:
Energy from floating algae pods Call it "fuel without fossils": UCSC's Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities. He has done prototypes in Santa Cruz (TEDtalk 9/12).
UCSC's Marco Rolandi works with Materials Science and Engineering Initiative focuses on sustainability 6/17 associate professor of electrical engineering who looks to biological systems for inspiration in developing innovative materials, including biocompatible materials for implantable medical devices. One spin-off from his lab is a biodegradable alternative to polyurethane and polystyrene foams for surfboards, uses shrimp shells, discarded by the millions of tons per year, to make a sustainable structural foam. see slugs in action.
Concrete/Cement:
UCSC's Brent Constantz developed technology to make "green" cement that could help slow global warming and ocean acidification based on a revolutionary product for healing broken bones inspired by the research on coral reefs he had conducted as a UCSC graduate student. His latest company, Calera, captures carbon emitted by power plants and converts it into a form that can be reused to make "green cement" (the standard manufacturing process for the cement used in concrete releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere). Calera's subsidiary, Moss Landing Cement Company, has built several pilot plants and a large-scale demonstration plant at Moss Landing, just down the coast from Santa Cruz.
Scientists Probe 'Glue' That Keeps Oysters Together reported by Slug Joe Palka, NPR radio.
How Mushrooms Could Repair Our Crumbling Infrastructure 9/17.
To Make Fracture-Resistant Concrete, Let a Sea Urchin Be Your Guide 12/17.
EVER HEAR OF A SELF-HEALING BUILDING? JUST WAIT! concrete progress. 6/15.
Super-strong ‘wonder material’ is made with just algae, water, and sunlight Nano-cellulose, GMO 4/13.
Big Think Design for Good blog example: eco-bricks and Spirit Tree.
Texas Oyster Reef Restoration Project Begins In Gulf Of Mexico. Also NYC 10/14. Can toilets revive New York City’s oyster population? 9/16.
Using nature to grow batteries. Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels and record-breaking solar cells (Video TEDtalk).
A tiny marine creature called a chiton might hold the key to better artificial teeth and bones. This rather unexpected possibility comes from a relatively new branch of science called biomaterials. NPR audio text and image. 1/11.
Other Examples
Could 'Bionic Mushrooms' Be the Future of Renewable Energy? 11/18 see Mushrooms.
Vertical Ocean Farms That Nourish Humans and the Planet 12/17.
In the fight to protect our food and health, bugs and germs may also be part of the solution. Natural Defense by veteran science writer Emily Monosson is the first book to bring readers into this exciting new world. A follow-up to her “eye-opening” book Unnatural Selection excerpt.
This Tiny Caterpillar Could Help Solve the World's Plastic Crisis 4/17 see Plastic .
A GARDEN GROWS IN A SUPERFUND SITE.
WE CAN MIMIC NATURE TO BETTER MANAGE WATER.
Hype(r)loop, Elon Musk mass transit concept PBS video. 5/16. See Transit.
First Ever 100% Edible Six-Pack Ring Feeds Marine Animals Instead of Killing Them 5/16
Whale-Shaped Floating Garden Designed to Clean the World's Rivers 3/15.
“Superbug” Threat because of 80% of antibiotics used on farm animals. 3/15 but sharks may have answer.
Diapers Made From Jellyfish May Be The Next Big Thing In Green Parenting] 4/14.
Mine Kafon; a bamboo tumbleweed that clears landmines.
Scientists Accidentally Develop 'Mutant' Enzyme That Eats Plastic 4/18.
Saltwater agriculture is possible examples include Mexico and growing crops and shrimp in Eritrea in Africa.
Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of change. She shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit. (Video TEDtalk)Update 9/12. This involves oysters for bio-remediation (see mushrooms Mushrooms)
Groasis uses mushrooms to grow other crops in the desert.
Scientists create digital watch powered by cyborg lobsters Grist.
Aquaponics combines fish with organic gardening. TEDtalk video.
Fiorenzo Omenetto shares 20+ astonishing new uses for silk, one of nature's most elegant materials -- in transmitting light, improving sustainability, adding strength and making medical leaps and bounds. (Video TEDtalk).
How Crushed Volcanic Rock in Farm Soil Could Help Slow Global Warming — and Boost Crops: A new study explores how planet-warming carbon dioxide could be absorbed using ‘enhanced rock weathering,’ a natural process sped up to fight climate change. 2/18Global Warming.
Grow Your own Clothes. TED Fellow Suzanne Lee is a fashion designer turned biological conjurer, who gleefully plays with new materials and processes (bacterial cellulose). (video)
In his book The Perfect Swarm, Len Fisher talks about swarm intelligence — where the collective ideas of a group add up to better solutions than any individual could have dreamed up, including an example of how UPS reorganized its driving routes using the logic of an ant colony. (interview)
Naomi Ehrich Leonard, marine roboticist. A Princeton University professor, won a MacArthur Genius grant. Leonard constructs autonomous underwater vehicles that mimic flocking birds and assist in the understanding of ocean dynamics article
UCBerzerkeley is building an artificial leaf, a super-efficient solar power source. (Audio)
Climbing devices based on geckos
"Captain Organic," Ross Lovegrove embraces nature as the inspiration for his "fat-free" design. TEDtalk video.
Shimon Steinberg looks at the difference between pests and bugs -- and makes the case for using good bugs to fight bad bugs, avoiding chemicals in our quest for perfect produce. TEDtalk video.
Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. TEDtalk video.
John Todd created a "living machine" to purify water. video.
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the internet -- that her agency has created by not worrying that they might fail. (TEDtalk video)
Mushrooms (AKA bio-remediation).
How Mushrooms Could Repair Our Crumbling Infrastructure 9/17
Are mushrooms the new plastic? (TEDtalk video).Insulation and packaging — both made from mushrooms. Bayer came up with the idea as a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York and developed it with classmate Gavin McIntyre. Now the two have a company called Ecovative Design (audio and video), which won the [Buckminster Fuller Challenge].
6 ways mushrooms can save the world inclues bio-remediation, explained in his book Mycelium Running S&E Stacks QK601 .S73 2005 (TEDtalk. ***Paul Stamets has also designed the LifeBox for planting trees. His video channel.
video discussion with Mushroom Mtn SC
Two UCB students give up finance and become social entrepreneurs, using coffee waste to grow organic mushrooms (video).
Plant based solar energy 2/12 GMO virus assembles nanotubes for solar.
Groasis uses mushrooms to grow other crops in the desert.
Appropriate Technology
This category refers to design which will work in developing Third World countries, sometimes with local tools and materials, or more high tech approaches which allows for leap-frogging traditional development, for example copper phone lines. See also Eco-Elders.
Scientists Use the Dark of Night to Generate Clean Energy 10/19 ancient technique!
Fridge0: an open source hardware solar fridge with no battery requirement 9/19
Cool Tools by Kevin Kelley is an updated version of the Whole Earth Catalog (see Stewart Brand); not all low tech.
Can Microgrids Bring Low-Carbon Power to Tens of Millions of People? 1/14.
The $20 prosthetic knee that could change lives in India 2/15.
Student Designed Water Filtration System Save Millions Of Lives 10/13.
Disaster housing made from water bottles solves two needs at once
Charge your phone with pee 7/13.
Appropedia a wikipedia for Appropriate Technology, which is low cost often green design for people in developing countries.
Cheap drip irrigation. another model.
Stanford design student and engineer Dave Evans visited Ethiopia and found that families spend $20 or more a year buying $4 clay cooking discs called mitads for making the flat injera bread that is a mainstay of their diet. Most mitads break in less than three months. Evans’ innovation: put a steel band around the clay mitad, which enables it to last for years instead of months. The cost of the Mighty Mitad: just $6, in production.
Originally meant for hikers, the BioLite CampStove, which converts wood-burning fire into electricity to charge cellphones, could revolutionize disaster relief. review
bike powered e-Waste recycling device.
This billboard sucks water out of the air and delivers it to families below
Cooking pot charges your gadgets while heating your soup .
14-Year-old is America's Top Young Scientist: Her Solar-Powered Jug Purifies Water 11/12 (video).
Baby Incubator Of the four million babies worldwide who die in the first month of life, one million die on their first day. After seeing countless piles of discarded medical device donations behind every hospital we visited overseas, Design That Matters started asking the question, "What does gets fixed? The answer: cars. So they designed an incubator made from car parts . (video). See also:
Students at Stanford d-school in the Extreme Affordability class designed a $25 incubator for premature babies (normally $20,000 and require electricity)and a deep lift human powered well pump. George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of the d.school (aka Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) Complete talk.
Gravity (sand) powered LED lights.
New solar cookersaudio interview 7.12
MIT Course: Disseminating Innovations for the Common Good 2007. Another MIT D-Lab course 2005.
Design for the Other 90% by Cynthia Smith S&E Stacks TS171.4 .D47 2007 Design with the Other 90%: part 2 CITIES is a book and exhibit from the Smithsonian.
You've probably heard about the hundred dollar laptop (TEDtalk video), which provides a rugged, easy to use but powerful tool to kids in the developing world. The Bee is a mobile computing system that allows communication, connectivity and data access in field conditions where such technologies are often difficult or impossible to use. As access to both power and connectivity are limiting factors in many emergency and field settings, the Bee has been built with these limitations in mind. It can be charged with solar power, a car battery, or a conventional power source and can use WiFi, GSM Networks, a FM radio transmitter, or a satellite uplink to communicate.
Envaya aims not just to help connect the 2 billion-plus people worldwide who currently have no access to the internet, but to help these populations build the foundations of civil society. It could also help super-charge the global environmental movement More. 3/11
Solar Water Disinfecting Tarpaulin, a flexible, adaptable vessel to render it simpler and more effective for both carrying water and making it safe to drink. Winner of NextGen design competition (see Design Challenges Page for more), and was inspired by Kennedy’s Portable Light Prototype—a small, lightweight mat containing solid-state lighting and solar cells. The mat absorbs the sun’s rays during the day and provides illumination for up to eight hours at night.
The Open Source Ecology team's first, ambitious project is the Global Village Construction Set -- a sort of life-size Erector set of the most essential machines for building a "small civilization with modern-day comforts," (video), including housing and the means for food, energy, and technology production. TEDtalk video 4/11. their wiki. Open source brick machine: the evolution.
The Solar Suitcase promotes safe motherhood and reduces maternal mortality in developing regions by providing health workers with reliable lighting, mobile communication, and blood bank refrigeration using solar electricity. UCB project, winner of CITRIS design competition.
Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, eyeglasses,prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone. TEDtalk video
Solar water heaters made from plastic soda bottles video
A group of Harvard students is harnessing the power of the world's most popular sport. They've built a soccer ball that charges with every kick, and post game can power a light.
Bicycle Ambulance, video , another site
Quadir is the now-legendary founder of GrameenPhone, which transformed his home country of Bangladesh in the 1990s and led the way for the cellphone revolution throughout the developing world. Currently Quadir heads the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and is building Emergence BioEnergy Inc., a project to develop local electricity for the rural poor, using such devices as a fuel cell that runs on anaerobic bacteria. Linking new technology with the boundless resourcefulness of the poor drives innovation in surprising directions at surprising speed. video excerpt. A follow-up summary is available here. Longnow.org
Josh Silver delivers his brilliantly simple solution for correcting vision at the lowest cost possible -- adjustable, liquid-filled lenses. Low cost eye care. TEDtalk video
Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These structures are still used today -- and are often superior to modern water megaprojects. TEDtalk video
Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year (PBS video) 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. He has written a book
Afrigadget site shows ingenious design solutions.
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)
Hippo Roller is a great way to transport clean water, a task that often consumes hours a day for many women, but is essential for health (see Water page). Emily Pilloton founded Project H Design to bring elegant, appropriate technology to where it’s most needed. (audio interview)
Solar cookstove breakthrough 9/13.
Biochar is helping transform agriculture in India. It's made for the purpose of adding it to soil as fertilizer, and since charcoal is a stable solid rich in carbon content, it can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Global 3000
UCSC alum Evelyn Strauss (’98) is executive director of Scientists Without Borders, a web-based collaborative community dedicated to generating, sharing, and advancing innovative science and technology-based solutions to the world's most pressing global development challenges.
Repurposing/DIY
(see also Consumption)
MAKE Magazine, a major driver in DIY renaissance (and sponsors of the amazing Maker Faire in May), have a green category and contest. Example: bamboo and recycled material greenhouse. Make Magazine sponsors the annual Maker Faire in late May. It has lots of great ideas/groups working on sustainability, for example water recycling, solar cooking, worms/composting. green projects include a house made from a futon, and sea scavanger.
Repair:
'Right to Repair': Fixing Our Own Broken Stuff Should Be Standard 1/19.
The Endangered Repairman from Yes Magazine.
iFixit, a free resource that provides comprehensive repair guides, troubleshooting tips and a community of technicians ready to help you fix your gadget, household appliance or vehicle. TechShop has any tool you could possibly need.
Dutch Repair Cafes fix stuff for free to keep it out of landfills.
Other
If You Build It follows a group of young Canadians strive for a more sustainable way of life by figuring out how to generate their own power via a homemade wind turbine. 9/14.
Open Source DIY beehive to help with Colony Collapse Disorder inspired by Wikihouse project.
Open source ocean robots TEDtalk video.
What is a hacker? video intro] (warning puppets). Hacker spaces such a Techshop and Biocurious (GMO's).
Video of repurposing of electronics.
Making a cardboard bike (video). See also Bikes page.
Bike powered electricity(video). how to.
Genuinely gorgeous, if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it patio furniture made from recycled food and drink packaging.
Greenmuze has fun, if not always completely practical ideas, including fantastical cardboard structures. [See also http://inhabitat.com/ inhabitat.com].
Vertical garden out of an old wooden pallet would work great on dorm balcony.
Striking lamps made from recycled materials.
Arvind Gupta shares simple yet stunning plans for turning trash into seriously entertaining, well-designed toys that kids can build themselves -- while learning basic principles of science and design. TEDtalk video.
Spontaneous Vegetation shows how to make urban living sustainable by foraging for food (be an urbavore ;), composting human waste etc.
Hackfarming with recycled materials.
Guatemala school built with plastic bottles as insulation (idea spreading rapidly)Link (images)
The Open Source Ecology team's first, ambitious project is the Global Village Construction Set -- a sort of life-size Erector set of the most essential machines for building a "small civilization with modern-day comforts," including housing and the means for food, energy, and technology production.
Human powered snowplows. See also Transportation
DIY Bike truck Another design from Instructables
Spectacular wooden bikes made from salvaged urban trees.
Make your own green cleaning products.
Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike. TEDtalk video
Plastic Island. Richard Sowa tied together over 120,000 plastic bottles and built himself a floating island, featuring a garden with a pond and a two-story house.
Twelve by Twelve. Having recently returned from years in the Bolivian rain forest, environmental activist Powers experienced a nearly debilitating form of culture shock upon his reentry into the heart of American consumerism. His salvation came from ardent permaculturist Dr. Jackie Benton, who offered Powers the use of her spartan cabin in rural North Carolina. Living among other “wildcrafters”—organic farmers, furniture artisans, and eco-developers—Powers learned firsthand what it means to be self-sufficient.
Steampunk is an artistic movement that recycles old but beautiful materials to create an alternate history. (video overview)
Nowtopia is a book about a new politics of work. It profiles tinkerers, inventors, and improvisational spirits who bring an artistic approach to important tasks that are ignored or undervalued by market society.
Green Design
Background
Green Design overview.
William McDonough (see elsewhere on this page as well as Eco-Heroes) provides a fine foundation in his Bioneers 2000 talk still relevant (other videos also).
Waste = Food, a brilliant documentary featuring William McDonough (co-author of Cradle to Cradle)
Biophilic design process. WHAT KIND OF DESIGN TRIGGERS HEALING? 8/15.
LIVING STRUCTURES SHOULD COME FROM LIVING PATTERNS A dozen living patterns selected from Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language (Alexander et al., 1977) (architecture).
Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity by Peggy Holman, see also permaculture and Systems Thinking
Sites
GreenMuze is a reliable source, as is Grist List as well as Inhabitat
GreenMuze has beautiful and cutting edge designs. For example, American designer Eric Stoddard’s solution to the problem of urban congestion is a sustainable three-wheeled, electric-assist HPV TrikE. Also algae-powered airships which someday may rule the skies, and a real airship. Also a trawling net that lessens bycatch.
Global Possibilities architecture as well as Design.
Eco-watch architecture.
Examples
Hype(r)loop, Elon Musk mass transit concept PBS video. 5/16. See Transit.
Californians Are Keeping Dirty Energy Off the Grid via Text Message:When power demand rises, OhmConnect sends out a text to customers: cut your energy use and you'll earn money. It's keeping demand spikes under control. 11/17
Creating a Sustainable Future: 5 Essential Reads includes micro-algae food 12/17.
Earthships: 100% Sustainable, Inexpensive Off-Grid Homes Made From Recycled Materials (Video) Grow your own food, produce your own energy and reduce your carbon footprint in an Earthship home 8/17.
First Ever 100% Edible Six-Pack Ring Feeds Marine Animals Instead of Killing Them 5/16
Cactivism purifies water, creates food. 9/15.
Giant Solar Floating Farm Could Produce 8,000 Tons of Vegetables Annually (Aztecs way ahead of us here) 6/15 See Food.
The Shape of Green a review co-author of Women in Green.
Eko Atlantic – Climate Change Apartheid Eko Atlantic, being built just off Lagos along Nigeria’s Coast and designed to house 250,000 is slated to be completed in 2016.Its whole purpose, developers say, is to “arrest the ocean’s encroachment”.
Cleveland Rocks: From ‘Mistake on the Lake’ to ‘Green City on a Blue Lake’ 5/15.
The Delancey Underground project envisions a fresh approach to solar technology-- using innovative fiber optics to reflect light underground, saving electricity and reducing carbon emissions, and generating the capacity for plants, trees, and grasses to thrive indoors. The "LowLine" is essentially part of the next phase in urban design, in which human scale and increasing resource scarcity force us to imagine smarter, more creative use of public spaces. Google talk. (video).
IDEO's Valerie Casey is rallying the creative community to her version of a Kyoto treaty for designers.
Agriculture see also Urban Agriculture
agroecology rainforest projects.
Giant Solar Floating Farm Could Produce 8,000 Tons of Vegetables Annually (Aztecs way ahead of us here) 6/15.
Architecture (See also Land Use)
Eco-watch architecture.
The architect transforming cities into 'vertical forests' 12/19.
As the climate changes, architects and engineers need to design buildings differently 10/19. see Global Warming.
Couple built a two-story house for $12,000 12/18.
Earthships: 100% Sustainable, Inexpensive Off-Grid Homes Made From Recycled Materials (Video) Grow your own food, produce your own energy and reduce your carbon footprint in an Earthship home 8/17.
Garbage Warrior The epic story of radical Earthship eco architect Michael Reynolds, and his fight to build off-the-grid self-sufficient communities. Colbert Report. Building with recycled materials Michael Reynolds, Earthship Biotechture 9/09 PBS segment with images. **** Gallery.Earthship (video) homes are built from recycled materials, and require no imputs or outputs. College 8 needs a provost house with an ocean view. hmmn...Fresh out of architectural school in 1972, Michael Reynolds immediately started to question much of what he had just learned. Why build houses with trees when forests are something we want to preserve? Why pay for electricity, water, and heat when all of it can be provided off-the-grid using existing materials and renewable resources like wind, rain, and solar? Reynolds set out to design a home built from dirt, tires, aluminum cans and other repurposed objects and so successful others began to take notice. Now, an entire community lives in these unusual homes called ‘Earthships’ in Taos, New Mexico.
Biophilic design process. WHAT KIND OF DESIGN TRIGGERS HEALING? 8/15.
Epic Urban Treehouse Offers Glimpse Into Future Living.
GreenMuze has interesting and sometimes beautiful designs, example the HIVE Project is a sustainable carfree alternative lifestyle and artistic community concept design created from recycled steel shipping containers planned for Houston, Texas.
Another GreenMuze example, a fantastical photovoltaic panel-covered Ferris Wheel Greenhouse, constructed from recycled cars and featuring a large-scale wind turbine, was the winner of the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. Fibrous Tower
Global Possibilities architecture examples.
Architects LAB.PRO.FAB seeks to understand the city as a social system, and the built environment as the shaper of that system.
Designboom top Ten Architectural Design Stories of 2014
Exponential City Growth Presents 'Window Of Opportunity' For Companies, The Environment 4/14.
City planner Jeff Speck has found the panacea for our ailing cities, something that could make even Detroit come to life again: walking. His new book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. video. He was co-author of Suburban Nation 2000. TEDtalkHow do we solve the problem of the suburbs? Urbanist Jeff Speck shows how we can free ourselves from dependence on the car -- which he calls "a gas-belching, time-wasting, life-threatening prosthetic device" 10/13.
State Architect and UC Berkeley professor emeritus Sim Van der Ryn was championing innovations like solar roof panels and rainwater catchment systems before most people had even heard of them. The former state architect of California has a new book, "Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting to People, Nature and Self." audio interview and links.
Island Press (go Slugs!) has a number of books on sustainability and urban planning. Global City Blues by Daniel Solomon " is a book about the making of cities and the buildings that compose them. It is about the conditions under which an architect engaged in those activities now works, how those conditions evolved and why they are changing. Another is Stewardship of the Built Environment: Sustainability, Preservation, and Reuse by Robert A. Young.
Futuristic phytoplankton farm could restore equilibrium in oceans 11/13.
House made from shipping containers 4/14.
Pop-up transformer converts vacant storefronts into “community incubators”
Building that cleans air.(another example) If we have to build parking garages, we might as well use them for yoga and weddings.
Top 10 green buildings 4/12 (images).
Designing Sailbots to Mop Up Oil Spills 9/12.
Floating buildings to deal with sea level rise.
Design turns New York’s parking lots into awesome prefab apartment buildings.
Much demonized by the Tea Party, who believe that even energy efficient light bulbs are part of a plot to enslave us, these hobbit houses don't seem so terrible. link. 10/11
Jaime Lerner is renowned as an architect and urban planner, having been mayor of Curitiba, capital of Paraná, interview. Here is a TEDtalk. A Convenient Truth is a documentary about Curitiba. See also Curitiba: A Global Model For Development by Bill McKibben
Californian architect Obie Bowman has designed the perfect off-the-grid cabin situated on the Oregon coast. The tiny 325sq.ft (30sq.m) sustainable get-a-way features photovoltaic panels, solar hot water, rainwater collection & natural air ventilation.
Screwdriver is only tool needed to build super-insulated Pop-Up House.
Wind tower also allows free green AC.
Meadow House mostly underground, but lots of light and air.
At TEDxPortofSpain, Mark Raymond encourages city governments to let go of their old notions of success and consider the balance of environment, economy, and society to design cities for social change. (video) 3/12
Jane Jacobs wrote a pioneering book on cites, which has inspired green thinking.
The thin green line: Investing in urban parks. PBS Need to Know 9/10. TEDtalk on NY High Line. 5 urban green spaces (photos).
Value of greenspace in urban areas
Green Roofsand Vertical farming
Builder Dan Phillips tours us through a dozen homes he's built in Texas using recycled and reclaimed materials in wildly creative ways. TEDtalk video
Living large in a tiny house. Microhouses as well as plans/budgets.
Clip on greenhouses for apartments designed by students.
Peter Jon Pearce caught Charles Eames’s eye with a sophisticated bent-plywood lounge chair he made in college and was soon offered a job. Flash forward 50 years to Malibu, California, where Pearce’s new EcoHouse prototype is the culmination of a lifelong quest to hone in on the basic principles that drive good design.
Jane Jacobs wrote the book on cities (literally).
The Building Blocks of Wholeness adapted from Christopher Alexander's Fifteen Properties from his Nature of Order
(TEDtalk video) Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green, beautiful and "basically pollution-free." This talks provides a history of green design, including Buckminster Fuller.
Open source brick machine: the evolution.
Cameron Sinclair, after training as an architect, (then age 24) joined Kate Stohr to found Architecture for Humanity has been working on the Asian Tsumani, and has a Haiti plan as well. 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 video2013 talk. 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
Highrise "What does citizenship mean in a transnational, globalised context? One Millionth Tower, the latest strand of the multi-media, multi- award-winning HIGHRISE project teams a group of highrise residents in Toronto with architects and animators to re-imagine their surroundings and transform their dilapidated highrise neighborhood into a vibrant, resident-led community. "Using cutting-edge open-source technology, this interactive documentary enables a 3D storytelling environment within a web browser, incorporating the magic of cinema, architecture and animation. A hyper-local story with a global resonance in its vision for a more human-friendly urban planet – and world wide web." 11/11
A number of smart people have recently written about green cities (including Stewart Brand, see above, who says that slums are green). Now, we've got economist Edward Glaeser talking up skyscrapers in The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. David Owen made a similar case with Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability. Kunstler says" a lot of this misunderstanding derived from David Owen's 2004 New Yorker article, "Green Manhattan," which declared that stacking people up in towers was the ultimate triumph of urban ecology. Owen is a very nice fellow, but this thesis was a crock."
Catherine Tumber's excellent new book, Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, finds potential in many busted and booming-again cities in the Northeast and Midwest. These places, she writes, are both big enough and small enough to manage a coming societal transition, in which people may have to live on constrained oil supplies and rely more on local networks for food and other goods. link. 11/11.
Innovative green beach house 4/11 and skyscrapers
Design on the Edge: The Making of a High-Performance Building by David Orr.
Passive solar works in hot climates too.
Frank Lloyd Wright goes solar, posthumously 3/12.
Paolo Soleri designed Arcosanti.
Recycled building materials see Fundamentals of Sustainable Dwellings and Urban Ecological Design.
How to love where you live by building community from Yes Magazine.
TEDtalk videos
Design Like you Give a Damn and architectural inspiration TEDtalks.
Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. TEDtalk video.
"The big design and development project of the next 50 years is going to be retrofitting suburbia," architect Ellen Dunham-Jones says in an interesting TED talk. Much of that work will be repurposing shuttered retail spaces -- redeveloping dead malls and big box stores and turning empty parking lots back into wetlands, she says. For a good companion piece, in this interview Worldchanging's Alex Steffen is much more skeptical that outer-ring suburbs can be "fixed." (From Grist)
Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of change. She shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit. (Video TEDtalk)
Teddy Cruz: How architectural innovations migrate across borders As the world's cities undergo explosive growth, inequality is intensifying. Wealthy neighborhoods and impoverished slums grow side by side, the gap between them widening. In this eye-opening talk, architect Teddy Cruz asks us to rethink urban development from the bottom up. Sharing lessons of truly rad skateboarders (vs suburban poser wanna-be's) from the slums of Tijuana, Cruz explores the creative intelligence of the city's residents and offers a fresh perspective on what we can learn from places of scarcity. 2/14. See Land Use
Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself. TEDtalk video
After weathering two years in Biosphere 2, Jane Poynter is trying to create technologies that allow us to live in hostile environments -- like outer space. TEDtalk video.
Paper emergency shelter: Long before sustainability became a buzzword, architect Shigeru Ban had begun his experiments with ecologically-sound building materials such as cardboard tubes and paper. His remarkable structures are often intended as temporary housing, designed to help the dispossessed in disaster-struck nations such as Haiti, Rwanda or Japan. Yet equally often the buildings remain a beloved part of the landscape long after they have served their intended purpose.(TEDtalk video).
Robert Moses embodied many of the ideas that green design now rejects (see Majora Carter's TEDtalk on the Bronx).
Manufacturing
William McDonough (co-author of Cradle to Cradle) TEDTalk video ***. 2008 presentation (video) to the California Dept. of Fish and Game. See also film Food=Waste.
General Motors veep Larry Burns previews cool next-gen car design: sleek, customizable (and computer-enhanced) vehicles that run clean on hydrogen -- and pump energy back into the electrical grid when they're idle.
Terry Swack, Founder & CEO, Clean Culture. PARC talk on Sustainable Product Design
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.
Ross Lovegrove: The power and beauty of organic design TEDtalk video
Alex Steffen offers a fast-paced round-up of radical (but possible) answers to our planet's greatest challenges, ranging from green cities and buildings, to digital collaboration tools, to ingenious tools for the developing world. TEDtalk video. Worldchanging.com founder
At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional "take / make / waste" industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated way, he shares a powerful vision for sustainable commerce. TEDtalk video.
Redesigning Air Conditioning (audio) AC created the electrical "load from hell," which causes us to fire up the dirtiest plants at the worst possible time.
Distribution
Adam Werbach audio interview. Once the youngest president in the history of the Sierra Club, San Francisco-based Adam Werbach has served as a sustainability consultant to Wal-Mart and recently sold his firm to global advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi. He discusses his goal "to construct a consumer movement for sustainability" -- and about the risks of corporate "greenwashing."
Transportation
(see also Transportation Page
Green Design Competitions
See also Design Challenges Page
Buckminster Fuller Institute site with video
Xprize has video contest for wild green ideas, high mileage cars, and will soon have other prizes for green design and entrepreurship.
PETA is offering an XPrize for test tube meat. See pro's and cons.
Engineers Without Borders - USA (EWB-USA) is a non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life. This partnership involves the implementation of sustainable engineering projects, while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students. Research Challenges
Local Resources
UCSC
Campus Sustainability Office blog has lots of info, including funding. profles of various folks at UCSC
Student Environmental Center’s Green Building Campaign
A number of courses at UCSC allow you to do hand-on green design work. Many of these can be found on the Cool Classes page.
Here are some examples:
EE178/CLEI 81C, Technological Innovation and Environmental Challenges, taught by Ken Pedrotti, Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering and John Vesecky, Professor of Electrical Engineering. This course explores the critical issues of energy (fossil fuels, bio-fuels, nuclear), and investigates solutions in terms of finding greater efficency in transportation, manufacturing and everyday life . Students will have the opportunity to participate in a group project that will come up with its own creative solution to a real problem.
ENVS 143 Sustainable Development BURY
ENVS 145 Green Building RETTENWENDER of Eco-logic Designs(includes Buckminster Fuller!)
SOC 115 Collaborative Design for Sustainable Technology with Melanie DuPuis
EE 80J: Renewable Energy Sources Introduction to energy storage conversion with special emphasis on renewable sources. Fundamental energy conversion limits based on physics and existing material properties. Various sources, such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and fuel cells described. Cost-benefit analysis of different alternative sources performed, and key roadblocks for large-scale implementation examined. Latest research on solar cells and applications of nanotechnology on energy conversion and storage introduced. (General Education Code(s): T2-Natural Sciences.) A. Shakouri [1] Link
EE 80S Sustainability Engineering (open to all) Shakouri
CMPS 80J: Technology Targeted at Social Issues.
Friends Foundation International gives micro-grants. They are a group of UCSC alumni who were so inspired by a single class they shared in 1975 that they've spent the last 20-plus years funding environmental and social projects around the world (nearly $200K). More.
Video overview of Santa Cruz entrepreneur and design support, including the Design and Innovation Center and the Pilot Project on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (contact student coordinator, larae@ucsc.edu. Center phone 420.6414). It hosts a business plan competition. PIE also offers internships and a weekly speaker series.
What's Next Panel 2010
The Santa Cruz Permaculture Design Course February - July 2009 Link Fees required, certification available, Offered by Transition Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Community
Land Use Report on KUSP Radio. New The Sustainability Academy's mission is to accelerate the mainstream practice of sustainability on the Central Coast of California. We are a think-do-teach tank dedicated to making real local progress towards sustainability across our region: in business, social ventures, and government agencies. The Academy teaches classes, manages projects, conducts research, and hosts public forums. We are a 501c3 public benefit organization, incorporated in 2005 and based in Monterey, California.Facebook.
Eco-logic Designs does hands-on building courses (including a program at Hartnell College in Salinas).
Other Opportunities
Santa Clara U Frugal Innovation Lab develops accessible, affordable, adaptable, and appropriate technologies, products and solutions to address human needs in emerging markets, and work with social entrepreneurs around the world.
Design Corps has summer training
Build It Green is a membership-supported Bay Area nonprofit established in 2005 (Oakland). Our organization works with building and real estate professionals, local and state governments, and homeowners to increase awareness and adoption of green building practices. Our mission is to promote healthy, energy- and resource-efficient building practices in California through outreach and education.
Articles in category "Sustainability"
The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total.
