Eco Factor: Charger converts mechanical energy into electricity.

In Chinese tradition balls have been used as health and fitness toys for centuries. Rolling two balls in one’s hand stimulates acupuncture points and loosens bones and muscles making you feel relaxed and fresh. Keeping conventions aside, product designer Jiang Qian has developed a concept charger that utilizes the mechanical energy generated in the balls and converts it into electricity.

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Eco Gadgets: Roll Charger – Chinese health toy-inspired ecofriendly battery charger

Here’s a great design concept just in time for summer when gatherings move outdoors and you want the music to move with you. Finnish designer Pekka Salokannel has created the portable and solar-powered Gramo Speakers that allow you to hook up the music inside or outside while skipping the need for electricity.

The speakers are outfitted with three layers of solar PV panels that charge a built-in battery pack so even in the dark, the speakers can keep the party going. If you need to move the speakers further than your patio, they fold flat so that they can be easily carried in a pocket or bag. The volume is be controlled by soft-touch controls on the speakers.

The Gramo is designed to work with your computer, iPod or iPhone.

Since the speakers are still just a concept, there’s no information on the sound quality or pricing. Regardless, it’s a wonderful design. I hope to see these, or something similar, available soon.

via Ecofriend

We knew that the use of biomass as an energy source was growing, but we didn’t know it had gone chic. L’Oreal Cosmetics has announced that they are installing a biomass system at their factory in Libramont, Belgium where they produce many of their brands’ haircare products.

The plant plant will feature an anaerobic digestion system that will capture methane from waste that comes from nearby cattle farms. When the system’s installation is completed at the end of the summer, methane will be used to generate 85% of the plant’s power. Even better is that this is just a single step in the cosmetics giant’s plan to cut their factory and warehouse emissions in half by 2015 (based on 2005 levels).

In order to meet their goal, the company will be installing additional onsite renewable energy systems like solar PV and solar thermaland buying more green power from suppliers.

The company also hopes to cut their water use by 30 to 35 percent in the same time frame by using rainwater capture and steam-cleaning technologies.

It’s great to see a large beauty company like L’Oreal making substantial commitments to reducing their emissions and water use. Now, to get them to make significant changes in their packaging and ingredients…

via Business Green

Giving workers a level playing field is key.

By far, the article which has received the most comments from you has been our review earlier this year of the changes made to the Solaris, Epic and Utopia solar charged lawn mower from Linamar Consumer Product.

With that much interest I thought I would write today about our experience mowing our lawn for the first time this year.

Why?

Well, yesterday I used for the first time our 2008 version of this energy conservation product.

Any time a new product comes to market one of the risks is that it does not have a track record. So, I thought you might be interest in how we made out.

Now, as I tell my students, my wife’s husband can be lazy (think about it for a minute).  I have neither the time nor patience to deal with special handling of items we use in and around our house.

So, over the winter I left our 2008 Epic (just like the Solaris and Utopia models except for minor cosmetic changes) solar charged lawn mower in our outdoor garden shed.  I did nothing special to take care of it. In fact, I totally ignored it.

The only thing I did was to bring the batteries inside so they would not freeze.

So, how did it go?

Did the batteries work? Yes. I did not use the solar charging station as I don’t want to risk or have to deal with the temperature going below freezing at night which is still does around here this time of the year.

Rather, I charged the batteries in the docking station plugged into our standard electrical outlet in my basement workroom, as shown in the picture above. If you look closely you can see the green light on the charging component on the floor in the lower right of the above picture indicating they are fully charged.

It took around 10 hours to charge them from being completely uncharged over the winter. In other words, I did not leave the docking station plugged into the wall over the winter. That would be a waste of electricity. I simply plugged the docking station into the outlet this past weekend in anticipation of mowing the lawn yesterday.

Did the mower start, the first time? Yes. In fact, it started the same way it did all of last year; that being it started the first and every time I depressed the handle followed by the starter switch. I did this around 5 times throughout the mowing of our lawn as I moved the mower from the back yard to the side to the front back to the side and back again.

Did the mower continue to have as low an operating volume as it did last year? Yes. The brushless electric motor was just as quite as it was last year, which is less noisy than any previous electric corded lawn mower we have ever used. Looking at the above picture and I see that I really need to clean the lawn mower, don’t I? 

Did the audio beeps warning me when the batteries were in place in the docking station on the mower occur as before? Absolutely. This feature, which goes off approximately 10 seconds or so once the batteries are in place if the mower is not running reminds you not to waste the batteries. I like this feature as it also reminds me not to forget them inside the mower should I put it away in in the shed but not remove the batteries, which I did once or twice last year until I heard the beeps. Remember, the batteries should always be in the solar or old fashioned charging station when not being used in the mower.

Yes, the picture above was taken after I had mowed that part of the backyard lawn. Compare it to two pictures above to get an idea how thick the lawn was when I mowed it for the first time this year.

Now for the big question.

Did the batteries last the entire mowing of the front, side and backyard lawns? Yes. The entire mowing took approximately 45 minutes. I used the self-propelled feature on the even and up hill parts of the lawn and did not use in on the downhill portions, which is the same approach I took last year. And remember, we use the mulching blade which uses more ‘juice’ from the batteries than the standard non-mulching blade per the Linamar Consumer Products customer support folks indicated to me last year.

So, after one year using no special care or maintenance, the now one year old electric lawn mower sold under the Solaris, Epic and Utopia brand names worked as well as it did all of last year.

Sweet!

Actress Q’Orianka Kilcher of the film The New World is testing a Honda fuel-cell car.

Which is cleaner, a battery car (running on power from the grid), a plug-in hybrid car (with some power from the grid), or a fuel-cell car running on 100 percent renewable hydrogen? There’s an endless debate about this, and it obviously depends a lot on how the question is asked (and, sometimes, who’s asking it).

Dr. C.E. “Sandy” Thomas, president of Virginia-based H2Gen Innovations, is a major fuel-cell enthusiast, and he says that hydrogen is the winner from every measure, including greenhouse gas emissions. And, in fact, he says that plug-in hybrids don’t even offer any advantage on climate emissions over our current auto fleet.

Dr. Thomas’ evidence is a recent Argonne National Laboratory report, which he says concludes that a plug-in hybrid with 40 miles of all-electric range would have “higher greenhouse gas emissions running on coal-generated power…than a non plug-in gasoline hybrid car.”

Interesting. But an analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) concludes that there will be considerable climate benefits from plug-in hybrids. It says they could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 474 million metric tons if they have high penetration in the auto fleet by 2050. Even with low penetration, they reduce emissions by 163 million metric tons by then.

The question most people ask, however, is about smog pollution. With electric cars, they say, aren’t you just switching from one source of pollution — the tailpipe — to the coal-burning power plant? But a study by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power concludes that, over a 100,000-mile life cycle, a standard gas car would produce 3,000 pounds of pollutants, and an EV with power from a coal-fired power plant would produce just 100 pounds.

There’s plenty of evidence that EVs, even running on coal electricity, are far cleaner in terms of smog emissions than are the cars we drive today. Jonathan Dorn, an EPRI staffer, recently produced a paper for the Earth Policy Institute on alternative power vehicles, and he says “even if we burned coal at night to power electric cars, it would still reduce carbon emissions by around 30 percent.” Dorn says that 100 percent conversion of the auto fleet to batteries would require only 10 to 20 percent additional electricity generating capacity.

Ohio-based artist Mark Langan has spent the last few years perfecting his unique craft, which creates dynamic sculptures out of repurposed cardboard. Langan’s art has captured the eye of a number of A-list clients, so we expect to see more of his unique style in the coming months.

Check out this video made by TDG’s Starre Vartan, who was on hand at Ohio’s Green Dream expo (a project of Greg Perry’s high school class, who were just awarded TDG’s 2009 Heart of Green Local Hero award).

Also by Starre Vartan:

Super Natural Hair Color: NYC’s Grace Heaven Salon

April showers may bring May flowers, but they also bring some dull family days stuck indoors with kids and parents alike climbing the walls. Combine the weather with school vacation (we return to school this week), and I’ve been digging deep into my mental bag of eco rainy day activities of late. I hope some of what we’ve been up to will keep other families busy during downpours. Keep in mind that my daughter is 3, so all of the below is appropriate for kids around that age. Her younger and older friends have happily taken part in the same activities. If you’ve got other tricks up your sleeve, share the wealth in comments. We’re all looking for fun, easy to do at home distractions that don’t involve buying new toys or eco-and-health unfriendly art supplies.

1. Labor-intensive, kid-friendly baking or cooking projects

I’m talking-time consuming projects, or ones that you can come back to in stages — bread, pizza dough, muffins and the like. Last week we even tested a recipe for my upcoming book on green kitchens and food by making truly local pasta — farmers’ market eggs, flour from Wild Hive, and New York City tap water. We didn’t use any equipment — we hand kneaded and rolled, and were quite delighted with the results. Our only gripe is we didn’t make enough. If the youngest kids are dying to get in on the action but are hindering rather than helping, give them their own flour and water mixture to play with while you make the real deal. If you have machines, use them all — make smoothies, bread, dry fruit into fruit rolls, make ice cream, pop popcorn and flavor it several different ways etc. etc.

2. “Beading” with found objects

We made necklaces and bracelets strung with everything from shells we have collected on the beach to beads from old necklaces of mine that have fallen apart, pieces of cardboard, and fabric from old t-shirts and the like. …

In Seville, Spain yesterday, the world’s largest solar tower came to life and started generating electricity. The PS20 plant has a capacity of 20 MW and will be able to power 10,000 homes.

The plant is made up of 1,255 mirrors, each taking up 1,291 square feet, that focus solar radiation on a 531-foot tower. The heat boils water in the tower which creates steam. The steam then turns a turbine, making electricity.

The PS20 is the second solar tower to go on-line in Spain, with the other capable of generating 10 MW. The solar towers are just part of a 300-MW solar-thermal complex planned by Abengoa that will also include four 50-MW plants that use parabolic troughs instead of towers. The entire complex should be up and running by 2013.

Spain became the world’s second largest producer of solar PV last year, with 3,000 MW installed and with these new projects, it seems they’re on their way to leading the world in concentrated solar power as well.

via Reuters

A recent study by Michigan Technological University found that jet fuel made from camelina reduces carbon emissions 84% compared to regular petro-based jet fuels. We’ve covered the advancements being made with jatropha-based jet fuels and the successful test-flights done using the biofuel, but camelina appears to be even more promising.

The plant, which requires little fertilizer and water and has a high oil yield, has a low-carbon life cycle and has shown the greatest reduction in emissions compared to other biofuels. The study focused on camelina grown in Montana and it found that the state alone could cultivate 2-3 million acres of the crop without displacing other crops. That amount of camelina would produce 200-300 million gallons of oil per year.

Jet fuel seems to be the area where biofuels could really make the greatest difference. Cars will be able to run on electricity or hydrogen, but airplanes will be harder to convert. If biofuels can be made in a way that doesn’t disrupt other crops and with less of an environmental impact than oil, then plants like camelina seem to be a great solution, at least in the short-term.

via Treehugger