This Magical Desalinating Water Bottle Will Make The Ocean Drinkable. This bottle that separates drinking water from ocean water doesn't exist yet--except in the renderings you see here. But it would be nice if it did. It could be a useful addition to a boat's safety equipment, ensuring the shipwrecked are able stay alive without resorting to their own urine. The bottle was designed by a team from Yonsei University in South Korea, who recently entered it to the 2013 IDEA awards. The idea is simple: You pump a plunger at the top, pressurizing ocean water until it's pushed through a membrane at the bottom of one chamber.
Fresh water then enters into another chamber. "The Puri portable fresh water equipment has reverse osmosis technology," the students say. The students make a plausible case for what such a water bottle might look like, down to the materials for all the parts. Revealed: the massive scale of UK's water consumption | Environment. The scale of British water consumption and its impact around the world is revealed in a new report today, which warns of the hidden levels needed to produce food and clothing. The UK has become the sixth largest net importer of water in the world, the environment group WWF will tell a meeting of international experts in Stockholm, with every consumer indirectly responsible for the use of thousands of litres a day. Only 38% of the UK's total water use comes from its own resources; the rest depends on the water systems of other countries, some of which are already facing serious shortages.
The study makes the first attempt to measure the UK's total "water footprint" and highlights the extent to which our imports come from countries which are running out of fresh water. It calculates that: · Taking virtual water into account, each of us soaks up 4,645 litres a day; · Only Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and Italy come higher in the league of net importers of virtual agricultural water. Global Water Shortages Grow Worse but Nations Have Few Answers. Image credit: José Manuel Suárez/Flickr As we have been hearing, global water shortages are poised to exacerbate regional conflict and hobble economic growth.
Yet the problem is growing worse, and is threatening to deal devastating blows to health, according to top water officials from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who spoke before a House panel hearing today. Ever-rising water demand, and climate change, are expected to boost water problems worldwide, especially in countries that are already experiencing shortages. “The magnitude of it is extraordinary.” says Christian Holmes, global water coordinator for USAID. The hearing comes on the heels of stark reminders of the current water shortages that are apparent across the globe. To alleviate more of that stress, USAID will work with other countries to use emerging science and technology to track the problem and prepare communities to adapt. Amazing ERO Concrete-Recycling Robot Can Erase Entire Buildings. Demolition is a messy business—not only does the process require heavy machinery and produce clouds of dust, but it also results in giant piles of rubble that often head straight for the landfill.
Omer Haciomeroglu, a student at Sweden’s Umeå Institute of Design has designed Ero – a robot that recycles concrete in an energy-efficient manner and separates it from rebar and other debris on the spot. The project won the 2013 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) in the Student Designs category. Heavy machines used in demolition consume large amounts of energy in order to crush concrete walls into small pieces, not to mention that demolition processes have to be accompanied by large amounts of water sprayed onto the structures to prevent the spread of dust. Once the work is done, the rubble is transported to recycle stations where waste is separated manually.
Power crushers are used to pulverize the concrete and the metal is melted for reuse. + Omer Haciomeroglu Via Core77. Could Dissolvable Electronics be the Answer to E-Waste Pollution? As technology rapidly progresses and consumers continue to hunger for the latest gadgets, an awful lot of out-dated cellphones and other e-waste is making its way into landfill. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hope to help alleviate this e-waste by developing dissolvable electronics. While such water-soluble materials could pose a problem for anyone prone to dropping their cellphone in the toilet, the scientists hope the technology will go a long way towards eliminating e-waste and reducing pollution.
Researcher John Rogers is leading the “Born to Die” project to develop dissolvable electronics. The idea is for electronics to be transient, rather than having to replace a device as technology improves, the device will simply dissolve once it’s reached the end of its use. Whether it will indicate an expiration warning to the user remains to be seen, but Rogers’ plan is to divert the barrage of out-dated electronics from landfills by having them disappear. Scientists Develop a Long-Lasting and Environmentally Friendly Battery Made From Wood. Photo via Shutterstock When searching for inspiration to create an environmentally friendly battery, University of Maryland researchers Liangbing Hu, Teng Li and their team looked to the trees. Their invention uses a tiny sliver of wood from yellow pine trees coated with tin to create a device that is a thousand times thinner than a piece of paper.
Instead of lithium, they chose sodium which even though it does not store energy as efficiently, costs far less and is a much more common material. While you may not end up seeing this battery in a mobile device, it could be an ideal choice for large-scale facilities such as power plants. Most common batteries are constructed with stiff bases that are unable to accommodate much expansion and contraction. “Wood fibers that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water, and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery.” said Hu. . + University of Maryland Via ScienceDaily. How Two College Pals Are Growing A Solution To Our Reliance On Plastic. Maybe the most devastating aspect of styrofoam packaging is that it’s useful for a matter of days or hours—say, while a product ships—but it lasts for a millennium.
Plastics like styrofoam currently take up between 25% and 30% of our landfill space, and a single cubic foot of styrofoam has the same energy content as about one and a half liters of gasoline. That’s a lot of impact for just a little bit of value. And that’s precisely why college pals Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre established Ecovative, which grows cost-effective alternatives to plastic insulation and packaging. While they were students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bayer and McIntyre experimented with mycelium, the network of vegetative filaments in mushrooms, and realized that it could be used to form incredibly strong bonds. "It turns out that mycelium is actually a living polymer," says Bayer, who graduated in 2007 and co-founded Ecovative that same year.
"I like to think of it as low-tech biotech. " This Tiny House Was Grown From Mushrooms. Somewhere in Green Island, New York, there is a tiny house filled with mushroom insulation. No one lives in it; the team at Ecovative Design--a company that makes mycelium-based bioplastics--is using the structure as a makeshift conference room. The Mushroom Tiny House is more than just a gathering space. It’s the first step in Ecovative’s move towards mycelium building materials. Ecovative has garnered a lot of attention in recent years for its Mushroom Packaging: custom-molded, compostable packaging made out of agricultural crop waste that’s bonded with mycelium (mushroom roots). "Now that packaging is taking off, we’re returning to our roots in building materials," explains Sam Harrington, the marketing and sales manager at Ecovative.
That project is the Mushroom Tiny House, a small wood-framed home filled with mushroom insulation. On the Mushroom Tiny House blog, Ecovative lists the steps for growing a tiny wall: 1. The home’s success wasn’t always a sure thing. The Enormous Cigarette Butt Menace, And What We Could Do About It. The Texas Department of Transportation says 130 billion litter its highways every year. They’re the most common item found on beaches. Many billions sit leaching into the ground all over the world.
Why are butts more littered than other items? As a sometime-smoker, I’d say it was about getting rid of it quickly, and not having to worry about extinguishing it. People otherwise careful about waste will happily toss away a butt, especially when there aren’t alternatives. The images here are one artist’s representation of the problem, commissioned by Legacy, an anti-smoking group. Chris Jordan, the artist, says: It depicts 139,000 cigarette butts, equal to the number of cigarettes that are smoked and discarded every 15 seconds in the US.
There are some technical solutions--sort of. Julia Cartwright, Legacy’s senior VP of communications, says it will "take a village" to clean everything up: It Will Now Be Illegal To Toss A Cigarette Butt In Chicago. There are fewer and fewer places these days where it’s okay to smoke, thanks to a growing number of public health laws. However, policymakers have paid far less attention to another societal consequence of lighting up: the scourge of litter from cigarette butts. According to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, an advocacy group, butts are the most commonly discarded waste around the world--a whopping 1.7 billion pounds are trashed each year, filled with toxic compounds. The state of Illinois is now doing something about it, having passed a law that makes it illegal to toss a butt on the ground or out the car window. Beginning next year, violators will face up to a $1,500 fine for littering their butts, reports the Rockford Register Star.
In Illinois, the Great Lakes can sometimes become the de facto “ash tray” for smokers. But cigarette butt trash is obviously a problem all over the U.S. and the world. [Image: Cigarettes via Shutterstock] These Trash Cans Know When They're Full, And Need Picking Up. Imagine a block with 10 public trash cans on it. Now think about the truck that picks them up. At the moment, it goes to all the cans, every time--regardless of what’s inside. Sometimes there’s little to pick up; sometimes it’s overflowing. This is dumb trash collection, the old way. The new way could be Enevo's smart sensor. Developed in Finland and used by a few customers there on a trial basis, Enevo is a sensing and route planning system for garbage. "In Europe, there are some customers that have been using it a few months, and they are getting a pretty accurate readings," Marrku Lento, Enevo’s CEO.
"In Finland, we have a couple of containers with customers who are next to a little harbor. We’ve covered a few smart bin solutions. But, like the Renew, the Big Belly is expensive. Whether through sun compaction or better route management, though, fewer collections is better for everyone. International Coastal Cleanup. Save the Date The International Coastal Cleanup occurs on the third Saturday in September. The 2015 International Coastal Cleanup date is Saturday, September 19th, 2015. However, due to a number of factors such as inclement weather, cleanups may be occurring on different dates around this time. Please check with your local cleanup to be sure of the date in your area. Sign Up to Cleanup Join the world’s largest volunteer effort for our ocean by participating in the International Coastal Cleanup. 2015 Report: Turning the Tide on Trash For the past 29 years, Ocean Conservancy has inspired millions of volunteers, as well as industry players, the world over to take action by removing and recording trash during our International Coastal Cleanup.
Ocean Conservancy makes careful use of your support, and holds high ratings from charity watchdogs. Save the Date The International Coastal Cleanup occurs on the third Saturday in September. Sign Up to Cleanup 2015 Report: Turning the Tide on Trash.