The Greener Truth » green inventions

A Bendable Bike

Aaron Midgett — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:55:26 +0000

I am alsways looking for new ideas that will make greener forms of transportation easier and last week I found a great one. This may seem like an odd concept, but in big cities, where bikes locked with massive chains routinely dissapear, what better way to keep your bike from being stolen than to use it as the lock. Now, I am not too sure how this works, or how well it rides, but the idea behind this bendable bike is genius. Kevin Scott’s bike simply bends around a post and the two wheels and the frame can all be locked together with a U lock. In order to make the bike bendable when needed and stable when being ridden, a crank tightens a cable inside the frame. The next step will be to incorporate the lock so that the bike can just lock to itself. But for now, what a cool invention.

Peddle Power at the Copenhagen Crowne Plaza

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:11:49 +0000

I have often fondly talked about my experience with biking in the Danish capital Copenhagen, but a the Crowne Plaza has come up with a great idea to take this to a new level. They have installed two bikes in the hotel lobby that are used to generate electricity. This by itself is a brilliant idea, not so much different from the idea of a gym powered by the patrons (one of our Greener Truth bloggers has always wanted to start a gym like this called the Powerhouse), but they have taken this idea a step farther and passed the savings along to the people doing the work. If you are staying at the hotel, a short workout on the bikes will earn you a free meal or drinks at the bar. This is the first such program that I know about and the Crowne Plaza is using this as a test program before expanding to other hotels. On top of this idea, the hotel was designed with energy saving in mind and uses 90% less energy than traditional buildings. Here are just a few of the energy saving ideas that have been implemented.

-solar pannels on the roof and exterior

-a geothermal well for heating and cooling

-the use of a biogas facility for organic waste

-organic food

-water saving faucets

-low energy lighting and electronics

I think that this is a great idea and would love to see these sorts of ideas catch on. To date, most business think of green practices as costly and unnecessary, but ideas like this will show that it is possible to run a greener business and save money as long as people are willing to think out of the box.

The Starbucks Karma Cup

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:49:10 +0000

I have railed on Starbucks (and all the other coffee stores) in that past over all of the wasted paper coffee cups, but after a long time coming, the company has joined with the Betacup program and decided to make some improvements. The Betacup program initially asked for sugestions from customers on how to fight the coffee cup waste. Here is a video explaining the problem and how to find the solution.
Now the winning idea has been chosen, and it is a brilliant one. Instead of redesigning the reusable coffee mug, the solution was simply to give folks an incentive to remember their mug. Every coffee addict that I know has multiple reusable mugs, but I don’t often see them being used. Reusable mugs are hard to clean and easy to forget, so to help people remember, the Karma cup idea will reward every tenth customer bringing a reusable mug with a free cup of coffee. This is so much smarter than a punch card, or a discount, because you never know when you are going to be a winner, so you always have to be on your toes and bring your mug. The only addition that I would make would be mug cleaning station. How many times have you had a reusable mug, wanted to use it, but just couldn’t stomach drinking out of the same cup for another day without washing it? So now, what if Starbucks had a quick wash station so that while you were waiting in line, you could wash out and sanitize your mug? Now that would be convenient, and with the addition of the Karma cup idea, could change some attitudes about coffee.

More information on Betacup and the coffee cup problem

-Betacup: Check out these other great solutions

-Treehugger

-Coffee Waste Calculator

-Sustainability is Sexy

Recycling Robot: The DustBot

Aaron Midgett — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:57:25 +0000

thanks to Inhabitat.com

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how much I love new ideas for making recycling more fun and more effective. While the recycling lottery is still my favorite right now, I’ve recently come across something quite promising (though perhaps not very cost effective at the moment).

The DustBot has been designed to ride around the streets of the Italian town of Peccioli picking up trash and sorting it into waste, recycling and compost. Although in its infancy, this little Bot works well, but isn’t old enough to roam on its own unmonitored. Eventually, the goal is to set these robots free in the city. Then customers will be able to summon these electronic garbage cans with a cell phone call: the Bots will make house calls!

Thse DustBots even have monitoring systems within their programming that measure the amount of pollutants in the air like sulfur oxides, benzene, ozone, and nitrogen oxides.

So far, this has been part of a $3.9 million project to clean up the city, but if technicians can get the cost down considerably, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this little guy in your home town soon.

For more information on waste and recycling see:

-The EPA (Recycle City)

-Wikipedia

-Earth 911

For more information on the DustBot see:

-DustBot

-Wikipedia