December 16, 2010

Needle and wool invention wins spot in Time Magazine

Filed under: Art,Design,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 10:33 am

Amsterdam designer Heleen Klopper who won the Doen Materiaalprijs back in 2009 for her system of mending holes in wool called ‘Wolplamuur’ (‘Wool hole filler’) has recently been included in Time Magazine’s The Best 50 Inventions of 2010. She had no idea she would be included and found out because people told her.

Watch the video with Heleen showing you how it works. It’s basically about filling up a hole with extra wool fibres using a special needle. I could use this product because I recently found a hole in a green wool skirt I really like.

(Link: dezeen.com)

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November 19, 2010

Folding an envelope into a chair

Filed under: Design,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm

If you like innovative Dutch design that saves space and looks cool, you have to check out the Flux Chair. Imagine stacking 77 chairs in no more than a one metre space, with one chair taking 10 seconds to unfold. The Flux Chair has just hit the market, comes in a variety of nice colours and has been throuroughly tested for up to 160 kg. Graduates from the Delft University of Technology, designers Douwe Jacobs and Tom Schouten have won awards for their innovative design.

Watch the trendy video on how they do the unfolding and folding it back.

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October 13, 2010

Carbon neutral condom to hit Dutch market

Filed under: Dutch first,Nature,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 9:35 am

Online shop Biocosmetica in Dordrecht announced this week that it will be selling a condom (The ‘Lovepack’) that is carbon neutral, made of rubber from sustainable forests. As well, the rubber planters will be paid fairly for their goods, making them fair trade items as well.

That should give some people a clear conscience, although condoms are bad for the environment no matter how you make them.

(Link: spitsnieuws, Photo of Rubber plant by Dinesh Valke, some rights reserved)

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July 22, 2010

Sports park lit up entirely with LED lighting

Filed under: Dutch first,Science,Sports,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am
LED

As of September, a sports park in Eindhoven (three football pitches, four tennis courts and the rest of the place) will be entirely lit using LED lights, made popular in its mordern-day version sometime around 1999 by Dutch firm Philips, headquartered in Eindhoven.

Local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad claims that this is a world first, as they couldn’t find anyone else who did this. LED lighting is much less energy consuming that regular lighting, up to 60% according to measurements quoted in the newspaper.

(Link: nuzakelijk.nl, Photo of LED lighting project by Velo Steve, some rights reserved)

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July 12, 2010

Sailboat uses wind power to generate electricity

Filed under: Gadgets,General,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 10:54 am

Well. Well well well. Ah well.

In other news, astronaut-inventor Wubbo Ockels is at it again. For the past five years he has been working on a hybrid, energy-neutral ketch called Ecolution and it is almost ready.

The boat has a diesel engine that drives electric engines that in turn drive the propeller. When the boat is sailing, the process is partly reversed and the propellers generate electrical power which is stored in 10,000 kg of batteries that double as ballast. This Ethereal-like design generates a maximum of 20 kW, and the batteries can store up to 300 kWh, which should be enough to satisfy the hungriest of on-board luxury appliances.

Ecolution is marketed as a sailboat that can be operated by anyone, as computers and electric motors do the heavy lifting.

Anyway, go read the PDF, there’s too much to mention here. The Ecolution will be on display during Hisway 2010 (August) and will then be operated for test runs from Scheveningen until June 2011.

More of Ockel’s inventions:

(Link: Het Kan Wel. Photo: Ecolutions.)

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July 4, 2010

Paper pulp cabinets by Debbie Wijskamp

Filed under: Art,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 1:04 pm

Not only the cabinets shown here were made out of paper pulp by Debbie Wijskamp, but also the assorted ‘crockery’ on the shelves.

The colour of the vases and plates is determined by the amount of ink there was in the newspapers Wijskamp recycled for this project.

The 2009 Artez graduate writes on her website: “Experimenting with the re-use of wastepaper resulted in a material with its own characteristic appearance and structure. As well, it is a very versatile material with many possible applications.”

(Link: Bright. Photo: debbiewijskamp.com.)

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June 15, 2010

Dutch fly world’s first biofuelled helicopter

Filed under: Aviation,Dutch first,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am
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On Wednesday 16 June, the Dutch defense department will be showing off the very first helicopter that flies on biofuel. A Boeing Apache AH-64D helicopter of the Royal Netherlands Air Force will fly on biofuel above the military Gilze-Rijen Air Base, located in Noord-Brabant, between the cities of Tilburg and Breda.

During the demonstration flight, one of the Apache’s engines will run on a mixture of fossile fuel and biokerosene, of which 90% of this kerosene comes from discarded cooking oil and 10% algenol, biofuel made from algae that is still very new.

This is a picture of an Apache, most probably somewhere in the United States.

(Link: blikopnieuws, Photo of AH-64 Apache helicopter by nathanm, some rights reserved)

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March 23, 2010

Turning green waste into biodiesel

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm
greenwaste

Having obtained her Ph.D on 19 March from Wageningen University, Kirsten Steinbusch found a new method of turning organic waste into energy, which can be used to produce biodiesel. Her method uses ‘volatile fatty acids, formed when microbes break down the waste. Apparently, it stinks like you wouldn’t believe. However, Steinbuch was able to apply micro-organisms and some hard chemistry to transform them into biodiesel.’

The process Steinbusch has developed provides more energy than burning green waste or extracting methane gas through fementation. “Extracting energy from green waste is sustainable, but it has to be energy efficient; you should not have to put more energy into it than comes out of it”, Steinbusch explains. Her approach doesn’t need any land or crops and has no negative impact on food production.

(Link: depers.nl, resource.wur.nl, Photo of Green waste by canonsnapper. Used under the terms of GNU FDL.)

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February 20, 2010

Floating wellness centre made of recycled materials

Filed under: Architecture,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 3:13 pm

This artificial island was concocted by Studio Noach (what’s in a name?) and Anne Holtrop, and is based on recycled polystyrene.

The intended purpose of the island is to house a wellness centre in the IJ lake near Amsterdam.

For many tourists the image of Amsterdam as one of a city where you can celebrate your bachelor party but not your honeymoon will change when the city can offer a wellness arrangement without its equal in the world.

That sounds like a perverted marriage of the ideas of Robert-Jasper Grootveld (who came up with floating, polystyrene gardens long before Studio Noach, and was taken to his grave on one), and that of the current city government which wants to turns Amsterdam’s lively ecosystem of opinions and ideas into a sort of super-controlled Disneyland for rich tourists.

The walls and roofs will be covered in plants and flowers. […] [The island will be located] just 6 kilometres from the Grachtengordel (‘Belt of canals’), to be reached by shuttle over land or directly over the water.

(Source image: Studio Noach. Link: Ecofriend.)

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January 14, 2010

Zwolle lends commuters electric bicycles

Filed under: Bicycles,General,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 2:50 pm

The city of Zwolle will start a 1 million euro trial this year to lend commuters electric bicycles, Z24 reports.

The bicycle is one of the most popular forms of transport in the Netherlands, but only for short trips of up to 5 kilometres. Zwolle hopes to raise this radius to about 15 kilometres for some by providing powered loaners.

Electric bikes are regular bicycles with an auxiliary motor that you choose to switch on for instance during a climb or when cycling in a strong head wind. Powered bicycles have existed for a long time in the form of mopeds with pedals, but these tended to look (and operate?) rather unwieldy. The new e-bike looks just like a regular bicycle, but with a small battery pack.

Slightly off topic, cycling awareness blog Amsterdamize (aimed, obviously, at non-Dutchies), recently had a very nice photo series on how the cold and the snow and the ice manage to stop cycling in Amsterdam, i.e. not.

(Photo of a Schwinn Tailwind Electric Assist bike by Richard Masoner, some rights reserved)

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