Don’t we always remember the good ol’days when there was no pollution, mother earth was her cheery best and we were kids swinging on the old rubber tire under the maple tree. Now, that the world’s a different picture and we have grown up a little, don’t we miss the times of fun we had with the tire swing.

Let us have frolic and introduce our children this cool sport of our days thanks to Abundant Earth. Not only are they offering the authentic swinging days of yore but they have also taken the whole experience to a new level altogether. They have come up with special hand-crafted Recycled Tire Swings that are artfully shaped into a varoety of different animals for that extra dose of excitement.

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If you had wanted to live in a futuristic house that not only looked extra-terrestrial but is also green and sustainable, you may consider the awesome looking dome homes from Solaleya. The dome home rotates and faces the sun right from morning till evening and also saves on electricity that way. The domes are built using a special FSC-certified wood.

If that isn’t all, the dome can withstand hurricane and cyclone level rains. Designer Solaleya is proud to say that the energy saving device produces low consumption levels. The house is both admirable and worthy to own. Looks like Solaleya has a number of plans and designs up its sleeve. The fact that the dome shaped house is a sustainable one makes it all the more attractive and must prove to be an inspiration to other designers who could also go ahead and design buildings and houses that are sustainable.

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The kind of megapolises we live in makes us wonder what is going to be like after a few decades. We may imagine crowded streets without enough space to move our toes. However, Nobel-Prize winner Dr. Daniel Kammen believes the cities can in fact be self-sustaining eco hotspots and can allow people to lead a healthier lifestyle than we do today.

Any of the polluting and energy consuming devices and technologies may be phased out and the cities would be blessed with cleaner air and water. Urban gardens could provide as an alternative to farm products, which strip the soil of its nutrients. Alternative fuels, good waste disposal systems, and also mass housing may help our future cities sustain themselves and not leave ugly carbon footprints. In fact, carbon footprints are left by each individual, even when one drives to the supermarket.

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I think we all can very well do with a change in the conventional alarm clock ticking beside our beds. Aren’t we tired of seeing the same old boring pattern. Well, not anymore. Inovaxion has come up with an exquisite timepiece but with a wooden twist. So none of you with taste can actually say “No” to this little wonder that not only tells the time but also doubles up as a weather station.

The Woodstation is actually a collaboration between the French company Inovaxion with a Chinese factory called Aerotime. And the functioning is quite simplistic. The movement sensor in it detects your presence and the screen through the wood gives you the required information like time and weather forecast.

When activated, the Woodstation tracks fluctuations in barometric pressure, indoor relative temperature and indoor relative hygrometry data that enables it to tell you the weather forecast 12 to 24 hours in advance. And of course, there are the regular alarm clock functions.

Big icons indicate the weather in symbols like sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy, snowy and stormy. On top of this, the device can be used with both AC adaptor and batteries.

Via yankodesign

All you big Converse fans out there have yet another reason to rush to your favourite store — The Earth. In tune with the air of green that has suddenly taken over the world, the big brand has a cool offering to make in the shoes section.

The green low-top sneakers are in the signature Converse design but with an eco-friendly twist. A creation of Autonomie Project, this footwear is made up of 100 per cent Fair Trade-certifiied all natural and sustainable latex. In layman’s words, the rubber in these shoes has been tapped from a tree in a well-looked after forest and doe not contain any chemicals like other so called rubber products. Even the dye used is free from PCP amd AZO.

Trying to offer variety, the Converse fellas haven’t just stuck to good ol’green. They also offer blue, black and white, making them the new green, in both low-top and high-top. So, go ahead and step in those ec-friendly shoes with Converse!

Via EcoFabulous

Biodegradable plastic would be a welcome change that will surely take us to our world of green. A young NY based company Perf Go Green has come up with a range of products from commercial trash bags to plastic drop cloths that will help reduce plastic waste.

Looking at the hug mass of plastic that hits the garbage dump, the introduction of biodegradable alternative would be a big step towards a greener earth.

Good news is that Perf Go Green products incorporate recycled plastics, combining them with Oxo-Biodegradable proprietary method. This method makes their bags easily decomposable into simple products when exposed to microorganisms, moisture and oxygen; contrary to regular plastic that takes hundreds of years to breakdown.

If true, this would be a breakthrough!
Via treehugger

Now have an environment-friendly travel. In what can be treated as a step towards government’s endeavor to fight pollution by vehicles, Volvo announced the launch of its new entry into the diesel-electric hybrid bus market. The hybrid Volvo 7700 is a 12-meter low-floor city bus that gets up to 30 percent better fuel economy and emits 40 to 50 percent less nitrous oxide and 30 percent less carbon, the company said. In addition, a smaller engine and nearly a third of the bus’ components are developed in-house by Volvo.
The hybrid Volvo 7700 uses “parallel hybrid” technology which allows the bus to be powered by either the electric motor or the diesel engine or both at the same time. I-SAM, the company’s hybrid technology, plans to use the same technology in its trucks and construction equipment after the buses go into mass production in 2010. Though the hybrid bus weighs more or less the same as a diesel-driven bus, it has a better weight distribution, which allows the hybrid bus to take more passengers than a comparable diesel bus.  As a result, the bus’ performance is enhanced and fuel consumption is reduced.

According to a report by United Press International, the first of Volvo’s hybrid buses will begin testing on city streets in London and Gothenburg, Sweden, later this fall. Volvo is believed to start delivering hybrid diesel electric buses to customers in 2009 with mass production beginning in 2010.

Via igreenspot

With the benefits of Windmills come common concerns like the whooshing sound that regular turbines produce, as well as their divisive visual aesthetics. Keeping in mind the volatility of the speed of wind in the urban environment, the QR (Quiet Revolution) has been designed. A new type of wind turbine intended to address both of these issues, Quiet Revolution’s QR5 Vertical Axis Wind Turbine, or VAWT for shawt, is smaller, quieter, and way better looking than your typical windmill, plus it should produce the equivalent of its £25,000 price tag in clean energy within 15 years or less. The elegant helical (twisted) design of QR ensures a robust performance even in turbulent winds. It is also responsible for virtually eliminating noise and vibration.

At five metres high and three metres in diameter, it is compact and easy to integrate, and with just one moving part, maintenance can be limited to an annual inspection.

Though the energy output will vary according to the wind speed but is likely to be between 6,000 and 10,000 kWhrs on a typical site. And if that wasn’t all, according the usage of such windmills will also lead to reduction in CO2 emmisions.

Via trendir

Finally something to fight the food shortage problem!! Conceptualized by Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, this is sure to be both environmentally friendly and economically profitable. Added to this the dream of preserving a little of the country in the city is a utopian one which now will help fight global warming too. The professor believes that only by allowing significant portions of the Earth’s farmland to return to forest do we have a real chance of stabilizing climate and weather patterns. Merely reducing energy consumption would not suffice.

Allowing forests to regrow where crops are now cultivated, he believes, would reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Besides, with the world’s population expected to increase to 3 billion by 2050 and almost 80 per cent of farming land in use, the idea has never been more relevant. The best way very rationally Despommier argues, is to change the way we farm.

Dr. Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. “I’m viewed as kind of an outlier because it’s kind of a crazy idea,” said he. The revolutionary scientist envisions blocks of vertical farms in the world’s biggest cities, each structure 30 stories high that could potentially be as productive as 588 acres of land and grow up to 12 million lettuces a year.

Currently he is in discussions with potential investors to build the first prototype. For Dr. Despommier, the high-rise version is on the horizon. “It’s very idealistic and ivory tower and all of that,” he said. “But there’s a real desire to make this happen.”

Via dailymail

The concept of ‘green buldings’ seems to be catching up in India. These structures are truly eco-friendly as they harvest their own water and not to forget the solar power systems. Not only this, they even have their own waste re-cycling system.

Plus the greenery in the otherwise concrete junglse that metros in India have become, is sure bliss. The construction has been done so that more than 50 per cent of the bulding is covered with glass like it is in Japan, which reflects the sun’s rays and keeps the indoor cool; thus, saving power.

When the fad was at a nascent stage, a 20,000 sqaure feet green building was consructed in Hyderbad in 2004. But now, the green attitude is catching up. You will be surprised to know that the green buldings (please read 315) in India today cover over 235 millin square feet.
Via zeenews