The Santa Monica, California-based design firm Minarc has come up with an ingenious way to reuse old tires and make them into bathroom sinks.  The rubber on tires are one of the most wasted materials on earth. In the United States, about 300 million tires are discarded every year.

Now that we don’t need soap for our dishes and we also don’t need to replace our razors nearly as often, a similar technology has come to toothbrushes.  Actually, the technology has been around for about 15 years.

Dr. Kunio Komiyama and his colleague Dr. Gerry Uswak are testing 120 Canadian teenagers willing to brush with the solar powered toothbrush and go to the dentist more frequently to document the effectiveness of the toothbrush.

Fifteen years ago, the first model introduced a titanium dioxide rod embedded in the neck of the brush just below the nylon bristles.  Light activates a wet rod thereby releasing electrons which react with acid in your mouth.  This helps to break down plaque without the use of toothpaste.

One of the things that I most hate to buy at the store is replacement blades for my razor.  They are entirely too expensive and are getting more and more ridiculous as more and more blades are added to a single razor head.

One way to make our cities more energy efficient is to use the energy we already use and make it go further.  That is the concept behind Turbine Light.  It uses the wind generated by cars and trucks to power the lights and recycles that energy used to produce more energy to light the highways.  It is a good idea, but there are a few issues with this concept.

One problem with hybrid cars is that they look like hybrid cars.  Perhaps something that will help to bridge the aesthetic gap between what is green and what is gas could be the new Volkswagon NCC Hybrid Coupe Concept that was unveiled at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show.  This car, although not perfect, helps to shed the “green cars are ugly” image with aggressive styling and smart technology.

Teenagers in a unlikely neighborhood attending West Philadelphia High School Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering have built a hybrid that will go 0-60 mph in less than 4 seconds and get over 60 mpg.  They have also come up with an innovative, yet logical way to achieve these astounding statistics.  

Eliosolar has taken the idea of a solar hot water heater to the next level.  Traditionally when people think of solar hot water heaters, they are thought to solely exist on roofs, but Eliosolar has designed them so they look like awnings, fences, guardrails, canopies, and a myriad of other accents on a house.  They combined the idea of shading the house from the sun and collecting the sun’s heat to make hot water.

A company called FloDesign has created an all new wind turbine based on technology found in jet engines.  They claim that these new turbines are 3-4 times more efficient, require less space, and can operate at higher speeds than the traditional wind-mill style turbines we see installed today.

Traditional wind turbines create a wake effect much like a wake seen behind a boat.  This causes the turbines behind the front line to be less effective than the ones behind it.  Turbines after the first row tend to produce 20-30% less power.  This is due to the fact that the turbines cannot dynamically move as winds change direction.

Last year we brought you news about Pacific Gas & Electric using compressed air energy storage to solve energy needs.  Now it seems Southwest Solar Technologies is taking it a step further.  Instead of just using wind turbines, it will combine, wind, solar, and other renewable energy resources to make renewable energy grid ready.

If you are not familiar with the technology, it basically uses off peak and surplus energy to power giant compressors that will fill salt caverns with air.  When power is at a greater demand than what is being produced, or in the case of solar, the renewable energy is not available, it will use the air pressure in the caverns to power the generators to produce electricity.

Traditional power plants like a 110 MW plant in McIntosh, Alabama have used this technology successfully for 16 years.  It seems the transition to a renewable source would be the next logical evolution in renewable energy.

via eere.energy.gov, inhabitat, swsolartech.com

All along we have all heard rumors about vast areas of floating garbage in our oceans, particularly with problematic plastics in the area officially known as the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone. But, until you see the images of sea turtles tangled in plastic shopping bags and dolphins dodging discarded plastic toys and containers in the North Pacific Gyre, it is hard to grasp just how vast and complicated this issue has become.

Worldwide, bee populations have been mysteriously in decline.  This of course is big trouble, not just for the production of honey, but for the ecosystem as a whole.  As you probably have learned in school, bees are an integral part of a plant’s life cycle in being able to cross pollinate.

French officials have discovered that there is an invasion of bee-eating Chinese hornets, Vespa veluntina that may be causing bee colony collapse.  It only takes a few hornets to wipe out an entire bee hive.  The hornets first kill all the bees and then proceed to eat the honey and feed the bee larvae to their young.

As we all know drinking water is a precious thing.  Its such a shame that so much of it goes down the drain without it even entering our body.  I am pretty sure that I am conscious of it because my parents strived for an efficient lifestyle (turn off the lights if you are not in the room…turn off the tv if you are not watching it…etc…)  So here are some tips to save water starting today.

1.  Many people leave the water running when doing the dishes.  This is not necessary.  This is how I do the dishes.  I turn the water on about 1/4 to 1/3 of full blast.  During this time, I scour the dining ware.  Then I wash a small sized

It is almost universally agreed that renewable energy is the future whether it is solar, wind, wave, or bio energy.  However it seems that many home owner associations are opposed to solar panels on roofs and/or wind turbines in back yards.  There are some innovative thinkers out there that have a solution.  At Taipei’s International Optoelectronics Week, the Chin Hua solar window was making electricity from what seemed to be a regular window albeit a slightly foggy window.

One of the best ways to be green is to make the most of what is already being used.  It is hard to do with concrete due to its brittle nature.  Once it is broken, it is hard to fix without costly man hours and the use of more natural resources.

However, Michelle Pelletier, a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, has discovered a way for concrete to heal itself.  Pelletier found that after fracturing concrete mixed with a microencapsulated sodium silicate agent into standard concrete can cause the concrete to regain up to 26 percent of its original strength.  It is speculated that a higher concentration of the sodium silicate will result in a higher rebounding strength.

Chemical Engineers at Oregon State University have come up w/ a way to deposit a “nanostructure film” on a multitude of surfaces.  The film will essentially make solar cells less reflective and able to absorb more photons for conversion of light to energy.  This new technology will enable solar cells to perform better at a lower price.  What makes this technology even more convenient is that it can be applied on site in a dispenser’s office.  No special manufacturing process is needed.