Home Building Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green
House-off switch
May 31st, 2007 by Ryan JohnstonIt is a switch that allows a user to turn off all non-essential electronic items in their home from a central switch. Push the button to turn your house on when you get home; push it again to turn it off when you leave. Aiming to make the ‘green’ way the most convenient way, the ‘House-off’ Switch was part of a larger project to encourage ‘green’ action among the environmentally disinfranchised.
The project searches for a kind of ‘environmental everyday’ where people take up ‘green’ behaviours because they want to rather than because they think they should. An everyday where ‘being green’ doesn’t imply sacrifice.
A more expensive version of the same concept has a central switch that also allows the inhabitant to leave some items plugged into ‘safe’ sockets around the house which can be left on for security or peace of mind when everything else has been turned off at the central switch.
Via YankoDesign - link
Tagged as: environmentalism, energy, power, green, eco-friendly
Turkey coops’ waste will power comunity
May 29th, 2007 by Ryan JohnstonBENSON, Minn. - The gray, sandy mix of turkey droppings and other bits and pieces flowing through Greg Langmo’s fingers back onto the floor of his barn isn’t just funky dirt, it’s fuel.
With 16,000 hens gobbling around him, Langmo is standing on a 15-inch layer of turkey litter — some 750 tons of the stuff — that represents a new source of energy.
It will help fuel a $200 million power plant due to begin full-scale production next month. The 55-megawatt Fibrominn LLC plant will be the first poultry litter-fired power plant in the United States, tapping a novel source of renewable energy to produce enough power for 50,000 homes. Its developers are planning similar plants in other major poultry states.
Read the rest of the story at MSNB.com
Tagged as: power, electricity, waste, energy, environment