Imagine how many streetlights there are in your city. Now imagine how many there are in your province or state. Now the entire country. Now all of North America. Now the entire world.

That’s a lot of streetlights, and a lot of power. What if all those streetlights could be powered by renewable electricity? Well this design features a solar-powered streetlight. It charges it’s batter during the day, and uses that power at night. It doesn’t specify the type of bulb used, but a super-bright white LED would be great on energy.

These solar-powered streetlights could also produce more than they would use to light the streets, and could theoretically be hooked back into the grid. This would provide a mass solar farm and generating massive amounts of electricity. Who knows, maybe you city will be powered by it’s streetlights in the near future!

By implementation of this system of products which are all street furniture that work and depend on energy collected by themselves, our urban areas could literary become solar energy farms. In this system it is most likely that energy collected in this way will be more than enough for need of street lamps, phone booths, bus stops and all of the leftover energy can be used for other purposes. With its 7.3 square meters of the main panel with solar cells and with MoSESS (Movement sensors energy saving system), big solar street lamp is able to provide illumination for city streets throughout all night. Bus stops provide ideal space for application of solar cells. They do not use much energy and in this way they can help other users from the SOLAR FAMILY that use more electricity. Even more, the electricity collected by the Solar bus stops can be used by any other user as they are all connected to electric company that serve as collecting energy point.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 2: The Water-Saving Urinal  >>

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Cleaning products are ugly. They’re corrosive chemicals that require thick plastic gloves. Well, there is finally an alternative.

The Method Home Series is a full line of cleaning products that are 100% eco-friendly. There are no toxic chemicals, and they are all naturally-derived and fully biodegradable.

The company itself is reducing it’s C02 footprint as well.

Great stuff! Now you can keep toxic chemicals out of your house, and throw away those big plastic gloves too.

Tons and tons of toxic chemicals are used every year to provide for cleaning materials all over the world. Method Home offers a very fab designed line of cleaning materials with no toxic chemicals. Thus providing safety, efficiency and sustainability in an important area. All Method products are naturally-derived, biodegradable, and scented with essential oils such as French lavender, magnolia, and pink grapefruit. On top of the sustainable issues Method due to the stunning packing design by – among others – Karim Rashid also offers an aesthetic value to peoples home in an area where aesthetics are scarce. It works and is needed: Inc. Magazine has added method to the 25th annual Inc. 500 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. method ranks No. 7 on the list, with three-year growth of 3,390.5%. On top of this Method is taking the fight against dirty on in its own backyard by lowering own carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint in a new strategy.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 3: Solar Powered Streetlights >>

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This is a perfect example of how green electricity can help humans as well as the environment.

These solar bottles are filled with water and then exposed to sunlight for 6 hours. The sunlight kills any bacteria, viruses, or other harmful pathogens in the water, making it safe to drink.

This could bring fresh, drinkable water to communities with polluted water sources or who have no drinkable water.

Bottle can improve the life of an enormous quantity of people, by providing them with safe water to drink wherever there is no access to improved water supply. No access to good quality drinking water leads to a high risk of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, dysentery and other diseases. One sixth of the world’s population has no access to safe water today. Bottle utilizes a water treatment method named SODIS (Solar Disinfection System) a simple, environmentally sustainable, low-cost solution for drinking water treatment at household level for people consuming microbiologically contaminated raw water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours. During the exposure to the sun the pathogens are destroyed. The SODIS system has been used in South America, Africa and the Far East with good results, with the new Bottle design the results and the diffusion of the system can increase.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 4: Green Home Cleaning Products >>

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Remember when you were a kid and you discovered you could burn things with a magnifying glass? Well things have come a long way since burning my name into our back deck.

The sun is a fantastic, and very underused source of heat energy, but get some mirrors or magnifying glasses out and you can cook a meal! The BCK Solar Cooker does just that, it cooks stuff using the heat from the sun.

While it’s a bit hard to tell everyone to get rid of their stoves or microwaves for a concave mirror, it’s a great thing to keep in mind while camping, or to keep for emergencies.

The design of the solar cooker improves the quality of life by allowing the public to cook in a clean and ecological way, without the use of non-renewable sources and without aggravating the environment (Green Design). The advantages of this project are that it can be used within natures boundaries where other resources are unavailable and where we must protect the environment and in situations where we wish to experiment in an innovative way of cooking and of working alongside with the nature.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 5: Disease-Fighting Solar Bottle >> 

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This thing really gets me excited about the future. Just look at this thing! Nicely curved and covered in blue lights, simply beautiful.

Even cooler than it’s design is what it does, this washing machine cleans clothes without the use of water & detergent. It uses “negative ions and compressed air”. Well I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it’s cleaning up at the award shows.

Not available for purchase yet as far as I know, but definitely something to keep an eye on!

A waterless washing machine that removes stains from garments within a few minutes, without the use of detergents. The AirWash, which won the ElectroLux Design Lab 2005 Award, uses negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes; the form was inspired by the waterfall, which just so happens to be nature’s own negative ion factory. It can be used for cleaning garments of all kinds, though the judges took special note of AirWash’s potential to make convential, eco-superfreaky dry cleaning obsolete. AirWash also stands to help save lots on energy costs and water consumption, and has lots of potential for places without ready access to clean water.

via INDEX Awards via Treehugger

Continue: Number 6: BCK Solar Cooker >>

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These watershoes are oh-so-eco-cool. They are made from 100% naturally renewable, and 100% biodegradable material. They also keep the highly-polluting raw material normally found in watershows out of landfills.

I was surprised at the stats on watershoes though, 30 million of them are made each year, and over 200,000 pairs are discarded. That’s a lot of watershoes!

The plastic normally found in water shoes is pretty bad stuff, so these are a great green option.

TrackLess is not a simple restyling but a completely new vision of a well known object: shoes for the beach and swimming-pool. Life improvement is achieved by completely replacing the highly polluting raw material commonly used at present, with a smart raw material naturally renewable, without any ecological drawback, and 100% biodegradable. To get an idea of the impact of this innovation, consider that 30 million pairs of this kind of shoe are manufactured in Italy each year, and each week 200 thousand are discarded adding tons of polluting plastic to the environment. There is also a potential source of improvement for economically underdeveloped people living in tropical areas where the plant that produces the raw material grows: the manufacturing process is designed for small industries, with low cost and fast production time; this makes it suitable for small farms, assuring the farmer another source of income from the production of the plant which is the raw material for this item

via INDEX awards

Continue: Number 7: AirWash: Waterless Washing Machine >>

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There have been some incredible improvements in eco-technology over the past couple year, but eventually we’re going to have to think about how to re-design our cities to make full use of them.

The Dongtan Eco-City maybe be something to look at. It’s a community designed to have minimal impact and promote eco-living. The city will be designed to promote walking, biking or taking public transportation. Farms will be organic. As for waste, it’s used as a eco-friendly biofuel.

The city will demonstrate to the world a new way of living, a new approach to designing urban environments and a way of building communities that minimises impact on the environment. Arup secured a £1.5m UK Government grant to unite China and UK research institutions in identifying and sharing best practice. Inhabitants will live an improved lifestyle. The location of land uses, transport planning and public space design encourage the use of public transport, cycling and walking. Dongtan will be a Zero Carbon Emission zone. Farmland within the Dongtan site will use organic farming methods to grow food. Waste is a resource and will be recycled as biomass for energy production. Energy will be provided almost entirely by renewable means. Dongtan is designed to reduce the environmental impact of a ‘business as usual’ city, so that the Ramsar bird habitat, located on the south-eastern side of Chongming Island, is protected and enhanced.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 8: Trackless Sustainable Watershoes >>

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This first product is a brilliant use of green technology. Simply turning a crank provides this LED light with power.

While we can’t expect everyone to turn a crank every time they want to turn on a light, this is an interesting solution to provide power to 3rd world countries with no electrical grid.

And hey, you can always keep one handy for emergencies.

via INDEX Awards

Continue: Number 9: Dongtan Eco-City >>

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This is the first is a series of posts looking at some of the nominees for the INDEX awards (International Design Exhibition), awarding innovative design.

Many products featured at this year’s INDEX awards focused on solving global issues, environmentalism was not left out. Many products focused on green technology and recycled materials.

It was quite a day, but we got through all 10 products, with only some minor wordpress problems. Here we go, start off with number 10:

Continue: Number 10: Human Powered LED Lamp >>

….or, if you’re the impatient type, you can view the whole list..

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This is an interesting take on generating personal green power.

A bunch of tiny ind turbines are attached to the roof of a house. Vibration and noise are minimized, and you have a small power-plant generating green electricity for you home!

It looks a bit strange in the picture, and the company claims these wind turbines are design to operate “in plain site as an attractive complement to the building’s architecture”. I think I’d prefer a nice out-of-the-way solar system, but these are still a great way to generate some green electricity for your house and save on your bills.

AV developed a small, modular wind turbine system designed for installation on buildings in urban and suburban areas. By eliminating the support tower, reducing noise and vibration, and creating a sleek and adaptable, modular housing that installs quickly and easily onto buildings, without penetrating the roof, AV defines a new category of wind energy systems that adds value to buildings and demonstrates clean energy at work.

via AeroVironment

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