Photo provided by Bioneers

Think of Janine Benyus, and your brain will likely bounce right to biomimicry.

Benyus is someone we’ve talked about often before, but just to refresh you, she is the president of the Biomimicry Institute and spoke at last weekend’s Bioneers conference.

During her speech, she outlined some of nature’s best 100 solutions for our problems, as well as compa…

Most people complain of hating high school. But that might be because they didn’t get to do cool stuff like make an electric car - or it is because they didn’t go to High Tech High.

HTH started in 2000 as a single charter school, but it has grown by leaps and bounds since then, and the student body focuses on specific projects that teach them what they need to learn. The school has had a 100% graduation rate, which is practically unheard of, and the students leave as published authors, since each class con…

Spooked by High Energy Costs?
Google has long been eco-conscious. From tips on how to save energy in data centers, to investments in plug-in cars and batteries and a fleet of PHEVs.

Its most recent initiative is an energy savings calculator with a Halloween theme. Read on for more details….

The point of going to an office to work is to communicate with others. But for too many years we have been building our offices so that the only way to get around is by elevator. At some offices an alarm goes off if you try to use the stairs, and every separate office ends up being in a world of its own. That doesn’t encourage a whole lot of inter-office communication.

In Minneapolis, SmithGroup designed some jazzy offices for law firm Bowman and Brooke, and critical to the design was a jazzy stair. Penny Broda writes in GreenSource:

“Most of the airy feeling comes from the o…

photo: Jenny

Another nail has been hammered into the corn ethanol coffin. According to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the water requirements to produce corn ethanol are significantly higher than producing non-irrigated biofuels, hydrogen generated from renewable energy, or petroleum or diesel fuel.

The researchers compared the amount of water withdrawn (used and returned to the source) and the water consumed (water not returned to the source) per mile traveled in a typical car when powered by gasoline, diesel, corn ethanol, soy-derived biofuels, hydrogen and electricity and obtained the…

Home office of Mr. Universe in Serenity

In these difficult times a lot of people are working from home, whether they want to or not. A lot of others would like to, but employers have not been crazy about it, even though it can cut overhead as well as your company’s carbon footprint. As Megan suggests at Planet Green, “Let your boss know that green telecommuting is a growing trend, that eco-smart bosses and workers everywhere are giving this carbon-footprint-shrinking solution a go, and that you’d like to hop on the emission-reduction wagon.” (read m…

It’s not hard to see the increased appeal of vintage and clothing swaps in a (necessarily?) contracting economy. Some of us have been second-hand thrift shoppers before it was cool, though, because we were economically-challenged and/or liked the thrill of the free find.

Found clothing is the opposite of “fast fashion”
Chicago resident Lauri Apple has creatively taken the thrift idea a bit further by applyinghttp://foundclothing.typepad.com/ that venerable old past…

photo: David Schroeter

China continues to tap the estimated 101 GW wind power potential of Inner Mongolia. A month ago it was announced that China Power would be developing up to 1000 MW of wind power in the region. Now comes word that two more projects, for a combined capacity of 2.4 GW, are proceeding. The details are as follows:…

A nice little touch in the EPEAT Gold certified Apple Macbook and Macbook Pros: The Energy Saver icon has changed.

It went from an incandescent bulb - aka a “heat bulb”, since they’re so much more efficient at producing heat than light - to a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL). The next step will probably be a move to a LED bulb in a couple years… For more on the environmental impact of the new Macbooks and Macbooks Pro, see our post on about it</…

We’re Glad You’re Okay, Nick
Nick Chambers of Gas2 just had a big car accident, and we’re glad to learned that he could just walk away with minor injuries. His Toyota Yaris hit a six-foot-high dirt embankment at highway speed and rolled over three times, but Nick “crawled out with no more than a bump on [his] head, seat belt burn, and a massively stiff neck.”

In a post that he wrote today, the day of the accident, he had this to say about small car safety……