Wired: A Florida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads — all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than parts of the sun. The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first […]

BusinessWeek: Martin Hughes is not your typical hybrid-driving, clean-energy fanatic. Hughes and his wife, both longtime oil-industry veterans, zoom around Houston in no-compromise vehicles. His, a Nissan Xterra SUV. Hers, a zippy Volkswagen Passat. Yet when Hughes heard last year about an environmental startup called TerraPass Inc., he was intrigued. The Menlo Park (Calif.) company sells “green tags,” which cost […]

TRENDWATCHING.COM: Continuing concerns about climate change and skyrocketing energy prices are fuelling interest in alternative sources of energy. One of consumers’ major complaints though is the lack of making a real impact: separating bottles and papers only goes so far. Sensing a real opportunity, British/Scottish Windsave launched the Windsave 1000 system, a three-bladed fan (1.75 m in diameter) that connects […]

Business 2.0: Airline miles are nice, but wouldn’t you feel better about splurging on a new flat-panel TV if you were helping to save endangered species? That’s the idea behind Ecomiles, a rewards program where the points translate into charitable donations. Members simply log on to Ecomiles’s e-commerce portal, which links up with Barnes & Noble (Charts), eBay (Charts), Hotwire, […]

Reuters: Dusty Dezhou was relegated to the footnotes of Chinese history for centuries, known mainly as the place where a Filipino king died. Now, Huang Ming hopes hot water will help put it on the map. His company has earned a fortune manufacturing solar heaters, relatively low-tech rooftop devices which capture the sun’s energy to provide water for baths and […]

we make money not art: Hybrid Muscle was both a work and exhibition space, built in Chiang Maï in Thaïland, that would generate its own electricity and thus be “unplugged” from the power grid. The engine was driven by the muscle power of an albino Buffalo. The buffalo worked a few hours a day to lift a steel counterweight. Once […]

Triple Pundit: Everyone loves Clif Bar, and recognizes them as one of the more admirable companies out there by just about any measure related to the integrated bottom line. But there’s one problem that Clif bar has never been able to solve – packaging. In order to keep Clif Bars fresh, the packaging has to be made out of material […]

Cool Hunting: About this time of year green thumb urbanites are struggling to find corners of land, or more realistically window sill space, to grow a few little herbs or vegetables. Garden in a Bag, available at Wishing Fish, makes the process a bit smoother by including all the necessary elements to grow various herbs and even some vegetables. For […]

Iconoculture: Urban escapists looking for the perfect artisanal farm like the idea of raising animals for fun and profits that don’t involve slaughter. They’re cute as heck and they can fetch big bucks: One alpaca stud recently sold for over half a million dollars. Small wonder alpaca farming is catching on with rurbanites, who love raising the gentle South American […]

Haaretz: Tutlui, a strawberry that grows on a bed suspended in midair, is one of the most successful agricultural inventions of the past two years. The innovation is expected to change the way this veteran yet problematic crop – a vegetable that is actually a fruit – is grown. Despite the huge investment necessary to convert the creeping strawberry to […]