Green Hotel: The Crowne Plaza in Copenhagen

The people of Copenhagen strike me as earth loving citizens. The air smells clean, the city is bike friendly and it's very easy to buy local products and food. The Crowne Plaza contributes to this image with a remarkable campaign. The hotel invites their guests to reduce their ecological footprint by generating their own electricity. The Crowne Plaza installed special bikes that generate about 40Wh every hour. If the guests reach the target of 10Wh they are rewarded with a free meal. iPhones mea...

China is taking the future seriously and started building 'Solar Valley City', a center for manufacturing, research and development and education around solar energy technologies. China is moving fast on the market of sustainable technology and is leaving other players behind. Already China is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels and wind turbines. Solar Valley City is supposed to boost this proces even more and attract hundreds of major companies to China. It is expected that China...

Food from far places can be really cheap, but flying over those tomatoes all the way from Argentina produces a lot of carbon-emission. And we can grow tomatoes just as well, without the excess emission! Buying local produce simply cuts the CO2-emissions and fuel-use needed for the transportation. I can imagine not everyone is aware of the distance your average veggies travel, and it can be hard to see what produce is local and what isn't. That's why I really like these clever package designs Ja...

Sometimes I think about what sustainability means to me. Lately, the term has become so overused, that I have been second-guessing what sustainable living really is. In our society, it seems we do not know what to do with the over-abundance of just about everything that is available to us. This has led me to think a bit more about my own consumption. Is there any need for me to be worried about excessive habits? Should I stop taking endless showers and start worrying kann man von viagra impoten...

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted last Wednesday. As a result most flights in Europe are cancelled. A volcano eruption like this doesn't only spew ash into the atmosphere. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano emitted more than 7000 tons of CO2 over the last few days. But aviation is an even bigger player in the CO2 market. So no aviation means a decrease in CO2. Now throw some basic math in there and this is would be the conclusion: 206.465 tons less CO2 emission due to a simple volcano...

Forget green power, enter RED power. The 'Still Light' miniature LED lamp runs completely on tomatoes! The tomatoes work as a battery, providing power to the LED by using the chemical reaction between the tomato juice and the zinc and copper elements that get plugged into it to create the circuit. It sounds pretty clever, and you gotta love the cuteness of a mini-lamp plugged into a bunch of tomatoes. I wonder how long it'll run though, and how many tomatoes it really needs to work, because I c...

The toilet of the future helps mother nature by using less water, and it saves us a buck by turning poo into power! Lucky people in Sneek (Holland) are 'testdriving' this toilet of the future since 2006. It flushes by means of a vacuum mechanism, just like airplane toilets have. This vacuum-flush uses just one liter of water per go (as opposed to around twelve for your average flush - you do the math!). Next to that, the smelly toilet-water gets separated from the comparatively less-smelly dome...

It's MAGIC! And MAGIC is probably the worst abbreviation I have ever seen. It stands for Manual Available Green (Power) Interaction Consumer. But to be honest, I don't mind. Because the MAGIC also is one of the coolest toys I know. The MAGIC is basically a Rubik's Cube that charges phones and other small gadgets. The more you turn it, the more energy the MAGIC Rubik's Cube harnesses. And most people turn the Rubik a lot. Unlike Dutch pride Erik 'Flying Colours' Akkersdijk. This guy wouldn't pro...

I  bumped into the following article on WBCSD; worth sharing. It's great to see big corporations are taking serious steps towards a better future. Reuters, 2 March 2010 - South Korea's LG Group will invest 20 trillion won ($17.90 billion) through 2020 to develop environmentally-friendly businesses and reduce emissions by 40 percent against 2009 levels, unit LG Corp said on Monday. The investment aims to expand its production of energy-efficient products and renewable energy businesses such as...

Friday the 23rd of April Tech the Future (Augustus, David and Eli) will visit Good! in Lelystad, the Netherlands. Good! is a sustainable lifestyle fair that, like Tech the Future, focuses on practical solutions. Products, concepts, food and architecture.. it promises to be a fun day. Of course we'll come armed with notebooks and iPhones so expect full and live coverage and reviews!