Harnessing the Power of the Sea

The sea is one of the most powerful things on the planet. You don't need to be a surfer to know that. The ocean is constantly moving due to wind, tides and currents. And movement potentially is electricity. No wonder tidal and wave energy have been high on many government agendas for the last couple of years. Scotland is taking a first serious step towards this alternative and endless energy source. The Scottish government approved ten marine energy projects that, if all goes well, could provide...

Time to buy some candles because Earth Hour is almost there. Coming saturday at 8:30PM hundreds of millions of people across the world will turn off their lights for one hour. Total blackout. But turning off your lights doesn't have to be boring. Five tips to have some fun in the dark. Dine in the dark The guys at Opaque figured out that eating with your lights out is a unique experience. If you're lucky enough to live in Los Angeles, San Fransisco or San Diego make a reservation for next satu...

This speech by Bill Gates is pretty inspiring. And the ideas he brings forward are too. Nuclear power is the future. "CO2 is warming the planet. And the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one. If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted, that leads to a temperature increase, and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects. The effects on the wheather, and perhaps worse, the indirect effects in that the natural ecosystems can't adjust to these rapid changes, and so...

I just stumbled upon a really interesting blogpost by the lovely people of Ecofriend explaining a new concept to generate electricity. The idea is quite simple. Cars driving at high speed generate air streams. This moving air could, in theory, move another object. This movement is then transformed into electricity. Smart thinking. Image a huge wall besides every highway made out of flexible 'bars'. Flexible enough to bend and stretch whenever a car drives by. A great example of regenerative ener...

What's not to love about bikes? They're a great alternative for those short car rides. Turns out 90% of the time cars are used to travel distances shorter than 10 kilometers. I can't understand why people still use their cars in the busy city centers anyway. Hopefully the AO bike by designer Omer Sagiv will change this. Not only is the bicycle itself a green alternative, the AO bike is completely made out of recycled plastic. And it's designed especially for urban traffic. Smooth suspension, sin...

In the second edition of our weekly Twitter-tribute #EcoMonday tip, a neat little trick to economize water (I bet Peter will like this one)... I have to thank my classmate for sharing this clever one with me. The trick is to put bricks in your toilet's water tank! The reason is pretty simple, check out this picture of a toilets tank. Your tank fills up with water until the float ball is up high enough, making the float arm lower the valve plunger in the ballcock assembly, shutting off the water...

Let it be no secret that we in Amsterdam like our greens. And so do the people at QWIC! Their Tulp electric scooter is green in every way imaginable: made out of hemp-composite, this electric scooter is totally bio-degradable, silent, clean and durable! The Tulp Vaniek Colenbrander shows the Tulp A week ago, on a very rainy day, me and Augustus visited QWIC’s headquarters, to take a closer look at their Tulp-scooter (Augustus wrote about earlier). Sadly it was too rainy outside to take the T...

Today all across Europe the Surfrider Cleanups kick off. So get off the couch, turn off your television and go to the beach! It's a great and fun initiative to increase awareness of the extent of pollution and the efforts of eco-citizens. According to the UNO, every kilometre of ocean contains 120 000 pieces of floating plastic; however despite this, macro-waste is still not considered real pollution under European legislation! Check out the Surfrider Cleanup website to check where you can help...

How We Feed the World is a short movie made by Denis van Waerebeke and Sabrina Massen for the 'Bon Apetit' exhibition held in the Paris Science Museum. The clip tries to explain why so many people on our planet are undernourished. It was aimed mainly at kids aged 9 to 14. So don't worry about not understanding all the science jargon. via GreenMuze

"Why do we always think that our most important resources will be around forever? How can we survive without clean water?" A few days ago I bumped into this clip; 'The Cycle of Insanity: The Real Story of Water'. The clip shows how our watercycle is broken, and that clean water is getting harder to find nowadays. This broken system wastes water and energy, pollutes our natural waterways, harms critical marine life, and poorly deals with flooding and other water management problems. The clip is...