This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled "Archimede", the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage, and the first to be fully integrated to an existing combined-cycle gas power plant. Archimede is a 5 MW plant located in Priolo Gargallo (Sicily), within Europe's largest petrochemical district. The breakthrough project was co-developed by Enel, one of World's largest utilities, and ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development. read the full article

Source: The Guardian Environment Network, Image Source: Archimede Solar Energy

Want to know where your laptop really comes from? It's nearly impossible to really know, but Sourcemap was developed to help provide you with the information you need in making sustainable choices about popular products, travel and food.

Below is a Sourcemap that shows the complex supply chain of the typical laptop:

Sourcemaps is a free and open-source project and anyone can create a sourcemap for travel, food and the lifecycle or traceability of products. Leo Bonanni founded Sourcemap, at MIT Media Labs, with the goal of empowering sustainability by providing transparency in supply chains, supporting sustainable business decisions, helping to facilitate the development of sustainable design, supporting local and sustainable purchasing, and becoming a resource of carbon footprints.

So whether you are concerned with global warming, resource depletion, community strength, or the preservation of cultures, visit Sourcemap to share and learn about sustainable ideas.

Source: Sourcemap, Image Source: Sourcemap

The open source washing machine project aims to rethink the way we wash clothes around the world, in accordance with economical, sociological, cultural and environmental aspects. Most of the people in this planet, mostly women, wash clothes by hand in harsh conditions related to poverty, lack of sanitation, water or energy. - oswash.org

The Open Source Washing Machine Project is a project by Bricolabs, a global platform to investigate the new loop of open content, software and hardware for community applications, bringing people together with alternative technologies and distributed connectivity.

The challenge

To design washing machine technologies that addresses issues of water pollution, toxic detergents and lack of water sources, electricity, materials and money.

The objective

To define a variety of possible technologies, materials used for different technologies, DIY ecological detergents and to educate on how to build prototypes and make ecological detergents.

The ideas

Materials:

• recycling washing machine parts + freeduino board as programmer
• recycling and building with vehicles parts (cars, bikes)
• building in wood and bamboo
• recycling plastic parts

Energy:

• using wind power
• water power
• solar power
• animal power
• human power

Technology:

• rotating systems
• vibrating and sonic systems
• shocking systems
• brushing systems
• bubbling systems
• uv light systems
• bacterials systems

The prototypes

Solar Powered
This prototype was built with bicycle parts, bamboo, and a solar panel directly connected to a recycled electric motor from a photocopier to create rotation washing.

Wind Powered
This prototype was built with reclaimed materials and uses wind power to create vibration washing.

Video source: Vimeo by Dries De Roeck.

Vibration Technology
This prototype uses loud speakers to agitate the water through the vibration of the container.

Image source: oswash.org

image source: gizmodo.com

Every wonder how OLED displays work? How can they be made so thin? And, why are OLED TV's so damn expensive if they are just made out of pickles? $2,499 for an 11" screen seems like highway robbery for a couple of decent sized English cucumbers.

OK, so they aren't made out of pickles and it's obviously not that simple, however, an MIT scientist demonstrates that the basic principles are the same. He also gives some details on the differences between LCD and OLED displays.

Sony recently announced they will be haulting sales of OLED TVs in Japan. Until new manufacturing techniques are perfected, OLED TVs that are ~2-20 times more efficient than modern LED LCD's will remain prohibitively expensive. Oh and good luck finding a 60" OLED TV (you can't). For now, the best green option continues to be LED LCD TVs which can boast a 50~75% improvement in energy efficiency over their CCFL LCD cousins.

Make your own pickles! http://www.pickyourown.org/makingpickles.htm