Posts tagged transport

Ecovative mushroom packaging

There are very few materials in the world I can’t stand the sight of as much as polystyrene (aka Styrofoam). Sure, it keeps our new electronics safe, our food warm, and our drugs cool… but the petroleum based material is an ecological disaster.

Luckily there are new products like the ones from Ecovative Design that use renewable materials like mushrooms and other agricultural byproducts that can be returned to the earth at the end of their use. Hopefully soon every new iMac, DVR, and Ikea lamp will be shipped in shrooms instead of nasty ol’ Styrofoam.

Open Source Ecology

The ultimate in agricultural nerding. Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers and engineers that has been creating an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

Beyond the personal automobile

Dan Sturges writes in MIT’s Technology Review about how new advances in technology are allowing people to ditch their cars in favor of a more efficient, more connected system:

I think any transition would have to start with the roughly 70 million commuters in the United States. The recipe for making car ownership less necessary for them requires three main ingredients. First, we need express “trunk line” transit services (trains, buses, vans, or carpools) from residential neighborhoods to areas where people work. Next, people will need local, short-distance transportation in the form of a bike, low-cost taxi, shuttle, or small personal vehicle to get to and from the trunk line service. Finally, car-sharing services—like Zipcar or peer-to-peer services like Getaround or RelayRides—need to be available near both work and home so people can have access to a car when they need one.

Read full article here.