When it comes to the use of greener technology, there are no shortages of ideas out there, with a variety of solutions for energy production, environmental cleaning and even energy efficient farming solutions. Of course, the number of these ideas that have gone into production is not particularly high, but there are certainly plenty of ideas out there that might someday benefit the planet and the population.
One particularly exciting announcement we saw early this year was a proposal for vertical farming – an exciting an innovative new prospect that might help to resolve food shortages in densely populated areas.
Vertical Farming
Vertical farming is the practice of stacking the plants in racks to be grown indoors. Not particularly revolutionary; but it is intelligent, the use of vertical stacking allows more plants to be grown in the space provided, and this is only planning to get more advanced. While they are currently grown with artificial lighting in many of the existing vertical farms, the plan proposes that in the future cities will find massive skyscrapers filled with plants, abundant with natural light and even making use of the water wasted by the other buildings in the city, rather than water of its own.
Ocean Cleanup Array
Another incredible invention is known as the Ocean Cleanup Array and combines floating booms with powerful processing platforms that allow it not only to collect rubbish floating around on the oceans but even separate it. The particularly impressive part of this project is that it is designed by a nineteen-year-old as part of a school paper, yet offers a design effective and efficient enough to remove plastics from the world’s oceans; one of the main pollutants responsible for damage to marine life and even equipment in the ocean. Less than a year later the inventor, Boyan Slat, presented and improved the concept for his design, which was taken up by the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, who have every intention of creating the device should they be able to get funding. It is estimated that this creation would clean and entire gyre in less than five years.
White Goat
Of course, if you’re looking for something you might benefit from a little closer to home then maybe you should be looking for the ‘White Goat’ – a machine designed for use in the office. Now, this is a bit pricier than most companies would consider buying and doesn’t pay for itself until you’ve used it about 200,000 times. However, the idea is certainly smart. Do you have a shredder at work? Most companies do, they’re for getting rid of all the incredibly private information that no one is allowed to read ever again, and shredding stuff to make shredded paper with – but they don’t get emptied very often, and all you get out of them is shredded paper. Haven’t you ever wondered how you could make that into something useful, like toilet paper? Well – someone certainly has, because that’s exactly what the white goat does. You send off your forty-page memo about whatever it is your company does, your staff just slot it into the machine, and half an hour later they can happily wipe their backside with it – how efficient.
The white goat was produced by Japanese manufacturers Nakabayashi and offers an entirely revolutionary system, each one of which could help to save up to 60 trees a day. This was first announced in 2009 but released in summer 2010.
Bioplastics
Bioplastics are, for packaging reasons mainly, a very exciting area of development, with some fantastic advances in recent years. One example that is perhaps most impressive is the production of Bioplastics using banana peels, and there are two reasons why this is so impressive. First of all – the banana peel is a relatively unused item of food waste, so it is fantastic that there could be a better use for it than just composting. Second of all the process was invented by Elif Bilgin – a sixteen-year-old and included producing a non-decaying bioplastic using a self-developed chemical process. Elif shared her process and results online, clearly showing that after four attempts, the first three of which produced results that were unlikely to be suitable for real life use, accomplished a bioplastic that was durable, strong and thick; suitable for use in manufacture.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough Elif went on to prove that her new bioplastic could be used in the production of cosmetic prosthetics, more specifically finger digits and did not conduct electricity, which made it a suitable wire covering.
