the greener side

Lotus leaf inspires fog-free glass

t San Franciscans and Londoners will like this; high schoolers who like to "park" might not. MIT scientists have cooked up a way to let you see through glass even if it's covered in fog. They coat the glass with a water-loving film. They say the effect lasts a year and could help to make buildings that repel dirt and clean themselves. It works the same way that lotus leaves wick away water.

Last year Treehugger mentioned lotus-leaf inspired waterproofing and self-cleaning clothes. Someday we'll be able to do the white glove test, smearing dust on our fingers and watching it puff away, same as the well-to-do characters in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Will Katrina slam you at the pump?

Gas prices already hurt at an average $2.60 a gallon (you won't find it that cheap in San Francisco). What fresh price hell can you expect after Hurricane Katrina? The price of crude oil on the NY Merc rose 1.6 percent yesterday. The Environmental Economics blog links to great sources to better understand how the natural disaster might pain your wallet. Will we soon see $5/gallon—making Americans adopt Europe's "eco-driving" trend, which encourages you to keep your pedal off the metal? Some advocates of cleaner fuels hope that if the equivalent of what Europeans pay--about $7/gallon--comes here, it will force more of us to clean up our act.

But writing about the concept of Peak Oil, the best-selling authors of Freakonomics aren't freaking out:

Markets have a way with dealing with situations like this: prices rise a little bit. That is not a catastrophe, it is a message that some things that used to be worth doing at low oil prices are no longer worth doing. Some people will switch from SUVs to hybrids, for instance. Maybe we'll be willing to build some nuclear power plants, or it will become worth it to put solar panels on more houses.

USDA label returns to "magic" soaps

Afraid the herbs in your hand lotion carry mutant DNA, were sprayed with pesticides, or watered with sewage runoff? Just look for a little green organic seal of approval from the USDA to wash away those worries. Three years ago, the government started stamping its organic label on approved natural cosmetics. But this spring the government changed its mind—until the Organic Consumers' Association and the makers of Dr. Bronner's soaps sued the FDA for backpedaling. Last week the USDA cried uncle, and the little green label is back.

The late, eccentric Dr. Bronner would likely be tickled. After all, the packaging on his all-in-one soap once called to "help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump."

Vitamins and pet food can also carry the USDA seal, and next come standards for fish.  But the USDA's National Organic Program, accustomed only to handling food, is perplexed about how to handle shampoos and soaps, which most of us don't swallow unless we've been abusing a potty mouth.

Trees no buffer for greenhouse effect?

Maybe you crank up the Mozart at home to make your plants happy, but don't try breathing on your ferns or violets to pump them up with extra carbon dioxide. After four years of overdosing a section of forest with the gas, Swiss researchers saw no signs that trees thrived better than normal. "Their study could shatter the widespread belief that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide may be kept partly in check by blossoming plant growth," reports Nature. In other words, the greenhouse effect might not slow down even if we treated every day like Arbor Day.

Free biodiesel how-to class

Potential Bay area green gearheads, don't miss the Biodiesel 101 class at the BioFuel Oasis the first Monday of the month. That's 7:30pm on September 5…or October 3 if you forget…at 2530 San Pablo Ave, Suite F in Berkeley. The Berkeley Biodiesel Collective lists a bunch of helpful links here.

A future home for Popeye

This 3-bedroom green concept house gets energy from a living spinach-based skin. It photosynthesizes and harnesses more power than it can use, giving the surplus to neighbors...which makes the soy foam wall insulation and wastewater recycling look humdrum. Its two Seattle designers won the international Cradle to Cradle contest, which asked entrants to "exert intergenerational responsibility." Do they really plan to build this? The competition lauds the winner because it:

...ends the process of taking and begins the process of giving…No advances in residential building design and technology truly matter if single families remain isolated and independent of one another.  This design suggests that community interdependence is the necessary foundation for future growth.

Find other C2C winners here. (found through Future Feeder). On a related note, Harvard researchers have dreamed up a way to turn algae into "microoxen" that might someday power gadgets. You can steer the one-celled animals' to swim in the direction you choose, making them carry nano-sized loads.

Knowing the potential of microscopic critters, you might shed a tear to learn that a single gram of soil can be home to millions of bacteria—not tens of thousands as we earlier thought—and pollution by lead and other metals can slaughter 99 percent of them.

Hot, cool fridges

Know how you have to move your fridge away from the wall so the heat can escape? Forget about that, and about those medieval-looking lamps that warm cafeteria curly fries. Here's a refrigerator that puts its hot working parts on top, where your snacks can stay cozy and warm (from we make money not art). Alas, it's only an experiment for now, cooked up by Korean designer Hae-jin Kim.

But there are ongoing efforts to make more energy-efficient fridges, which in the States still use HFC greenhouse gases, which will be banned by 2020. One hundred fifty million Greenfreeze fridges, safer for the environment, are used everywhere in the world but (did you guess?) North America. Coca-Cola and McDonald's are switching to such systems. Greenpeace, which was behind the development of Greenfreeze, is also working with NGOs on SolarChill sun-powered coolers to keep food and vaccines fresh wherever there's a sunny day. You can also get ultra-efficient models from Northern California's Sun Frost.

Flowers in a flash

Australians can now get fresh flowers 24/7 from a vending machine. Flowers All Hours targets last-minute shoppers, especially men who might blush about buying roses in public. Gizmag notes:

Because the Floral eKiosk operates at a controlled temperature and flowers are protected from light, dehydration (caused from air conditioning) and ethylene gas (given off by cars and ripened fruit), flower shelf-life is increased by up to 3 times compared with arrangements purchased from most grocery stores, supermarkets or garage stations.

The business hopes to set up kiosks globally, everywhere from "hospitals, train stations and supermarkets to airports, casino's, drive through bottle shops, 24 hours garage stations, clubs, crematorium and retirement villages," says Gizmag.

This seems like an example of nature mixing with technology for no real "green" good. I'm guessing that these flowers are grown on the usual farms that use pesticides and lack labor safeguards for workers (scold me if I'm wrong).

Luckily, there's an ongoing push elsewhere for florists to adopt organic standards and stock bouquets made without risky chemicals or sketchy labor standards, as the Sustainable Industries Journal explains (Triple Pundit is grateful). If you cringe at decapitating plants, you can opt for Brazilian blooms made of sugar cane pulp, as Treehugger highlights. Here's a sweet-smelling way to pair nature with tech: if you order flowers from Organic Bouquet through Working Assets' site FlowersforChange.com, two percent of your order goes to a nonprofit group.

No Waste Like Home launches

Last week our friends across the Atlantic got to watch No Waste Like Home, a reality show that shows "Britain’s most wasteful families" how to make "a radical shift in living, as they follow Penney Poyzer's advice on how to cut down on waste and save money." The Alternative Energy Blog has more.

It's only a matter of time before  a copycat program comes to our shores. Spoke too soon? A green lifestyle cable show, spotlighting eco-celeb Danny Seo, has been rumored for more than a year. Born on Earth Day, this guy's been building an impressive list of creds since he launched a grassroots green group at age 12. Expect his media spotlight to brighten even more.

Greener thinking for economists

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page might make many green thinkers turn red with anger, but the paper's reporters are paying attention to the growing awareness of the link between environmental and economic concerns. A recent story:

Environmentalists consider themselves careful watchdogs of government policy…But frustrated by their slow progress and turning increasingly pragmatic, environmental groups are finding economics a powerful tool… The field of environmental economics began to take form in the 1960s when academics started to apply the tools of economics to the nascent green movement… It wasn't until the 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act, however, that most environmentalists started to take economics seriously.

The EPA employs 164 green economists, up 36 percent within a decade, says the WSJ. Green-minded economists have helped government and businesses make real progress toward conserving land, investing in sustainable companies, and reducing pollution. Part of the success lies in convincing companies of how expensive pollution can be, starting with the high cost of lawsuits and government compliance. Read the free article here (found through the  Environmental Economics blog).