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Why can't an air purifier enhance the look of a space? Does it have to look like an industrial cooling fan? Venerated product design agency IDEO blows those questions out the window with its sleek, modern design for the Coway AP-1008CH, an air purifier whose aesthetics are matched only by its performance. Featuring realtime pollution indicators and an intelligent purification system, the......read more
In the natural world, plants perform the crucial duty of filtering dirty air from the atmosphere. French designer Mathieu Lehanneur mimics that natural process with Andrea, a slick-looking home air purifier powered by plants. The air cleaning tech draws air in through a quiet fan before propelling it through the leaves and root system of the plant, and then out through the soil and back into......read more
What if buildings could talk? David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang (aka "The Living") answer the question, helping lead the burgeoning movement of interactive architecture, which seeks to engage citizens with environmental and other issues. Living Light is a permanent outdoor pavilion in the heart of Seoul, Korea with a dynamic skin that lights up to show real-time air quality data in the......read more
Some green tech is so next-level that it's hard to believe. Like wallpaper that cleans the air. Yep, you read right. Inhabitat reports Bluecher Technologies has just produced a "breathable, glass fiber/polyester non-woven paper-like covering" with absorbants that capture harmful chemicals like PCBs, PCP, pesticides, and radon. The wallpaper, called Saratech Permasorb, might be the......read more
When it comes to its environmental effects on Earth, space exploration is a dirty business. NASA says it could take a century to clean up the chemical messes left behind by launching shuttles and rockets into space. The liftoffs have created plumes of carcinogenic chemicals in the sandy soils beneath Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral in Florida. NASA said it will spend $96......read more
President Obama, under mounting pressure from business groups and Republicans in Congress, has withdrawn a plan to strengthen emissions rules for smog-causing chemicals. The abandoned Environmental Protection Agency standard would have dramatically reduced emissions of ground-level ozone. For American eco advocates, the announcement is salt in a wound opened by a series of White House decisions......read more
President Obama's environmental concessions (read: cave-ins) continue to pile up, and American environmentalists are rightly losing faith. His latest retreat, on ozone regulation, comes just days after the State Department gave the go-ahead for the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Alberta to Texas. The smog announcement was conveniently released on Friday before......read more
When recycling comes to mind, usually its brings images of bottles, cans, and paper. But aircraft carriers? A new decision by the U.S. Navy to recycle four decommissioned ships instead of sinking them and turning them into artificial reefs is being lauded by environmental groups and recycling companies.Just one of the four ships is estimated to contain 40,000 tons of recyclable steel, copper, and......read more
The AirCurve is a cleverly-designed acoustic amplifier that turns your iPhone into a no-power-drain alarm clock on your nightstand, or a mini sound system that never needs batteries or adapters. AirCurve looks like a simple, elegantly minimal stand for your iPhone. But inside is a coiled waveguide "horn' that collects the sound from the built-in speaker of your iPhone, amplifies it (by about 10......read more
In no place have the cataclysmic environmental effects of climate change been felt more strongly than southeastern Australia. There, a prolonged, 12-year drought has wrought havoc on local ecosystems and caused catastrophic damage to agriculture, which suffered record losses and sent rural communities into a tailspin. Enter Australian inventor Edward Linnacre, a Swinburne University......read more
