San Francisco’s EcoCenter is the first commercial building in the city to be 100 percent off the grid, and Inhabitat recently toured it as part of this year’s Architecture and the City Festival. Even in the city with more LEED-certified buildings per capita than any other, converting a polluted swath of landfill near the naval shipyard superfund site into a passive, off-grid, über-green environmental justice education center wasn’t easy: In fact, it took 10 years to get it done.

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Post tags: brownfields, ecocenter, heron's head park, landfill, LEJ, Literacy for Environmental Justice, Living Classroom, Toby Long, toby long design

Read the rest of Inhabitat Tours San Francisco’s Award-Winning LEED Gold Bar Agricole

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Post tags: Aidlin Darling Design, bar agricole, Concreteworks, Nikolas Weinstein

Drones, or unmanned aircrafts, are becoming more common and more affordable — and as a result, they’re not just for the military anymore. To meet growing interest, the UK’s Civilian Aviation Authority will soon open the world’s first airport dedicated to drones, located in Southern Wales.

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Post tags: air space, air transport, civilian air transport, civilian airports, civilian manned airplane, civilian manned planes, Design, drone airport, drones, environmental monitoring devices, green design, military technology, Technology, UK, uk airport, UK airports, unmanned aircraft, Wales, wales airport

Imagine a world in which schoolchildren eat organic, locally sourced lunches rich with fruits and vegetables — some of them heirloom varietals, some of them grown on the school grounds. That is the world that Alice Waters, the celebrity chef at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, is promoting through her Edible Schoolyard project. This week, as part of Chez Panisse’s 40th anniversary celebration, Waters threw a school lunch block party in downtown San Francisco, co-hosted by Levi’s — and Inhabitat was there to check it out.

Read the rest of Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Launches Hand-Designed Levi’s Tees Over Lunch

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Post tags: alice waters, david byrne, Edible Schoolyard, green design, Levis, San Francisco, sophia coppolla, t-shirts

Potholes and other pavement woes can be hard to take on a bike – they convert all of your hard-won forward momentum into up-and-down unpleasantness. You could cry to your local public works department — or you could take matters into your own hands with this awesome new bike technology that redirects the bump away from you. The Tortola RoundTail frame ($2,000) transfers the shock of bumps in the road to two hollow steel loops, which replace the conventional twin triangles, cutting vibrations by as much as 50 times.

Read the rest of Innovative RoundTail Bike Frame Cuts Vibrations 50-Fold

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Post tags: bicyles, bikes, bumps, cycling, green design, potholes, road, road bikes, RoundTail, shocks, tortola

When you heard that the increasingly controversial plastics ingredient Bisphenol A, or BPA, was found in credit card receipts and other thermal copies you probably thought, Fine, I’ll use cash. But now there’s evidence that your good cash money is also contaminated with the stuff. Whether you’re using Euros, dollars, rubles or yuans, you’re being exposed to BPA on a daily basis.

Read the rest of Study Reveals That World Cash Supplies Are Contaminated With BPA

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Post tags: bisphenol A, BPA, cash, currency, environmental health, toxics

Is reading green? With one option in the form of paper and the other channeling electricity through the latest gadget, it’s easy to begin to feel a little green guilt about one of your favorite hobbies. But you don’t need to fret over your reading carbon footprint anymore, that’s because Taiwanese researchers have developed re-writable “paper” that allows you to channel the benefits of an e-reader, all without the need to keep it powered up.

Read the rest of New i2R E-Paper Doesn’t Require Electricity for Reading and Can be Reprinted Over 250 Times

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Post tags: e-readers, green gadgets, green technology, i2R e-paper, Industrial Technology and Research Institute, Industrial Technology Research Institute, rewritable paper, Taiwan

It’s a beautiful thing when innovators take two problems and turn them into one solution. That’s the goal of a team of scientists out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who believe they can sequester carbon dioxide pollution while simultaneously using it to generate renewable energy. The project, which recently received a $5 million grant from the Department of Energy, would inject carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere deep into the earth, where the temperature is 125 degrees Celsius. The gas would become “supercritical” at this temperature, taking on some liquid properties. It would then be pulled up and fed into a turbine that converts heat into electricity.

Read the rest of Berkeley Researchers Say Carbon Pollution Can Be Turned Into Energy

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Post tags: carbon capture and storage, ccs, Climate Change, CO2, geothermal energy, lawrence berkeley laboratory, renewable energy, supercritical carbon dioxide

Here’s an incredible story about upcycling and human ingenuity to brighten your weekend: the MIT Fab Lab is teaching people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kenya how to make their own DIY wireless internet networks out of easily found local materials. Just $60 of readily accessible materials like cans, wire, and plastic tubs can stretch an ad-hoc network made of two over-the-counter routers and make it work for thousands of people. A simple car battery can power the system, so there’s no electrical infrastructure required – which is a boon to villages in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan where an electrical grid is unreliable or nonexistent. Check out the story on SFGate if you want to find out how to build your own network – it can be done virtually anywhere!

Read more over at SFGate >

+ Fab Lab

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Post tags: $60 Wireless internet, afghanistan, digital divide, DIY wireless internet, fab lab, FabFi, fablab, internet, jalalabad, kenya, MIT, MIT Fab Lab, Pakistan, wireless internet

Like many Americans, you may be lighting up the barbecue this holiday weekend — but if you want to set yourself apart from the bands of boring black grills, take a cue from our guide to stylish green grills. From DIY creations to hot spots that also double up as planting pots, whether you’re cooking up a sustainably raised burger or a tofu dog, each of these grills will help you streamline your holiday resource use without limiting your fun!

Read the rest of Four Stylish Green Grills for a Sustainable Fourth of July!

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Post tags: altoids, altoids grill, bbq, bbq Memorial Day, bbr Altoids, Black + Blum, DIY, diy barbeque, diy grilling, eco barbecue, eco grills, green bbq, green grilling, green holidays, Lapin Kulta, Memorial Day, repurposed materials, solar cooking, upcycling

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, are an unlikely team to take on global climate change — but Mr. Clinton has the connections and Mr. Bloomberg has the cash. The two are forming a new, reinvigorated leadership of C40, or the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, which will meet later this week in Sao Paolo to get down to business.

Read the rest of Can the Dynamic Duo of Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg Tackle Climate Change?

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Post tags: bill clinton, c40, carbon emissions, large cities climate leadership group, Michael Bloomberg, sao paolo

Read the rest of Mexico Unveils Gigantic Green Roofed Volcano Soccer Stadium

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Post tags: Chivas Team, eco design, Green Building, green design, green volcano building, green volcano soccer stadium, guadalajara, Jean-Marie Massaud and Daniel Pouzet, massaud, volcano soccer stadium

In a fascinating use of time-tested technology to address uniquely modern problems, Japanese space agency JAXA is teaming up with Japanese fishing net maker Nitto Seimo to haul in some of the 100,000-plus objects of space junk orbiting the planet. A JAXA satellite will deploy and release a kilometers-wide net made by Nitto Seimo of ultra-thin triple layered metal threads. The net will gradually be drawn into Earth’s magnetic field and burned up along with the abandoned satellites, engine parts and other litter it’s collected.

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Post tags: eco design, fishing nets, green design, Japan, japanese space agency, JAXA, nitto seimo, space exploration, space junk, space waste, sustainable design, Waste

When we read that plans to re-envision Candlestick Park (home of the San Francisco 49ers) were afoot, we expected to see yet another of the steady stream of proposals that look to professional sports to salvage troubled neighborhoods despite empirical evidence that shows that all they really bring is more traffic. But it turns out that we were wrong. The proposal is actually the starting point for Todd Jersey architecture to turn the stadium into a multipurpose venue that includes an eco-hotel and convention center that could not only save the surrounding swampland but green the scene as well.

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Post tags: candlestick park, Eco Architecture, eco design, eco-stadium, green architecture, green design green stadium, professional sports, San Francisco 49ers, stadia, stadiums, sustainable design, Todd Jersey Architecture

A new generation of renewable energy entrepreneurs are currently developing turbines to harness the wind in the upper layers of the atmosphere, where some believe as much as 870 terawatts (or 87 trillion watts) of energy lurks. The question is how bring it back down to Earth. NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore has proposed tethering floating turbines with nanotube cables that would double as transmission wires. But that’s just one idea in the ascendant industry, and Moore has won a the first-ever federal grant to evaluate airborne wind generation.

Read the rest of It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Flying Wind Turbine!

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Post tags: airborne wind power, makani power, mark moore, nanotech wind, nanotechnology, TWIND

The atmosphere at this year’s L.A. Auto Show has been electric — literally — as one automaker after another has announced its foray into EVs. To wit: Honda’s new Fit EV, which has a 70-mile real-world range and will hit dealerships in 2012, according to Honda CEO Takanobu Ito. The new Fit will feature three driving modes — sport, normal and economy — to allow drivers to customize the car’s performance to their needs. It will also charge up in 12 hours using an American plug (six hours in Europe).

Read the rest of Honda Unveils All-Electric Fit at the Los Angeles Auto Show

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Post tags: Honda, honda fit, honda fit ev, ito takanobu, LA Auto Show, takanobu

A tiny electric Audi A2 with a battery made by DBM Energy recently drove 372 miles from Munich to Berlin without stopping, shattering the world record for EV range. The drivers averaged 52 miles per hour, ran the heat, and still had enough juice left over to offer to charge up journalists’ iPhone batteries when they arrived at the German ministry of the economy Tuesday morning.

Read the rest of Electric Audi Drives 372 Miles to Break EV Distance Record!

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Post tags: AUDI, audi EV, dbm energy, electric vehicles, ev, EV range, green transportation, sustainable design

Read the rest of West Coast Green 2010 Gets the Green Crowd All Revved Up

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Post tags: brammo, cars, cell car, Green Building, green building materials, green lite motors, greencycler, saba, sustainable design, vehicles, west coast green

Just how powerful is your circular saw? Well, put six of them together and they can propel a go-kart and rider at more than 40 miles an hour. This important discovery was made this weekend at the UK’s national power tool drag racing championships in Somerset. The circular saw-powered Bolt Lightning kart — with 36 horsepower — handily disposed of the competition, which consisted only of vehicles propelled by ordinary power tools.

Read the rest of Go-Kart Powered by 6 Circular Saws Slices Through UK Derby

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Post tags: barry lee, dyi, go karts, mini cars, races, repurposing, somerset, toolstation, UK, upcycling

If you’re in the market for a GM car, you may soon be sitting among recycled Gulf oil spill materials. With partner GDC, GM is cleaning and recycling the infamous absorbent booms from the Gulf and will begin turning them into air dams, water deflectors and other passive car parts as soon as next week. Booms absorb oil but repel water — a property that comes in handy for parts that shouldn’t get wet.

Read the rest of GM to Use Recycled Oil Spill Cleanup Materials in New Cars

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Post tags: absorbent booms, BP, bp gulf oil spill, general motors, GM, gulf coast oil spill cleanup, recycling, upcycling