Category Archives: Stuff We Need

From sustainably produced consumer products to zero-emission vehicles to plastic-eating fungus, this is the kind of stuff we need.

Stuff We Need: Plastic-eating Fungus

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Just about a year ago, I blogged about an article that prompted me to reconsider my just-say-no-to-plastics mantra.

No, it didn’t convert me into a lobbyist for the plastics industry. Heck, I still believe that the absolute best thing would be for humans to end the production of plastics. Rather, I just haven’t ruled out the possibility that plastic could someday become a renewable resource. We’ve already made great strides in recycling (how cool is fleece made from recycled plastic bottles?!), and there are a number of different plant-derived plastics already on the market.

However, one problem that isn’t going away anytime soon, thanks to the fact that plastic takes forever to biodegrade, is waste: landfills overflowing with plastic, waterways polluted with it, animals dying from ingesting it, etc.

Well, thanks to a team of Yale University students with a passion for fungus, we have a good subject for a long-overdue Stuff We Need installment!

Via Fast Company:

[A] group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane…

The fungi, Pestalotiopsis microspora, is the first anyone has found to survive on a steady diet of polyurethane alone and–even more surprising–do this in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment that is close to the condition at the bottom of a landfill.

How frickin’ cool is that?!

Now, knowing how careless humans can be while tampering with the natural order, it’s not hard to imagine this going very, very badly.

Here’s the synopsis of a sci-fi/action/thriller movie that would almost certainly be made based on one possible outcome:

The Fungus Among Us
A global environmental crisis is mounting, stemming from humanity’s lust for plastic. Landfills are full, toxic chemicals are leaching and poisoning ground water, humans may have switched to electric cars, but oil is still fought over, as the plastics industry tries to keep up with worldwidee consumers’ insatiable demands for cheap, disposable products of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, in a small village in the Amazon, living amongst a tribe of indigenous people who have been spared contact with the outside world, a reclusive biologist (played by Brad Pitt) discovers a fungus that eats plastic. Despite his disdain for the developed world, knowing that even his oasis in the jungle will eventually be destroyed if the plastics problem isn’t addressed, the scientist reluctantly returns to the U.S., where his discovery is at first shunned by environmental bureaucrats. Turning to the private sector, a plastics manufacturer realizes they can insure their future billions in profit while earning billions more by selling the fungus that will clear up the landfills so that they can be filled again, over and over and over again. Only, after initial success, the fungus, which they genetically altered in order to boost its consumption rate and capacity, starts to reproduce at an alarming rate, it becomes airborne, and soon it starts consuming plastic everywhere it’s found. Personal property, modes of transportation, infrastructure everywhere starts crumbling apart, and it’s up to the reclusive biologist to find some way to kill the fungus. Will he succeed?

So, hopefully they can figure out how to use this fungus responsibly, perhaps by cultivating it in massive containers, into which they add the plastic waste, where it can be eaten in a controlled, sealed environment.

See, they just have to consult me!

Stuff We Need: More U in EV SUVs

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My wife and I own an old Toyota Previa van, like the one pictured here, it has over 200,000 miles on it, it squeals loudly driving around town, it hums loudly at highway speeds, it probably needs around $1,000 worth of work right now to keep it truly road worthy, and yet I can’t imagine living without it.

There are very few things that we can’t fit inside it or strap to the roof rack, including this year’s 10-foot Christmas tree, it’s amazingly comfortable on long road trips, and you can sleep in the back in a pinch.

That’s one long-winded scenic route on the way to stressing that the operative letter in SUV is “U” for utility. (For purposes of this blog post, I’m defining Sport Utility Vehicles to include vans, pick-ups and other trucks.)

Back in July 2011, I wrote about the Suzuki Every Van and how it was doomed, because, as an EV (Electric Vehicle) it failed the U Test in a big, big way, offering a pathetic maximum range of 62 miles.

Well, today, via Inhabitat, there’s news from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, MI, about this:

…Via Motors unveil[ed] the company’s first extended-range electric vehicle, a full-size light duty pickup truck called the eREV VTRUX. [The] 100-mpg VTRUX attempts to replace a full V8 engine with a hugely powerful 402-horsepower electric motor (with 300 lb-ft of torque), a larger version of the same system that allows the Chevy Volt to beat EV range anxiety.

Now, the downside is that, like the Chevy Volt, the VTRUK is NOT a true EV, as Inhabitat mistakenly refers to it. It still utilizes a gasoline engine, hence the “100-mpg” rating, which clearly makes it a hybrid in my eyes.

That said, since SUVs are such notorious gas guzzlers, a 100-mpg pickup is nothing to laugh at, and the fact that Via Motors will also be producing a van and something that looks like a Chevy Suburban, might just win my seal of approval anyway, for how soundly they are winning the U Test.

If we are ever to completely replace gasoline-powered automobiles, automakers MUST make them affordable (who knows how much these Via trucks will cost), and they must pass the U Test. The average family must be able to drive their family members, their dogs, their stuff and their home and garden improvement supplies around, and they have to have good range, especially since charging stations are only just starting to pop up in a relative handful of places.

Stuff We Need: Scrapblasters!

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I haven’t posted a Stuff We Need installment in a while, maybe because I’ve been too overwhelmed with stuff lately, like moving 20 years of accumulated stuff from one house to another, and having been immersed in those stuff-filled days we call the holiday season.

But when I saw this, I knew I had to have one:

Scrapblasters are two guys from Seattle, Brian Westcott and John Brink, who do upcycling with great retro taste.

It’s not that I have a thing for vacuum cleaners, it’s just that a vintage vacuum cleaner repurposed as a boom box TOTALLY works for me.

And yet, looking around the Scrapblasters website and checking other things they’ve made, I came up with an idea I’d like more than a boom box.

Back in April, they posted this:

That right there is a speaker and sub-woofer in a 1910 suitcase, and what I’d really like is to commission them to construct a home theater sound system inside a collection various retro items that would sit around the TV room.

THAT would be so rad!

Stuff We Need: Solar Blimps

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Call ‘em blimps. Call ‘em zeppelins. Call ‘em dirigibles (if you can pronounce it). Call ‘em airships.

Whatever, if they are are solar and zero emissions and can carry cargo, we need ‘em!

Carbon emissions from cargo planes, ships, trains, and trucks is significant.

That a solar blimp can look really cool — always a plus for me — is yummy icing on the cake, but the fact that, according to Inhabitat, the makers of the SolarShip plan to demonstrate their vessels soon, in 2012 and 2013, is really exciting.

[SolarShip]…has taken the steps to bring its vision of a green shipping future to life, recently completing the initial test flights for its solar helium plane. The prototype blends the concepts of blimp and airplane by placing a blimp lined with solar panels over an airplane cockpit and landing gear, and using solar power to propel the plane into the air. SolarShip plans to build three sizes of this ship: the small Caracal, the mid-size Chui, and the 30-tonne cargo hauler Nanuq.

Now, sadly, these things won’t be replacing cargo ships and trains anytime soon. The largest of the three, after all, the 30-ton Nanuq, can only carry the equivalent of one 20-foot shipping container.

But it’s a step in the right direction, and in the meantime we get some great CGI eye candy to watch.

Stuff We Need: Solar Bridges

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Apropos my post from July, where I assert that green energy and infrastructure projects, and the millions of jobs they could provide, are painfully obvious no-brainers, no-brainers that we ignore at our own peril, today I came across this, via CNN:

World’s largest solar bridge project gets underway

A CGI image of how the new solar panels will look on the roof of the new Blackfriars rail station in London

What a brilliant idea…and how very sad that the U.S. isn’t doing projects like this on a grand scale, all over the country, simply because we’re so paralyzed by political and governmental corruption and dysfunction.

When legendarily foggy and rainy London decides to invest in a solar project like this, you know the technology has advanced radically, that despite their sunshine deficit, as the article says, the solar panels will help reduce annual CO2 emissions by more than 500 tons!

Instead, here in the U.S., lobbyists for the dirtiest fossil fuel known to man might be successful in building a pipeline to pump the toxic sludge from Alberta, Canada, through the heartland of America, to the U.S. Gulf Coast, because they have a cozy relationship with the State Department.

Tragically sad.

Stuff We Need: OdeWire

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I’ve been a reader of Ode Magazine for years, and I regularly feel grateful for such a consistent source of positive news stories in a world dominated by negative-focused media.

All the more reason, then, to celebrate the launch of a new project from Ode, a news aggregator called OdeWire, that uses semantic search technology to cull news stories from all over the world that focus on positive developments; on people and organizations who are finding and implementing solutions to the problems that face humanity and our planet.

Now, I don’t agree with every single thing I read in Ode, but do I need to? Hell no! I don’t agree with everything I read in the New York Times, or in any other publication for that matter, so why should Ode be held to that standard?

Rather, there’s no denying that the stories on the whole provide proof that we all desperately seek, that good things happen everywhere, everyday.

And so now Ode brings us OdeWire, a kind of Google News for what Ode calls Intelligent Optimists. Divided into six major topic sections — Business, Energy, Food, Health, Technology, Life — I’m very impressed so far with the selection of articles and the variety of publications they originate from. I look forward to visiting the site often.

Here’s Ode Editor-in-Chief, Jurriaan Kamp, and Tim Musgrove, the mad scientist behind the semantic technology, talking about OdeWire: