Green tech finds (5/26/11)
Diaper-eating mushrooms, recycled oil booms, and global warming’s effects on your wi-fi signal… this week’s green tech finds.
- Solar and wind power for apartment dwellers: Jonathan Globerson’s Greenerator concept allows apartment dwellers to harvest both wind and solar power from their balconies. (via Inhabitat)
- GM recycling oil booms into Volt parts: Lots of oil booms left over from last year’s BP oil spill. Instead of letting them get tossed into landfills, GM is collecting these materials and recycling them into air-deflecting baffles for the Chevy Volt. (via Earth 911)
- Harvesting Gulf Stream power: The Department of the Interior is reviewing a proposal by Florida Atlantic University to turn Gulf Stream currents into baseload power. (via Yale 360 and @SierraActivist)
- Google turning paper mill into seawater-cooled data center: The internet giant purchased the paper mill site in Hamina, Finland in 2009, and will turn it into a data center that’s cooled by seawater. See the details in the video above.
- Mushrooms — the disposable diaper killer: Researchers in Mexico have discovered that oyster mushrooms can break down disposable diapers in a matter of months (vs. the centuries it would normally take). (via Ecogeek)
- Could climate change screw up your wi-fi?: A new study by the British government argues that changing weather patterns created by global warming could make wireless signals much less reliable. (via Planet Green and @treehugger)
- Consumer energy management tools work: That’s what a study by Environmental Defense Fund and OPower found. When Americans have access to energy meter data, their power use drops by an average of 1.8%. Not huge individually, but potentially massive on a large scale. (via Fast Company)
Found something else greenie and techie? Share it with us…
MORE FROM SUSTAINABLOG:
- Cancer now the leading cause of death in China.
- How wheat farming could be more sustainable
