Article: Greener Consumption: The on-the-go edition
Yep, we’ve all got places to go. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep the impact of those trips to a minimum with your choices in transportation and what you take with you.
bicycles
Article: Fifty no-handed bike moves
“Golden Tree” by Martin Brooks from Ninian Doff on Vimeo.
A part of me sincerely believes that my life will be an utter failure if I never learn how to ride my bike without using my hands. I’ve practiced on and off since my youth, but fear of crashing and ruining my beautiful face overtakes the urge to ride sans hands. When I ride my bike up and down the West Side bike path in Manhattan, I burn with jealousy at my fellow New Yorkers who flaunt their no-hands bike riding ability…
Article: #BikeNYC photo series
Flickr’s official blog highlighted Dmitry Gudkov’s photo project titled “#BikeNYC” that was inspired by his own personal transformative experience with how he engaged with New York City after he purchased a bicycle. He became curious about his fellow bicyclists and reached out to them, first through Twitter (hence the hashtag origin of the photo series’ name) and began snapping portraits of New Yorkers with their bikes along with an accompanying profile. He explains:
Article: Fellini rides a low rider bike
“Rides a Bike” is one of my favorite single serve Tumblr sites that updates with vintage photographs of stars and celebrities of days of yore on bicycles, such as director Federico Fellini rocking a low rider bike. Add this site to your RSS or bookmarks for your weekly bit of whimsy. I can’t wait for…
Article: Cool bike-book shelf
Furniture designer Chris Brigham and his one-man firm “Knife and Saw” created this nifty storage solution that’s perfect for any bicycling bibliophile. This shelf however will not work for upside-down bikes.
Article: Horse bicycle accessory
Korean designer Eungi Kim created an “attachable bicycle ornament/accessory” that transforms a bicycle into something that resonates with memories of our childhood. It was one of the mane submissions in the “Seoul Cycle Design Competition 2010,” a contest organized between Designboom and Seoul Design Foundation. The ‘horsey’ package includes wooden ornaments (horsey shape body), metal…
Article: Bike By Me
I am far from a jock. And bikes scare me. They say you never forget how to ride one, but I am too chicken to try. What if I fall? I am as afraid of bikes as I am of horses. And clowns. And Log Cabin Republicans. Bike By Me may have me changing my…
Article: Where's the bike shop?
A Reuters photographer snapped this photo of co-owner Christian Petersen peering out the window of his awesomely decorated bicycle shop located in Altlandsberg, Germany. In case you’re wondering, there are about 120 bikes mounted on the building. [Via]
Article: The pedicab: a low-carbon solution for a night out drinking
What’s the carbon footprint of a night out barhopping? I’m not sure anyone’s actually measured that specifically, but a developing world staple seems to be catching on as a low-carbon transportation alternative for tourists and college students who’ve had a few too many: the pedicab.
Article: Pedal-powered recycling pick-up… and more
Recycling does create energy savings overall, but if you watch those big trucks rolling through your neighborhood on pick-up day, you probably realize that there may be even more efficient ways to handle the collection of these materials. A couple in Northampton, Massachusetts, has found one: pick up those recyclables by bike.
Article: Tandem bike + cargo bike = greener moving solution
Transportation for moving usually means a friend’s truck or a rented van… any bicycles involved are usually loaded into one of those options. Two students from the Netherlands’ Delft University for Technology, however, have created a concept in which a bike is the moving vehicle. The Vrachtfiets (which translates as “cargo bike”) is a recumbent tandem bike with electrical assist, and designed to forgo gas-guzzling options for short moves.
Article: Princeton bike sharing program gets special delivery
Bike sharing programs are popping up all over the place — cities, corporations, and universities are all investing in making bikes available to commuters to ease traffic congestion and pollution. With almost all of these services, you can assume that the bikes themselves were delivered by trucks to their respective locations. This past Sunday, though, fourteen Worksman bicycles (based in NYC) were delivered by the most obvious method: cyclist rode the 55 miles from the factory to Princeton University.
Article: Green tech finds (9/17/09)
Things that go “zoom”… plus online tomato swapping, bike power harnessing, and another good reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Green tech finds galore…
Online vegetable trading: Got more tomatoes from your garden then you could possibly eat? Really want some homegrown watermelon? Veggie Trader is a new site that allow you to “…trade, buy or sell local homegrown produce.” (via Planet Green)
EVs hit prime time: Prime time television, that is: Jay Leno plans to host a “Green Car Challenge” regularly on his new show that will feature “…celebrities who will take turns trying to best one another’s track times in a specially prepared Ford Focus-based battery car.” (via Examiner.com)
Article: David Byrne's perfect city
It’s odd to me that I am linking to two Wall Street Journal stories in as many days but I just ran across this funny little video they did accompanying David Byrne, he of Talking Heads fame, to Brookyn via bikes. Byrne was a judge in a citywide competition to design new bike racks for New York City. He was so into the project that he designed his own. Included are giant shoes, dollar signs (for the Wall Street area natch) and dogs. The video is cute.
Article: Green tech finds (8/6/09)
Green tech galore… here are this week’s finds.
- Smart car charging comes to San Diego: If you envision freeloading friends trying to charge their cars up at your place in the future, fear not: as a part of its testing of car-charging stations, San Diego will have participants use a Plug Smart “intelligent charger” that makes sure the drivers get the bill for the electricity.
- Package delivery by UrbanMole: Both Fed-Ex and UPS (among others) are doing there best to green up their operations. Designer Phillip Hermes’ UrbanMole concept would take the trucks off of the street completely with a “capsule-like device … that travels through an underground pipe network that transports packages of all stripes.” (via Cleantechnica)
Article: 5 innovative non-profits making bicycling (and bikes) more accessible
We’re right in the middle of Bike to Work Week, and, hopefully, you’ve taken the opportunity to try out a two-wheeled commute.
Bicycles aren’t only an efficient means of transportation; they’re also relatively cheap. But, for many people in both the developed and developing world, the few hundred bucks required to buy a new bike may be out of reach. Numerous non-profits have sprung up to make biking accessible for these people; here are just a few doing innovative work on this front.
Article: Brita Climate Ride
Brita cares about cleaning the environment as much as it cares about providing great products for making your home a healthier place to live. They have been serving consumers who look for high quality water filtration systems. Not content to stop at providing clean water to millions of people, Brita sponsors events that bring the…