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.
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)
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.
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)
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.
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 community together under the common cause of improving awareness of environmental issues and also to solve some problems by supporting charities and other philanthropic ventures.
Brita is holding a series of “Climate Rides,” whereby bicyclists race together in honor of environmentalism. Bicycles are a great example of energy conservation (and money conservation). There are a few climate rides scheduled in cities along the east coast, check out the Eco-mmunity Map Marker Group for “Brita Climate Ride” [www.sundancechannel.com]] for complete listings.
