The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Forget the ‘sharing economy': technology is about to usher in the ‘circular' economy
A ‘circular supply chain’ using technology can achieve sustainable production and business growth
An open, networked business-to-business platform that connects entire supply chains can serve as the enabler for progressive enterprises with the foresight to seize the opportunity.
Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Forget Sharing — Go Circular Economy”
8 ways to rethink resources: nappies to benches and food waste to biogas
LIST ONLY
1. Nappies to roof tiles and railway sleepers . 2. Paper to reduce food waste . 3. Sustainable construction materials . 4. Clothes from old water bottles . 5. Agri-waste into plastic bottles . 6. Worms as fertiliser . 7. Food waste to biogas . 8. Recycling polyester
Phi Beta Iota: Brilliant examples of remediation in context of continuing to do the wrong things righter (Russell Ackoff 2004). Bio-design and the tri-fecta of holistic analytics, true cost economics, and open source everything engineering would make such measures moot.
Can local manufacturing compete with automobile mass production? It seems that yes, it can. The technology will improve as time goes on and you can't beat the price…
3-D Printed Car: NY Daily News Autos gets a ride in the Local Motors “Strati” 3-D printed roadster
The world’s first 3-D printed car is now a reality, and the Daily News Autos got to ride in the car of the future on the streets of Brooklyn, New York. Engineered and built by Phoenix-based Local Motors, the 2-passenger roadster, called the “Strati,” can be printed in 44 hours and has a top speed of approximately 50 mph.
EXTRACT
“This is about simplification and streamlining,” explains Jay Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Local Motors. Rogers was present to give us a tour of the Strati and explain, exactly, 3-D printing tech brings to the automotive world. “All this material you’re looking at,” he says, pointing to the car, “is about $3,500 dollars.”
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Granted, it’s not pretty, but the prototypes ridged edges can be smoothed over with human-powered grinding and sanding. Paint can also be applied to the body-work, though this negates the Strati’s near 100-percent recyclability.
4/4 Fabbing & cities: Barcelona Fab City
This post is the fourth of 4 posts about Digital manufacturing (fabbing) environments that we have been publishing weekly on Fridays. In these posts I have shared my research on fab labs, open innovation and smart cities, mainly in Europe and in Spain.
The fourth post is the result of a research on fab labs and their relationship with smartcities. In the last two articles I have written about two recent nodes of the global fab lab network. Although there are other fablabs in Spain, I decided to give visibility to these two initiatives in León and in Sevilla. Among all fab labs in Spain those two are giving a real opportunity to make personal production and digital manufacturing accessible and comprehensible for a wide range of people. However, the most popular manufacturing laboratory in Spain is Fab Lab Barcelona (2008). It is settled in the IAAC – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and it is part of the Fab Lab Network. I would like to share my interest in their research on how the digital production ecosystem could make our cities smarter.
Beautiful Woven Refugee Tents Get Their Power from the Sun
Designer Abeer Seikaly has developed a practical yet elegant solution to the need for lightweight, mobile, and structurally sound shelters for disaster zones.
The Canadian-Jordanian's Weaving a Home project not only provides flexible, transportable shelter, but also incorporates water collection, solar power generation and solar water heating into the design.
Each tent has its own water collection system, utilizing the natural channels formed by the skin to direct water to the storage point. By using a fabric with strong thermal properties, the tents can alsoconvert solar radiation into power and heat collected water for showering.
3D printing is growing up!
How a Dutch team of architects is 3D-printing a full-sized house in Amsterdam (video 4 min)
Architects in Amsterdam have started building what they say is one of the world's first full-sized 3D-printed houses. The structure is being built using a plastic heavily based on plant oil. The team behind the house claim it is a waste-free, eco-friendly way to design and construct the cities of the future.
