Hasta La Gadget!

Yesterday, The United States Department of the Interior approved plans for the world’s largest solar energy project. The $1 billion Blythe Solar Power Project will consist of four massive plants built on public lands in the southern California’s Mojave desert.

“When completed the project is expected to generate up to 1,000 Megawatts
of energy…” commented Interior Department secretary Ken Salazar. “That’s enough electricity to power up to 750,000 average American homes
and to make Blythe the largest solar power plant facility in the world.”

The plant is being developed by private German-based company, Solar Millennium. According to the company, the plant will has the potential output of one nuclear-power plant or a large modern coal-fired facility.

The Blythe announcement follows a parade of high-employing renewable energy projects. Two weeks ago Salazar inaugurated the world’s largest wind tower manufacturing plant in Colorado, and a week before that signed a lease for the first major offshore windfarm off the coast of New Jersey.

via PhysOrg

The eco-fashion designers at Matt & Nat
teamed up with Apple to create its new line of vegan laptop bags. This
odd collaboration of Matt & Nat, whose mission is to create chic and
beautiful, yet environmentally responsible products, and Apple, whose
goal is to create the most powerful, user-friendly tech products (and
dominate the world?) produced some pretty sweet bags.

The “Apple” collection
consists of four bags: the Motto ($195), Creed ($210), Ritual ($180),
and Mantra ($110). Each bag is made from vegan leather with a gray suede
lining made from, on average, 21 recycled plastic bottles. The bags
have separate compartments for the 15″ or 13″ MacBook, iPod, iPhone,
iPod Shuffle, and the Motto and Creed designs even have a compartment
for the iPad. 

With so many custom compartments, you can say
goodbye to digging around in the bottom of your bag for your iPod. These
spiffy bags are available through Matt & Nat or the iTunes Store, and for a price, you can own your very own trifecta bag to be green, fashionable, and Apple savvy.

There are millions of pounds of plastic in landfills around the country and floating in that big huge garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – you know, the one the size of Texas – and only a fraction of the plastic used in the United States alone actually gets recycled. Thanks to one Japanese inventor and engineer, the table-top Blest Machine (Japanese) essentially takes plastic, melts it down, separates the gases and condensation from the melted plastic, and produces burnable fuel oil at the end. He says about two pounds of plastic will net you a quart of oil, and the oil can even be further refined into other petroleum-based products like gasoline.

What’s the catch? The second law of thermodynamics says no system is perfect, so before anyone thinks this is a perpetual motion scam, note that you actually have to dump energy into the Blest Machine to melt down the plastic, process it, and produce the oil on the other end.

This isn’t free energy by any stretch, but that’s not the point: the $9,500 table-top gadget isn’t designed to be an energy producer, it’s meant to give people and municipalities a way to use electricity (which can be produced using sustainable means) to get rid of plastic waste and turn it into something that’s useful today, like oil. Right now the Blest Machine is only available in Japan, but expect to see it pop up around the globe soon.

[via DVice]

We all know pandas are cute, especially sneezing pandas,
but what about panda poo? Well, in the case of these eco-friendly paper
products made with recycled panda poo, yep, I think it can be pretty
darn cute.

Apparently, because of all the fibrous bamboo that
pandas consume, their excrement contains excellent paper making fibers.
The panda poo is collected from conservation parks, rinsed, boiled, some
pineapple and banana fibers are thrown in, the mixture is allowed to
dry in the sun for a few hours, and viola, it’s now paper.

These
100% recycled and odorless (I would hope so) creations come in
notebook, journal, or card form, and if you don’t like pandas, you can
also get paper made from elephant, cow, or horse poo.

If you love potty humor or recycling, you can purchase these adorable paper products here for $8-$24.  

North America’s greenest hotel is set to open in about a month, in what was once an abandoned building in downtown Toronto. Dubbed The Planet Traveller, the hotel exceeds LEED Platinum certification, which is the highest achievable rank.

The Planet Traveller features 114 rooms, a rooftop bar, and a slew of green features, including: a geothermal temperature control system, motion sensing lights to conserve power, solar and photo voltaic panels, and it can even turn wastewater into usable water.

“Climate change is both the biggest problem and the biggest opportunity our society has faced,” owner Tom Rand said. “I believe we can lower our carbon emissions by 75 per cent over the short term, and to near zero over the long term. Countries that figure it out fast will be selling solutions to the rest of the world.”

Via Inhabitat