sustainability

An interesting piece by Adele Peters of FastCompany describes shoes made partly from a funky kind of plastic derived from algae. 

The Ultra III shoes, made by a company called Vivobarefoot, are partly made with algae skimmed from freshwater lakes.  This algae is turned into a foam that is blended with a standard plastic, ethylene-vinyl acetate, to form the material for the shoes.

Developers of technology pursue efficiency relentlessly.  This is done for a variety of reasons: Efficiency is readily quantified and lends itself to comparison between designs; a preference for efficiency seems simply rational (who wouldn't prefer a more efficient car over a less efficient one?); increases in efficiency increase sustainability.

A team of Mechanical Engineering students at Rice University have invented a gizmo that they hope will help mitigate food waste.  The device is called "BioBlend" and it consists of an add-on to a standard garburator that processes food scraps into a paste suitable for composting or conversion to biogas.

Check out the video below.