Found this article at Sustainable Design Update about Sintex Industries making a prefabricated biogas digester which turns waste and garbage into cooking fuel. Nothing new about the technology but constructing a tank has always been the biggest headache. Now, you can just get it ready-made and install it. According to this Fortune magazine article, it [...]

Graphiosoft are offering a stripped down version of ArchiCAD 11 for way below their normal price, the target market being small architectural firms. On the face of it, it’s a good move because small firms may be able to get by without features like teamwork, markup tools or even a printed manual. However, if you [...]

Researchers at IIT Kanpur are working on a toilet design that will reuse water. The design is still under development but, if it works as advertised, it’ll be a good thing because the amount of fresh water flushed down the drain is dramatically reduced. The article at Down To Earth may disappear in the next [...]

Scientists at a British company, Ceravision, have developed an alternative light bulb which has an energy efficiency of 50% (compared to 5% for incandescents and 15% for fluorescent tubes). As if that’s not enough, this bulb should last for decades and doesn’t contain mercury either. I can’t say I fully understand the technicalities but it [...]

I’ve always been interested in LED lighting and, while it is making great strides towards becoming a highly efficient artificial light source, the lowly tube-light is still the least power-hungry domestic lighting source you can find; it just beats its newer counterparts - the compact fluorescents.
And if anyone still thinks incandescent lights aren’t all that [...]

Solar pipes are not new but they usually employ fibre optics which makes them cost more than many people are willing to shell out. This system, on the other hand uses highly reflective pipes instead and, if it is anything like it should, technically, be, it might do a lot to reduce our consumption of [...]

Oh, this is good! A company that mainly develops unmanned aircraft has turned its skills to making rooftop wind turbines. Small and light (no price yet so I don’t know if it’s cheap) and mounted on the building parapet - to make best use of the structure’s aerodynamic properties - it requires only 3.1m/s of [...]

C|NET reports that a company based in Ohio, USA has created interior lighting systems that consume just one-third the energy compared to the average fluorescent system. In addition, it is said to emit neither heat nor UV light and won’t leak mercury if broken. Although the systems are expensive at the moment, they are expected [...]

This may not be great dinner-table conversation but simply separating urine from excreta can make a huge difference to how we approach the issue of human waste. Wost Man Ecology, a firm run by Swedish farmer Ingvar-Nilsson, makes separating toilets that are now selling all across the world. Essentially, the urine can be directly used [...]

As bamboo makes its way into the building industry mainstream, this article questions whether it is always as green as it’s made out to be. We need a neutral body to certify the processes involved in growing and manufacturing bamboo products.
Full Article: Bamboo in Construction: Is the Grass Always Greener?