Sustainable Living for Your Home



Everywhere you go, you’ll see that people are taking steps in adapting a different kind of living. Sustainable living is definitely on its peak as people are exerting conscious efforts to push through sustainable living. Apparently, this conscious effort has been around for some time now but it’s only now that people are starting to notice—partly because of the threatening effects of Global warming and Earth destruction we have been experiencing these past few years.

Many innovative products for your home are being released to the market nowadays that answer directly to sustainable living. Concepts and ideas flow in minds of developers; not only are they helpful for the environment but also it brings them an alternative source of income. Here are some examples of new sustainable living, eco friendly products to hit the market today:

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Palm Oil Causes Deforestation



Palm oil is heavily in demand these days and the palm oil industry is certainly booming, ensuring good income for many years to come. Palm oil is a major component to common necessities such as shampoos, soaps and candles. And because palm oil is edible oil, it can also be used in foods like chocolates and margarine making it a very lucrative business to many farmers experiencing difficulties in farming.

Due to these ever increasing demands, huge palm oil plantations are replacing large portions of forests in Asian countries particularly in Malaysia, the leading palm oil exporter in the world. These land conversions are certainly taking their toll to the biodiversity within the area, threatening many animals living in these forests to extinction.

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Endangered Birds Got the Beach



Most of us normal, average people would like to have a beach of our own where we can lie down and savor the sun all day. What will make it better than somebody else buying it for you and allowing you to use the beach for free? Apparently, you have to be an endangered species first before you can get someone to buy you a whole stretch of beach to lay egg on.

Meet the Maleo birds, these endangered birds got their own stretch of Indonesian beach to their name, complete with bodyguards to protect their eggs from human scavengers and hungry poachers. Maleo birds are considered endangered since they are very rare. These endangered species are also a native of Indonesia; unfortunately, their eggs have become a popular delicacy around the Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia. This situation had brought down the number of live Maleo birds threatening to extinct them.

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Disposable Plastic Bags Anyone?



Plastic bags are nature’s number one enemy. A regular disposable plastic bag can last up to 1000 years in the face of the Earth and poses a great environmental hazard. Actually, nobody really knows if they indeed dissolve or they just stay that way forever. These bags are made to last a lifetime, they are durable and they will not break into any other form; that unfortunately, puts Mother Earth into a compromising position.

This is exactly why environmentalists move to ban disposable plastic bags from supermarkets and shops in hopes of wiping out plastic bags usage once and for all. Although there have been recycling efforts employed by the government, it seems that it’s never enough as compared to the actual amounts of plastic bags people use everyday. In the end, it will still depend on the choices we make and how we live our lives.

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Living Power: Renewable Power Generation from Animals and Humans



Generating electricity from biomass is stepping to the forefront of commercial power generation and Netherlands’ chicken-manure power plant, which started working around September 2008, stands as the largest biomass power plant in the world – supplying renewable electricity to nearly 90 thousand households. And yet more fascinating is the pursuit of developing renewable power projects that are modeled on the generation of electricity from the body of living organisms. The technologies are still in their infancy but whatever results have been obtained, thus far, are no less than amazing.

Of all the animals, studied for producing electricity in or on their bodies, none has come so stunning to the scientists as the electric eel. With its thousands of electrocytes (electricity-producing body cells), a large electric eel can generate an electric potential of about 600 volts – enough to stun a horse. Yale University researchers, in collaboration with nanotechnology engineers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), are working on developing artificial cells that would generate renewable power for medical implants and charging other small devices. The findings of these researchers, as published in Nature Nanotechnology (October 2008), show that the artificial cells modeled on electric eels’ electrocytes can be improved to produce up to 40% more electrical energy in a single pulse as compared to an eel’s natural electrocyte.

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