“Ideas can and do change the world,” says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea’s 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked — and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.
This information comes from the TED Talk by Rutger Bregman.
For more information about Rutger Bregman visit his website.
Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and his team of experts have created the world’s largest smog vacuum cleaner. The Smog Free Tower uses patented ion technology to produce smog-free bubbles of public space, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air for free.
The Smog Free Project is not only intended to be a local solution for parks, but also an inspirational experience of a clean future. Along with governments, NGOs, pro-bicycle campaigns and the clean-tech industry, people can work together to make a whole city smog free.
Specifications:
2014-2018. The first 7-meter high Smog Free Tower equipped with environment-friendly and patented ozon free ion technology. The Smog Free Tower cleans 30.000m3 per hour without ozon, runs on green wind energy and uses no more electricity than a waterboiler (1170 watts). Smog Free Jewellery available on request.
This information comes from the website of Studio Roosegaarde.
At The Ocean Cleanup, we’re developing the first feasible method to clean up world’s ocean garbage patches. Five vast areas of Open Ocean, known as the subtropical gyres, act as a trap for ocean plastic. We specifically focus on the North Pacific accumulation zone – also known as ‘the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ – since about 1/3 of all oceanic plastic is concentrated in that one area between Hawaii and California 1.
When I founded The Ocean Cleanup almost three years ago, there was no realistic way to clean up these accumulation zones, each several million square kilometres in size. I realised that coastlines are evidently very effective in catching plastic. Unfortunately, there is no landmass in the middle of these gyres, so I then proposed to deploy a very long array of floating barriers attached to the seabed. This would act as an artificial coastline, allowing the ocean to clean itself. We aim to deploy our first pilot system in 2016, and hope to be able to start cleaning the North Pacific by 2020.
Yet a common argument against our efforts is that focus should instead be on preventing more plastic from entering the oceans. I fully agree prevention is top priority. Having to clean up the gyres again a few decades after cleaning up would be nothing short of annoying. But in my opinion, one does not exclude the other – they complement each other.
First of all, the ocean garbage patches do not go away by themselves and hence need to be cleaned up at some point in time.
This information comes from the website of The Ocean Clean up.
Here is a very informative article about plastic problems today and a lot of suggestions about what to do with the problem on a personal level:
Plastics Will Outweigh Fish in The Ocean: How Does It Affect You and What Should You Do?
The village features energy-positive homes, mixed renewable energy sources, energy storage, organic food production, vertical farming, and aquaponics, water management and waste-to-resource systems.
Vision:
This information comes from the website of ReGen Villages.