Have you ever thought about how much energy you might be wasting just using your muscles to move your body? Well, Jakub Szczęsny from Warsaw clearly has. He has decided to collect the energy of people exercising outdoors by building, in conjunction with a group of engineers and the team the FunBec.eu foundation, a synchronised floating platform for water purification. Exercise would put the purification process into motion. Simple, clever, brilliant!

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Rainwater tanks are here to stay. Not only is the general populace turning to them as the realization sinks in that water is a scarce resource, but they are also being legislated by government at all levels. The unfortunate problem is that the vast majority are not the most attractive additions to the built environment, particularly the latest round of polypropylene models, which are mostly big beige blobs.

Full Tank, grown as an adjunct to a Melbourne based architectural firm, has spotted this need in the market and in response has presented the LUMI water tanks. Using Plexiglass in a variety of saturated colours, these tanks have been designed to fit into urban environments as an alternative to a naked normal water tank. The material used has a satin finish, which glows in the sunlight and illuminates by night with internal LEDs. LUMI is fully recyclable and compatible with greywater recycling systems and rainwater diverters. The outer casing can be retro-fitted to most domestic sized rainwater tanks.

With the growing recognition that petroleum-based plastics are killing the planet and giving us cancer comes an increasing interest in biodegradable bioplastics that come from more sustainable sources. Environmental tech company Metabolix recently announced that they have discovered a way to derive large amounts of bioplastic by growing it in switchgrass. The company uses the plant to create its own line of plastic, Mirel, which it hopes will supplant traditional plastics in the years to come.

British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy uses found materials to make his site-specific pieces. A devout environmentalist, his work aims to draw out the impermanent yet ethereal character of the spaces in which they are placed.

Seriously, not to be preachy, but why are you still eating fast food? Eating habits are not matters of personal choice anymore. Most environmentalists, not to mention nutritionists and even economists, are increasingly in agreement that partaking of the cheap food produced by the industrialized food chain is akin to, if not worse than, driving a gas-guzzling SUV. The recent recall of 143 million pounds of beef highlights why our way of procuring food is not merely unsustainable, it’s also unspeakably cruel and ultimately bad for our health. Michael Pollan, author of the seminal The Omnivore’s Dilemma, spoke with Newsweek in the wake of the USDA recall.

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