Mayor Bloomberg Releases An Interesting Video

I didn’t know what to make of this when I saw it. I live in Manhattan, in a city where people bike, take buses, subways, trains, live and work in towers where they share elevators, share water, share electricity. I thought my town is setting the example for energy-efficient, communal living. And then, the guy who runs the place, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, releases a study — including (see below) a shocking video — that says, you think New York is great on energy? You think that? Well, check this out…

…and New york is about 1/3 less polluting than most other American Cities!

So we’re dirty, but we’re three times more efficient than typical Americans. The same goes for residents of Toronto and Barcelona, they’re three times better than their countrymen. Tokyo, London and Seoul are about twice as efficient.

Cities, even rich ones, perform differently. In this list of 12, starting with the dirtiest, New York comes in fifth. These are greenhouse gas emissions per person (What’s with Washington?)

1. Washington, D.C., U.S. — 19.7 tons of CO₂ equivalent
2. Glasgow, UK — 8.4 tons
3. Toronto, Canada — 8.2 tons
4. Shanghai, China — 8.1 tons
5. New York City, U.S. — 7.1 tons
6. Beijing, China — 6.9 tons
7. London, U.K. — 6.2 tons
8. Tokyo, Japan — 4.8 tons
9. Seoul, South Korea — 3.8 tons
10. Barcelona, Spain — 3.4 tons
11. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — 2.3 tons
12. Sao Paulo, Brazil — 1.5 tons

Sited from: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/17/165275215/the-big-apples-mayor-makes-a-very-scary-video

TONIGHT!: Design+Denver Meetup

Hey, D+D’ers! In case you forgot, it’s the 2nd Thursday of the month and we’ll be meeting at 6:30pm to chat about all things beautiful in the world of design. Ok, well not quite. I thought it would be fun to brainstorm on future trending, specifically BIG PICTURE trending for society 5-50 years and beyond. We’ll try to lead this discussion into the next meeting (4th Thursday, 25th of October) when w

e take our thoughts from this one and talk about possible design challenges these trend assumptions pose and what we can do about it!

Where is this all going?

What is shaping up that we can use to predict future use patterns?

How will people be moving around in the future?

How will the Information Age evolve?

Industrial Age –> Information Age –> ???? Age?

How will we communicate?

What future challenges will we face?

Bring anything you’d like to help; studies, magazines, articles on line, you favorite rendering marker…whatever helps!

Meeting Place:

6:30pm-7:30pm

Panera

Colorado & South Cherry Creek Dr.

640 South Colorado Boulevard  Glendale, CO 80246

(303)656-4800

email me with any questions/concerns: irwindesigned@gmail.com

D+D Overview Link: https://irwindesigned.wordpress.com/designdenver/

Production Process By Design

Hey there designers, and lovers of stuff. I wanted to offer a very brief summary on the manufacturing side of products in hopes of spurring thought the next time you design something to be mass produced through the outline of a simple production flow diagram. As designers, we are often never tasked with understanding the process in which the things we design are made, unless we have a client (master) that demands that their product be “eco riendly” the mystification of how things come to be and their environmental impacts are never scrutinized.

I chose to take a snapshot of the production process out of an LCA (life-cycle assessment) of an aluminum truck wheel that Five Winds analyzed to show just what goes into making a single product (1 material).

As yo u can see the complexity of a one material product can be daunting. Notice the inputs (water, energy, material) and the outputs (waste, emsission, product). These all make up the embodied energy of that product. So, keep in mind just how much work goes into creating that elaborate thing-a-ma-bob next time. In the name of your job, furthering  your understanding of process,  wowing a possible client, and of course limiting the impact of your design on the environment.

energy, Energy, ENERGY!

The US Energy Information Administration just released their Annual Energy Report for the country. Check it out here. There are some really cool interactive graphs that outline most information categories you can play with.

Biosolar Green Energy!

Well I knew that plants synthesis energy, but when a friend and I developed this graphic when we were operating reThread to bring to light this idea we never thought it’d become a reality!

Barry D. Bruce, professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is turning the term “power plant” on its head. The biochemist and a team of researchers have developed a system that taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.

Bruce collaborated with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Switzerland to develop a process that improves the efficiency of generating electric power using molecular structures extracted from plants. The biosolar breakthrough has the potential to make “green” electricity dramatically cheaper and easier.

“This system is a preferred method of sustainable energy because it is clean and it is potentially very efficient,” said Bruce, who was named one of “Ten Revolutionaries that May Change the World” by Forbes magazine in 2007 for his early work, which first demonstated biosolar electricity generation. “As opposed to conventional photovoltaic solar power systems, we are using renewable biological materials rather than toxic chemicals to generate energy. Likewise, our system will require less time, land, water and input of fossil fuels to produce energy than most biofuels.”

Nice work!!