Avocados are one of the wonderful fruits of summer. High in nutrition and flavor, nothing signals the start of summer like a zesty lime guacamole dip with tortilla chips. The next time you’re making guacamole or slicing an avocado for a salad, try saving your pits to grow into avocado trees. It’s surprisingly easy to grow your own avocado tree from seed, and it makes a great educational project for home and classrooms. Check out our handy-dandy guide below, complete with photos, to learn how to grow an avocado tree from seed.
Are you as excited about seeing Wendy as we are? The 3,000 sq. ft. spiky-armed, smog-eating sculpture by HWKN is almost complete in the yard of MoMA PS1 and will be opening to the public next week. But if you’re impatient like us and want to see a sneak peek of Wendy now, click through to see our photo gallery of this fascinating installation which will feature a water canon, a pool, a DJ booth and an exhibition space when complete!
A team of 40 researchers and students at the University of Maryland’s Department of Aerospace Engineering set a new world record for a flight time set by a human-powered helicopter. Actually, they destroyed it — an earlier Maryland team, Gamera I, had set the record of 11.4 seconds, but this Gamera II crew designed a newer and lighter helicopter that scored amazing results. Last week the Gamera II was aloft for 50 seconds. The record, for now, is unofficial until the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) verifies it in the coming weeks.
If you read our enlightening “how to switch to LED bulbs” tutorial, you’ve hopefully already seen how much money and energy you can save by replacing your incandescent bulbs, but we wanted to make it even clearer how easy and effective a home light bulb makeover can be. We headed over to Brooklyn to give a light bulb overhaul to the managing editor of Inhabitots, our very own Julie Seguss! Julie is going to be a new mom in just a few months, so saving money is of the utmost importance right now, but she still wanted to keep her Park Slope home illuminated with a warm, bright glow. In just a few hours, the Inhabitat lighting makeover crew (aka Inhabitat editors Jill & Yuka) were able to swap out all of Julie’s electricity-guzzling incandescents and halogens with energy-efficient Philips LEDs, and we think you’ll be impressed with the monthly savings we tallied up for Julie at the end of the day. Check out our video above to see the whole makeover, and find out how much extra cash Julie and her husband will have after the makeover to spend on diapers and baby clothes!
‘Shelter ByGG‘ may look like a giant red cloud sitting on the street, but it’s really a cozy cocoon-like shelter made of renewable cork ! Gabriela Gomes sent us news about her design, which she describes as an experimental habitable module that can be placed in any empty city space. The private retreat is a great way to get away from prying eyes within public spaces, and even gets its clean energy right from the sun.
It is said that creating a super-cavitating craft is as challenging as breaking the sound barrier, but that is exactly what Juliet Marine Systems have done. The vessel, called GHOST, is a combination aircraft and boat that has been designed to fly through an artificial underwater gaseous environment creating 900 times less hull friction than water. It has been built at no cost to the government, and is hoped that the technology can be used to protect US sailors, servicemen and servicewomen in the future.
Tesla’s first batch of highly-anticipated Model S electric sedans were delivered to customers this past Friday – one month ahead of schedule – at an invitation-only event at the Tesla Factory in Fremont, California. The first ten sedans were rolled out of Tesla’s factory in front of a crowd of people that included Tesla employees, relatives, and politicians including California Governor Jerry Brown.
By now, we hope that most of you know that swapping incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs saves money and energy, but there’s still a lingering misconception that LED bulbs emit a cold, bluish light that is just not as warm or attractive as the old filament-filled bulbs we grew up with. To dispel this fallacy, we sought out a group of people with a critical eye for light bulb color and ambiance – lighting designers on the show floor of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at New York Design Week. These meticulous designers take light warmth and quality very seriously (that is their job after all), so we couldn’t think of anyone better suited to give an honest opinion about the latest generation of high-tech LED light bulbs. Watch our video above to see how we retrofitted five gorgeous designer lamps with new Philips LED light bulbs – and in the process saved $1,732.86 in energy costs and won over some designer converts to the future of LED lighting.
Talk about upcycling — this tiny barbeque grill is made from a single Altoids Sours tin, two salvaged computer fan guards and a handful of nuts and screws, and it’s big enough to handle a wiener or a hamburger patty! Instructables user vmspionage claims that he (or she) got the inspiration from the eBq, which employs the larger Altoids mints tin, but in the name of progress vmspionage has made that original grill look like a 1980s computer by comparison.
Being visible in the dark is of crucial importance to cyclists and skateboarders setting out at night, so with that in mind the Exertion Games Lab team at RMIT University in Australia has created the LunaHelm — a cycle helmet fitted with 104 LEDs that can be controlled by the wearer to create light signals! Not only does this mean they are seen in the dark, but they can also indicate to traffic where they are turning, without taking their hands off the grips.
With an emphasis on preserving the rich tradition of American skilled labor, Field Aesthetic Manufacturing Company has devised an array of handmade sustainable products. The Green Mountains based company makes a line of organic soaps and ties, but their field bags are really what takes center stage. Made from recycled military tent canvas, the sporty unisex bags fuse handcrafted quality with upcycled fashion.
A new UCLA study demonstrates that climate change could cause temperatures throughout the Los Angeles region to rise by 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century. These results could mean a tripling of
Great news! The MillionTreesNYC Project, which is one of 132 PlaNYC initiatives to green up the city, has already surpassed the halfway point in its grand goal of planting one million trees within the
Foster + Partners has been selected to renovate and redesign Cuba’s School of Ballet, which was originally conceived by Fidel Castro. According to BDonline, the derelict school, which was never
Environmental activists sometimes put themselves in harm’s way to protect natural resources, and according to a new report from Global Witness the number of people killed defending the natural world
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