Those who thought rich white kids were the only recent contaminates in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood are in for a surprise. Polluted drain water is making its way into Newton Creek, and new plans are coming out to help divert it.

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection will add green infrastructure to eastern Bed-Stuy to prevent sewage overflow from running into nearby Newton Creek. Relatively cost-efficient green infrastructure systems like bioswales, vegetative buffers, rain gardens and landscaped diversion ditches are possibilities. Funding for the projects will come from residents’ water and utility bills. Specific locations have yet to be designated, but New Yorkers are already seeing small green dots that mark potential sites.

The post Green Infrastructure Project to Divert Brooklyn Floodwater first appeared on Gajitz.

In developing nations, the spread of mobile technology is far outpacing the spread of access to reliable grid electricity. This means that, of the some 200 million mobile phones in Africa alone, most can not be charged in the owners’ homes. Instead, those owners have to walk far distances and pay several dollars a month just to charge their devices. A revolutionary device called the Bottle Charger could charge those devices in homes while saving plastic bottles from the landfill.

The Bottle Charger was designed by a group of visionaries in Nairobi, Kenya. It takes nothing more than a 20 liter (about five gallons) plastic bottle and a cup of boiling water to charge your cell phone or other device in 15 to 30 minutes, depending on factors like the temperature surrounding the bottle. The Bottle Charger uses a small Blackbeard Unidirectional Constant Turbine (B.U.C.T.) to generate energy along with the rise and fall of temperatures.

While solar power is often proposed as an alternative source of energy in developing nations, there are a host of problems that come with solar power collection and storage. The biggest obstacles to using solar effectively are that the sun needs to shine on the panels for them to collect energy, and the storage batteries need to be replaced rather frequently, which can be costly. The Bottle Charger isn’t strong enough to power entire cities, but it could power lights and phones, improving productivity and communication.

Unfortunately, the Bottle Charger project on IndieGoGo fell far short of its $25,000 goal before the end of the campaign. But the idea is solid, and there are so many possibilities for an invention like this. Hopefully the Bottle Charger team will continue their drive to provide safe, cheap, clean power to developing nations.

The post Device Charges Cell Phones With Hot Water + a Plastic Bottle first appeared on Gajitz.

With all of the effort humans put into finding and generating energy, it might come as a surprise to some folks that there is already energy all around us just going to waste. Kinetic energy is generated from movements we make every day, but it is rarely harnessed or utilized. The Pavegen System turns kinetic energy from footsteps into real electric power that can be used for a wide variety of applications.

As people step on Pavegen paths, their footfalls cause plates to depress slightly which generates energy. The energy is stored in batteries and can then be used to power street lights, speakers, alarms, lighting and even advertising signage. The system requires no effort on the part of the people who use it; the normal movements they already make everyday would be enough.

Pavegen is looking at a number of settings for their technology. The kinetic energy paths would be most useful in locations that already see significant foot traffic, such as inside malls or schools. Offices or transport hubs would also be ideal locations, and the installation of an energy-generating path would significantly reduce energy bills wherever it’s installed.

The post Stepping it Up: Kinetic Footpath Generates Energy From Steps first appeared on Gajitz.