06 Jul 2010, Posted by admin in Thoughts, 1 Comment. Tagged deeper meaning, design, green

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

Good design goes unnoticed, seamless; it sits there unobtrusively to help you get the job done.

Great design, changes your behaviour and the way you interact with your space.

As the rivers dry up and the ice-caps melt, it will be the designers, the creatives, the Mike Thompsons of this world that will change our perceptions on our personal environmental impact. Before we can forge our way through to enlightenment we must first learn how much energy it takes to fuel our daily lives. Its not magic that will power your iPod, laptop and mobile in the future; It will be algae.

Meet Al Gore’s next birthday present….Latro (meaning thief in Latin) is a beautifully simple design, it creates light from algae using nothing but a few abundant ingredients. All it needs is Carbon Dioxide, sunlight, water and algae to get the party started. By inserting electrodes into a highly dense algae solution Thompson managed to syphon off electricity during the plant’s photosynthesis. Simple, beautiful and elegant.

And that’s it. The only waste product is Oxygen, which thinking about it, isn’t the worst waste product around, I mean, I’ve made worse. Oh and Latro needs the odd top up of water now and again… rainwater I hear you say? That’s the thinking! You just creative all over Mother Earth. Who knows one day algae could be the very thing powering your Rampant Rabbit, what was it that Kermit used to say? ‘It ain’t easy being green‘.

‘Hey what’s all that green stuff on your bedsheets?’

‘Errmm…algae, I swear’