Sep 17, 2007

Power-Generating Floor

Japan East Railways
Power-Generating Floor



As part of research aimed at developing more environmentally friendly train stations, is testing an experimental system that produces electricity as people pass through ticket gates. JR claims that this sort of human-powered electricity generation system may provide a portion of the electricity consumed at train stations in the future.

The ticket gate electricity generation system relies on a series of piezo elements embedded in the floor under the ticket gates, which generate electricity from the pressure and vibration they receive as people step on them. When combined with high-efficiency storage systems, the ticket gate generators can serve as a clean source of supplementary power for the train stations.

Busy train stations (and those with large numbers of passengers willing to bounce heavily through the gates) will be able to accumulate a relatively large amount of electricity.

"Walking on New Power-Generating Floor Creates Electricity"
(Japan for Sustainability)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/1667-e

Sep 14, 2007

Eco & UD House

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd
Eco & UD House
(exhibited in Ecoproduct 2006)







Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd, also know as Panasonic,
is
well know for excellence of electronic products.

The Eco & UD (universal design) House is built with Panasonic's 6 principles of Universal Design.
  1. Simple operations
  2. Comfortable posture and motion
  3. Consideration to safety
  4. Displays and phrases that are easy to understand
  5. Easy movement and space characteristics
  6. Environment in which product will be used a factor of 10
This is found by dividing the resource output, by the input. This means you can either decrease resource use for the same productivity, or increase productivity with a fixed amount of resources.

Panasonic uses a version of Factor X that refers to the measurement to achieve a balance between the "improvement of quality of life" from the customer's viewpoint, and the "reduction of environmental impact" over the entire product life cycle.

Quality of Life is defined by number of functions a product performs for
  • Safety / Sense of security
  • Comfort and convenience
  • Versatility and Flexibility
  • Universal Design and Flexibility for all environmental impact if found by measuring
  • Prevention of global warming (GHG factor)
  • Effective use of resources (Resource factor)
  • Reduction/elimination in use of specified chemical substances

Panasonics current goal is to reduce 60% of greenhouse gas (GHG) by the year 2010.
According to their current calculations, they have already achieved a factor of 5, meaning that the number of functions for products in the house have doubled, while GHG emissions have been cut by 40%.

-What's displayed?
  1. fuel-cell co-generation and solar power generation systems
  2. green roof the increase energy efficiency, reduce the warming effect of the urban heat islands.
  3. House Shelter with High Insulator and Air Tightness Rainwater Pooling System.
  4. a self-cleaning air conditioner
  5. a hydro-fluorocarbon free refrigerator, a dish washer and a tilted-drum washer
  6. dryer which clean with significantly less amount of water and long-life LED lighting devices which virtually do not need to be replaced.

Sep 6, 2007

Organic T-shirt& Capilene recycled wear

Patagonia
Organic T-shirt& Capilene recycled wear











(my favorite Patagonia Organic T-shirt& capilene Long sleeve)



●Why recommended
When I look to purchase T-shirt, I look for:
1.quality
2. Corporate Social Responsbility
3. process of how its mad
4. design and concept

And Patagonia fulfills my requirements!
Patagonia is known for"1% for the planet". (donate 1% of their annual sales to NGO to contribute to preserving the environment
Patagonia is well respected from urban lifestyle to outdoor activities.


by Shiro Hosojima