#solarpunk af

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How Ron Finley transformed his community with flourishing urban gardens | One Earth

Meet the “gangsta gardener,” Ron Finley, who began turning unused spaces in urban Los Angeles into abundant gardens to feed and educate loca

According to Ron Finley, growing regenerative gardens and nurturing soil can transform the world. A  former fashion designer turned urban gardener, he is turning unused spaces in Los Angeles into abundant greens to feed, nurture, educate, and build communities.

After realizing that his South Los Angeles neighborhood had an abundance of accessible liquor stores, but purchasing organic produce required a 10-mile walk, he decided to become a “gangsta.” In Finley's perspective, a true gangsta is “having knowledge of how systems work and being able to support yourself.”

Today, Ron Finley's influence extends globally. He has facilitated the creation of numerous community gardens in empty lots around Los Angeles, becoming a prominent voice in the guerilla gardening movement. His efforts include international travel to inspire others, and he teaches a MasterClass on gardening while appearing in documentaries about urban farming, such as Urban Fruit and Can You Dig This.

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MouthX, the Spanish technology helping severely disabled people use technology via their mouths 

Thanks to recent technological developments, some companies are working on innovative methods to enable people with physical disabilities to

Aurax, a Spanish company, has developed an innovative device called MouthX, dubbed the most complete and compact hands-free controller on the market, with which users can manipulate smartphones, computers and tablets using their mouth.

In an interview with Victor Hugo de Pablo, Head of Engineering at Aurax, Novobrief learned first-hand about the device’s benefits and how MouthX is helping a traditionally underserved population in the digital age.

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Urban food gardens produce more than vegetables, they create bonds for young Capetonians – study

Young urban farmers in Khayelitsha are nurturing connections, creating economic opportunities, and promoting environmental conservation.

"The young urban farmers I interviewed are using community gardens to grow more than vegetables. They’re also nurturing social connections, creating economic and business opportunities, and promoting environmental conservation. My findings highlight the transformative potential of youth-driven urban agriculture and how it can be a multifaceted response to urban challenges"

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Disposable vapes are being repurposed into powerbanks and sent to the Ukrainian front lines

Volunteers at Leeds Ukrainian Community Association (LUCA) recycle components, such as batteries and wires, from the discarded vapes to send to Ukraine to be turned into energy sources for soldiers in remote locations.

The recycled components are used to power drones, phones and night vision devices in the trenches.

Viacheslav Semeniuk, a LUCA trustee, said the repurposed vapes are used "as a light source and in cooking" adding, "this is sometimes the only source of power".

It is estimated 8.2 million vapes were being thrown away every week prior to the ban in the UK.

"It is a creative way to use these vapes," said Mr Semeniuk.

"We crack open the vape and pull out the battery, isolate the wires, and pack them into boxes".

Volunteers in Ukraine turn the dismantled disposables from LUCA into working energy supplies for soldiers.

"If we can utilise whatever is not needed any more and make it for free, why not?"

said Mr Semeniuk.

Disposable vapes are being turned into powerbanks for Ukrainian soldiers living on the front line.

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Since 2011, the StEnSea (Stored Energy in the Sea) project has been exploring the possibilities of using the pressure in deep water to store energy in the short-to-medium term, in giant hollow concrete spheres sunken into seabeds, hundreds of feet below the surface.

An empty sphere is essentially a fully charged storage unit. Opening its valve enables water to flow into the sphere, and this drives a turbine and a generator that feed electricity into the grid. To recharge the sphere, water is pumped out of it against the surrounding water pressure using energy from the grid.

Each hollow concrete sphere measures 30 ft (9 m) in diameter, weighs 400 tons, and will be anchored to the sea floor at depths of 1,970 - 2,625 ft (600 - 800 m) for optimal performance.

How giant concrete balls on ocean floors could store renewable energy

In an effort to reduce the use of precious land to build renewable energy storage facilities, the Fraunhofer Institute has been cooking up a

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“STELLAR” ELECTRIC MINIBIKE from Indonesia has its own solar panel

“From the beginning, we wanted to create something that felt futuristic and forward-thinking, much like the advanced technology and concepts you’d see in space exploration.”

Fajar Ismail (@fjismail) is an industrial designer who works for Quest Motors, an electric motorcycle startup and custom EV workshop based in Bandung, Indonesia, and founded by former Tesla senior engineer Niko Questera. Fajar and team set out to create an electric daily commuter that looked like a landing craft or two-wheeled rover from a science fiction film, dropped onto an alien planet from an exploratory starship.

The Stellar design was heavily inspired by a mix of spacecraft aesthetics, science fiction, and the solar punk genre. From the beginning, we wanted to create something that felt futuristic and forward-thinking, much like the advanced technology and concepts you’d see in space exploration. This vision influenced not only the futuristic shape but also combine with traditional custom elements.

It’s named “STELLAR,” a landcraft concept for a Post-Petrol Age. Stellar is an electric mini bike designed as a personal daily scooter for short- to mid-range distances. It’s powered by a 1000-watt BLDC electric motor with a 720 Wh Lithium-Ion battery as a powerplant.

Stellar was equipped with solar panels as an additional charging system; it’s suitable for a tropical country like our homeland of Indonesia, which has tons of sunlight resource shine every year, because range anxiety is a classic issue for electric vehicles. The solar panel is placed right where the fuel tank of gasoline powered counterpart would be.

Solarpunk Landcraft: “Stellar” Electric Minibike

From Quest Motors: A two-wheeled electric landing craft...   "Solarpunk" is a science fiction subgenre that imagines a future where renewabl

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How one Irish family is fighting food waste with a giant egg

Fiona Kelleher and her kids stood looking out the window, watching Fiona’s husband as he worked on something that looked a bit nuts. ‘He had

Kieran, a longtime mechanical engineer, had just invented Ireland’s first micro-scale anaerobic biodigester.

What does one even do with a micro-scale anaerobic biodigester?

Well, this particular anaerobic biodigester takes care of nearly 100% of your food waste.

You feed in all your scraps and waste – even hard-to-compost foods like cooked meats, dairy, cakes and liquids go in. Then the anaerobic bacteria get to work breaking down the waste.

After that, out come two very different ready-to-use products: a biogas for cooking and a nutrient-rich liquid fertiliser for gardening.

Food waste goes in. Gas and fertiliser come out.

‘We were never really into gardening or growing food. That was the biggest thing to change with the digester,’ Kieran says.

‘During lockdown, we set up the polytunnel and started using the fertiliser from the egg to grow tomatoes and courgettes. Because not only have you got a way to get rid of your food waste, you’ve also got a way to grow more food. And the taste was extraordinary. We had loads of tomatoes so we gave them to friends. They couldn’t get over how tasty they were compared to what they were buying from shops.’

Fiona and Kieran have only seen positives come out of using the egg. They love cooking with the biogas they produce themselves, and having no bill for fertiliser.

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Another incident of guerrilla gardening, this time outside Tokyo’s Iidabashi Station. City officials discovered a small garden of zucchini and tomatoes growing in a plot of land that was previously used for cigarette butts and puke

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