In addition to launching popular lawsuits against those responsible for the crisis, crowdfunding platforms (or crowdfunding) serve to promote interesting initiatives in the field of the environment. Reviewing the project portfolio of Kickstarters, one of the best-known platforms with the most content, Innovative projects can be found, in different stages of development, in the field of recycling, mobility, pollution or spaces urban greens. Let’s see some examples of these interesting eco-innovative proposals:
Reuse and recycling
Vending machines are a symbol of consumerism that permeates our way of life: chocolate bars and soft drinks full of calories, sandwiches and synthetic coffees, second-need products, to be used and thrown away and wrapped in one and a thousand layers of packaging… Without However, from New York comes a proposal to reconvert this symbol of consumerism towards the promotion of the exchange of objects and recycling: Swap-O-Matic.
A retro-designed machine that functions as a clearinghouse for objects, an ingenious way to encourage reuse and recycling.
Mobility: drawing routes by bike
Contrail is defined by its promoters as a public art project to make the bicycle a system safer and more fun transportation. Through a small device installed on our bike we can become a kind of rolling brush that draws the route we are making on the asphalt.
A beautiful way to share and claim public space for cycling and promote sustainable transport in the city.
Pollution
Collaborative networking and open hardware are aspects common to these two projects. The first of these refers to air pollution. This is the Air Quality Egg, a project to improve the monitoring and control of local air pollution. Through a citizen work network, a system has been developed that measures different pollutants and that can be easily installed in each home. Connected to the internet, the sensor sends the data in real time to a freely accessible website in order to subsequently develop detailed maps or applications that facilitate and improve the monitoring of pollution in cities. After New York and Amsterdam a workshop has just been developed in Madrid (MEDIALAB PRADO)< /a> for the creation of ten Air Quality Egg prototypes.
The second project in this area has been conceived for thedecontamination of oil spills: Protei. It is a nautical sailing robot to act in disasters like the of the Gulf of Mexico.
To date, the promoters, from different parts of the world, have developed 5 different scale prototypes, all of them powered by the wind. As in the previous case, the philosophy is open hardware.
Urban green spaces
In this area we can find revitalization initiatives quite transgressive such as an underground urban park; environmental awareness projects through seed bombs that dye the city green; or various projects circumscribed to urban gardensas a garden care assistant to>; a serial production of windowfarms; or an initiative for installing a garden on the roof of a food distribution bus.
Undoubtedly, all of them are interesting projects, some of them more activist and demanding, several of them emerged thanks to collaborative networking, but all aligned in the field of green entrepreneurship and eco-innovation, beyond the traditional ecodesign standards (life cycle analysis, recycled materials, etc.); who knows, maybe these projects represent a promising source of green employment in the future…
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