Where else can you test-drive electric cars, come across some interesting eco-friendly products, eat delicious organic treats, and do yoga? the Green Festival of course! Held this past weekend (Oct. 23-24) at the Washington DC Convention Center, the event showcased the present and future of what you can do to go green.
Interesting Cars
Upon arrival, we set off to test drive the 2012-13 Ford Escape Electric Hybrid (left image). The car features a pretty smooth drive, with an eerily quiet electric engine, and if you need that extra power, the gas engine kicks right in.
In addition to the Ford Escape Electric Hybrid, Ford showcased some additional vehicles like the mean looking electric Ford Focus (top right).
Ford wasn’t the only company with cars on display; when was the last time you heard about a car that runs on wood pellets? yea.. wood pellets! Beaver Energy modified this old Mercury Cougar (bottom right) to run on wood pellets. They say it runs 1 mile on 1 pound of wood-pellets, or a total range of 30-40 miles depending on driving conditions. The gas generated from burning the pellets powers the engine. Did we mention they hold the world land speed record for a wood burning vehicle?
Amazing Products
How many of you would like to grow fresh vegetables in a very small area of your house or yard? How about saving 22% of your water usage by not flushing the toilet after a #1? Or maybe you would enjoy showing off your new cork-bark hand bag with the matching shoes?
The Tower by Sustainable Garden Supply (left) allows you to plant a seed, put it in a small pot, connect the pot to water, and place it in their vertical tower. It’s like a bookshelf of vegetables, how cool is that? You can grow a variety of vegetables depending on where you live, and it’s modular enough to be deployed as a residential or commercial system.
Another interesting product we saw was the goflushless spray by EcoCommand Inc. (middle). Ever heard the saying “If it’s yellow, let it mellow?” no? Ok, this may sound weird for some, but this product allows you to NOT flush after taking a #1 in your bathroom. Simply spray the goflushless a couple of times into the bowl to eliminate odors and sanitize. The end result? you can save up to 22% of your home’s water usage!
What other uses do you have for the cork of your wine bottle? shoes? hand bags? Ok maybe not your specific cork, but did you know that cork bark can be transformed into a variety of product finishes? APCOR (Portuguese Cork Association) had a nice exhibit featuring a variety of cork-bark products (right image). Most importantly, it’s eco-friendly! From sexy natural cork shoes by Manolo Blahnik, to a variety of handbags, and beautiful cork flooring, the possibilities are truly endless!
Educational exhibits
We also came across some very insightful exhibits, especially the one by the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s EERE (Eenergy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) branch.
Their Anatomy of a House setup has a cut-away wall (left) that shows you all the different insulation that is commonly available, and you learn that Closed Cell Foam insulation is waay better than the others. It has an R value (measure of thermal resistance) of 32 compared to the Fiber-glass Batt’s 19. Lastly, we found out exactly how hard it was to generate enough power for an incandescent bulb (right), good thing we have compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). A pair of CFLs only needed 24 watts, and we had to pedal harder to get 100 watts to light up the incandescent bulbs (needless to say our legs felt it..). A fun day overall at the festival.
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Tags: aquaponic farming, cork flooring, electric hybrid, ford, goflushless, Green Events, green festival, wood pellet car
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Featured Content, Green Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
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