The bicycle and the bow are both highly efficient, human-powered technologies that could substitute for two very harmful alternatives: the car and the firearm. Why do we promote one but not the other?
While manufacturing modern firearms and bullets depends on a global supply chain and fossil fuels, bows and arrows can be made anywhere out of anything, using only human power and simple hand tools.
We built a pedal-powered generator and controller, which is practical to use as an energy source and exercise machine in a household -- and which you can integrate into a solar PV system. We provide detailed plans to build your own, using basic skills and common hand tools.
Imagine a personal heating system that works indoors as well as outdoors, can be taken anywhere, requires little energy, and is independent of any infrastructure. It exists – and is hundreds of years old.
The printed archives of Low-tech Magazine now amount to four volumes with a total of 2,398 pages and 709 images.
Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. These "fascine mattresses" were weighted with rocks and sunk into canals, estuaries, and rivers.
George Cove, a forgotten solar power pioneer, may have built a highly efficient photovoltaic panel 40 years before Bell Labs engineers invented silicon cells. If proven to work, his design could lead to less complex and more sustainable solar panels.
It is surprisingly difficult to build a carbon neutral sailing ship. This is even more the case today, because our standards for safety, health, hygiene, comfort, and convenience have changed profoundly since the Age of Sail.
In the mid 20th century, whole cities' sewage systems safely and successfully used fish to treat and purify their water. Waste-fed fish ponds are a low-tech, cheap, and sustainable alternative to deal with our own shit -- and to obtain high protein food in the process.
Can we make modern health care carbon-neutral and maintain the levels of care, pain relief, and longevity that we have come to take for granted?
If the electricity for a vertical farm is supplied by solar panels, the energy production takes up at least as much space as the vertical farm saves.
As a freelance journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I have always believed that I should regularly buy a new laptop. But older machines offer more quality for much less money.
From the Neolithic to the beginning of the twentieth century, coppiced woodlands, pollarded trees, and hedgerows provided people with a sustainable supply of energy, materials, and food.