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LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

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Urban Fish Ponds: Low-tech Sewage Treatment for Towns and Cities

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.

How Sustainable is High-tech Health Care?

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?

Vertical Farming Does not Save Space

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.

How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops

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.

How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again

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.

Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels?

Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators can produce electricity that is more sustainable, more reliable, and less costly than power from solar PV panels.

Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

During the first half of the twentieth century, Soviet citrologists grew (sub)tropical plants in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius – outdoors, and without the use of glass or any fossil fuel-powered assistance.

How Sustainable is a Solar Powered Website?

We present our website’s energy and uptime data, calculate the embodied energy of our configuration, consider the optimal balance between sustainability and server uptime, and outline possible improvements.

The Solar Powered Website in Spanish, French, and Other Languages

During the last months we have been working on transforming Low-tech Magazine into a multilingual publication.

Too Much Combustion, Too Little Fire

The fire – which we have used in our homes for over 400,000 years – remains the most versatile and sustainable household technology that humanity has ever known.

The Printed Website: Second Volume Out Now

The second volume features a third of the web articles published in the earlier years, carefully selected for their continued relevance and interest today.

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?

The water and energy use of the mist shower is so low that the bathroom could be taken off-grid and off-pipe even in an urban context.