We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.
Consumer societies produce enough plastic waste to power at least 10% of motorized road traffic. Dutch designer Gijs Schalkx grabbed the opportunity and now drives his car on the waste he collects.
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.
To improve energy security, we need to make infrastructures less reliable.
As long as we keep accumulating raw materials, the closing of the material life cycle remains an illusion, even for materials that are, in principle, recyclable.
Jerker line systems can be used to operate water pumps or sawing machines, to forge iron, to process food or fibres, or to make paper.
Almost all of the leading economies in Western Europe during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
Increasing the share of renewable energy will not make us any less dependent on fossil fuels as long as total energy consumption keeps rising.
Depending on the size of the kiln, it took between one and six weeks for the fire to complete a full circle.
Why introduce yet another expensive, energy-intensive and risky technology if there are so many other and better ways of fighting global warming?