About
Sustainable Design Update
Sustainable Design Update (SDU) covers new developments in green design, architecture and appropritate technology. We believe all green developments, including green designs for the poorest people are important.
Some say that technology got us into the ecological mess we are in and that turning away from technology is the only thing that will save us.
We say nonsense. Turning away from a technological solutions to ecological problems may be worse than doing nothing at all. We do admire those who have gone off the grid and back to the land even if it they don’t solve the large scale problems.
SDU looks for all good ideas. We have an emphasis on “White Papers” and technologies that are just coming onto the market. We strive to analyze new tech to see if it has a real chance of creating long term solutions. Sometimes we present obvious “green scams” – unproven designs that claim to violate the second law of thermodynamics. More and more we see magnetically levitated turbines that look like old Maytag washers and perpetual motion machines getting past the reviewers at the Patent Office and into large scale promotion online. We challenge these and point out where we think the faults are.
SDU is different from other Green blogs in that we also focus on design for the poorest people on the planet. Over the next 25 years a billion people will move from the country to the city for the first time. They will connect to the grid and plug into main stream culture. This influx will overburden an already challenged our planet. Our atmosphere and our oceans will overtaxed if we don’t take up the challenge of designing sustainable and affordable technologies that solve problems and create opportunities for this expanding portion of the population.
We cover Appropriate Technology both here and at: The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
SDU is edited by John Barrie, find out more about him: John Barrie