Prefab housing isn’t what it used to be. While we typically think of cheap, low-quality mobile homes when think of prefabricated construction, the world’s top architects and engineers are looking to prefab housing as way to create sustainable urban environments. Since prefab housing is affordable, energy efficient, and incredibly quick-to-build, creative designers are hoping to bring this concept to skyscrapers. Next week in Seattle, Sustainable Living Innovations, a group made up of architectural design, construction, and engineering consultants, will unveil what they believe…

That headline up there may sound like Monty Python-esque absurdity, but it’s quite real. Or at least half of it is. At a farm in Northern Ireland, farmer William Taylor is putting his cows on treadmills – not to lose weight, but to generate electricity. Yes, really. The treadmills are placed at a slight incline, and to prevent themselves slowly sliding backwards, the cows have to walk, while a feed container gives them something to stay occupied. As they trudge along, the treadmill turns a crank which in turn spins a generator, and apparently, one cow walking produces enough power to run four milking…

Cycling: good for you, good for the environment – and good for making your butt look toned and hot. Right? Yes – until it rains. Or gets cold. Or gets windy. Then it can suck. Turn to cars, then? Sure. But they’re expensive to buy and run, often not great for the planet and let’s be honest – your butt needs the exercise. So what if someone combined the best of both modes of transportation ? Well, that’s what TrikE is about (though, no, we don’t know what the funny capitalization is for). TrikE is what’s known as an electric-assist HPV – no, not the virus, but a Human Powered Vehicle – and aims to provide the all-weather…

You thought the way the Solar Pebble slapped the sun around was pretty cool, right? Right? Here’s another great way we mancreatures are bringing the sun to its knees as a sustainable energy source. That is, sustainable until the sun explodes in like 5 billion years. But that’s irrelevant. Until then, we have the Sundolier! ‘Bah! I’ve seen this before,’ you say. You would. And, granted, from these photos, the Sundolier would appear at first to be a fairly typical skylight. But let’s not get our lines crossed here – first of all, this thing’s a freaking robot that sits on your roof. …Yeah,…

I really, really hope I never get audited like this. Surely you know of EnergyStar – if you’re a PC user, you probably see their logo every time you boot up your machine. They’re the guys in charge of setting up guidelines to regulate the power consumption and efficiency of products. Recently, a bunch of Congressional auditors went to work to test the thoroughness of the EnergyStar program. And they were hella sneaky about it. …If you can call this sneaky: they submitted a bunch of very-clearly-fake products for approval, including an ‘air purifier’ that consisted of a feather duster…