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Trees provide paper for our offices, wood for our homes, fruit for our lunches and dinners, jobs for our country’s loggers, jungle gyms for our children, and shade from the sun on a sweltering day. But to my recent astonishment, some trees supply more than just oxygen, paper, and shade — they produce rubber.
Imagine driving to and from work everyday, not carpooling, and not feeling guilty about it. Now picture yourself driving half a mile to the market without being criticized for contributing to ozone depletion (“you should've walked!”) or for caring more about your car than the planet. If you love your ride – and loathe your bike and public transportation – this fantasy is about to come true. And electric cars are your ticket to paradise.
This past year, we’ve suffered economic catastrophe, witnessed the birth of the iPhone, capitalized on phrases like global warming, mass extinction, and terrorism, cheered an American super-swimmer to eight gold medals in Beijing, and caught glimpses of vanishing oil and automobile industries. Hollywood lost actors Heath Ledger and Paul Newman, and the United States welcomed its first African-American president to the White House. We couldn’t have squeezed much more into 2008. But somehow we did. While Warren Buffet was busy bailing Goldman Sachs out of financial turmoil and Apple was crafting the hottest gizmos since color TV, a few ordinary environmentalists were doing some inventing of their own. Here’s a list of some of the most zany green gadgets from 2008.
Photo credit: Ecoble.com.
