Green Tech Magazine December 2017 en

16
Did you know?
Drone-supported forestry
The reforestation of hard-to-reach areas is the focus of a new
project being implemented by the British company BioCarbon
Engineering. Researchers have developed a drone system
that automatically plants trees. After a scanner drone has identified
the optimal locations for seedlings, other drones are
used for planting. Further advantages of the system: It is faster
than manual planting and costs are reduced to one-fifth.
www.biocarbonengineering.com
Let the light in!
Translucent, multifunctional and produced by a 3D printer. Architects
from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed
functionally integrated façade elements that offer plenty of space
for architectural design. A particularly practical aspect: Functions
such as ventilation, insulation or shading are already integrated into
the new façade. Among other things, the ‘Fluid Morphology’ façade
concept is aimed at reducing building technology, establishing
a closed material cycle and simplifying the construction process by
making sensible use of digital tools. www.hk.ar.tum.de
These plants are super
And rather smart. Hyperaccumulators or ‘superplants’, of which
there are around 500 different species in the world, take up toxic
metals such as nickel, cadmium or zinc into their leaves via the soil,
thus protecting themselves against predators. This self-protection,
also known as phytomining, has two major advantages for humans
and the environment. On the one hand, toxic metals are filtered out
of the soil and made fertile again for crops. On the other hand, the
metals can be recovered by burning the plants. One hectare of the
plant Berkheya Coddii, for example, stores 170 kilograms of nickel.
www.sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.at
The world’s first shoes made from algae
Polyurethane, the main component of shoe soles and produced
using petroleum, is one of the largest pollutants present in the oceans.
To counteract this problem, researchers at the University of California
presented the world‘s first flip-flops produced from algae
oil. This innovative footwear is even compostable. In the future, the
researchers want to go one step further and recover algae oil from
worn flip-flops. www.universityofcalifornia.edu
Credits: Erik Jepsen/San Diego Publications, Andreas Heddergott/TUM, BioCarbon Engineering, Shutterstock