via yankodesign
“Quantum Tap gives you a good reality check on how much water you ‘think’ you use and the actual. Working on the lines of how syringe works, the tap activates by pulling up a pump action-handle. Scaled markings on the stem of the handle indicate the amount of water that will be released by pulling the handle to a specific correlating height. You can choose how much water you want to use and pull up the handle accordingly. The faucet looks neat and the idea pretty simple; my only concern is soapy hands and a messy tap.”
Quantum Tap is a 2011 red dot design concept winner.
Designers: Dennis Kulage & Michael Scherger
Yet another thing to add to the list of the things that would make the “Quantified Lifestyle” a realistic contribution to more sustainable consumption. I want everything in my household (especially things that use utilities) to tell me how much and how fast I’m consuming resources. Imagine setting goals for consumption as you do a financial budgets! (If you do that sort of thing). What if an entire city could set goals and meet them as a community?
![thedailywhat:
Green Initiative of the Day: It was announced yesterday that PepsiCo will soon begin manufacturing a biodegradable bottle composed entirely of plant material — this despite Coca-Cola Co.’s recent assertion that it would be years before a 100% plant-based bottle could be produced.
Materials used include switch grass, pine bark, and corn husks. PepsiCo plans to eventually begin incorporating organic leftovers from its food business.
According to PepsiCo senior VP of advanced research Rocco Papalia, the way the new PET bottles feel and protect their contents is indistinguishable from their plastic siblings. “We’ve cracked the code,” he is quoted as saying. “It’s a beautiful thing to behold.”
[ap via csm.]
This is a huge deal. While it’s still a mass produced bottle, it’s evidence that a large corporation can innovate towards a direction where the product can have a complete life cycle that includes a natural degradation process. As most of what we produce, plastics take an un-natural lifespan to decay… and even then, what was decaying wasn’t anything the Earth’s natural biosystems could collect and re-use on it’s own (at least within a reasonable time frame). And if it’s true, that they’ve created something biodegradable, we are another small step towards becoming as efficient as our nature counterparts, a system that produces no un-usable waste.
Now, my less optimistic nit-picky qualms:
While named third in the list of the bottle’s manufactured contents, I predict that a large portion of the bottle’s contents is corn husks. Farm production of corn is amassing it’s own set of environmental problems… mostly to maintain our culture’s fast food bingeing. Perhaps, Pepsi’s next step could be lessening it’s use of corn in it’s product altogether, bottle and soda contents.
And now the thing I’m stuck with is why isn’t all of the soda’s contents, the thing we ingest, as natural it’s container?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li5swlUIZF1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
