W.O.K. TO WALK by Isabella Loddo is eco-sustainable packaging for fast food. Created for street food bought and consumed outside the home, it could also be used at home in a pinch. “The product has a very intuitive shape and is designed around the keywords dynamic, economy, eco-sustainability and ergonomics.” As are all of these products.

Whether it’s San Francisco, New York, or any bicyclistic city in between, you’re destined to witness biker after biker dancing with danger, especially at night when visibility is uncomfortably low. Many cars, trucks, and buses, like immature kindergartners, don’t like to share and subsequently choose to ignore bikers’ rights to the road. In addition to a high price tag, new bike-lane inhibition is promoted by arguments on a legislative level, such as one in San Francisco that accuses the city’s large bicycle population of creating more pollution than automobiles because they supposedly impede the flow of traffic. In spite of these roadblocks, cities across the country are beginning to get the picture, slowly and seemingly reluctantly adding more lanes here and there, but what are cyclists to do in the extended meantime? Alex Tee and Evan Gant’s LightLane device was recently just a concept but is soon to enter reality as a much-needed visual declaration of personal biking space. The two Altitude, Inc. designers know that any amount of panicked shouting or bell-ringing are no match against prevention when it comes to bicycle safety. With a dire shortage of dedicated lanes, LightLane provides urban cyclists with a solution that adapts to them and any route they make take. The compact projector mounts easily to the rear of a bike frame and projects a bike lane-inspired linear pattern that provides great visibility and a familiarity that helps catch a driver’s attention.

Originally presented as a losing design competition entry, LightLane has continued onto a path to production thanks to widespread public interest and encouragement. The patent-pending device features preliminary design specs like high-visibility DPSS (diode-pumped solid state) green lasers, super-bright red LEDs, a 3-hour runtime on its rechargeable lithium-ion battery (but how cool would it be if it was pedal-powerd?!), a universal frame attachment bracket, and compatibility with universal mobile phone charger standards. Although it is currently only in its production engineering stages, LightLane has speedily made the jump from a design concept to a real product-in-progress. Upon its anticipated release, it will most definitely receive an overwhelming welcome by safety-hungry bike riders ready to brave the night.

If you can deal with a 6-feet wide, 95-pound spinning wheel on the roof of your Cape Cod, well then, you just might simultaneously save the planet and put some cash back in your wallet. Earthtronics, a renewable energy product and consultation company, has introduced a gearless building-mounted wind turbine that can make electrical lemonade from measly 2-mile per hour wind lemons. The home device is licensed and marketed under the well-known Honeywell name and will be launched this fall at ACE Hardware stores, making the idea of personal wind power much more approachable against the inescapable association with sprawling wind farms.The Honeywell WT6000 Wind Turbine looks just like a household fan that was blown-up to cool off the sweaty kids in the movie Honey I Blew Up the Kids. Unlike gargantuan industrial turbines, these comparatively Lilliputian spinners ditched the pricey central gearbox for a direct-drive design that generates power from the blade tips. While traditional turbines have a range of 7.5 to 29 MPH, this configuration makes it possible to harness energy from wind speeds as low as 2 MPH up to 45 MPH, Although this isn’t the first building-mounted turbine, the wide range of usable wind speeds make it the lowest cost per kWh installed turbine ever made.

Making your home greener and cleaner does cost a pretty penny, but with tax incentives and savings over time, installing something like the WT6000 could be worth the initial leap. The newly passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allows consumers and businesses an uncapped 30 percent investment tax credit which will provide some relief to the WT6000’s suggested retail price of $4500 and additional installation fees up to $1500. In addition to state-by-state clean energy perks, personal wind power just might be within our reach by the time these land on store shelves this fall.

Audacious naysayers continue to revoke the existence of our environmental emergency, perhaps because they can’t really “see” a blatant state of crisis. The masses still have a hard time distinguishing between greenwashed marketing, patchouli-scented sensationalism and cold, hard facts. So, how to pound the message into our heads? It seems the answer is to, well, pound the message into our heads.

New Yorkers have a new showstopper to gawk at near Penn Station. A gigantic 70-feet-tall digital billboard commands immediate attention from passersby who learn upon first glance that atmospheric greenhouse gases are rising by 800 tonnes each second. Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division and MIT researchers teamed up to erect this pioneered effort of a scientifically sound carbon emissions counter that began its real-time escalation at an existing 3.64 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases.

There’s no denying this kind of thing is meant to be a shocking, purposeful attempt to make us lift our heads and think a little. Renowned psychologist and Harvard University professor Dan Gilbert explains our reluctance to respond to non-imminent, looming threats like global warming in this 2007 Pop!Cast. Because our brains are well-designed to protect us using fight-or-flight reflexes, they can’t efficiently process something like global warming, which does not have a face, has little emotional influence, isn’t centered in the now, and changes so gradually. Gilbert describes climate change as a “personal, slow and quiet enemy”, and when it’s put this way, the most over-the-top messaging suddenly seems to be nowhere near enough.

The in-your-face public messaging trend has gained momentum since a couple years ago, which has since produced creative, attention-grabbing campaigns from groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Denver Water. From benches to billboards to buses, Sukle Advertising + Design uses white space to urge the “Use Only What You Need” campaign on behalf of Denver Water. Similarly a popular WWF billboard uses natural light and shadow to illustrate the extreme rapidity of rising ocean levels. In regard to sparking curiosity about resource conservation and climate change, these attempts succeed in making it difficult to peel our eyeballs away.

As environmental awareness becomes more important to influencers, we will surely continue to see a growth in visually grandiose expression. Maybe this seemingly excessive messaging style is the first incarnation of many increasingly ostentatious moves to make us finally pay attention.

Saving money, saving energy, and keeping your sweat at bay…what’s not to like? The quirky geniuses at Big Ass Fans keep the environment, our pocketbooks, and sweaty people in mind as they continue to develop their, um, big ass fans. So you may be wondering what the big deal is. It’s just a ridiculously giant fan, right? Well, novelty aside, the fans are designed to move a boatload of air around while using a small amount of energy. This allows vast amounts of air to be circulated at amazing efficiencies that blow small or regular ass fans out of the water. Big Ass Fans was founded in 1999 with a mission to revolutionize high volume, low speed (HVLS) fan technology. As of today, they have an expansive reach with 35,000 of these fans spinning worldwide. With over a decade of research and development, BAF has used wind tunnel testing, computational fluid dynamics, and finite element analysis to achieve unmatched cooling solutions for many commercial and industrial spaces. Since the monstrous utilitarian models, like the ceiling-mounted Powerfoil X and upright Airgo, would most likely turn your studio apartment into a vortex, more compact and architecturally aesthetic models have recently been introduced for smaller commercial and residential spaces.

The Element and Isis models are sleek and minimal, with no swirly-doodle bells and whistles to clash with individualized decors. While looks and energy consumption are both gentle, so is the noise level. A design of ten slow-moving blades turn large amounts of air which makes for a quiet cool while others continue to tolerate whirrs and wobbles of the old standard. And if you think machine-based noise is inescapable in industrial territory, step into a factory cooled by a Big Ass Fan and you’ll think twice.

BAF doesn’t stop the buck at claims of lower energy consumption by design. The fans are built to last without a compromise on parts or build quality. The facilities are all LEED certified, and of course, are cooled by their own Big Ass Fans, as are many other LEED certified buildings. And if that isn’t enough, BAF donates to the non-profit Longhopes Donkey Shelter rescue in Bennett, Colorado, where friends of their mascot, Fanny the donkey, await a new home…preferably one with a Big Ass Fan.

RiVIT is Davide Scomparin’s 1st place winning entry to The Design Institution’s recent Beach&Pool 2008/09 design competition. The portable beach mat solves a couple of problems at the same time, it provides padded comfort and a hood to protect skin from the sun’s rays and at the same the hood captures those rays to charge your cel phone and or MP3 player (via USB).

RiVIT comes folded in a small case with a strap for carrying and has two parts, a hood/tent and a padded mat. The hood has built-in PowerFilm photovoltaic solar panels that can recharge small electronic devices. Not only does RiVIT capture renewal energy but it’s also sustainably built. Both the hood and the mat are covered with Waterfront, a fabric made of post-use recycled polyester. The mat is stuffed with edil fiber, a material made from recycled PET bottles usually used as sound proofing material. The hood also has a reinforcing structure made of stainless steel rods to keep the panels in place and off your face. All the fabric parts are cover-removable which allows for the whole mat to be washed.