Awards and Events                
      UNEP at Work                

Underwater kite

"Deep Green" behaves just like a kite, only it flies not in the wind but tidal currents. Attached to the ocean floor by a long tether, it glides from side to side. The water flowing past it spins a turbine under its "wing" and generates electricity. Among the advantages it has over other tidal power concepts is increased power from a smaller package, and a capacity to harness power from slow moving waters. It's still a prototype but it's estimated that a Deep Green system mounted along UK shores could generate enough green electricity for approximately 4 million UK households every year.


Wind-powered car crosses Australia

The Wind Explorer is the first electric vehicle to cross a continent powered by the wind. The lightweight vehicle crossed Australia, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean-4,800 kilometres- in 18 days. Piloted by German extreme sportsmen Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer, the 200 kg car set three new records: the first time a continent had been crossed by a vehicle powered by wind, the longest overall distance covered by an exclusively wind-powered land vehicle, and the longest distance covered in 36 hours. The Wind Explorer was powered by lithium-ion batteries, recharged by a portable wind turbine whenever wind conditions permitted.


Fully recyclable laptop

Roughly 2 million tons of electronics became obsolete in the US in 2005, but less than 380,000 tons of electronics were recycled. Hence, the motivation behind the Bloom Laptop was to reduce the amount of e-waste going to landfill. The Bloom laptop is fully recyclable in two minutes, via 10 easy steps - no screwdriver required. All the components can be separated easily from the frame for proper recycling. It's the brainchild of a group of mechanical engineering students at Stanford University, USA, and Finland's Aalto University. Their project won the students an inventor of the month award from design software giant Autodesk.


Tue blue gowns are truly green

The blue graduation gown of the University of North Carolina has gone green. With the encouragement of eco-conscious students who prefer a gown that might only be worn once in a lifetime to be made from recycled materials, award-winning fashion designer Alexander Julian, an alumnus of the University, worked with manufacturers Oak Hall Cap & Gown, to create the first designer graduation gown. In addition to adopting the perfect "Californian blue", the garment is made from 100 per cent post-consumer recycled plastic bottles. Twenty-three plastic bottles are used to make each gown. The label is printed directly onto the garment rather than a separate label.


Greenest container ships ever built

Shipping company Maersk has announced that it will be buying ten of the world's largest, most efficient container ships ever built. Curiously, the ships will be both the largest and greenest shipping vessels ever to set sail. They are more environmentally friendly due to the economy of scale - they carry more cargo, so the emissions per container are less. These huge ships produce 50 per cent less CO2 than the industry standard for Asia-Europe trips and consume 35 per cent less fuel per container. The ships will be 400 m long, 59 m wide, 73 m tall, and carry 16 per cent more than the current standard.


Surfboards Made From Ocean Trash

Surfer Kevin Cunningham has come up with one of the coolest ways to recycle ocean pollution. Sick of all the debris on his local beaches, he decided to make surfboards out of it. Fragments of human-made debris such as plastic and glass are recycled and reused in the skin of the surfboard, plastic bags are woven into a strengthening cloth; plastic bottles are cut up and reassembled into fins; and there are many other possibilities to be explored, says Cunningham. His company Spirare Surfboards is producing a limited series of boards made from reclaimed debris for public exhibition, to be followed by a line of 100 boards that will be sold as custom orders.