Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. These “fascine mattresses” were weighted with rocks and sunk into canals, estuaries, and rivers.
George Cove, a forgotten solar power pioneer, may have built a highly efficient photovoltaic panel 40 years before Bell Labs engineers invented silicon cells. If proven to work, his design could lead to less complex and more sustainable solar panels.
It is surprisingly difficult to build a carbon neutral sailing ship. This is even more the case today, because our standards for safety, health, hygiene, comfort, and convenience have changed profoundly since the Age of Sail.
In the mid 20th century, whole cities’ sewage systems safely and successfully used fish to treat and purify their water. Waste-fed fish ponds are a low-tech, cheap, and sustainable alternative to deal with our own shit — and to obtain high protein food in the process.
Can we make modern health care carbon-neutral and maintain the levels of care, pain relief, and longevity that we have come to take for granted?
If the electricity for a vertical farm is supplied by solar panels, the energy production takes up at least as much space as the vertical farm saves.
Being an independent journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I always reasoned that I needed a decent computer and that I need to pay for quality.
From the Neolithic to the beginning of the twentieth century, coppiced woodlands, pollarded trees, and hedgerows provided people with a sustainable supply of energy, materials, and food.
Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators can produce electricity that is more sustainable, more reliable, and less costly than power from solar PV panels.
During the first half of the twentieth century, Soviet citrologists grew (sub)tropical plants in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius – outdoors, and without the use of glass or any fossil fuel-powered assistance.
We present our website’s energy and uptime data, calculate the embodied energy of our configuration, consider the optimal balance between sustainability and server uptime, and outline possible improvements.
During the last months we have been working on transforming Low-tech Magazine into a multilingual publication.
The fire – which we have used in our homes for over 400,000 years – remains the most versatile and sustainable household technology that humanity has ever known.