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Sustainability

Genesis Systems' WaterCube.

A seriously impressive piece of technology grabbed a lot of attention at this year's CES trade show convention in Las Vegas, Genesis Systems’ WaterCube. It’s a home and office appliance that’s about the size of an A/C unit and can produce up to 100 gallons of water daily from thin air. That’s the amount of water used by a typical family of 4.

The amount of water it can produce depends on the humidity levels, but Genesis Systems says it can even create water in dry environments.

Much like solar panels provide energy independence, this does the same for water.

"Our first mission is to sustainably solve global water scarcity," said David Stuckenberg, who founded Genesis with his wife, Shannon, told Techxplore. "Once you have this plugged into your house...you can turn yourself off (from) the city water."

"One of the challenges that we're facing, in terms of making humanity sustainable, is the stuff we need for life," he said, according to Techxplore. "Next to air, water is the most important thing."

The WC-100 WaterCube stands more than 3 feet tall, weighs close to 600 pounds and will cost around $20,000 to pre-order. So, even though you may not have a water bill anymore, you will have a pretty expensive monthly payment plan on a WaterCube for a few years.

But once it’s paid off, your water is free as long as you own the appliance.

Genesis Systems believes that the WaterCube creates “an infinite water source” that is “democratizing the water supply.”


This article originally appeared on 1.28.24

Science

Bartender in Patagonia takes sustainability to a whole other level

Wait til you see how Federico Gil uses glaciers—yes, glaciers—to distill his signature gin.

Annie Reneau

Federico Gil puts his passion for sustainability into practice.

When people talk about sustainability in the food and drink industry, there's a lot of talk about plastic straws and reducing waste. But at Bar Pionero, the sustainability standard is set much, much higher. They do things I didn't even know were possible, and they don't do things a lot of people—those who put profit before protection of the environment—would do in the name of conservation.

And most of it comes down to the vision of elite bartender Federico Gil.

Gil and his brother founded Bar Pionero 14 years ago, after moving to Chilean Patagonia from Uruguay. The bar sits adjacent to the main lobby of the Las Torres Hotel, just inside Torres del Paine National Park, and with its wall of windows framing a towering mountain, just being in the bar is an experience. The food is good, and as someone who doesn't drink, I was delighted by the incredible mocktail offerings. But the highlight of the bar is Gil himself.


Watching Gil speak about sustainability was mesmerizing, even with him speaking in Spanish and me only understanding a few words of what he said. For the details, I needed the English-speaking translator, but Gil's passion for sustainability needed no translation; it was genuine and palpable.

bartender standing in front of a table full of drink-making materials.

Federico Gil shares how Bar Pionero creates its sustainable cocktails.

Annie Reneau

On a practical level, here are some of the zero-waste practices the bar has implemented:

- Not only do they not use plastic straws but they use signature copper straws. Chile is the world's largest copper producer, so the metal is plentiful. It's also naturally anti-bacterial (though they have a sanitation process they use to clean them, of course).

- They repurpose bottles and jars into drinking glasses and tools for the bartenders. Sometimes they even combine them with copper. Check out this gorgeous glass made from an upside down glass bottle top and copper.

Cocktail glass sitting on a table

Cocktail glass made from a glass bottle top and copper

Annie Reneau

- They make their own mixes, spirits, bitters, vinegars, etc. from the plants that grow naturally in the surrounding landscape as well as from the organic garden on site.

- They also make vinegar by capturing and repurposing the dribbles of beer that come out of the tap after a draft beer is poured.

- They brew their own beer using pure glacial water and hops grown in the garden. The byproduct of the brewing process then goes back into the garden as fertilizer.

glacier

Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park, part of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field

Annie Reneau

- They distill their own gin in small batches, using glacial water, 13 botanicals from the natural landscape and the clay left behind from the moving glaciers. Gil says his goal with the gin is to convey the "spirit of the ice." Glacial gin. Who knew?

The gin is so unique, Gil could certainly make money distributing it around the world, but he refuses. Same with the beer.

"The world doesn't need one more gin or one more beer," he says. The most sustainable way is not to sell it outside the hotel, where it would have to be shipped and transported. "We're not thinking about how much we can sell, but what impact we have," he adds.

It's literally putting their money where their mouth is, knowing they could have a lucrative product on their hands but not capitalizing on it because of the environmental impact that would have. And it's not just a guess—Gil says the bar actually keeps track and calculates their environmental impact using various measures.

bartender painting a rock held in tongs

Federico Gil painting a lemon extraction onto a frozen rock from Torres del Paine National Park

Annie Reneau

On top of all of that, watching Gil craft a cocktail is like watching an artist at work. He's as passionate about creativity as he is about sustainability, and it shows. I watched him light herbs on fire and set a glass bottle top over the flame to capture their essence, then paint a homemade cold extraction of lemon onto a frozen stone from the park, then shake together various liquids created from park botanicals and put it all together into glass made of layers of jar and glass tops.

I'd never seen anything like it, and I've rarely seen anyone who walks the sustainability talk so clearly in their work. It not only gave me hope for the conservation of Torres del Paine and Patagonia (which is stunning—a place bucket lists are made for, seriously), but also made me realize how much we have to learn from one another as we strive to protect our beautiful planet.

If you'd like to see Federico in action, check out this video from my experience there:

This writer was a guest of Las Torres Patagonia. This article was not reviewed by the hotel or anyone associated with it before publication.

Science

Yurok Tribe in California becomes first indigenous tribe to co-manage National Parks land

The Yurok had 90% of their homelands taken during the Gold Rush. Now they're getting some of it back.

The Yurok Tribe has lived among the redwoods for thousands of years.

The history of colonialism and the stealing of lands from indigenous peoples in the Americas is fraught with pain and suffering that has gone unseen by many. A growing Land Back movement has been fighting, in part, for indigenous people's reclamation of their ancestral homelands and the restoration of land management based on Native knowledge and practices.

One small but significant move in that direction has taken place in the redwood forests of northern California. The Yurok Tribe, who had 90% of their homelands stolen during the Gold Rush, has joined the Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League in an agreement that will give ownership in 2026 of 125 acres (50 hectares) of land near Orick, California to the tribe.

According to the AP, the land is named 'O Rew in the Yurok language, and the tribe's cultural resources director Rosie Clayburn said the return of the land is proof of the “sheer will and perseverance of the Yurok people."

"We kind of don't give up," Clayburn said. The Yurok Tribe has been living along the Klamath River for thousands of years and is currently the largest indigenous tribe in California, with over 6,300 members. It is one of the few tribes in the state that lives on a portion of its ancestral lands.


The site being returned to the Yurok is about a mile from the Pacific coast and sits adjacent to the Redwood National and State Parks, home of the world's tallest trees. The Yurok people have always utilized the redwoods for building plankhouses, sweat lodges and canoes, though they traditionally only use trees that have fallen naturally.

Clayburn explained what the memorandum of understanding between the tribe and the parks service means.

“As the original stewards of this land, we look forward to working together with the Redwood National and State Parks to manage it,” she said. “This is work that we’ve always done, and continued to fight for, but I feel like the rest of world is catching up right now and starting to see that Native people know how to manage this land the best.”

Reconstructed plankhouse, the traditional dwelling of the Yurok Tribe in Redwood National Park

NPS/Public Domain

The tribe plans to build a traditional Yurok village on the site, as well as a new visitor and cultural center displaying sacred artifacts, sharing information on redwoods and forest restoration and serving as a hub for the tribe to carry out Yurok traditions, Clayburn said.

The site will also serve as a new gateway to the Redwood National and State Parks, with more than a mile of new trails that will connect to existing trails inside the parks. The trails will include a new segment of the popular California Coastal Trail with interpretive exhibits.

The agreement also sees the restoration of a salmon habitat in Prairie Creek that had been buried by a lumber operation. The Yurok have been working on restoring it for the past three years, bringing thousands of juvenile coho and chinook salmon and steelhead back to the stream where salmon traditionally swam upstream to spawn.

In this historic collaboration, the Yurok will be the first indigenous people to co-manage National Parks land. But there are many more examples of Native American and First Nations people working with government institutions and municipalities to return land and pass management back to the people with centuries of proven sustainable relationship to the land.

For instance, in 2018, the city of Vancouver returned a piece of land belonging to the Musqueam people, who had used the land as a sacred burial site. In 2012, the Land Buy-Back Program began in the U.S., consolidating and restoring nearly 3 million acres in 15 states to Tribal trust ownership and paying $1.69 billion to more than 123,000 interested individuals.

Another significant move toward the legal recognition of Native lands was the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling that the eastern half of Oklahoma, including much of Tulsa, is on tribal land. The ruling was deemed a huge win for tribal sovereignty and territorial boundaries, but the fact that the battle made its way to America's highest court (and had limitations placed on it in 2022 by the same court) is indicative of the struggle indigenous people face in reclaiming their ancestral lands.

The logistics of land rights, restoration and reclamation are complex from a legal standpoint, so it's heartening when an agreement can be made without protracted legal battles. Such agreements depend on the people engaged in them acting in good faith, which appears to have made this Yurok Tribe agreement successful.

As Redwoods National Park Superintendent Steve Mietz said, the restoration effort and partnership with the Yurok Tribe, it is “healing the land while healing the relationships among all the people who inhabit this magnificent forest."

The TUfast Eco Team celebrating its victory.

Imagine driving halfway across America in your electric vehicle on one charge. ONE CHARGE. Sixteen hundred miles. It’s impossible to believe—most EVs get maybe 250 miles before needing a charge—but German students created a car that does just that.

Called the "muc022 prototype," the single-seater vehicle, which looks like a Smart car but even cuter and more aerodynamic, handily surpassed the previous record of 999.5 miles in four days. The team of students from the Technical University of Munich kept driving the 374-pound car for two more days until it finally coasted to a stop after going 1,599.27 miles. All told, the car made it 99 hours on the road.

Of course, it wasn’t truly a road. (Or autobahn, if you’re being authentisch.) The students tested the car, a modified version of a vehicle used in previous competitions, in an empty hangar at Munich airport. Students from the team even slept in the hangar.


The group was awarded a Guinness World Record for “Greatest distance by electric vehicle, single charge (non-solar).”

The muc022 prototype is one of the most energy-efficient vehicles ever, with an energy consumption ratio of 103 miles per kilowatt-hour. For perspective, consider that Tesla Model Y, which calls itself “The most efficient Electric SUV ever built,” only offers 4 miles/kWh. The car built by German students is over twenty-five times more efficient! Take that, Elon!

It’s pretty amazing what students are coming up with these days on the automotive/energy front.

A team of students from Switzerland called the Academic Motorsports of Zurich (AMZ) created the fastest-accelerating electric vehicle in the world. It goes zero to 62 mph in just nine-tenths of a second. This is big because the perception that electric cars are slow or lack oomph is one of the barriers to getting more on the road, despite their many health and environmental benefits.

AMZ - World Record! 0-100 km/h in 0.956 seconds

A student was also responsible for a massive breakthrough in the battery space. In 2016, University of California Irvine doctoral student Mya Le Thai accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years. Whereas the average rechargeable laptop battery lasts 300 to 500 cycles, this nano battery easily made it to 200,000 charges in three months, meaning your laptop battery could effectively last 400 years.

So when will the average person get their hands on a car that goes 1600 miles or a battery that lasts four hundred years? The answer is hard to pin down. Commenters on the futurology subreddit discussed the timeline and related issues of bringing these innovations out of the classroom and into the marketplace.

Regarding the immortal battery, user EXSPFXDOG said: “I look at this as solving a big problem in multiple ways! It would eliminate you having to drop 20 grand plus to replace battery car batteries!

tufast eco, ev world record, best ev charge

TUfast Eco

via Technical University of Munich

It may help the power storage issues with solar and wind. And it may keep millions of lithium batteries out of landfills. It seems like scalability may not be a big issue because it could mesh with how we make the millions of batteries currently being made. It also helps save some rainforest destruction for Lithium mining!”

Not everyone was so optimistic, though. “People who make batteries also sell batteries, and they don't want you to have one that lasts forever. Nationalize all battery manufacturing asap,” suggested outtyn1nja

It’s not the worst suggestion. What would need to happen to nationalize battery manufacturing?

Hopefully, some forward-thinking students are working on figuring this out.