Gyong-po-beach, Gang-neong, S.Korea

Gyong-po beach is a popular vacation place for Korean people, located east coast of Korean peninsular. However, the beach hits hard this Summer because of the nuclear scare from Japan.

I visited the Gyong-po beach during the Korean thanksgiving break. Since the weather turns into cold, not many people showed up at the beach;but, the remnants of summer were everywhere. I got up early and tried to pick cigaret butts, wrapping papers from sweets and so on with my parents. I felt a bit sad that people did not concern the environment over this beautiful beach.

Ero, the concrete demolition robot

Seoul, the capital city of S.Korea, is filled with new construction. You are able to come upon building demolition every corner of the city. The dust and debris it creates are many times unbearable for the residents.  I find this interesting robot while I am reading an eco-article on the net.

ERO is a Concrete Deconstruction Robot designed to disassemble concrete structures and enable the building materials to be re-used for new pre-fabricated concrete buildings. ERO uses water jets to crack the concrete surface to disassemble concrete and sucks up the mixed debris. It cleanly separates the waste mixture and packages the cleaned material. What was previously waste, now turns into labeled packaged asset to be transferred right away into concrete pre-casting stations to be re-molded into new building blocks.

ERO seems eco-friendlier than the existing methods of current demolition.

Fantastic eco saving inventions

Bio-fuels, Solar panels and wind turbines are few names among the huge environment saving inventions. While I am reading through eco-news, I come upon these interesting inventions.

1. Breathing Bike

Artist Matt Hope has created an ingenious pedal-powered air filtration system that provides clean air to the rider as it moves. Using an IKEA perforated garbage can, moped helmet, fighter-pilot breathing mask, wheel-powered generator, and home air filtration system, the entire contraption uses human energy to clear the air. The city like Beijing, where the air pollution rate hit the record high, Breathing bike might help the citizens from a health issue when riding.

2. Smog eating street

Scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology installed smog-eating concrete onto a city block in Hengelo, Netherlands, finding that in ideal weather, it could reduce air pollution by up to 45 percent.The researchers coated one part of the street with titanium oxide — a photocatalytic material known for its air purifying qualities — and another part of the street was paved with normal paving blocks to act as a "control street." The parameters measured included traffic intensity and nitric oxide, nitrogen oxide and ozone concentrations.The study found that the nitrogen oxide air pollution was decreased by 19 percent over an entire day.Although the titanium-oxide coated pavement is around 50 percent more expensive than normal concrete, the researchers believe it could be a very feasible solution for inner city areas where they have a problem with air pollution.

3. Concrete canvas shelters

Concrete Canvas Shelters(CCS) are rapidly deployable hardened shelters that require only water and air for construction. A CCS25 variant can be deployed by 2 people without any training in under an hour and is ready to use in only 24 hours. Essentially, CCS are inflatable concrete buildings. CCS have a range of applications in both civil and military sectors, as emergency key infrastructure for disaster relief or frontline operations. 

As what we have seen from the movies become reality, I hope those inventions will be part of our lives in the near future.