All posts filed under: Things for the Planet

The Dreamball Project

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Sports help to keep kids out of trouble, while giving them the opportunity to exercize and socialize in a positive setting. Football (the soccer kind, not the American kind) in particular has international appeal — anywhere in the world, kids know the game and the names of the top-tier teams and players. Designed by Kyungchan Hwang, Songkyou Jin, Haksu Lee, Minhyun Han, and Jin Jun, of the Korean design firm Unplug Design, the Dream Ball is a football made of recycled relief boxes. One of the finalists for this year’s INDEX: Award, the project team has redesigned relief packaging with a pattern so that it can be turned into different types of balls depending on the size of the box. Instructions inside of the box guide relief workers who create the origami-like balls. The rest is child’s play.

Yill Mobile Energy Storage Unit

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You get to the office and manage to just avoid that chatty woman from accounting in the parking lot. Before heading to your desk, you stop by the charging station in the hall to pick up your assigned Yill and roll it to your cubicle. You sit down, plug your computer into it, and start checking your emails. A typical day in your near future? A winner of a 2011 reddot design award, Yill is a mobile energy storage unit designed by Werner Aisslinger’s Berlin-based design firm Studio Aisslinger for Younicos a developer of storage systems and network solutions for electricity supplied from regenerative energy sources. (Make sure to check out both the Studio Aisslinger and Younicos sites — the designs are fantastic). Able to power a workstation for two to three days without cords or cables, Yill stores energy in a rechargeable lithium titanium battery, which Younicos claims is better than conventional lithium ion technology because it is safe, recharges quickly, and has a long operating life. It’s a power source you can take with you outside …