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SolTech Energy, a Swedish company selling solutions for clean solar power, has developed a unique home heating system contained within roofing tiles made out of ordinary transparent glass. The attractive house-warming tiles (somewhat ironically) give roofs a beautiful, icy appearance quite unlike anything else we’ve ever seen before.

In 2009, the SolTech Energy System was selected by a jury and nominated among nine as the year’s “Hottest New Material.” Based on votes by the people, the company’s glass tiles were awarded with a gold medal from the North Building Fair, Nordbygg. “The winning entry combines an attractive design with essential functions for clean and sustainable energy. It is an innovative product that is well in time,“ said the chairman of the jury, PhD. Bengt Toolanen.

So what makes the system so special and award worthy? For starters, the tiles are made from ordinary glass and have about the same weight…

I could start with the typical “save the earth, it is the only we have”, which is completely true, but I will start to tell you that we, as humans need to stop acting like the planet is infinite and it is never going to run out of resources, if not for the earth we share, for ourselves. It will. It is already… And still, it passes us by like it is nothing. Why? Because we don’t see it truly in front of us. If we see war, we see dead people, we see injured people, we know it is happening, we know we need to do something. We don’t see the impact of our actions in our planet, at least clearly. But it is happening.

Yesterday, according to the Global Footprint Network, was the Earth Overshoot Day. For those of you who are not familiar with this, the…

It’s not just the bees and their ilk. Neonicotinoid insecticides were known to harm important pollinators, and now a major report says they are killing insects, microbes, lizards, earthworms, birds and even coastal shellfish.

Neonicotinoids make up almost one-third of insecticides used. In 2011 the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up a task force to review the safety of systemic pesticides. After reviewing over 800 studies the group now says present use “is not sustainable”, and calls for a global phase-out.

The chemicals break down more slowly than early tests suggested, says author Jeroen van der Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. These past studies, which informed the decision to allow the use of neonicotinoids, looked mostly at immediate effects. But long-term environmental build-up may be the real problem, so the task force says the previous regulatory studies “lack environmental relevance”.