Death Shrouds for Mars Burial (No Joke), Algae Skis, Bacteria-Built House, Biobased Food packaging, Coca-Cola, Absolut Go Paper, and More: The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the Week of February 12th

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) We all will die eventually, but one burial-garment designer and one bioengineer are thinking of future human burials on Mars with a new death garment made of four 100% biodegradable layers from silk and they plan to run experiments in which they dissolve the Martian death garments using alkaline hydrolysis to ensure residues do not cause any toxicity issues for using the human compost for growing crops.

In today’s Digest, let’s not get totally bummed out about getting buried on Mars with biobased, biodegradable death shrouds – let’s also enjoy life and have some fun skiing on algae skis, living in a bacteria-built house, eating out of bioplastic food packaging, and drinking Coca-Cola and Absolut out of paper bottles instead of glass or plastic. This and more ready for you now at The Digest online. READ MORE

9 Toyota builds a fuel cell system for The Energy Observer, bringing Toyota’s fuel-cell tech to the maritime sector

In France, The Energy Observer— a former racing boat now used to travel the world on alternative energy— will receive a fuel-cell system designed for maritime applications from Toyota. Toyota, a supporter of the Energy Observer since its inception, redesigned its fuel cell system to be maritime-specific in an astonishing seven months. If successful, Toyota may become early developers of maritime-based fuel-cell applications. The CEO of Toyota Motor Europe stated that “This project shows that the Toyota Fuel Cell technology can be used in any environment and can be spread throughout many business opportunities.” Their partnership kicked off as a result of the companies shared vision of creating a “future society in harmony with nature.”
More on the story, here.