How many trees are cut down to make newspapers? In an effort to offset this deforestation, all the major newspapers for one day in the year, could add just 1c / 1p or their price. The profit from the action could be pooled together and ploughed straight back into a fund specifically created to plant trees. If all the major newspapers did it, then it would create a level playing ground, price wise, for that one day and no customer would defect to another paper on price. Even if just one...

I know it's not a new invention and most of us know how it works to act as transducer between air pressure (ie sound waves) and current. But the idea behind it is always to capture intelligible sound. The idea that I propose is based on the same scheme as microphone but for the purpose of generating electricity. We can think of huge or array of microphones installed near noisy or windy places to perform like windmill but at very low cost.

The wind off of cars on the highway should be able to be harnessed in a positive manner. Why couldn't we put wind turbines down the middle of the highway so that air generated from passing vehicles could in turn power something such as the highway lights?

Like anyone I hate the idea of land mines that are left behind after a conflict to claim lives and limbs. However, they will continue to be manufactured to fill the military's demand. My idea is that an internal device should be designed to be easily incorporated (at little cost), to allow a mine to be set to be active for a limited time period (say two years) after which it would be inctive and largely harmless. There are a number of ways that this could be achieved: Incorporate a...

Anything that has a radiator is blowing off heat and wasting energy doing so. So why not use it to heat up NaOH which will remove the oxygen from it. This leaves you with NaH which when allowed to react with water creates hydrogen. Then you can use the leftover NaOH to do the same path again. The idea of using NaOH to store hydrogen has been realised. They are called powerballs (http://www.powerball.net) but no concept of using the technology to capture all the energy we throw away...

Wind turbines are being used to generate electricity in several countries (Denmark for example). Why don't they have turbines that exist to remove polluting particles from the air and perhaps transfer them to the base of the station. If some of the emissions of automobiles could be captured by a "windmill" then instead of using the power to generate electricity it could be used to gather the particles and concentrate them into something that is no longer floating in the air, but contained...

We should add several wrinkles or ridges to our cans so that we can crush them by our own hands with no chance of them being crushed incorrectly and we get perfectly flat, crushed cans every time. This saves the common can recycler time and gets rid of the frustration of having to crush them with your feet. If we run ridged dents around the can from top to bottom we can crush them by hand easily, completely flat and without effort.

The most efficient means of heating a house is by using geothermal heat pumps. Check the link below: http://www.eere.energy.gov/RE/geo_heat_pumps.html. The air going into your house runs through an underground tube, and becomes warmer. I.E. less energy required to get the air warmer. Heat pumps are kind of expensive to build, and it takes about 5 years for the energy savings to pay for the initial cost. Most people move within 5 years so the incentive isn't there to install them....

Over the number of years that I have lived, I have realized that, most of the time we loose filament of electric bulbs is while switching the bulb on. That must be because of sudden heating of cold filament to an instant brightness. So if we create a second electric bulb holder that fits on any existing bulb holder such that it doesn't instantly ignite the bulb to full brightness but rather smoothly increases the electric current to the fullest, then we would save a lot of money and...

One of the biggest issues with solar power is finding the land area for it, without wasting usable land. My idea is to use the roads, by building tall platforms that run the length of the road. This would allows dual use of the same space, particularly in the country. In addition, the roads would be safer as it would provide a partial cover to rain, thus preventing some hydroplaning. They already do it in some places with byways, why not solar panels. Add you don't have to destroy usable...