Textile technology
A fresh new look

Think of a glass of milk and the associations are overwhelmingly positive: natural, creamy, almost luxurious. Now a Hanover-based company, Qmilch, is applying those connotations to the wardrobe.

Founder Anke Domaske, a 28-year-old microbiologist and fashion designer, is quick to dispel any doubts about the viability of lactose-based fashion. “You don’t need to keep the clothes in the fridge,” she laughs. “They won’t curdle.”

In fact the textiles are produced from a milk protein, casein. “There have been milk fibres since the 1930s,” adds Domaske, “but they always used chemicals in the production process and it was very resource-intensive.”

To produce 1kg of the thread required 20,000 litres of water and could take up to 60 hours. Domaske’s process uses only two litres to make 1kg and she is now producing around 2kg an hour.

Her recipe includes casein, zinc and beeswax. “You could compare it to baking,” she says. “You need the right amount of ingredients as well as the correct temperature and time.” Plans for a new factory will see Qmilch producing 560 tonnes a year. The clothes retail for €150-€200.

Domaske says it was her insistence on organic production – the fibres, produced by machine at the University of Bremen, meet the global standard – that led her to develop her material and found the company. However, her chemicals-free stance made it hard to find partners. No actual foodstuffs are used, as Qmilch uses the 20% of cow's milk unfit for human consumption.

This year the firm won Hanover’s StartUp-Impuls prize, which provided seed capital, and the Confederation of the German Textile and Fashion Industry’s innovation award. In the next five years Domaske plans to increase staff from six to 20, and hopes to produce abroad. “We already have orders from England, Russia and Arab countries,” she says.

Energy producers
Light on their feet

Every time its 1,100 pupils come jostling through the corridors at Simon Langton Grammar School on the outskirts of Canterbury, England, they produce more than a boyish din.

When students step on the tiles, their kinetic energy is absorbed and converted into up to 2W of electricity. Some 5% of this is used to light up the tile, 50% illumines the hallway and the rest is stored in a battery.

Produced by Pavegen Systems, this waterproof, ecological energy-saver can be used anywhere with intense foot traffic – not just in schools, but also in shopping centres, railway stations and office buildings. Five tiles in a busy road can illuminate a bus stop or an ad display all night. They can also make street- corner crossings safer.

The rubber to make the tiles comes from 100% recycled tyres, and each is designed to last 50,000 hours, or 20 years. When they were fitted on a dancefloor at last year's Bestival on the Isle of Wight, they generated nightclub LED displays – and 20 of them are powering lighting at the Westfield Stratford City shopping mall which has just opened in east London.

The product won the 2010 Innovation Future Zone prize at the Ecobuild sustainable- construction show, made the Product of the Year shortlist at the Brit Insurance Design Awards and won the Big Idea category at the Observer Ethical Awards.

Founder and CEO Laurence Kemball-Cook, who invented the system, calls it "the first fully commercialised form of footfall energy-harvesting technology". The company, which started in 2009, has signed up for other installations across Europe. Architects and local authorities in the US have shown interest too. "It will allow developers and municipalities to hit their carbon-reduction quotas," adds Kemball-Cook, who is 25.

Wi-fibreakthrough
Broadband for the boondocks

In scarcely 10 years, the internet has transformed banking, shopping, entertainment and travel, and the engine of e-commerce is fast broadband. But not everyone has access to fast broadband.

Even in France and the UK, rural communities are less well served. These 'not spots' are a concern for both politicians and businesses. The problem is that the main ways of delivering broadband do not work well outside cities.

ADSL, where the internet runs over phone lines, loses speed rapidly at distances of more than 4km. Cellular wireless signals struggle with broadband speeds, users need to be close to a mast for a good connection, and cellular capacity is running out. At the same time, the laying of new broadband cables and fibre optics is very expensive.

Or maybe not, if the advocates of white-space radio are to be believed. White space is a radio technology that uses the large gaps left by other services such as TV. By taking that unused space among the radio waves, telecoms companies can fire up high-speed broadband connections that work over long distances, at a more aff ordable cost. In larger countries, such as the US and China, the potential to exploit white space is huge.

Now British engineers believe they have found a way to make white space work without interfering with other transmissions. A computer model tells each connection exactly which spectrum and how much power it can use, so broadband users do not block out TV signals. According to Richard Walker, head of wireless at TTP, a technology firm in Cambridge, England, a white-space system is very similar to today's Wi-fikit. A white-space antenna might even be similar to a TV aerial.

Although another Cambridge company, Ionica, tried to set up a similar network in the late 90s, Walker says the technology has improved and the demand for high-speed internet has grown enormously. There are other uses for white-space radio, such as communications by the emergency services or for smart meters for the utilities companies.

Both Ofcom, the UK communications regulator and the US Federal Communications Commission have announced support for white space, with the former estimating that it could easily generate £320m (€369m) for the UK economy. That alone should stop white space falling into a black hole.

Green crusade
Fare trading

Parisians who care about the environment have a new way of getting about – a variation on the minicab system that's been around in every British city for the past 30 years.

EcoCab is positioning itself as an alternative taxi fleet and is making strenuous eff orts to live up to its name. Since no mechanism for transport offers zero CO2 emissions, the company says it is compensating by financing projects that limit them. With its partner, EcoAct – a French-Brazilian group of engineer-researchers – EcoCab is funding various ventures designed to reduce greenhouse gases and to create jobs in emerging countries.

The company, which has just completed a lengthy trial operation, stresses though that it is competing with other executive services in the sector and does not only play the green card. Its drivers wear suits, speak English, and carry luggage from passengers' front doors to the airport check-in or train seat. All cars have leather seats, air-con and mp3 player plugs.

The EcoCab service – booked via phone or online – sets a tariff and route when reservations are made. Passengers receive a text when their vehicle arrives.

Trips within Paris start at €13, while those to the Orly and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airports cost from €35 and €45. Regular users can pay monthly and EcoCab also offers an hourly service, from €45.

EcoCab says its taxis emit low levels of CO2 (89g/km), and the company would rather, say, send a minivan for large groups than two small cars, to minimise the “environmental cost.

EcoCab’s business is profits- driven but company president Nathan Reiner says: “Every 12 months, we draw up a balance sheet of our carbon emissions – the distance covered by our cars multiplied by the rate of CO2 emissions per kilometre.

“Then EcoAct calculates how much we must invest in a project so that our part represents a savings of emissions equivalent to our own emissions, which we can’t reduce. Thus, we contribute to the reduction of what we emit. The balance is zero.”

One such project helps to replace fossil fuels at a power plant in Malana, India; another converts methane from a pig farm in Itararé, Brazil, into electricity.