Sustainability Live 2011

I visited Sustainability Live at the NEC yesterday, mooching around for new stuff, innovations and bright ideas that I could use in my work. I picked up a few ideas that might eventually be of use to me (with the right applications), but here’s some other bits of interesting stuff that I saw with a common theme of “flexible”:

Astrid LED-Neon lighting : Flexible tube LED lighting – low energy, low heat, long lasting LED tubes that are so flexible they can be used for sign-writing as an alternative to conventional neon tubes. Simply a brilliant idea.

Flexcell PV modules : Flexible PV amorphous silicon modules laminated into light thin plastic substrates that look like they could just be stuck onto almost any curved surface rather than having to have a separate flat frame. I know there’s other stuff like this out there, but it caught my eye on the day.

Lighthouse signage and labelling : DIY customizable signage and label printing system. Looks so simple to use, but produces “professional” looking self adhesive signs and labels. Looks like just the sort of thing that larger contracts might use on rapidly changing sites where fixed signage is unworkable, and needs to be adapted to different situations on a daily basis, such as refurbishment of an occupied space.  Well impressed!

But if you didn’t go, here are a few more things I spotted that I’d not seen before:

• A new heat recovery system that’s applicable to virtually any building
• An energy management system that could be modified to control demand-side use within a fixed supply-side limit – keep connection costs down to what's available rather than having to pay for off-site supply upgrades for new buildings. (It's not marketed to do this, but chatting to them it could be programmed to work in this way.)
• A great dust-suppression system
• A solar mapping service for PV installation planning
• A brilliant system for creating temporary working platforms on water
• A solution to the problem of safely de-pressurising aerosol cans on site, and capturing their hazardous contents safely.
• A resin injection system for soils – loads of applications
• A silo company that specializes in biomass storage and combustion, including wet materials.

Feel free to get in touch if you think any of these sound as if they might be useful to you!