Normally an 8,000-nautical mile cross-Pacific voyage isn’t a noteworthy event. But it is if you’ve done it on a 20-meter catamaran built from 12,500 two-liter plastic bottles.

On July 26, 2010 Adventure Ecology and a crew of six accomplished such a feat, completing a 128-day journey from San Francisco to Sydney in The Plastiki.

The voyage was Adventure Ecology’s way of showing people that would-be waste can be used as a valuable resource. So knowing that up to 80% of total marine pollution consists of plastic materials, the group designed and engineered a boat largely composed of it as an example. The plastic bottles line the boat’s two hulls, keeping it buoyant. Plastiki’s sail is even made from recycled PET.

The catamaran is also equipped with solar panels, wind and trailing sea turbines, and bicycle generators to create onboard electricity for lighting and cooking.

And as if the eco-friendly boat design wasn’t enough, the crew took saltwater showers, captured drinking water from a rain catchment system and ate various meals grown in an onboard hydroponic vertical garden to further promote sustainability.

Unlike most paper and plastics cups that end up in the trash bin—and eventually in a land fill—after being used, a new disposable cup from product design consultants The Way We See The World is designed to wind up somewhere else: Either in your stomach or as fertilizer in your lawn and garden.

That’s right, these cups, called “Jelloware,” can either be eaten or act as plant food. This is because they’re made from agar agar, a gelatinous seaweed extract that nurtures plant growth. And while seaweed extract may not sound incredibly appetizing, Jelloware cups have a flexible composition similar to Jell-O and are cast in flavors like lemon-basil, ginger-mint and rosemary-beet, so they’re intended to be eaten, too.

According to The Way We See The World, the Jelloware cups re-imagine the concept of drinking and provide a new experience in the way it feels, smells, moves, tastes and—perhaps most importantly—is disposed of. After all, some 58 billion disposable cups find their way into land fills each year.

If you’ve been watching the Tour de France, you may have witnessed a peloton turning into a jumble of broken and bent bikes. Not good. And while the bicycle design innovation from Kevin Scott, a product development student at the UK’s De Montfort University isn’t meant for venues like the Tour, his bike bends in half because it’s supposed to.

Scott’s “bendy bicycle” design features a cable that runs through two segmented tubes connecting the rear part of the bike to the front. This cable can be loosened with a ratcheting device located underneath the seat so that the bicycle literally folds in half, allowing it to be wrapped around lamp poles, trees, signs, etc. This bending allows it to (a) lock to itself with an ordinary D-lock (not clunky chains), which Scott thinks will cut down on bike theft, and (b) become more compact for home storage and public parking purposes. When not parked, the cable can be fully tightened so that the frame straightens back out and it rides like any normal bike.

The bending design may not be the flashiest element to be developed for bicycles, but it could provide a greater sense of security to the 3 million people worldwide who have their bikes stolen annually.

While it might seem that photovoltaic cells—which generate electricity from sunlight—might not be all that useful on a cloudy day, consider their usefulness at night. And consider being at 28,000 ft on an airplane powered by photovoltaics in the middle of the night. On July 7, 2010, a prototype plane from Switzerland-based Solar Impulse piloted by Betrand Piccard, the HB-SIA, flew for 26 hours and nine minutes, making it the first solar airplane to harness enough of the sun’s energy to power it through an entire night.

What’s more, Solar Impulse says it still had plenty of battery power left when it landed. (We’re guessing that Piccard was probably running on empty, however.)

Equipped with 12,000 solar cells on its 193-ft wingspan, the HB-SIA collects the sun’s energy and stores it as electricity in lithium ion batteries. The batteries power the plane’s four electric motors. The plane had a top speed of 70 mph, but an average flight speed of only 26 mph. At that rate it would take about 115 hours of flying time from New York City to Los Angeles.

But Solar Impulse isn’t stopping with the HB-SIA. The company says it wants to develop a second-generation prototype to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Then, it wants to fly around the world. Here’s hoping that the average speed is increased by then, because otherwise it would take on the order of 38 days for the circumnavigation.

With over 5 million Twitter followers, 10 million Facebook friends and album (15 million) and single (40 million) sales that are Beyond Platinum, if anyone can work an audience it’s Lady Gaga. Polaroid is hoping to reach a contemporary audience, too, but for its camera products. So in an effort to appeal to a new generation of consumers, it picked Lady Gaga as its creative director.

The position isn’t just a formality, either. Gaga has reportedly been sitting in on product design and development sessions to help create this line of cameras. Polaroid says its goal in collaborating with Gaga is to create products that blend fashion, technology and photography.

Presumably Polaroid has the technology and photography portions covered. Gaga evidently—and her stage outfits are nothing if not evident--knows a thing or two about fashion. The line drops in November.

It’s estimated that an average of 99.2 million people worldwide have tuned in for each game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. But consider this: Some 2 billion people throughout the world don’t have access to electricity, so you can just imagine how much greater the audience would be for the world’s most popular sport if they did.

Four Harvard engineering students may have found the solution to this problem in the “sOccket,” a soccer ball that generates electricity to work as an electrical outlet. The device was developed on the idea that while not everyone has access to electricity, most everyone has access to a form of exercise.

Here’s how the sOccket works: When in motion, a cylindrical magnet moves along an inductive coil which is located inside the ball. This creates the electricity. After creating enough electricity, users can plug appliances equipped with a DC jack into the ball to power them. Its creators say that playing for 15 minutes on the second-generation sOccket harnesses enough electricity to light a small LED bulb for about three hours. Just imagine what kinds of appliances future generations of this device might be able to power.

One kicker is that the ball weighs about 5 ounces more than a standard soccer ball. But unless you’re anyone but David Beckham, we think you’ll hardly notice a difference.

It’s 350º F under the hood of a stockcar. Throw in high vibrations (up to 600 g) and high electrical current demands (up to 140 A) and it’s not surprising that the alternator is said to be one of the most problem-prone parts in NASCAR engines. So in an effort to improve alternator temperature cooling (they can’t do much to adjust the velocity forces nor the electrical requirements), NASCAR approved routing a 1-in duct from the side of the radiator shroud to the alternator in 2009. While that was a helpful move, it presented problems for packaging under the hood.

Earnhardt Childress Racing (ECR), the engine manufacturing joint venture between racing organizations Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Richard Childress Racing, attempted to achieve the cooling duct by putting a secondary rear cover with a hose attachment onto the alternator. But the cooling efficiency was reduced by maintaining the original Bosch alternator cover. So ECR engineers, having learned of a polyamide-based material reinforced with carbon fibers during attendance at a motorsports expo in Italy, began using it to develop prototype replacement covers. The material, Windform XT from CRP Technology, allowed them to create the covers via rapid prototyping. However, because the material is partially conductive and because the packaging considerations were so tight as to not permit any electrical isolation, it they determined it couldn’t used for the application.

However, the time investment wasn’t lost because CRP had recently developed a material that is reinforced with glass fibers, Windform LX, which also exhibits strength and thermal resistance. So six alternator covers were initially created and track tested, showing a 20º F reduction in stator motor temperature and excellent durability. Rapid prototyping then turned to rapid production as 50 covers were created for installation onto the alternators in ECR NASCAR Cup engines. In 12 races, not one alternator failed. That’s engineering for reliability in extreme conditions.

This year’s winner of the Starbucks-sponsored Betacup Challenge open design contest—which had the goal of creating a new, eco-friendly coffee cup—isn’t a cup.

That’s right: the winner of the contest didn’t design a new cup.

Rather, the winner, “Karma Cup,” is a simple concept: A chart near the counter will track those who bring in reusable cups for their coffee. The 10th customer to order coffee with a reusable cup gets theirs free. So while it’s not a redesigned coffee cup as most of the other 400-plus entries were, this idea could promote coffee shop sustainability in an equally effective way.

Many coffee shops already offer incentives for people that bring in reusable cups—normally in small discounts on their coffee—but they’re widespread use has yet to catch on. So the Karma Cup is hoping greater incentives will inspire more people to think sustainably. Think of it as a community-oriented rewards program where only those with reusable cups can be a part of the club.

The Karma Cup may not be as exotic of an idea as, say, the “Neutral Resource Coffee Cup,”—made from the leaves of the Pacific Island-based Areca Palm Tree—but sometimes simpler is better. And faster for adoption.

Here lies Anne Lindeboom. Born in 1920, she was a loving mother and she loved to garden and sew. Dead in 1984, now, she’s a toaster.

On a level of “Tales from the Crypt”-like creepiness, Dutch artist Wieki Somers has been using human ashes to create sculptures by means of 3D printing. Disturbing? Unquestionably, but Somers has a point in doing this. She says there’s too much excessive consumption in the world. So turning loved ones into everyday household objects will make people appreciate them more.

While it may be a valid point, we can’t imagine grandpa would be too thrilled about becoming a table lamp.

No, this isn’t some hip car remodeling show coming to MTV, but an open innovation contest to help develop an infotainment system of the future. In order to research the potential use of apps for a next-generation vehicle infotainment system prototype, Volkswagen wants to collect as many new ideas as possible. That’s where you come in. You can upload your apps in a SWF file, share your ideas or provide input on someone else’s idea. And not only could your app be in a future VW, but you could win cash prizes.

Application programs can be submitted for these categories:

• Eco mobility
• Games and fun
• Networking and communication
• Productivity
• Travel utilities

The contest ends June 30.