Did you know that the best way to reclaim arid land is to let animals graze on it? Or that the hottest new things on wheels may be motorless cars and folding scooters that operate only with power generated by batteries in their wheel hubs? Or that to clean up toxic wastewater you needn’t go the expense of gigantic waste purification plants—-you can do it with a mix of bacteria, plants and other environmentally sound eco-systems costing far less and much more ecologically friendly? If you didn’t know these things you haven’t been following the tracks of the Buckinster Fuller Challenge grants. The past three winners of the Challenge are at work, today, doing all these things. And even the losers in this year’s competition are hard at it with jaw dropping projects. One honorable mention went to a Chicago group that’s developed a system to capture, clean and return 100% of the city’s wastewater and storm-water to its nearby lakes. Now all that water is dumped into the Mississippi and goes down to the Gulf of Mexico. Another honorable mention went to a group called Barefoot College, aptly named because it teaches illiterate, rural […]