A new kind of adhesive is reported from Gazette-Times, Kaichang Li, a professor of wood science at Oregon State University, receives a dozen calls each day from businesses interested in his laboratory’s latest invention: an inexpensive adhesive made of natural materials.

He said they’re interested in the adhesive’s use of simple, reusable ingredients, including vegetable oil, which keeps costs down.

“If I gave you the recipe, you could cook it in your kitchen at home,” Li said.

Li and his team stumbled upon their discovery while trying to develop an all-natural adhesive that melts at high temperatures but is solid at room temperature, used for cardboard or wood furniture.

They didn’t reach their original goal, but found a pressure-sensitive adhesive – one that requires pressure for use – that can be used on all types of products, from duct tape to sticky notes to labels.

The vegetable oil-based adhesive is posed to make an impact: Li said environmentally friendly adhesives on the market today are expensive, adding that nearly all adhesives are made from petroleum-based chemicals.

“Even if we use up the world’s oil supply, we can still make tape” with this technology, Li said. A great negosyo idea for environment conscious entrepreneurs.

Photo by Gazette-Times.

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Have you heard lately that Apple iPhones have erratic signal? There’s one surefire way to solve the iPhone 4 antenna problem: don’t let your hand or fingers come in contact with its metal band.

Easier said than done, right? Unless you’re willing to constantly use the speakerphone, a headset, or a pair of gloves, your only viable option is to keep the iPhone in a case–or, as some have discovered, wrap it in a rubber “bumper.”

A CNET report that iPhone Guru blogger Oliver Nelson crafted a clever DIY iPhone 4 bumper solution out of one of those rubber wristbands you probably have sitting in a junk drawer.

It’s a pretty straightforward project: stretch a wristband around the edge of your iPhone and presto, you’re done. If you’re handy with an X-Acto knife, you can cut holes for the headphone jack, mute switch, dock connector, and so on.

Photo by Oliver Nelson.

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Coffee Shop are all around in the Philippines this days and you might be wondering with all the coffee they are making there are lots of used coffee ground that are put into the garbage. Here is a great business idea from the U.S. utilizing the discarded coffee grounds from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. A University of California, Berkeley business students Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez perked up when a business ethics professor mentioned a sustainable business opportunity: using nutrient-rich discarded coffee grounds to grow mushrooms.

Hooked on the idea of “creating a business out of waste streams,” Arora says, the pair tested the idea in a fraternity kitchen in early 2009. When their mushrooms sprouted a month later, they started BTTR (pronounced Better) Ventures, and by the time they graduated that May, they had a $5,000 grant from Berkeley and interest from such customers as Whole Foods and Berkeley chef Alice Waters.

BTTR Ventures collects 8,000 pounds of coffee grounds each week that shops such as Peet’s Coffee would otherwise discard. When they’re done growing mushrooms, Arora, 23, and Velez, 22, donate the compost to local schools and community gardens.

In addition to selling the mushrooms they grow in their 2,500-square foot warehouse, they sell starter kits to let consumers grow their own mushrooms. The home kits now move at a rate of about 200 a week in local Whole Foods, with additional sales online, and make up half of BTTR Ventures’ business.

Photo by Kristen Loken.

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A cute diaper idea in U.S. by Ada Vaughan created a booming diaper business. By combining her passions as a mom and her love of cloth diaper spark the idea.

It all began in 2008 sewing diapers in her basement. She tried different things such as illustrations and even made 40 different kinds of baby food. She really wanted to own her own business. She started working with a professional seamstress in 2009 and then went to China and looked at the factory where the diapers would be made.

CuteyBaby offer 8 different prints for the modern cloth diapers that customers can choose from. There is also the “Zip it, Baby!” dry bags where dirty diapers can be kept neatly until laundry time. There are two size options for the dry bags. There are also “Keep It Clean” biodegradable liner sheets.

Photo by CuteyBaby

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Check this out a recycled carton made into a feeding chair for children. Not just eco friendly but very ingenious. Springwise reports of a new kid on the flat-pack furniture block, offering a portable high chair solution. Made from recycled cardboard, the Feedaway from Melbourne-based Belkiz is an easy-to-assemble, lightweight version of the traditional feeding chair. It’s designed to be used away from home, wherever baby or toddler feeding chairs aren’t available, and otherwise folded away.

Designed for infants aged up to 20 months or weighing up to 20 kilograms, the Feedaway comes with a three-point safety harness. Its non-toxic food-grade coating can be cleaned with a wet cloth. It weighs approximately one kilogram (2.2 lbs), and Belkiz claims it will last for around 30 assemblies. After that, it’s 100% recyclable.

Retailing for AUD 39.95, the Feedaway is a convenient piece of ‘take away’ toddler furniture and should fold nicely into the increasingly mobile lifestyles of parents with an eye for eco-iconic design. Belkiz is currently seeking stockists for the Feedaway in Australia, and distributors in the US and EU.

Photo by Belkiz.

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Happy New Year everyone, it’s been a very busy the past week to start the new year right. Negosyoideas.com reports to you a review from Trendspotter Springwise over the holidays all smart negosyo ideas they covered in 2009 and selected some of what they believe will provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities this 2010. Needless to say, it was a huge challenge to pick from such a wide range of innovative concepts.

Small-scale food production using membership models

The past year or two saw a huge increase in innovative, upscale mobile food purveyors working from trucks and selling everything from premium ice-cream to Korean BBQ tacos. Requiring an even lower investment, the next wave could be small-scale culinary subscription services, which allow fledgling entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the food business, and create a steady income and a loyal client base for future business activities.

Sample stores, cafes & vending machines

Sophisticated sampling—dubbed tryvertising by trendwatching.com—isn’t new. On the rise, however, are dedicated spaces that facilitate sampling by a variety of brands, attracting consumers through the irresistible offer of free goods. Following sampling stores in Spain, sampling cafes in Tokyo and sample vending machines in Belgium, we suspect this concept will spread even further in 2010.

Remote farming for consumers

According to Wikipedia, farm simulation game FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook with 73.8 million active users in January 2010. Offering consumers a way to remotely control a patch of land that will actually provide them with an edible harvest is a new Italian start-up: Le Verdure Del Mio Orto, which lets anyone build an organic garden right from their web browser. As the produce grows, it’s picked and delivered to the customer’s door within 24 hours. Weekly deliveries are part of the package.

Paying consumers to promote products they use and love

As our sister-site trendwatching.com pointed out in its sellsumers briefing, selling is the new saving: a recession-induced need for cash plus an ever-growing infrastructure are fueling concepts that help ordinary consumers make money instead of spending it. One of the easiest ways to do so is by taking on the role of marketeer for products they already use and love: from promoting concerts by their favourite bands, to helping small companies launch new products.

Single-use toilet bag turns human waste into fertilizer

A potential solution to a problem that 2.6 billion people have to deal with: no access to a toilet. Designed for use sitting, squatting or standing, the single-use, biodegradable plastic Peepoo bag is lined with a urea-coated gauze layer that disinfects all waste. Used bags are odour-free for at least 24 hours and are safe for burial underground. Within two to four weeks after use, their contents are converted to high-quality fertiliser—something that’s also rare in many areas and could become a source of income and further enrichment for individuals or villages.

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A New Zealand man named Sandy Sanderson made a business out of the aluminum softdrink cans that are so plenty here in the Philippines. This is a great negosyo idea for anyone who wants to starts small and the materials can be found readily.

Here is a report from Jalopnik. While finishing a canned beverage he thought of model airplanes he’d seen made from cans and thought why not make cars out of the same material? And thus was born the CanCar.

Now Sandy is selling copies of his plans for building the cars on his website for $10 each. A business that helps recycling and makes money…a great deal!

Photo by Sandy Sanderson.

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Junk is a lucrative business here in the Philippines, from the street buyers who buys used bottles, newspapers, irons and plastics to the wholesale buyers. The electronic junks that clutter in our house is yet to be harness to recycle or reuse the working items and at the same time turn it back as money. Springwise has this report from the U.S.  offering a solution is EcoATM, an automated reuse-and-recycle machine that makes it easy and financially rewarding for consumers to offload their abandoned electronics.

The process is simple: a customer feeds the machine an old mobile phone and it analyses the device and assigns it a value. If the phone has a resale value, the customer receives store credit, or can donate the amount to charity. If there’s no resale value, customers can choose to have the handset recycled.

The first EcoATM was installed in Omaha, Nebraska, and has already proved successful, with 23 phones collected on the first day.

It’s likely to hold appeal for retailers and manufacturers too, as the system is designed to facilitate compliance with new federal ‘takeback’ laws. Although it currently only takes mobile phones, EcoATM will soon be able to accept a range of consumer electronics including MP3 players, digital cameras and even computers and printers.

The incentive for EcoATM is clear: an estimated 12 billion dollars is currently sitting in drawers across America in the form of old phones.

Photo by EcoATM.

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This is an interesting idea of utilizing goat not just for meat and milk but also for renting it to land owners who have problems of maintaining idle lands with weeds. Goats are voracious eaters of grass and it fits well in clearing grass to a minimum level on idle lands. Likewise goat raisers always have a problem of sourcing grass to feed there goats. Here is more report from Treehugger.

Goats have many advantages:

• They have a low impact on the environment due to their cloven hooves.

• They are natural climbers and love steep slopes and uneven terrain.

• They can go where machinery and other modes of brush removal are not allowed to go.

• They are cost effective in many situations.

• They are walking fertilizer factories.

• People love the goats! They bring communities together and make people happy.

Also, “Goats are becoming very popular with construction companies. They are finding that it’s a win/win for everyone. Many companies use the goats to clear brush so surveys can be done. They have also found it can be very cost-effective when considering how much it is to clear the land, then haul the debris and dispose of it.

Plus, permits are not needed for the goats to clear which saves time and money. And it also improves communities by bringing people together to see the goats, not to mention the lack of noise that heavy machinery generates.”

Photo by rent-a-ruminant.

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This is good news, according to Discovery News watermelon juice can be use as a new alternative fuel. The Philippines being an agricultural country is producing lots of this fruits. Here is an excerpt from the magazine.

A staple of backyard barbecues and summer time snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a new study, leftover watermelons from farms’ harvests could be converted into up to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million gallons) of clean, renewable ethanol fuel every year destined for your car, truck, or airplane’s gas tank.

Agriculturally, watermelon is a peculiar fruit — each year farmers across the country leave between 20 and 40 percent of their crop to rot on the ground. These are the ugly ducklings of the lot; though perfectly fine on the inside, the misshapen or blemished melons simply won’t sell at the grocery store.

Across the United States, it’s estimated that 360,000 tons of watermelons spoil in fields every year.

Photo by sofijab.

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