Agenda: Sucking Smog Out of the Sky (And a Few Other Crazy Ideas)

Desperate times call for crazy measures, and this idea sounds so crazy it just might work. Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde has "developed an electronic vacuum cleaner" that can literally punch holes of clean air in the smoggy skies.

The concept uses buried coils of copper to create an electrostatic field that attracts smog particles, creating a void of clean air above it. "You can purify the air so you can breathe again," Roosegaarde told Dezeen in an exclusive interview during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. "It creates these holes of 50-60 metres of clean air so you can see the sun again."

Roosegarde's has already signed an agreement with the city of Beijing to build a public park to "showcase the technology," which sounds nifty, but the capital needs far more than one small-scale demo project to solve its ongoing pollution crisis. So, Dear City Officials, since you're already planning on throwing a ton of money into cutting down air pollution, we'd like to humbly suggest a few other cutting-edge solutions in which to invest:

Super Trees According to the Huffington Post, installing just one of the $100,000 devices has the pollution-fighting effect of planting 1,200 trees. Imagine what a whole forest could do ...

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Photos: dezeen.com and ecolocalizer.com