Who’s Who in Green: Michael Reynolds

Driving through New Mexico, at one point or another you’re bound to see one: those strange structures built half into the earth, with a bunch of old dirt-packed tires forming the front wall. These ‘earthships’ are incredibly efficient off-grid homes using passive solar energy, thermal mass construction and natural and recycled materials to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

Michael Reynolds founded Earthship Biotecture, a company that specializes in designing and building Earthships, in the 1970s. He wanted to create a home that was not only sustainable, but also mostly self-sufficient and within financial reach of the average person. Earthships generally cost between $50,000 to $100,000 and can be built by just about anyone, regardless of whether they have any previous experience.

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Over time, Reynolds began to incorporate technology like solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal cooling, making the homes even more efficient. And, earthships aren’t limited to tires. Reynolds also designed many similar buildings that used other recycled materials like aluminum cans and glass bottles.

Reynolds’ process of developing his earthship concept has largely been based on trial and error. After each one that he builds, he comes up with improvements that can be applied to the next one. The experimental nature of Reynolds’ homes has not exactly made for smooth sailing – he lost his credentials in the 1990s after several buyers filed lawsuits and complaints over defects like leaky roofs. However, his license has since been reinstated.

Reynolds has also applied this natural and sustainable building concept to multi-unit rentals, making them even more accessible to the public. He is also the subject of a documentary called ‘Garbage Warriors‘, which follows him for three years as he builds earthships around the world and lobbies the government for the right to build a sustainable living test site.

His earthships have inspired a whole new generation of green builders, and they remain some of the most iconic examples of green architecture in the world. Learn more about earthships at EarthshipBiotecture.com.

Michael Reynolds’ Green Score: 34,689

Photo credit: Flickr user cer!se

Defining Sustainability at the Arizona State University Art Museum

How can sustainability be defined with art? That’s what Arizona State University’s Art Museum set out to answer this fall with Defining Sustainability, a series of dynamic and interactive projects that will come together to illustrate sustainability ideas.

From ASU News:

Each exhibition or project tells a simple story – an artist’s proposal for green transportation or a designer’s solution for recycled shade structures – which together convey the complexity of sustaining life on earth. A nontraditional art museum project, artists and designers, faculty and students will engage the greater Phoenix community in their creative processes and in conversations about sustainability. The diverse projects range in materials and format, and are installed throughout the ASU Art Museum to tell stories of environmental, social and cultural sustainability.

In Defining Sustainability, art and the museum are catalyst and site for campus and community members to gather and further the conversation about sustainability. While many of the projects focus on this place, they have implications for art, museums and urban centers throughout the country and the world. Today’s art museum is a pristine, controlled environment, keeping the landscape, with all its environmental systems, hazards and problems, at bay. The ASU Art Museum strives to forge a new model for the university art museum as an interdisciplinary lab to explore real-world issues through the lens of the creative process.

Defining Sustainability will run from August 26th, 2009 through February 20th, 2010 and will feature exhibitions in all media by regional and international, emerging and established artists.

Learn more and view a few examples at the ASU website.

Pictured above: Shade structures made by ASU architecture faculty member Jason Griffiths, who will be leading the upcoming project Political Ply at ASU Art Museum in October 2009. Photo courtesy Jason Griffith.

Link [ASU News]

Timberland CEO Struggles with Company Ban on Bottled Water

Timberland CEO Jeffrey Swartz announced a new ban on bottled water at his company headquarters around the world two weeks ago, thinking it would be fairly easy to implement. After all, what’s so tough about using filtered tap water or other alternatives and passing on expensive deliveries of bottled water? As it turns out, according to Swartz – plenty.

He was psyched about implementing the new ban, until he started running into some obstacles:

First there’s a supply issue to contend with – our facilities team reports a 4-week supply of bottled water already in house and we don’t want to be wasteful, so can we continue to offer it until the supply runs out?  Sure, okay … makes sense.  Then the vending machine folks chime in, what about the plastic soda bottles in the vending machines?  Are we getting rid of those, too?  Wow.  Okay, sure.  No more plastic bottles in the vending machines.  But hold on, says the guy in charge of our dining services – we don’t have nearly enough glasses and cups to accommodate the increased demand from people who would otherwise be drinking bottled water.  We’re gonna have to add more dishwashers, or buy more glasses … yikes.  All I wanted to do was get rid of the bottled water, now I’m buying new dishwashers?  How come it’s never as easy as you think it will be to get something done?

Apparently Swartz also received feedback from readers of the Earthkeepers blog about whether banning bottled water was even necessary in the first place, with people arguing that bottled water has its place and that getting rid of it wasn’t going to negate Timberland’s carbon footprint.

Swartz understands that – but, as he says on Earthkeepers, “I hold on to the notion that in the corporate world, where tap water is clean and reuseable containers are (soon to be) plentiful, we can do better than bottled water.”

That’s a great attitude to have, and we applaud Swartz and Timberland for going through the trouble to address these kinds of issues in the workplace. Their next step? Getting rid of paper products.

Link [Earthkeepers] via [GreenBiz.com]

Support OrganicNation.tv’s Bid for NAU’s Grant for Change

Exciting news – OrganicNation.tv has been nominated for NAU’s Grant for Change! The $10,000 award will highlight the efforts of people who move in the spirit of the Nau Collective and support those who instigate lasting, positive change in their communities – and there’s no doubt that the Organic Nation team accomplishes that goal.

Support OrganicNation.tv by heading over to the NAU Grant for Change site and voting! Here’s why:

As obesity and diabetes rates climb and farming techniques continue to pollute the air and water, it is crucial to educate young Americans about their food options. This fall, OrganicNation.tv will continue building awareness on and offline to empower young people about issues of food safety, nutrition and sustainable farming.

On the heels of their successful West Coast KickOff Tour, Dorothee Royal-Hedinger and Mark Andrew Boyer will embark on journey across the U.S. Traveling from California to Maine, they will gather and share stories from farmers, urban gardeners, activists and chefs and address issues like: “How can farming be sustainable?” “Is organic food more nutritious than conventional food?” “Can organic food feed the world?” This project will be formed into a free educational toolkit for use in 8th and 9th grade classrooms, empowering the next generation to build a sustainable nation.

Here’s how to vote:

1) Go to: https://www.nau.com/za/NAU?PAGE=register&nextpage=grant-for-change and register
2) Sign in with email address and password you registered with in step 1 here: https://www.nau.com/za/NAU?PAGE=login&nextpage=grant-for-change
3) Vote for us by giving us 5 stars (or however many you want) here: http://www.nau.com/collective/grant-for-change/dorothee-royal-hedinger-and-mark-andrew-boyer-482.html

You’ve got to drop by OrganicNation.tv to check out all the awesome video content and blog entries, including photos of America’s first certified-organic rooftop farm and an interview with an organic brewmaster. OrganicNation.tv’s hard work brings the everyday wonders of sustainable food into sharp focus, giving us all an inside view of how sustainable food systems are created across the country.

Link [NAU Grant for Change] + [OrganicNation.tv]

Greenpeace Knocks “Traitor Joe’s” for Unsustainable Seafood

“Traitor Joe’s: Your one-stop shop for ocean destruction.” That’s what Greenpeace branded specialty retailer Trader Joe’s after they were rated dead last among 9 supermarket chains on seafood sustainability. Trader Joe’s scored lower than Winn-Dixie and Wal-Mart because it serves red list fish.

Fish on the red list is either imperiled, or comes from fisheries that harm other sea creatures like turtles, dolphins, seals and sea lions. Among those on the list are Atlantic Cod, Orange Roughy, red snapper, Chilean sea bass, grouper and yellowfin tuna.

Greenpeace sent out protesters dressed as Orange Roughy to the Trader Joe’s in San Francisco, urging the company to stop its environmentally unfriendly practices.

Click ‘Go’ below to watch a quick animated video:

From the Traitor Joe website:

Hello friends. Traitor Joe here. I’m up to my eyeballs in red list seafood. There is so much in my stores that I bet there is nothing left in the oceans. That’s the beauty about red list species. They are doing so badly in the oceans that they need extra help and conservation in order to survive. But will I help save them? Heck no! I need to make a profit and if that means I am helping these dwindling fish stocks to go extinct, oh well. I’ll still sleep at night.

After all, you’d never know my seafood was caught in ways that endanger ocean habitats and other marine creatures. Why? I conveniently leave the labels off my seafood. Ha, ha ha. Pretty good trick, right? My customers never know what they are really buying. That way I can pass the guilt on to you, so you can help me turn the oceans into a giant, empty bathtub without ever knowing. How’s that for giving my customers what they want?

As Greenpeace notes, Trader Joe’s could escape the harsh spotlight easily by removing all red list seafood from its stores. After all, their core customer base cares deeply about the environment – and is it really smart to alienate them?

The other retailers that have made no visible effort whatsoever to increase the sustainability of their seafood operations include Aldi, Costco, Giant Eagle, H. E. B., Meijer, Price Chopper, Publix and Winn-Dixie.

Wegmans, Ahold, Whole Foods, and Target were praised for their efforts to improve.

Link [Traitor Joe] via [Marc Gunther]

What’s Organic About Organic Beer?

OrganicNation.tv is back with yet another awesome video from their travels across America exploring the sustainable food landscape. This time, the Organic Nation team caught up with Chad Kennedy, Head Brewer at Portland’s Laurelwood Public House and Brewery.

From OrganicNation.tv:

Portland is of course known for its beer and microbreweries, and the Portland beer scene has been swept up in the organic movement in recent years (which is why the North American Organic Brewers Festival was held in Portland over the weekend).

Laurelwood wasn’t the first certified-organic brewery in Oregon, but it has been the longest lasting. Chad and his brewers have two organic brews, the the Free Range Red and Tree Hugger Porter, and if Dorothee and Chad seem a bit happier than usual, it’s because we had the pleasure of tasting both of them during the shoot.

Chad walked us through the whole process of brewing organic beer, and to our surprise he told us that hops aren’t actually organic in some organic beers. The USDA only requires that 95 percent of the ingredients in certified-organic beer are themselves organic, and because organic hops are in very short supply right now, conventional hops are often used in certified-organic beer.

Check it out:

What’s Organic About Organic Beer? from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Watch more Organic Nation videos over at OrganicNation.tv!

Link [OrganicNation.tv]

Organic Nation: Exploring America’s Sustainable Food Landscape

EarthFirst.com’s own managing editor, Dorothee Royal-Hedinger, is setting out on a tour of the Midwest and West Coast with her new project Organic Nation. Organic Nation is an exploration of the American sustainable food landscape focusing on the people, places and products that are shaping a new green economy and lifestyle.

From OrganicNation.tv:

We’ll be exploring such fundamental questions as: What does “organic” mean and how are products certified? What do scientists say about the risks of chemical pesticides and fertilizers on human health? What are the costs of switching to organic production and is it affordable for farmers and consumers? Is organic better than local or vice-versa? Can organic food production feed the nation and is it truly sustainable?

Check out the trailer below:

Organic Nation Trailer from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Dorothee, who also runs Fresh Cut Media and regularly contributes to Change.org and BUST, will be traveling with writer and photographer Mark Andrew Boyer.

Tour itinerary:

May 10th-20th Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin
May 22nd – 24th Buffalo, New York
May 25th – 28th San Jose, California
May 29th – 31st San Francisco, California
June 1st-10th TBA

Support Organic Nation! O.N. will be accepting donations through June 10th to keep them on the road. You can also support Organic Nation by voting in the Organic Film Trailer Competition, following them on Twitter and reading the Organic Nation blog.

Link [OrganicNation.tv]

Self-Sustainable City of Green Rings to be Built in South Korea

Gwanggyo, a new city to be built south of Seoul, South Korea, will get a futuristic, green city center designed by Dutch architecture group MVRDV. The town is planned to be self-sufficient, with 77,000 inhabitants, and the buildings in its center will be unlike any others in the world. MVRDV won a competition to design the city center.

From Meta Efficient:

The architects say that all the elements of the city center will be design as rings, and “by pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life.”

Box hedges will be planted on the terraces and roofs of the buildings. The intention is to improve ventilation, and reduce energy and water usage.

The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces.

 

Interesting concept… with the rings of greenery and large glass walls, you feel a connection with the outdoors no matter what floor you’re on. Such a design would practically eliminate the claustrophobic feeling one can get when surrounded by concrete and steel in city environments. Details on exactly how the city would be self-sustainable are thin, but it will be interesting to see how this concept will translate to real life once it’s completed in 2011.

Link [Meta Efficient]

The Future of Sustainable Food: Are we on the Edge of a New Era?

Following a huge grassroots effort to get a victory garden reestablished on the White House lawn, Michelle Obama made it official last week: an organic kitchen garden is now in progress near the fountain on the South Lawn. As we had hoped, Mrs. Obama is helping to elevate awareness of healthy, locally and sustainably grown food. So, does that mean that sustainable food revolution is about to sweep the country?

During World War II, victory gardens became a necessity as the government rationed foods like sugar, cheese and meats and labor and transportation shortages affected the ability to harvest and transport fruits and vegetables to markets. The government asked citizens to shoulder some of the burden of food production, and what resulted was a nation where nearly every yard supplied fresh produce. But, it didn’t last. Once the war was over, we went back to our lawns.

The importance of sustainable food can’t be overstated. Our food system is a mess. The vast majority of the foods we consume are grown thousands of miles away from our homes with liberal use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, processed heavily and then shipped to our local supermarkets. It’s hard to even tell where the foods we eat come from anymore. We’re so far removed from the source of our food, it’s really kind of disturbing. Children hardly even realize that food comes from nature, as opposed to the store down the street.

Food recalls are becoming more and more commonplace as farms and processing centers cut corners and fail to properly oversee operations. Contamination is widespread and has reached stomach-turning heights in recent years. Most of what’s found in grocery stores is loaded with empty calories, preservatives, sodium and fat. Conventional farming practices are robbing our soil and our food of nutrients, polluting our waterways and causing vast oxygen-deprived ‘dead zones’ in our oceans.

People are beginning to realize the value of authentic food – thanks in large part to a receptive First Lady and skyrocketing interest in the green, eco-friendly lifestyle – but making the dream of a sustainable food revolution into reality on a nationwide scale is a gargantuan task, and one that may still take many years to be fully realized.

Advocates of conventional agriculture – including, naturally, the powerful National Corn Growers Association – are pushing back, arguing that organic farming can’t provide enough food because yields tend to be lower.

From The New York Times:

“We think there’s a place for organic, but don’t think we can feed ourselves and the world with organic,” says Rick Tolman, chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association. “It’s not as productive, more labor-intensive and tends to be more expensive.”

Although some people argue that there are hidden costs to cheap food, from environmental damage caused by factory farms and fertilizer runoff to the health costs associated with eating highly processed, calorie-laden food, the fact remains that commercially produced food is relatively inexpensive.

As the Obama administration took over in January, many advocates of organic, sustainable food had hoped to see an ally appointed as secretary of agriculture and were angry at the appointment of Tom Vilsack, who has been called a Monsanto shill. Obama’s choice to put Vilsack in charge of the USDA was seen as a devastating blow to the movement.

From Counterpunch:

“Vilsack’s nomination sends the message that dangerous, untested, unlabeled genetically engineered crops will be the norm in the Obama Administration,” said Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director of Organic Consumers Association. “Our nation’s future depends on crafting a forward-thinking strategy to promote organic and sustainable food and farming, and address the related crises of climate change, diminishing energy supplies, deteriorating public health, and economic depression.”

Vilsack has taken to fighting that perception, turning a patch of pavement outside his headquarters into a “people’s garden” and claiming sustainable food as one of his main priorities. Among his stated goals are improving the quality of children’s school lunches, helping small farms develop regional distribution networks and overhauling agriculture and food policy to place an emphasis on nutrition and fighting climate change.

Sustainable food activists are wary, and take Vilsack’s statements with a grain of salt given his past, but they’re still hopeful that sweeping changes in the way things are done could push local and sustainable food into the mainstream.

Still, even the most ardent of sustainable food advocates warn that the movement isn’t ready for its closeup. Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and supporter of diversified, regional food networks, told The New York Times “The movement is not ready for prime time. It’s not like we have an infrastructure with legislation ready to go.”

But, momentum is building all the same, and across the country, thousands of people are turning back to that World War II-era tradition of growing their own food. This time, there’s even more at stake – so we’ve got to make sustainable food a reality. Luckily, our fortunes have changed dramatically since the Bush administration left office with its collective tail between its legs. We’ve got friends in powerful places – even Oprah is speaking out for sustainable food.

So, what can you do to help? For starters, consider following Michelle Obama’s example and plant a kitchen garden, start some potted herbs and veggies on your balcony or even take over an abandoned lot. Learn more about growing your own food no matter where you live with our guide to urban gardening, and get more info about the sustainable food movement at SustainableTable.org.

Link [The New York Times] + [CounterPunch]

Photo credit: Slow Food Nation & The Huffington Post

NYC Skyscrapers Gather Heat for Power

Towers in Manhattan are getting power from heat through the installation of gas-powered cogeneration plants, which are being added to many buildings’ roofs and parking garages.  Improved efficiency combined with government incentives and rising electricity costs have made installing cogeneration plants and generating their own power cost-effective for landlords, who are looking to save money in the long term.

From The New York Times:

The appeal is simple: cogens help landlords lower energy costs. “You start to see savings on monthly bills right away,” said Clark Wieman, Cooper Union’s planning director. He said that the new generator would cost eight cents a kilowatt-hour, roughly half the cost of buying electricity from Con Ed.

For landlords, the assurance of on-site power also provides added comfort. “Backup power is another amenity we offer to our tenants,” said David R. Greenbaum, president of Vornado’s New York office division.

Cogens are also considered greener, because they lighten the demand on Con Ed’s older, dirtier plants and generate as-needed energy on location. Electricity weakens as it travels along transmission lines. Indeed, only 40 percent of each volt that Con Ed generates reaches the customer, according to Thomas W. Smith, the chief executive at Endurant Energy, the consulting firm managing the One Penn Plaza installation. The remainder dissipates into the grid as heat and carbon emissions.

The cogen at One Penn Plaza, the black skyscraper next to Madison Square Garden, is expected to attain efficiency levels as high as 80 percent, according to Smith. That’ll translate to about 2,800 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions that are offset each year. And that’s just from one building – the more skyscrapers install cogeneration plants, the more greenhouse gas emissions will be cut.

The upfront cost will keep this idea from spreading too far and wide – One Penn Plaza’s cogen cost $18 million. So, only big developers will be able to afford to make the change. Still, it’s encouraging to hear that big cities are getting smarter about energy.

Link [The New York Times]

NBA Going Green for All-Star Events

This weekend’s NBA All-Star events will be the greenest ever, as the league takes unprecedented steps to make the festivities more eco-friendly. The NBA is buying green energy credits to offset the power it will use at the US Airways Center and the Phoenix Convention Center. They’ll also increase recycling and use Suns stars for a green public service announcement. Today, the NBA is building a playground in Phoenix as a community service project with post-consumer products.

From The Arizona Republic:

“We recognize that a lot of the efforts around our games and the transportation and the use of arenas … (that) there is a lot of energy use involved in that,” said Kathy Behrens, a senior vice president of the NBA, which organizes several days of All-Star festivities before the game, which will be played Sunday.

Sports teams could be extremely influential environmental figures, sports-marketing expert Ray Artigue says.

“They can use the amazing interest in sports as an educational platform to change people’s habits,” said Artigue, executive director of the NBA sports-business program at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

The green energy credits purchased by the NBA will fund a yet-to-be-determined green energy project. The Suns are also beefing up their own green efforts, with plants to install solar panels on the center’s garage this summer. Last December, the Suns began recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans discarded in the center’s public areas.

This should serve as a great example to sports teams around the world – hopefully the All-Star events will get even greener in 2010!

Link [The Arizona Republic]

InterIntel Working to Bring Environmental Solutions to Haiti

Daniel Schnitzer is Co-Founder and Director of Project Management at InterIntel, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity based in Cambridge, MA.  InterIntel works at the community level to improve energy services and environmental management with empowering, self-sustaining projects.  They are presently organizing three projects on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. In this post, Dan explains how he started the organization with the goal of “democratizing sustainability”:

Back in August of 2008, during my first trip to Haiti, I was standing in front of the heaviest paperweight I had ever seen in my life. It was a perfectly new 170 kW diesel generator, connected to a non-functional streetlighting grid in a coastal town called Tiburon on the western tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula. My Haitian friends had told me that the local congressman spent tens of thousands of dollars and a great deal of effort into developing this project. But now that he had been re-elected, no one was sure whether this generator would ever give light to Tiburon. Electricite d’Haiti built the grid, but had since abandoned it.

During that trip I encountered many other symptoms of the governmental and market failure we read and hear about most often in the form of statistics like these: 800,000 children and 500,000 women die worldwide each year from respiratory disease caused by indoor air pollution from dirty biomass cooking fuel; in 2004, Tropical Storm Jeanne killed 3,000 people in Haiti; in 2008, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike tore paths of destruction through Haiti, causing untold property damage and killing at least 800; each year 30,000,000 trees are cut down in Haiti, which now has just 1% of its land under forest cover.

These symptoms are inequitable for the obvious reason that they disproportionately affect the poor, the oppressed and the disenfranchised. InterIntel and many other organizations operate on the conviction that solutions for many of the root causes of symptoms like illness, disasters and poverty are readily available. Further, we believe that solutions can go one step further than economic development; they can foster social justice.

However, time and again, the “solutions” pandered to the governments and people of least developed countries by the IMF, World Bank and USAID not only failed, but in many cases made situations worse. This is hardly surprising, though. What little participation countries receiving aid from these organizations have is controlled by their finance ministers, who represent the interests of the business elite – not the people.

That is why InterIntel takes a community-based, participatory approach to its projects. We use surveys to discover the needs, constraints and desires of residents, and depend on facts, not ideologies, to guide our work. In order to truly solve the root problems so ubiquitous in the developing world, we must engage in empowering, self-sustaining activities that put people to work, prevent capital flight, and transfer knowledge.

For example, InterIntel discovered through its surveys of 265 residents in the community of Les Anglais that the payback period on a $20US solar-powered LED lamp could be as little as three months, and typically at most fifteen months, based on the amount presently spent on kerosene and candle-based lighting. If such lamps were available, residents would have the option to use a light source that is better for their health and their budget. Our solution is to build a clean energy retail store to stock appropriate energy technologies like solar lamps, solar home systems, and efficient charcoal stoves. We have introduced three key features of this project – cooperation, training and microfinance – to ensure that it has the greatest possible impact.

I encourage you to read more about this and our other projects on our website, www.interintel.org.  In order to make these projects a reality though, InterIntel needs to raise a minimum of $20,000.  We estimate our total costs for the year to be $80,000.  Since receiving our 501(c)(3) status in mid-January of 2009, we have raised over $2,500 from individual donors and greatly appreciate donations of any size – even $25 is enough to purchase and ship two solar LED lamps to Les Anglais. Donations can be securely made through PayPal on our website: www.interintel.org. If you are interested in volunteering, please visit our website to learn more about us and send an email. You can also support our cause by sending our website to friends, family and colleagues, or by becoming a “fan” of InterIntel on our facebook page.
-Daniel Schnitzer

This is our first post from guest blogger Daniel Schnitzer. If you’re interested in blogging for us, send an email to dorothee@see3.net.

Urban Renewal Furniture: Innovative, Sustainable Solutions

How’s this for creative thinking: two design students at Syracuse University are creating furniture from common items like street barricades simply by rearranging some nails. Jeffrey Gerlach and Andrew Stanley combine their passion for design with sustainability to create a range of projects centered around urban design and DIY.

From Design Milk:

This is our DPW ADK furniture — born from a spontaneous need and evolved from a simple vision the department of public worth Adirondack chair is true upcycling a modern and sustainable take on the classic Adirondack chair all that is needed is the rearranging of some nails when we don’t have much we make much more of what we have now go show your public worth…

I could definitely see this kind of thing catching on in urban gardens. After all, Adirondack chairs can be crazy expensive – and why use virgin wood when you could give a previously used object a new life?

Link [Design Milk]

Researchers Create Coconut-Based Car Parts

Texas researchers are making car parts out of coconuts as an alternative to polyester. Coconuts are an abundant natural resource in many areas of the world including Indonesia, India and the Phillipines, and the husks are normally thrown away. The researchers used fibers from the outer husks of coconuts to make trunk liners, floorboards and car-door interior covers.

This is the first time that coconuts have been used in such a way, according to Walter Bradley, an engineering professor who is leading the project at Baylor University.

From MSNBC:

“The fiber has very good strength, stiffness and ductility, and potentially can be used for all kinds of things,” Bradley said, including a more environmentally friendly particle board (used in construction) that requires no binders.

The husk fibers are blended with polypropylene fibers before being hot-pressed (compression-molded) into required shapes. The coconut fiber provides a rigid architecture for the lightweight, yet stiff, composite.

Preliminary testing shows that the coconut composites can meet the specifications for industrial tests, Bradley said. In fact, the mechanical properties of coconut fibers are just as good, if not better, than synthetic and polyester fibers when used in automotive parts, he said. Also, coconuts also do not burn very well or give off toxic fumes, which is key in passing tests required for their use in commercial automotive parts.

Bradley’s team is currently working with a Texas-based fiber processing company that supplies unwoven fiber mats to four major auto companies, creating a 600-lb roll of the composite material for safety tests and certification. Preliminary testing has shown that the coconut composites can meet industry standards and actually perform better than synthetic fibers. They don’t burn well or give off toxic fumes.

What an interesting way to use a material that would otherwise not just go to waste, but cause health hazards. In Ghana, for example, discarded coconut husks pile up in mounds, collecting water and providing a breeding ground for malaria-causing mosquitoes. What was formerly trash can now be a source of income for coconut farmers.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Need to Fundamentally Rethink Food

A sustainable global food system is absolutely essential to a healthy future for humans and the environment, according to expert Tim Lang of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council. Lang warns that the current system is showing “structural failures” and is taking an “astronomic toll” on the environment.

From BBC News:

Professor Lang lists a series of “new fundamentals”, which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:

Oil and energy: “We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets.”
Water scarcity: “One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water,” Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK’s vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
Biodiversity: “Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land.”
Urbanisation: “Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?”

Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?

Lang is suggesting that we get biodiversity into gardens and fields as soon as possible. Chef and food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees, saying people must reconnect with their food by growing their own gardens and becoming more mindful of food waste.

Higher food prices have pushed an additional 40 million people into hunger in 2008, bringing the overall figure of undernourished people in the world to 963 million. The ongoing economic crisis could add millions more to that figure in 2009.

It’s absolutely essential that we all begin thinking of food in a new way, asking ourselves where it came from, how it was grown, how many resources were required to grow and transport it. Reconnecting with food will improve our health and help redistribute agriculture to ensure that large groups of people don’t depend upon food from a single region. We must use land more wisely so that we can feed more people with a larger variety of food.

Urban farming is becoming more popular for those who don’t have yard space to start a garden, and buying food from local farmer’s markets is also a good choice.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: Steve Patterson

Low Cost Housing Made from Loofahs

If you thought all a loofah is good for is exfoliating your butt, think again. The dried vegetable is being used as a renewable, natural building material in impoverished areas of Paraguay thanks to the genius of social activist Elsa Zaldívar.  Elsa realized that not only is the loofah a great cash crop for poor communities to grow, it also makes strong yet lightweight building panels.

From Ecolect:

Working with industrial engineers, Elsa Zaldivar has combined readily available waste from the loofah with plastic waste to form strong, lightweight building panels. The panels can be used to create furniture and construct houses, insulating occupants from temperature and noise. This innovation addresses a real need in Paraguay, as around 300,000 Paraguayan families lack adequate housing. When the panels break or fall apart they can easily be broken down and recycled back into new panels, greatly easing the demand for wood in Paraguay’s over-harvested forests. Because of Elsa’s inspiring work she was awarded a Rolex Award for the creation of a low cost housing material. Rolex is now partially funding her effort and Elsa hopes to provide her sustainable and low cost housing throughout all of Paraguay.

It’s pretty incredible that Elsa was able to combine creating an income stream for these communities, giving them environmentally friendly housing and innovating a new eco-friendly building material all in one project.

Even better, Elsa persuaded local women to grow and process the loofahs using ecological methods that make the products superior to the ones grown on plantations in China (which are the ones you most often see in stores). The main, high quality part of the loofah is made into high-profit cosmetic products while the waste is used to create the building panels.

This is quite an admirable accomplishment – if only more of us could do so much for our communities and the world! Learn more about Elsa’s work at the Rolex Awards website.

Link [Ecolect] + [Rolex Awards]

The True Cost of 10 Everyday Items

We use so many items every day without really thinking about it, since they’re so cheap. Aluminum cans, printer paper, plastic bottles, batteries pencils – they hardly cost a thing. At least, in terms of money. But there’s an underlying cost to that item in terms of environmental effects. Did you know, for example, that graphite is nonrenewable, or that one kilo of cotton requires between 7,000 and 29,000 liters of water to grow? Were you aware that the energy required to make a single aluminum can is equal to roughly the energy that would be obtained through half that can’s volume in gasoline?

Eco Salon has a great article full of such facts and statistics, and many of them will surprise you. From Eco Salon:

White Granulated Sugar

What we know as “white sugar” comes from a mixture of sugar cane (between 60% and 70%) and sugar beet (the remainder). Around 120 countries worldwide are involved in producing the 100+ million tons of sugar crops – in temperate zones (northern Europe, for example) it is the hardier sugar beet that dominates.

Requirements: large quantities of water (processing cane requires 4 times more water than beet); vegetable transportation costs to processing plants; extraction of raw sugar juice from cane or beet via pressing or diffusion; clarification of juice; crystallization of sugar liquor; evaporation to create syrup; centrifuging (how molasses are extracted); drying. Then a long process of refining that ends with granulated sugar’s characteristic whiteness. Heavy machinery, staffing costs and startling amounts of power are included in these requirements.  The final stages of refinement into white sugar may involve the use of phosphoric acid, carbon dioxide or filtration techniques. Throughout, a number of pollutants (PDF) are created from the burning of oil, coal or bagasse (sugar cane residue) –such emissions are monitored and regulated by specialists.

Once a luxury, sugar is now used as a flavouring and preservative in countless varieties of food and drink. With the assumption that it’s easy to make. (Not so).

But even after all that, you’re paying just $1.50 for 16 oz. No wonder we love the stuff so much!

It really makes you think about whether that item is really worth all the trouble – at least, the mass produced version of it. Mass production may be more efficient, but it’s certainly still a long journey from raw material to finished product, a journey that produces a lot of greenhouse gases and requires a lot of resources. I don’t know about you, but reading about things like this really inspires me to seek out alternatives – handmade, organic, sustainable. Because, we can do so much better.

Link [Eco Salon]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

World’s First Sustainable Dance Club

Sure you like to party, but did you know that dancing could help power your favorite club? Check out this video which profiles the Sustainable Dance Club in Rotterdam (NL).

According to The Lohasian,

The club uses proven technologies such as grey water circuits, sustainable (renewable) materials, wind turbines and solar panels. But goes even further by integrating human movement and human experience into the sustainability design.

Moving, sweating, body heat all interface with the environment, from powering LED lights through a movement powered dance floor, to changing wall colors effected by body heat.The innovative design truly pushes the boundaries of sustainable thinking, by creating an incredibly interesting value chain between the DJ who is to inspire the club attendees who power the “light show” and various other elements of the the club – creating the ultimate atmosphere and experience.

For more information, visit sustainablerotterdam.com.

Solar Panels Decorate Graves in Spanish Cemetery

Graveyards take up a lot of space. Before the growing population became a pressing problem, people didn’t think too much about the efficiency of dedicating large swaths of perfectly good land to store skeletons for an indefinite length of time. By now we should know better – we’re wasting perfectly good land and if we keep on creating cemeteries at the rate we are today the whole world will end up covered in them. So, the idea to turn a sunny expanse of graves into a solar power plant is a fantastic first step toward common sense.

From TIME Magazine:

Santa Coloma is the first city in Spain to convert its municipal burial place into what is essentially a power plant. The installation consists of 462 solar panels spread over roughly 10,700 sq. ft. (1000 sq. m.), and has a capacity of 100 kilowatts, enough to meet the energy needs of 60 families.

The idea came from Esteve Serret, director of Conste, a company that manages Santa Coloma’s cemetery. Serret had long been interested in renewable energy, and one day, as he worked with his father in the graveyard, he realized they were standing in a potent site for it. “To produce solar energy you need a wide open space,” Serret says. “and in Santa Coloma, the biggest open space is the cemetery.” Indeed, the city’s 124,000 inhabitants are squeezed into a bare 1.54 sq. miles (4 sq. km.) of space — and much of that land is mountainous.

Serret had only to convince the cemetery’s owners: the municipal government. That turned out to be easy, especially because the $935,000 it would cost to install the panels would come from Conste and Endesa, a major power company. “Why not? we thought,” says Begoña Bellete, councilwoman for environmental affairs. “A city like ours has to commit itself to being on the frontlines of the fight against climate change. And this was a great opportunity because the financing would be private. All we had to do was provide the space.”

This is a fantastic start, and in Spain, other cities are already warming up to the idea. Neighboring Barcelona has inquired about the project. It’s hard to imagine this catching on in America, though, what with the complete and unapologetic sense of entitlement to the ideas of the past, whether they work in today’s world or not. Regardless, something’s got to give, soon.

Link [TIME Magazine]

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