I've been away,
which explains the radio silence on the Sustainable diary for the past few days.
I've been very busy with my day job and I also did a bit of travelling,
Now I'm here, ready to write.
30 mar 2013
18 mar 2013
Dabba wallas: 4,000 men and 175,000 lunches delivered. A sustainable food delivery system
Today
Sustainable diary writes about the successful system of the Dabbawallas, who manage to deliver food from mothers and wives at home
into the hands of their sons and husbands who are off at work.
“Dabbawalla” comes from the term tiffin dabba, referring to a
tiered lunch box and “walla,” a carrier or vendor.
This
process, how you can see in the video, is complete sustainable.
"In
India, where many traditions are being rapidly overturned as a result
of globalization, the practice of eating a home-cooked meal for lunch
lives on.
To
achieve that in this sprawling urban amalgamation of an estimated 25
million people, where long commutes by train and bus are routine,
Mumbai residents rely on an intricately organized, labor-intensive
operation that puts some automated high-tech systems to shame. It
manages to deliver tens of thousands of meals to workplaces all over
the city with near-clockwork precision".
Dabbawallas's
video is realized by The Perennial Plate, who explain: "Each day
in Mumbai 4000 men in white outfits and matching hats transport
175,000 lunches across the big city. They retrieve the tiffens (lunch
containers) of food from mothers and wives, and bring them (by foot,
train, bicycle and even carried on top of their heads) to the office
buildings of waiting husbands and sons. The Dabba wallas have been
doing this since the late 1800s. Despite the unsophisticated mode of
transport, the lunches always arrive on time (the error rate is 1 in
every 16 million transactions). It's a pretty impressive feat and we
were lucky enough to follow a couple Dabba Wallas for a day in
Mumbai, and see their work first hand."
Despite
the influx of food chains and eateries in Mumbai over the last
decade, demand for the lunchtime service is higher than ever before,
with customers from multinational corporations and hedge funds. If we
thought it was too hard to have a hot, home-cooked meal for lunch
each day, well, this organization proves us wrong.
More info
website The Perennial Plate
17 mar 2013
Sunday's tale: Bottle Masonry. Made house with recycled plastic bottles
Sunday's
Tale: a post from the past
On
Sustainable diary last Sunday we spoke about an amazing building made
with glass bottles, and also today we decide to tell a bottle’s
story.
Plastic
bottle construction is an idea of Andreas Froese, an architect and
environmental entrepreneur. Froese developed Eco-Tec, a method to
utilize plastic (PET) bottles as “bricks” in the construction of
houses, latrines, and water tanks. It is a good idea to address the
problem by putting to use some of the million plastic water bottles
discards each day in developing nations.
The
first plastic bottle construction project in Africa was pioneered in
Uganda by an organization called Butakoola Village Association forDevelopment - BUVAD. BUVAD is located in Kayunga, a district north
of Kampala.
They
teamed up with Eco-Tec to bring bottle construction technology to
Uganda in the form of a latrine block. Students and community
members at a local primary school collected and filled bottles found
throughout the community and together they built a block of latrines
for their school. Constructed in April 2010, BUVAD’s latrine block
was the first of its kind on the continent.
Benefits
of Bottle Construction
Waste
management - A small house can use as many as 10,000 bottles, waste
that would otherwise be deposited in a landfill or burned.
Environmental
protection - Unlike “traditional” bricks, bottle bricks are not
fired, a process which uses much firewood and contributes to
deforestation.
Cost
effective - Building with bottles is typically less expensive than
building with bricks as the main construction material is trash.
Job
creation – The construction process of building with bottles is
work intensive. This means many can be involved in the process,
creating opportunities for employment and community involvement, from
collecting to filling to building. While this method would
potentially be costly in more industrialized nations, where labor is
expensive and materials are cheap, in countries like Uganda,
materials are expensive, labor is cheap, and jobs are in demand.
Shock
resistant – The plastic coating of “bottle bricks” makes them
more flexible than fired bricks. Bottle construction has greater
shock resistance and is well suited for earthquake prone areas.
Long
lasting – It is estimated that it takes a plastic bottle
approximately 300 years to decompose.
More info
website Eco-Tec
Photo credit © Aminu Abubakar
16 mar 2013
Buffalo Project: on-demand mobile electricity. A simple and unique solution
Having
an operational phone means access to services that have improved
banking, health and farming in Africa and Asia. Many millions of
people at the bottom of the economic pyramid are expected to acquire
mobile phones, greatly benefiting their lives, business activities
and access to information. However, most of these new subscribers
will not have direct access to electricity.
In
addition to this, Buffalo provides environmental benefits through
supplying zero CO2 power which translates into increased access to
safe lighting. The system can also be used to provide off-grid power
for a range of uses from medical to educational applications.
It
will help in bringing a considerable amount of economic growth to
hundreds of rural communities around the world.
More
info
website Buffalo Grid
facebook
page
Photo
credit © Buffalo Grid
Buffalo
entrepreneur, Bududa village, Uganda
15 mar 2013
Indonesian students create eco-friendly deodorant from cow dung
DwiNailul Izzah and Rintya Aprianti Miki are two students who won the
gold medal at the Indonesian Science Project Olympiad (ISPO), which
is held every year at the end of February in Jakarta, with their
original invention and respectful of environment.
The
two young inventors have create an affordable air freshener made from
cow dung. Yes dung, as weird as it sounds, the formulation actually
has a pleasant herbal smell. This two girls overcame 1,000 other
competitors with their surprising freshener, which was created by
collecting unused cow manure from a cattle farm in Lamongam, East
Java, and fermenting it for 3 days: "Then they extracted the
water from the fermented manure and mixed it with coconut water.
Finally, they distilled the liquid to eliminate all impurities. The
whole process took 7 days, which is pretty long, but in the end they
obtained what they were looking for – a liquid air freshener with
an herbal aroma from digested cow food."
Their
natural deodorant is healthier, contains no chemicals that are found
in similar products available on the market, and is also cheaper.
While a traditional deodorant to 275 grams costs 39,000 Indonesian
rupiahs (about $ 4), a 225-gram cans of deodorant from cow dung only
costs 21,000 rupees (about $ 2), which is half. Explains Dwi Nailul
Izzah: "Our air freshener is not supplemented with chemicals to
smell fragrant, it’s pure and smells like the natural plants fed to
cows."
Dwi
and Rintya are ready to show their cow poop air freshener at the
International Environment Project Olympiad (INEPO) held in Istanbul,
Turkey during May, and are going to file for a patent.
More
info
14 mar 2013
Waiting for the spring: Ecology of Colour Pavilion in Kent, UK
UK-based Studio Wave created Ecology of Colour, a colourful pavilion for
holding a variety of sustainable craft workshops within Dartford
Central Park’s Ecology Island. This is the third Artlands public
realm commission for North Kent. Made from local materials, was designed “to act as a jolly custodian"
and encourage community involvement in a neglected corner of a public
park.
In
response to this unique context, Studio Weave have designed a small
versatile structure with a semi-outdoor space at ground level and an
enclosed area on the first floor with many windows that open wide
onto the landscape. As well for bird watching and art studio the
building will be used as an outdoor classroom, a dyeing workshop and
simply as a rain shelter, as well as sun shelter, within the Ecology
Island.
The
colorful cladding was conceived by graphic studio Nous Vous who have
created a cohesive graphic visual language for the exterior of the
building. Prior to its installation, a team of local residents and
artists worked together in a painting workshop to produce each of the
144 panels, which form the external cladding.
The
building opened in September 2012, now a group of designers is
working with a group of horticulturists to create a garden full of
native plants for extracting natural pigments (including Golden Rod
for yellow, Alder for red and Bugloss for blue), celebrating nature
and color in a fun, inclusive way.
More
info
website
Studio Weave
website
Art lands North Kent
facebook
page
Photo
credit © Studio Weave
13 mar 2013
The most beautiful, and green, street in the world: Rua Goncalo de Carvalho
Sustainable
diary has found another amazing green tunnel, so let's go in Brasil.
RuaGoncalo de Carvalho is a street located in bairro Independência in
the city of Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio
Grande do Sul. Flanked by trees on either side, the street became
internationally known after a campaign for its preservation spread on
the Internet leading it to be dubbed "the most beautiful street
in the world", and today it is considered "environmental
heritage" by the city.
It is a forest. Over
a span of 500 meters the sidewalks are lined with more than one
hundred trees of the genus Tipuana, going up to the seventh floor of
the buildings in some cases. These trees were planted in the 1930s
by employees of German origin who worked in a local brewery.
In
2005, the construction of a mall nearby brought the risk of changes
to this beautiful street, prompting residents to mobilize. The
campaign was successful, and on June 5, 2006 the then mayor José
Fogaça signed a decree making the street Gonçalo de Carvalho
"historical, cultural and environmental development of the
city."
The
writer Pedro Nuno Teixeira Santos wrote: "Goncalo de Carvalho in
Porto Alegre, Brazil, is not only the most beautiful street in the
world because of the stunning visual effect of its immense Tipuana
green tunnel. It is the most beautiful street in the world for this,
but mainly because these trees were planted cherished by its
residents, over several decades, that is, the green tunnel is the
result of love, the love of the trees! It was from this love and this
struggle of the residents of Goncalo de Carvalho, that the political
power of the city found itself forced to recognize the importance of
cultural heritage, landscape and environment, classifying and
protecting it with the force of law".
More
info
website
Rua Goncalo de Carvalho
Photo
credit © here
12 mar 2013
My space is small. My life is big
TreeHugger
founder Graham Hill describes his lifestyle in the New York Times,
Here youcan read the complete interview. I did not consider the case to
summarize it, it is very good and well worth to read it all!
"I
sleep better knowing I’m not using more resources than I need. I
have less — and enjoy more."
He draws
the principles of degrowth theory. The
decrease is a current of political thought, economic and social
environment to the controlled reduction, selective and voluntary
economic production and consumption, with the aim of establishing
relations of ecological balance between man and nature, as well as
fairness among human beings themselves.
Degrowth
is something that we need to think:
"Our
fondness for stuff affects almost every aspect of our lives. Housing
size, for example, has ballooned in the last 60 years. The average
size of a new American home in 1950 was 983 square feet; by 2011, the
average new home was 2,480 square feet. And those figures don’t
provide a full picture. In 1950, an average of 3.37 people lived in
each American home; in 2011, that number had shrunk to 2.6 people.
This means that we take up more than three times the amount of space
per capita than we did 60 years ago.
Apparently
our supersize homes don’t provide space enough for all our
possessions, as is evidenced by our country’s $22 billion personal
storage industry."
In this
video you can see where and how Graham Hill lives:
More info
website Graham Hill
facebook page
Photo
credit © New York Times
11 mar 2013
Make food not war! Vegetable Weapon by Tsuyoshi Ozawa
Sustainable
diary loves speaks about food and food culture, so when we watched
the pictures of Tsuyoshi Ozawa on Inhabitat we thought: "This is
a good story for start the week".
The
artist was born in 1965, Tokyo. In 2001, he began “VegetableWeapon”, a series of photographic portraits of young women holding
weapons made from vegetable.
He
realized this photo project in different countries around Asia,
America, Europe, and Africa. He finds a woman that live in the place
and asks her to gather vegetables and other ingredients needed to
make an indigenous hot-pot dish. After the food is creatively
arranged in the shape of a firearms, he starts shooting the absurd
war-like portraits.
Once
the photograph is made, Ozawa and his model disassemble the delicious
weapon, cook the ingredients, and share a meal together. Vegetable
Weapons shows how humor and art enable us to talk about delicate
subjects like war, food culture and power.
"Drawing
on the dynamics of everyday life and human interactions, Ozawa
combines real-life incidents, situations and materials to create
works which draw attention to ideas and issues central to social and
political life.
[...]
He intends these processes to create an opportunity for discussion of
issues such as conflict, war and injustice using the construction of
an art work as the catalyst for dialogue."
More
info
website
Tsuyoshi Ozawa
Photo
credit © Tsuyoshi Ozawa
10 mar 2013
Sunday's tale: the Thai Temple of recycled beer bottles
In
the Thai landscape, Buddhist temples are very common sight.
Deep
in Sisaket province, in the north-east of Thailand, lies one
incredible temple complex. Its official name is Wat Pa Maha Chedi
Kaew but it is known by almost everyone as Wat Lan Kuad or the Temple
of a Million Bottles.
There’s an estimated 1.5 million bottles
bound in concrete into the temple. It is a novel way to recycle any
empties.
The
construction of this temple complex began in 1984, as the monks found
themselves with an excess of donated beer bottles that they
previously used just to decorate existing buildings.
The
resident Buddhist monks at the complex encourage local authorities to
deposit any used bottles at the temple which they then use to build
new structures and works of art to the grounds of the temple. "The
more bottles we get, the more buildings we make", says Abbot San
Kataboonyo. Everything on the temple site, from the crematorium to
the toilets, incorporates the bottles, making a space that’s both
functional and beautiful. Bottle caps have been used to decorate
murals, and to create mosaics of Buddha.
The
monks have come to prefer the bottles over traditional red clay
bricks as they don’t fade and produce a fantastic colored ambient
light. They primarily use green and brown glass bottles from the beer
brands Heineken and Chang. Some of the older buildings in the complex
are created with rare square shaped Heineken bottles that are easily
stackable and were briefly sold in the 80′s. Perhaps that is where
the idea for bottles as bricks was originally conceived.
Even
though drinking is a sin in Buddhism, this still seems like a
positive use of beer and lager bottle. So, if you find yourself in
Thailands Sisaket province consider stopping by and earning some
merit. Or at least just enjoy a cold beer and donate your bottle to
the effort!
9 mar 2013
A Forest Year by Samuel Orr. How landscapes change over time
This
Saturday Sustainable Diary does not have many words. It leaves
pictures to tell the story today. A year long story, which you can
see in three minutes. Photographer Samuel Orr for about 2 years in
2006-2008, lived just outside Bloomington, Indiana, at the edge of
one of the more wooded regions in the midwest. He was there because
at the time he was creating several nature documentaries on the
natural history of Indiana for PBS. His house was into the middle of
a large nature preserve.
Every
day for 15 months, took photos out of the window of his house, then
put the accumulated 40,000 photographs into an amazing time-lapse
video, A Forest year.
Samuel
explain:"Over 40,000 images were taken, and I made little movies
of 5-8 seconds for each of the key days/events/seasons, and blended
them together into the finished film at 30 frames a second. The
audio was added to give another dimension. I tried to put in
wildlife songs and calls appropriate to the season. For instance,
the honking during what is late winter are Sandhill Cranes, which
used a migratory flyway that passed directly overhead".
At
the moment Samuel has a new project, you can see, and help, here...
More
info
website
Samuel Orr
8 mar 2013
Starving Artists Project tells the stories of homeless artists
StarvingArtists Project is a new initiative, it try to change all of that by
giving NYC’s homeless community a platform to showcase their cries
for help. The program seeks to turn the cardboard signs we see being
held up on street corners and in subway stations into art that funds
social change.
The
creators of the project, Nick Zafonte and Thompson Harrell, worked
with world-renowned photographer Andrew Zuckerman (famous for
shooting portraits of politicians, humanitarians, artists and
entertainers) to capture beautiful, dignified portraits of each
“artist” as well their handmade artistic signs and turn the
images into a collection of art to inspire change.
The Starving Artists Project Film from Thompson Harrell on Vimeo.
The
collection of diverse cardboard signs, along with portraits , debuted
at the Dumbo Arts Center in January, 2012. The project showcases 35
handwritten signs, accompanied by portraits of the 30 artists who
wrote them. A giant 4 ft tall collection cup was constructed and
placed in the center of the gallery - all donations were given to the
New York City Coalition Against Hunger and Holy Apostles SoupKitchen, two local charities focused on feeding the local community.
Zafonte
and Harrell explained to the Huffington Post: “Everyday the
homeless reach out through the only means they have, scraps of
cardboard and their own creativity. The problem is we don’t ever
look, seeing their messages as an interruption to our day. Our
mission and solution was to change the way society interprets their
messages – by presenting their signs as art, allowing their own
voices to inspire meaningful action.”
More
info
website
Starving Artists Project
Photo
credit © Starving Artists Project
7 mar 2013
NLE architects and Makoko community in Lagos: floats idea for life on the water
Today
is a rainy day here in Milano and maybe for inspiration, Sustainable
Diary speaks of a water story. As
you know on our planet water levels are steadily rising, and along
west Africa's densely populated coast many waterfront communities are
finding themselves inundated with the problem of adaptive housing
solutions that withstand swelling tides and swift currents.
NLÉArchitects has been working on a three-phase plan for the waterfront
community of Makoko in Lagos, in Nigeria. An estimated 250,000 people
live here, they trade, shop and build aquafarms on the lagoon's
waters. This slum was said to be created in the 18th century as a
fishing village, but has ballooned as others have sought to find a
home.
Each
year, the tropical rains that lash Lagos, overwhelm the colonial-era
drainage system. The NLÉ's project will transform the already
buoyant city into a contemporary community on the water's surface
with independent floating structures made of local materials applied
in new ways.
First
step of the project is the realization of the Makoko Floating School,
a triangular form in section constructed with timber on a platform
supported by empty blue plastic drums. The 3-storey structure
contains a common area for children to play on as its base, with two
floors for classrooms above it. The energy supply is based on
renewable technology, this with the water catchment systems make the
dynamic educational facility partially self sustainable.
The
school is expected to serve the urgent needs of educating children in
the community, and also as a floating building pilot project for
African water communities.
"Particularly
in view of climate change, there's a need to adapt buildings. We
decided to use this as a prototype for developing something whether
the water level rises or goes down, the building responds to that,"
said architect Kunle Adeyemi from NLÉ.
The
school was completed in the end of February, the floating houses
being finished in September of this year and the Lagos Water
Community project by the end of 2014 which will herald a new era for
coastal developments in Africa.
More
info
website
NLÉ Architects
Photo
credit © NLÉ Architects
