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

website Indonesian Science Project Olympiad (ISPO)

website International Environment Project Olympiad (INEPO) 

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Sunday's Tale: Mandela Foods Cooperative take care of food system of West Oakland, California

Sunday's Tale: a post from the past

Just three days ago on Sustainable diary we wrote of the cool song FoodFight, by Earth Amplified and with today's story we really recognize how people need for being more conscious about our food and food systems.

Until a few years ago West Oakland, a neighborhood situated in the northwestern corner of Oakland - California, had 53 liquor stores and no grocery stores at all. The community had the nearest supermarket, with a full produce section, at one hour's walk away.

In the video we can see James Berk, a local inhabitant, explain that for this lack is diet used to consist of Fritos, Cheetos, and Doritos, and not much more.

But in june 2009 with the opening of Mandela Foods Cooperative the thing started to change. It is a worker owned grocery store (Berk is became one of them!) and nutrition education center that brings healthy, local produce to the neighborhood, and even delivers healthy food to local corner stores. 

Mandela Foods Cooperative is one component of Mandela Marketplace's FoodEnterprise Network that builds a local food system and entrepreneurship opportunity for residents in West Oakland, and establishes a model to catalyze a local food economy within the inner-city.

They purchase from and support small scale farmers, local and cooperative businesses, non-GMO growers, organic producers and fair trade organizations. They carry an array of pesticide free, organic whole foods and grocery items.

So if food kill more people then guns for the moment the situation here is save.

More info

website Mandela Foods Cooperative

website Mandela Market Place

Facebook page

Photo credit © Mandela Foods Cooperative

 

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Soccket: the power of play. A magic soccer ball by Uncharted Play

It Is such a clever invention! You can envision a fun, portable source of energy that capitalizes on the popularity of soccer to address the lack of electricity in the developing world. 
The Soccket is a portable energy-harvesting source in the form of a soccer ball that captures the kinetic energy during game play and converts it into electrical energy, to charge lights and small batteries. After playing with the ball, the child can return home and use the ball to connect a LED lamp to read, study, or illuminate the home.

And in the developed world, the Soccket can be a great tool for teaching about clean energy and a better way to charge our gadgets.

The Soccket’s exterior is made of a custom waterproof EVA foam that is extremely durable while remaining soft to the touch and it is weighing only slightly more than a traditional soccer ball. Currently, 30 minutes of play provides 3 hours of LED light.

Prototypes of the ball first appeared in the media in early 2010, the mass-produced version of the ball is the brainchild of UnchartedPlay, a social enterprise.

Uncharted Play just launched the Kickstarter campaign, for implement the production (that now has been limited to a few hundred Soccket balls per week) in order to scale-up and purchase necessary equipment for the manufacturing processes and will be accepting pledges until 28 March.

More info

website project Kickstarter

website Uncharted Play

Facebook page

Photo credit © Uncharted Play

 

 

 

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A poetic concept: making bikes from junked cars

The Spanish design studio Lola Madrid, owned by creative agency Lowe & Partners, has launched few days ago the platform LOLA Hace (LOLA Make), in order to design and manufacture products that make life easier for people or emotionally in touch with them. The first product that they have conceived is Bicycled.

Bicycled is new making bikes project that utilizes recycled cars as the main source for material. It is such a poetic concept, fewer cars and more bikes is a probably a dream for cyclists everywhere, in an effort to create the most efficient, ecological and healthy means of transportation.

Even though the line is not yet complete, Lola Madrid has just launched a video about the process of transformation and creation of models: the exclusive use of car wrecks different gives a unique look to any bike, which makes anyone proud owns one! Each hand-made bike is based on a consumer insight - which reflects on the emotional attachment from wrecked vehicles. Body metal is used for the bike frame, brake lights turn into reflectors, door handles become seat post clamps and so on.

Bicycled looks like a great way to give cars a second life, while also reducing the demand for new material for bikes. Add in that each creation is closer to art than a mass produced product and they seem to have a winning combination.

More info

website Bicycled

website Lola Madrid

Facebook page

Photo credit © Lola Madrid

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Create without destroying: Carmina Campus, a fashion sustainable initiative

These are the days of the Milan Fashion Week, one of the things that has attracted the attention of Sustainable diary is Carmina Campus, a collection of handbags, jewels and furniture successfully combining the idea of ethical fashion and sustainable eco-friendly, with the great traditional Italian craftsmanship.

The brand was founded in 2006 by Ilaria Venturini Fendi, who explains "With Carmina Campus I tried to fashion a new approach, enriching the body of knowledge derived from my family history with values such as respect for the environment and the implementation of work projects aimed at social development"

The creations included in the collections are under the sign of reuse and upcycle, as Carbags line, bags made with seat covers, sun screens, safety belts recovered from car in shambles. Over the years the collection Carmina Campus made in Italy has been enriched by new materials. So switches are turned into sparkling Switch Bag and bottle caps become closures for Pyramid Bag, bags reversible with an inlay made of small pieces of leather processed in a pyramid. And then there are the old color charts, which take the form of soft Soft Bag.

While the items of the collection 100% made in Africa, successfully making concrete the philosophy “not charity, just work”. In Kenia Carmina Campus has given rise to the Ethical Fashion Initiative. The project has seen the involvement of some employees of craftsmen who have passed on their know-how to local communities through a process of training on site. So the brand has launched social projects that have the objective of training microentrepreneurs, promoting education and health care. The iniative was born from the collaboration of Carmina Campus with ITC (International Trade Centre), an agency of the UN and the World Trade Organization, whose mission is to provide developing countries opportunities for training and work.

More info

website Carmina Campus

Facebookpage

Photo credit © Carmina Campus

 

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Baguette table by Studio Rygalik

Two days ago was pubblished a post about the start-up Culinary Misfits, today take again the topic "food waste" with Studio Rygalik of Warszawa, Poland.

They realized a new project, the starting point is a statistical fact: food thrown away in Vienna could feed half of the population of Graz. This was presented for the first time at the Vienna Design Week.

"It was also to show that the materials to build from are all around us. The tables were made from stale baguettes that were supposed to be thrown away".

These bread structures were part of a "bread experience" created by Gosia and Tomek Rygalik, the founders of the Studio, at the Design Week Laboratory, where people were surrounded by bread, eating bread dishes from bread tables.

In their series of "Baguette tables", they cut the french bread to varying lengths, their exposed ends leveled to create the table tops, the longer pieces providing support and stability, functioning as multiple legs, as well as providing some tasty, visual appeal.

Studio Rygalik aims to develop a wide variety of limited edition projects for companies, that maintain a good balance between the commercial and the experimental.

Studio Rygalik develops a wide variety of comprehensive projects. The focus is on furniture, products and spaces. The scope is wide – from design, development and implementation of new products to site-specific installations and production of limited editions, as well as objects, dining experiences and workshops that explore the relations of design, food and eating.

More info:

www.studiorygalik.com

www.viennadesignweek.at

photo credits © Nick Albert /Kollektiv Fischka

 

 

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Culinary Misfits, a special catering service from Berlin

CulinaryMisfits is a design start-up born in Berlin, exploring the intersection of design and sustainability with a primary focus on food culture and how we can be inspired to rethink how we approach natural foods.

The founders are Lea Emma Rosa Brumsack and Tanja Krakowski. They create the first catering service to make its dishes using only ingredients discarded by supermarkets, farmers and restaurants

The idea is already explained in its name: misfits in fact means both "freak of nature" and "inappropriate", this word was chosen to challenge the widespread belief that the food is good only when it is looking good.

While it is true that the eye wants its part, it is equally true that appearances often deceive. So Lea and Tanja have chosen to use as ingredients only vegetables and fruits of the season because of their aesthetic inaccurate are rejected by large retailers and catering obeying strict criteria and aesthetic dimensions that determine a huge and unnecessary consuming food.

They collect veggies and fruits themselves and co-operate with two local organic farmers who let them have their abandoned harvest to a truly fair price- a substantial extra income for the farmers and a basis of business for Lea and Tanja.

With this second choice products Lea and Tanja create delicious dishes, minimizing waste and looking at the ingredients locally, thereby complying with the criteria of distribution at zero kilometers, without depriving their creations of quality and good taste.

After starting in early 2012, Culinary Misfits has at the moment a provvisory home in Kreuzberg. Now a crowdfunding campaign is underway to allow Culinary Misfits to have their own place for cooking, experimenting, lecturing and selling the little misfits.

More info:

www.culinarymisfits.de
Facebook page

photo credits Culinary Misfits

 

 

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Terra Stools: Adital Ela makes products from compressed earth

AditalEla, Israeli-born eco designer, in her new line "Terra" uses natural materials 100% organic to create pieces of furniture.

The main raw material is pressed earth and natural fibers, hence the name of the project, the first product for her line Terra is "Terra Stools".

They are made using a unique compression process that was developed based on a long term study of materials and of ancient building methods, inspired craftsmanship techniques commonly used in India or the Middle East. On this process she learned from Daphna Yalon, Tal Bashan, Um Ajaj, her Iraqi grandmother (that made her own oven from dirt turned to clay) and many more.

In this project she acts as a “designer-gatherer”, all materials were gathered from construction and agricultural waste, including faeces and dung, and from the natural environment. 

 After having pressed the materials, giving it a form, each object receives a natural finish, is necessary to protect that to polishing, which is carried out by the use of oil of linseed.

Each stool is handmade and is an almost unique piece, is completely natural, eco-friendly and completely free of pollutants. Making a Terra stool creates no pollution. It requires no energy and uses only local and organic materials. If a stool is no longer useful, the owner can simply leave it in the garden and let it deteriorate back into the earth. Or they can add water and mold it into another functional object.

Adital Ela believes that its objects can adapt to any type of furniture that too from outside, where too often makes use of the ubiquitous plastic.

She is also preparing to launch a pilot program in Jerusalem of Terra workshops, which she hopes will spread in a franchise-like manner, Eventually, she wonders: could this be a source of income for income deprived communities?

Adital Ela is the founder and the director of S-Sense Design Studio.

The studio's work is based on three pillars:

Planet - Design of products and services that support sustainability.

People - Design that empowers people and communities.

Value - The promotion of sustainable design thinking action and education.

More info

www.aditalela.com

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Sunday's Tale - Maker Faire Africa: schoolgirls create an urine-powered generator

Sunday's Tale: a post from the past.

This story comes from Maker Faire Africa 2012, in Lagos. This is a popular event across the African continent, drawing thousands of participants who travel to Lagos to show their inventions and other practical creations.

As the Next Web describes it, the Maker Faire is intended to highlight creations "that solve immediate challenges and problems, and then works to support and propagate them. Put another way, this isn't just a bunch of rich people talking about how their apps are going to change the world."

Possibly one of the more unexpected products at Faire is a urine powered generator, created by four young students. The girls are Duro-Aina Adebola (14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15).

It produces electricity for six hours using a single liter of urine as fuel.

So how exactly does the urine-powered generator work?

Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.

This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.

Along the whole way there are one-way valves for security, but let’s be honest that this is something of an explosive device…

Note: This is an experiment more than a real new tool for electricity generation. The net power output is negative due to the energy needed to get the hydrogen from the urine through electrolysis. These issues, coupled with the complexities of storing hydrogen safely, mean the generator may not be an immediately marketable prospect, but it demonstrates the potential for using the abundant resource that is urine to create valuable products.

Photo credit Maker Fair Africa

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What can be Made from Recycled Cargo Straps? Bundubags!

Bundubags makes innovative, totally recycled bags with a core belief that lives can be changed by good design. Bundubags began with a creative idea, a love of contemporary African design and a desire to support African women.

Handwoven using traditional African weaving techniques, each bag is made from recycled cargo strapping made from PET, which is spun into long strips. One of the beach bags for examples, uses the equivalent of 6 to 8 pieces of 1.5L PET bottle , so more PET recycled bags means less waste in our daily life .

They also collect offcuts, unused strapping bales as well as used strips, that they sort and clean and re-use in the production of each bag. So it is twice recycled!

The project is based in the Alexandra township on the outskirts of Johannesburg South Africa, and it now employs 40 women, all of whom earn a sustainable income.

More info

www.bundubags.wordpress.com

Photo credit © bundubags

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