The MA Design and Environment has collected the final student projects in an online pamphlet. Feel free to have a look here.
Friday 17 September 2010
Final Projects: MA Design and Environment
The MA Design and Environment has collected the final student projects in an online pamphlet. Feel free to have a look here.
Monday 28 June 2010
Wednesday 7 April 2010
Saturday 13 March 2010
This chart from Phil Howard at Michigan State University shows how three chemical giants, Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta, have come to dominate the agricultural seed industry in the last 10 years. Obviously, there are concerns about whether this market is fair:
But this monopoly isn't just bad for farmers' livelihoods; it's bad for the resilience of our ecosystem. We have 71 percent of U.S. cropland being used for just three crops, and a small handful of companies supplying the seeds. That's a precarious situation, and it's why projects like the Seed Vault are important. There's a bigger version of the chart here.
http://www.good.is/post/the-seed-industry-s-scary-consolidation/
Monsanto supplies proprietary traits to 85 percent of corn planted in the United States, and 92 percent of soy. Corn and soy are the lifeblood of the U.S. food system. If you eat a standard diet, you’re ingesting a Monsanto-originated product with just about every bite you take. Nor is the company a benign monopolist, the report shows. GMO corn seeds have jumped from $110 per unit in 1999 to upwards of $190 by 2008; for soy, prices soared from less than $25 to more than $40.
But this monopoly isn't just bad for farmers' livelihoods; it's bad for the resilience of our ecosystem. We have 71 percent of U.S. cropland being used for just three crops, and a small handful of companies supplying the seeds. That's a precarious situation, and it's why projects like the Seed Vault are important. There's a bigger version of the chart here.
Half full toilet
1A: A (Clean) Toilet Hack
Potential water savings: Up to 18 gallons per day, per person.How to easily reduce the water wasted by every flush.
Toilets waste tons of water every year. When you flush, that’s about five or six gallons right there if you have a conventional toilet, and on average we each flush six times a day. Thankfully, there are now all sorts of products to lessen gallons per flush. There are low-cost add-ons like the Toilet Tummy or the British-made Hippo the Water Saver. You can also purchase a dual-flush toilet, which can save up to five gallons per flush by offering one kind of flush for each bodily function. But the lower-tech and less-well-heeled among us might want to try this easy and free hack.
Get Started
1. Remove the lid from your toilet.
2. Observe the black floating ball. This thing determines the water level in your toilet.
3. Reach into the toilet tank and grab the thin metal rod attached to the black floating ball.
4. Bend the rod downward just a little. It won’t break easily, but be ginger, yeah?
5. Be an optimist. Your tank is now half full.
Thursday 11 March 2010
Ecological Age -- Arup
Arup has developed a film / presentation for transitioning to an 'Ecological Age.' The film presents an overview of issues that form the basis for new strategies for cities, sustainability and resources. The blog with links to films can be found here.
Saturday 6 March 2010
Friday 5 March 2010
Edible prints
A series of screenprints on rice paper using only food, i.e. cream, flour, fruit juice and food colouring.
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Tuesday 2 March 2010
Monday 1 March 2010
KIVA
Kiva Promo from RMac Productions on Vimeo.
Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.
Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.
SUSTAINABLE INTERNET
Lately there has been a lot of talking around proposing INTERNET NOBEL PEACE PRICE.
We have been arguing a lot about the meaning of SUSTAINIBILITY and what are our responsibilities in order to achieve a more fare and sustainable society.
This blog offers the possibility to reflect on what is linked to those action that most of the time we give for granted and we never stop questioning. You will also find some GUIDELINES for a better use of this TOOL and to defining some GOOD PRACTICES.
We are responsible for our choices and sometimes to think about the implications of our actions make us remember the role of people and the role of tools.
Local Love: 321 Steps To Less Landfill
Looking like something out of the future, this sexy high-tech water bottle is set to revolutionise the way you take your water. In fact, if you’re harbouring a bottled water addiction it may be the one that brings you back to the water tap.
The genius element aimed at capturing your heart and changing your drinking habits is 321 Water’s cleverly incorporated filter system that takes tap water and renders it deliciously fresh and chlorine free through a carbon filter and one push mechanism.
Given Aussies produce 80,000 tonnes of water bottle landfill each year, can you really afford not to give it a try? Wholly designed and made in Australia its already captured the imaginations of many taking out the New Inventors People’s Choice Award.
The product’s innovative designer Gretha Oost’s intent is to produce objects that make it easier for people to ‘do the right’ thing environmentally; this little beauty is the end product of that principal .. now all you need do is heed the call!
Graphic: Bottled water imports and exports
Graphic: Bottled water imports and exports
June 5, 2008
A new UN map highlights bottled water’s patterns of international trade. With France being the major exporter of bottled water, trade routes in Europe (between France, Germany, and Belgium) often involve intracontinental trade. The United States also imports a large quantity of water from France and Fiji.
The FuseProject : Recycle Cool Water bottles into Toys!
The FuseProject : Recycle Cool Water bottles into Toys!
Article or RSS item submitted by Ty Wenzel • Apr 16th, 2008 • Category: Green Me Baby!, Product & Merch, Style Trend Forcasting |
fuseproject -- Y Water bottle
Bottled-water-drinkers have surely noticed Poland Springs making the switch to lightweight bottles; once empty, the easily-crushed containers remind you that what was a vessel five minutes ago has now become garbage.
Yves Behar's fuseproject and L.A.-based Y Water--targeting vitamin-enriched water at children--are moving in the opposite direction, with a distinctive Y-shaped bottle they're hoping will stick around a while longer.
Behar's innovation was to give the bottle two lives: its first is as a vessel for the product, and when empty, it gains a second life as a toy. The sturdy 9-ouncers "can be linked with other bottles through biodegradable rubber 'Y Knots,' connectors that help to create spaceships, animals, robots, or whatever else a creative child can imagine."
"We look to this repurposing of the Y Water bottle to not only encourage children to be creative, but to encourage children to think about reuse rather than simply discarding these into the trash," says Behar. "We want to create a new paradigm for children's products that encourages unique new behaviors and a productive afterlife for the product."
Bottled Water Sales Slipping
http://www.psfk.com/2008/09/bottled-water-sales-slipping.html
Good news on the reduce-reuse-recycle front. Bottled water sales in the United States, the world’s largest bottled water market, are starting to slow down. Although sales are not declining, the Worldwatch Institute reports that this year’s projected growth is only at 6.7% – the smallest increase in the past 10 years. It may not be a landmark occasion, but it’s a positive sign.
Bottled Water Blues?
Bottled Water Blues?
According to a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United States is the leading consumer of bottled water. The sale of bottled water has increased by 500% in the last decade. This significant increase is largely due to the successful marketing tactics of companies like Dasani, Deer Park, Aquafina, etc. Many of these companies promote the idea that bottled water is healthier than tap water. VCU Recycling Coordinator Steve Heintz says he’s noticed the increase in bottled water use.
“I’ve definitely noticed, when I look in the dumpsters outside it is more than half full of bottled water,” said Heintz.
But with this dramatic increase in water consumption there is also a greater need for more recycling. The United States has not been able to meet this need and almost 40 percent of the bottles that were deposited for recycling in 2004 were actually exported to China.
Associate Research Professor for the VCU School of Environmental Studies, Dr. Peter deFur says that the demand for bottled water also increases the demand for energy.
“We’ve seen this dramatic increase in commercial bottle water and what happens is there is the container in which the water is sold and that takes energy,” said deFur. “And even if people do recycle it, it takes energy to recycle.”
VCU students, like Kara Terrell, say that while they do reuse and refill water bottles they purchase on campus, they do not take the initiative to dispose of them properly when they are finished.
“Oftentimes, I don’t really use the recycle bins provided on campus, but I do recycle bottles on my own, I just fill them with water whenever need be,” said Terrell.
In order to conserve energy and plastic resources, it’s important not only to realize the value of recycling itself but the importance of reusing as well. Heintz says one way to boost recycling among Americans is to change their attitudes.
“Recycling is a resource, the materials you recycle whether it be paper, plastic, metal or wood… these are all commodities and to throw them out, put them in a landfill, and just bury them is basically a waste of space.”
Do you care?
The controversy over drinking bottled water rather than tap is something that consumers have been questioning for years. Some people think it’s healthier to buy purified water, but othersworry about the cost to the environment. Take the poll below to let us know what you think.
The facts about bottled water:
1. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, Americans bought a total of 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006. The Pacific Institute estimates that producing the bottles for American consumption required more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation.
2. The Container Recycling Institute reports that 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter.
3. Beverage Digest estimates Americans spent over $15 billion dollars on bottled water last year.
Wednesday 24 February 2010
bottled water
"So drinking bottled water is like giving my car a blowjob?"
The question above, posed by copyranter in the title of an article panning Brita's new advertising campaign, got our attention. Brita's approach may be crude, (no pun intended), but such reactions will certainly contribute to achieving Brita's goal. More clicks. More people aware that
"Last year 16 million gallons of oil were consumed to make plastic water bottles."More people visiting Brita's filter for good pledge site, where Brita claims over 74 million plastic water bottles will be avoided by users of the Brita water filter system who have made the pledge to switch from bottles to Brita.
Drawbacks of Water Filters
Water filters like Brita and Pur may get panned for not removing every possible contaminant, or for the disposable filters and appliance waste generated, which is probably not necessary in light of the fact that tap water quality in most developed nations is excellent. And Brita has certainly been beaten up for advertisements which suggest that tap water quality is questionable just because we are foolish enough to flush our toilets with perfectly good drinking water.
Ditch Bottled Water
But many TreeHuggers are committing to ditch bottled water. For some, the taste or quality of their tap water needs a little help. An in-line water filter, installed centrally or at the tap, is considered to be less wasteful due to the infrequent change-outs of the filter media. For apartment dwellers and those who cannot install fixed filter systems, the jug filters like Brita or Pur are a reasonable alternative. It certainly beats buying water in bottles.
Tuesday 23 February 2010
The Guru Wheel
There are plenty of actions we could undertake in order to make our life on the planet more “eco”. Unfortunately, being “green” in our society can be difficult, there are plenty of possibilities around that make it is easy to forget about the impact on the environment of our actions.
I have always been fascinated by the way human brain works, particulary in knowing the mechanisms that move us towards certain decisions instead of others and on understanding how we give ourselves limits...Why we sometimes do things that we know are “wrong”? I believe this is the question that all the people who care about our planet ask everyday. Why do we keep polluting the earth and our bodies with chemical pesticides and harmful substances,if we know that they are dangerous?
(...) sometimes we cannot afford to wait until we see the results of our mistakes, we have to act before it’s too late, we have to give ourselves limits. “Give limits” is what I believe sustainability toolkits do.
A sustainability toolkit is a mans creation, made to guide men towards a lifestyle that does not affect negatively on the planet or future generations.
My project is concentrated on creating a tool that helps students to develop a better understanding of what is “eco” and what is not. My aim is not to create another finished object that can be purchased in a shop or tested online, used and forgotten about, it will be a sort of “spiritual guide” that will help the users to create their ”sustainability toolkit” in their own head, that will contain all those actions that the common calculators don’t take into consideration.
francesca
The Sustainability Toolkit
Learn what sustainability is and have the chance to win the ULTIMATE SUSTAINABILITY KIT
to help you to survive the un-sustainability
"Buy Nothing day”_ an anti-consumerist campaign as a toolkit for sustainability
It is widely accepted that contemporary consumption patterns are at an excessively high level so that it is certainly incompatible with ‘sustainability’. With regard to this issue, various consumer movements have recently emerged as a new counter-consumer practice, ranging from anti-consumerism to ethical consumption. ‘No shopping day’ as a campaign against contemporary problematic consumption culture, namely “Buy Nothing Day”, provides an opportunity not only to be aware of environmental consequences of consumption, but to make a commitment to sustainable consumption, such as consuming less, reusing and recycling more, and making more environmentally friendly choices. It serves as a sustainability toolkit, helping ameliorate current consumption patterns.http://www.scribd.com/doc/27392771/Anti-consumerist-campaign-Buy-Nothing-Day
(click here)
Friday 19 February 2010
The C.R.O.C.
Greenpeace' latest ironic campaign concering individual carbon offsetting in the US. I'd suggest to check out C.R.O.C. in order to get the whole picture. Fantastic!
Wednesday 17 February 2010
Bruce Sterling on Atemporality @Transmediale.10
Preview Image: Jonathan Gröger
Transmediale is an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture which includes exhibitions, competitions, conferences, film and video programmes and live performances. This year's subject of the festival, to which Bruce Sterling refers, was "Futurity Now!:2010. It is a year which has been synonymous with past images of the future. Writers and commentators throughout the 20th century strove to depict 2010 as a shining example of a future framed by technological progress and social harmony.
But as 2010 draws nearer it is clear that global society is neither the utopia nor the dystopia traditionally presented in these fictions, architectures and theories of the future. Rather, it is an increasingly complex web of economic, political and cultural systems dependent on the convergence of rapidly evolving technologies. With the ubiquity of digital practices and social media firmly entrenched as an intrinsic part of our cultural code, we have caught up with our own notions of the future. The future is experiencing an identity crisis.
Futurity is a concept that examines what the 'future' as a conditional and creative enterprise can be. At its heart lays the intricate need to counter political and economic turmoil with visionary futures. With FUTURITY NOW! transmediale.10 explores what roles internet evolution, global network practice, open source methodologies, sustainable design and mobile technology play in forming new cultural, ideological and political templates. transmediale.10 invites artists, scientists, media activists, thinkers and visionaries to ask not what the future has in store for us, but what do we have in store for the future? (source: transmediale.de)
Feeding the 5,000
How come we've missed that?! In January in an attempt to highlight the staggering amounts of waste generated in the UK's good chain, author Tristram Stuart offered free lunches to central London made of food that would otherwise have ended up in the bin...
Tuesday 16 February 2010
Collapse
Collapse is a movie based on a vision of the world after the collapse of industrial civilisation. It touches the issue about economy, production, etc, things that will collapse by our own fault.
The greenhouse gamble
The Greenhouse Gamble Ronald Prinn, director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revised their model that shows how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century without substantial policy change.http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-05/greenhouse-gamble
Monday 15 February 2010
Seedy sunday in Kew Eco-Village (14th feb)
Some photos from the rainy seedy sunday I went to on sunday!
http://www.seedysunday.org/
http://seedvoyageur.blogspot.com/
Thursday 11 February 2010
Truck Farm
Here's a short introductory trailer to TRUCK FARM, the project I mentioned in connection with Ahyoung's research proposal. This film + food project about growing a little food in a big city is realised by the Wicked Delicate collective.
Monday 8 February 2010
Urban Tools
The exhibition, Actions: What You Can Do With the City, which previously was on view at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal in 2008-2009, is now up at the Graham Foundation in Chicago. This exhibition (and accompanying catalog) offers 99 tools for actions that "instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world." Ranging from urban agriculture to alternative modes of transport and dwelling, the actions reframe the urban terrain for new modes of creative occupation.
Saturday 6 February 2010
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to reshaping cities, towns and villages for long term health of human and natural systems. Our goals include returning healthy biodiversity to the heart of our cities, agriculture to gardens and the streets, and convenience and pleasure to walking, bicycling and transit. We visualize a future in which waterways in neighborhood environments and prosperous downtown centers are opened for curious children, fish, frogs and dragonflies. We work to build thriving neighborhood centers while reversing sprawl development, to build whole cities based on human needs and “access by proximity” rather than cities built in the current pattern of automobile driven excess, wasteful consumption and the destruction of the biosphere.
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/
Thursday 4 February 2010
Seedy sunday in Kew Eco-Village
Kew Bridge Eco Village hosts Brentford's First Annual Seed Swap, come along and swap saved or surplus seeds, there will also be a wide range of vegetable and flower seeds. Don't worry if you don't have any seeds to swap as all seeds will be available for a small donation. Storytelling for children from 12.30-1.00pm. You will also find information, gardening related stalls, and refreshments.
http://www.seedysunday.org/index.aspx
From Consumerism to Sustainability
The Worldwatch Institute has a new report, 'State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures,' that may be of interest to some of you currently researching consumerism. The core focus of the report is on shifts from consumerism to sustainability. Free chapters of select sections are available to download here.
Wednesday 3 February 2010
Imagine life in 20 or 30 years...
http://livingclimatechange.com/
Saturday 30 January 2010
Andrew Simms at the LSE
Friday 29 January 2010
No Poo
(image from instructables.com)
What kind of shampoo do you use everyday? Regular shampoo contains chemicals that will harm both the user and the environment. Try no poo, it's natural, it's sustainable and less expensive then regular shampoos and you only need natural ingredients like baking soda and vinegar.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Go-No-Poo/
http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=365
Thursday 28 January 2010
Botany of desire
APPLE = SWEETNESS
POTATO = CONTROL
CANABIS = INTOXICATION
TULIP = BEAUTY
http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/
POTATO = CONTROL
CANABIS = INTOXICATION
TULIP = BEAUTY
http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/
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