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In some places in the world, for instance India, sewage and wastewater flow into open canals and eventually into waterways, spreading odors and enabling the easy breeding of insects such as flies, which can be a vector for pathogens affecting human health.
An obvious and comprehensive fix would be to overhaul the wastewater and sewage infrastructure to keep potential disease sources contained and processed, but until such time as those projects can be undertaken, there's a simpler, more cost-effective solution for mitigating the effects of open sewage and wastewater canals.
According to one company, BiOWISH, they have developed and released a novel biocatalyst that can be applied to wastewater canals in just ten minutes a day - without a complex or expensive delivery system. BiOWISH says their "Aqua" product can be administered to waterways and sewage systems using just a simple drum, hose, and valve system, and the results are quick and effective, reducing Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) by 80 to 90%.
"BiOWiSH technology creates a composite biocatalyst from a unique blend of microorganisms, enzymes, and co-factors. Manufactured using a highly-refined, proprietary fermentation process, BiOWiSH enhances biochemical reactions at a faster and more efficient rate than available alternatives over a wide range of environmental conditions." - BiOWISH
The company says their biocatalyst technology can be put to use across multiple industries, including agriculture, aquaculture, and wastewater treatment, and is certified organic and contains no GMO ingredients. The technology is said to work with a broad spectrum of organic matter, and is effective in a variety of diverse environmental conditions.
BiOWISH has released a series of case studies from their work in Pune, India, and says that residents near the canal have reported a "dramatic reduction in odor and flies, potentially reducing the incidences of waterborne pathogens". The company believes their technology to be both cost-effective and environmentally friendly:
"BiOWiSH technology provides municipal governments around the world a simple, cost effective, and environment-friendly solution to treat sewage in open canals. It's estimated that implementing BiOWiSH-Aqua costs about $2-$3 per person per year (USD). That's less than 5% of the cost to install a traditional secondary wastewater treatment system." - David Fennema, BiOWISH Senior EVP for Environment
BiOWISH also produces home/residential solutions as well, to reduce odors and unclogs drains or septic tanks, to accelerate the composting process and keep water in ponds and fountains clean and clear.
A frame from the October 20, 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film many believe depict a sasquatch. Photo courtesy: Yahoo!News
A Texas scientist claims to have sequenced the DNA of Sasquatch, a creature whose very existence is mysterious to many and purely mythological to most.
"Our study has sequenced 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and utilized next generation sequencing to obtain 3 whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples," Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, Texas, says in a news release.
"The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species."
Ketchum writes that her team's research indicates the "North American Sasquatch" is a hybrid of a female Homo sapien and a male of "unknown hominin species," whose DNA matched approximately 15,000 years ago.
Sasquatch, more commonly known as Bigfoot, has been a staple of American mythology for hundreds of years. The modern Sasquatch theories took on a newfound prominence in 1958 when the first official Bigfoot search party was launched in California.
Most members of the scientific community have discounted the Sasquatch theory. However, in a Sept. 27, 2002, interview with National Public Radio, Jane Goodall appeared open to the concept, saying, "Maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."
So, how do Ketchum's claims hold up under scrutiny?
For starters, Berger notes that while Ketchum has 27 years of genetic research experience during her career as a veterinarian, her company, DNA Diagnostics, has received an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau.
But more important, Ketchum has not allowed scientific peer review of her findings.
"That is a massive red flag. Real research scientists almost never preannounce their research findings," Berger writes. "In effect she is using the mantle of science to confer credibility on her discovery, without actually deserving the credibility."
And finally, where exactly did Ketchum get her DNA sample? After all, if she was working from a reliable source, that alone might be the real story because no physical evidence of Bigfoot exists on record.
As it turns out, Ketchum says her DNA sample was obtained from a blueberry bagel left in the backyard of a Michigan home that, according to the owner, sees regular visits from Sasquatch creatures.
In other words, it seems likely that the legend of Bigfoot will remain more myth than reality for the foreseeable future.
A nutraceutical is a food or part of a food that allegedly provides medicinal or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease. Grapefruit juice has been touted as containing many compounds that can reduce hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and even the risk of cancer. Grapefruit juice can, therefore, be justifiably referred to as a classic nutraceutical. However, for many persons taking certain medications, grapefruit juice might actually better be termed a "nutrapollutical!"
It turns out that grapefruit juice can directly or indirectly interact in important ways with a number of medications. This is especially important since grapefruit juice is consumed by approximately one fifth of Americans for breakfast - a time of the day when medications also are commonly taken.
Grapefruit juice blocks special enzymes in the wall of the small intestine that actually destroys many medications and prevents their absorption into the body. Thus, smaller amounts of the drugs get into the body than are ingested. When the action of this enzyme is blocked, more of the drugs get into the body and the blood levels of these medications increase. This can lead to toxic side effects from the medications.
Amazingly, this remarkable food-drug interaction was discovered completely by accident over a decade ago! Researchers were investigating whether alcohol could interact with felodipine (Plendil) and used a solution of alcohol with grapefruit juice to mask the taste of alcohol for the study. Researchers discovered that blood levels of felodipine were increased several fold more than in previous studies. This increased blood level caused an increase in the effect and side effects of felodipine. Further research revealed that the grapefruit juice itself was actually increasing the amount of the study drug in the body.
Research about the interaction of grapefruit juice with drugs suggests that compounds in grapefruit juice, called furanocoumarins (for example, bergamottin), may be responsible for the effects of grapefruit juice. Researchers believe that furanocoumarins block the enzymes in the intestines that normally break down many drugs. One glass of grapefruit juice could elicit the maximum blocking effect, and the effect may persist for longer than 24 hours. Since the effects can last for such a prolonged period of time, grapefruit juice does not have to be taken at the same time as the medication in order for the interaction to occur. Therefore, unlike similar interactions, where the interaction can be avoided by separating the administration of the two interacting agents by a couple of hours, administration of grapefruit juice with susceptible drugs should be separated by 24 or more hours to avoid the interaction. Since this is not practical for individuals who are taking a medication daily, they should not consume grapefruit juice when taking medications that are affected by grapefruit juice.
The grapefruit juice-drug interaction can lead to unpredictable and hazardous levels of certain important drugs.
These are medications with which grapefruit juice should NOT be consumed unless advised by a doctor:
Toxic blood levels of these medications can occur when patients taking them consume grapefruit juice. The high blood levels of the medications can cause damage to organs or impair the organs normal function, which can be dangerous. If you or a family member are taking any of these medications, beware of the "nutrapollutical" grapefruit juice.
Dutch company Dykstra is designing a new iteration of sail-powered ship, using old sailing knowledge and new sailing technology. The Ecoliner Fair Winds has four massive 'automatic' sails that are moved by, in addition to the wind, software and satellite-based weather data that together calculate the optimal route for the ship when it is underway.
These means Ecoliner needs very little crew to sail, and also much less fossil fuels than a regular container ship. Ecoliner can still carry dozens of regular-sized containers.
Dykstra is planning an entire armada of these wind-assisted vessels. Fair Transport, the for-profit company that partnered with Dykstra to help design the Ecoliner, is out to reduce the use of regular container ships, which contribute a billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere annually.
Fair Transport's founders Andreas Lackner, Arjen van der Veen, and Jorne Langelaan have for three years been sailing an old brig, the Tres Hombres, to demonstrate that sustainable wind-powered shipping is possible. But the trio would also like to offer the shipping world a fleet of high-tech sailing ships that can carry dozens of industrial containers while being navigated by a slim crew, and reducing container ship pollution - in other words, be economically and environmentally sustainable.
Fair Transport hopes the higher cost of building this ship can be amortized over its 30-year lifetime via lower fuel costs.
The Ecoliner is estimated to have a top speed of 18 knots, and when speeds drop below 12 knots it needs the assistance of an electric motor. The Ecoliner is scheduled to be ready next year, in 2013.
Oil city: steam rises from refineries outside Edmonton, Alberta. Photo courtesy: Andy Clark/Reuters
There are some times when I am not so proud to be Canadian - this is one of them. I agree with our Green party MP, Elizabeth May; and, wonder why anyone would want to attend. Perhaps given our Kyoto protocol track record, we should take the higher road and not attend unless we intend to change our stand on the issues.
Of all the delegations in the room in Doha, the Canadians adopt the lowest profile. Some question whether they should be there at all: The country's first and only Green party MP, Elizabeth May, said: "Having Canada in the room negotiating to weaken the second Kyoto, when we have already signalled that not only will we not be participating in taking on new targets in the second period but we're legally withdrawn from the protocol, should make us pariahs."
"I can't imagine how anybody would want us in the room."
Canada's current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 23% over the country's Kyoto protocol target, and federal government estimates place Canada 28.8% over the target by 2014. Canada is the only country to have repudiated Kyoto, the sole legally binding international policy tool to date to deal with the emissions, and ranks just behind the US and Australia in the table of worst global emitters per capita.
This is because of Canada's size, its cold climate and its resource-based economy, especially the energy-intensive, carbon-emissions-heavy oil boiled from large swaths of bitumen know as the Alberta tar sands.
Canada holds the world's third-largest oil reserves, mostly concentrated in the western province of Alberta, the region that is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Where most provinces' GHG emissions have stabilised since 1990, Alberta's emissions have increased by 41%.
The cornerstone of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's policy has been to try to approve key pipelines, such the Keystone XL, from Alberta to Texas, the Enbridge Northern Gateway, from Alberta to the West Coast, and Enbridge Line 9, an eastbound pipeline reversal that could see tar-sands crude pumped to Quebec and the Atlantic coast.
Harper's 2012 budget bill, called C-38, replaced the entire Environmental Assessment Act in order to "streamline" approval of major oil and gas pipelines. The 2011 budget slashed funding for Environment Canada by over $222m (£140m), with cuts specifically to departments dealing with climate change, clean air, waste management and water resources.
"The environment assessment regime put in place in the past year would be a laughing stock in a developing country," said May. "We have a government that is less concerned about climate than the CEOs of major oil companies."
Canada has increasingly "harmonised" its energy and climate policy with the US, and in Copenhagen followed it on a non-binding agreement to "reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 level by 2020". But Canada-US harmonisation stops when it comes to investing in clean-energy jobs: were Canada to match the US on a per person basis, it would invest an additional $11bn. Canada provides less clean-energy stimulus than Saudi Arabia, China, Australia, France or the US.
A recent study by labour and environmental groups estimates Canada could create more than 20,000 jobs if it invested the $1.3bn-a-year tax subsidy currently given to oil, coal and gas companies in emerging energy sectors such as wind, solar power and home retrofits.
Desert blooms: Philipp Saumweber, the founder and CEO of Sundrop, with a tray of his “perfect” produce. Photo courtesy: Jonathan Margolis for the Observer
The scrubby desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide, is not the kind of countryside you see in Australian tourist brochures. The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead smelting and mining, the coastal landscape is spiked with saltbush that can live on a trickle of brackish seawater seeping up through the arid soil. Poisonous king brown snakes, redback spiders, the odd kangaroo and emu are seen occasionally, flies constantly. When the local landowners who graze a few sheep here get a chance to sell some of this crummy real estate they jump at it, even for bottom dollar, because the only real natural resource in these parts is sunshine.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that a group of young brains from Europe, Asia and north America, led by a 33-year-old German former Goldman Sachs banker but inspired by a London theatre lighting engineer of 62, have bought a sizeable lump of this unpromising outback territory and built on it an experimental greenhouse which holds the seemingly realistic promise of solving the world's food problems.
Indeed, the work that Sundrop Farms, as they call themselves, are doing in South Australia, and just starting up in Qatar, is beyond the experimental stage. They appear to have pulled off the ultimate something-from-nothing agricultural feat – using the sun to desalinate seawater for irrigation and to heat and cool greenhouses as required, and thence cheaply grow high-quality, pesticide-free vegetables year-round in commercial quantities.
So far, the company has grown tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers by the tonne, but the same, proven technology is now almost ready to be extended to magic out, as if from thin air, unlimited quantities of many more crops – and even protein foods such as fish and chicken – but still using no fresh water and close to zero fossil fuels. Salty seawater, it hardly needs explaining, is free in every way and abundant – rather too abundant these days, as our ice caps melt away.
So well has Sundrop's 18-month project worked that investors and supermarket chains have lately been scurrying down to Port Augusta, making it hard to get a room in its few motels, or a table at the curry restaurant in the local pub. Academic agriculturalists, mainstream politicians and green activists are falling over each other to champion Sundrop. And the company's scientists, entrepreneurs and investors are about to start building an £8m, 20-acre greenhouse – 40 times bigger than the current one – which will produce 2.8m kg of tomatoes and 1.2m kg of peppers a year for supermarkets now clamouring for an exclusive contract.
It's an inspiring project, more important, it could be argued, than anything else going on in the world. Agriculture uses 60-80% of the planet's scarce fresh water, so food production that uses none at all is nothing short of miraculous.
Blue-sky thinking: the 75m motorised parabolic mirror follows the sun all day, using its heat to generate energy for the Sundrop greenhouses. Photo courtesy: Hat Margolis
Growing food in a desert, especially in a period of sustained drought, is a pretty counterintuitive idea and Sundrop's horticultural breakthrough also ignores the principle that the best ideas are the simplest. Sundrop's computerised growing system is easy to describe, but was complex to devise and trickier still to make economically viable.
A 75m line of motorised parabolic mirrors that follow the sun all day focuses its heat on a pipe containing a sealed-in supply of oil. The hot oil in turn heats nearby tanks of seawater pumped up from a few metres below ground – the shore is only 100m away. The oil brings the seawater up to 160C and steam from this drives turbines providing electricity. Some of the hot water from the process heats the greenhouse through the cold desert nights, while the rest is fed into a desalination plant that produces the 10,000 litres of fresh water a day needed to keep the plants happy. The water the grower gets is pure and ready for the perfect mix of nutrients to be added. The air in the greenhouse is kept humid and cool by trickling water over a wall of honeycombed cardboard evaporative pads through which air is driven by wind and fans. The system is hi-tech all the way; the greenhouse is in a remote spot, but the grower, a hyper-enthusiastic 27-year-old Canadian, Dave Pratt, can rather delightfully control all the growing conditions for his tonnes of crops from an iPhone app if he's out on the town – or even home in Ontario.
It's the kind of thing an enlightened futurologist might have imagined for the 21st century, and to enter Sundrop's greenhouse from the desert outside, passing the array of sun-tracking solar parabolic mirrors that looks like something from a film set, is to feel you've arrived at a template for tomorrow-world. The warm, humid air laden with the scent of ripening tomatoes is in such contrast to the harsh landscape outside, where it tops a parched 40C for much of the year, that it feels as if the more brutal sides of both nature and economics are being benignly cheated. You can supply billions with healthy, cheap food, help save the planet and make a fortune? There has to be a catch.
Green shoots: Charlie Paton in his East London home. It was his discovery that led to the use of seawater in agriculture. Photo courtesy: Hat Margolis
There seems, however, to be only one significant person in the world who feels there is indeed a catch, and, a little bizarrely, that is the inventor of the technology, one Charlie Paton, the British lighting man mentioned earlier, who is currently to be found in his own experimental greenhouse, atop a three- storey former bakery at the London Fields end of Hackney, east London, feeling proud-ish, but not a little sour, about the way things have worked out 10,000 miles away in the desert between the Flinders mountains and the Spencer Gulf.
If you are of an ecological bent, Paton's name may ring a bell. He is the multi-honoured founder of a veritable icon of the green world, a 21-year established family company called Seawater Greenhouse, originators of the idea of growing crops using only sunlight and seawater. Earlier this month, Paton was given the prestigious title Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts, and a few months earlier, Seawater Greenhouse won first prize in the best product category of the UK's biggest climate-change awards scheme, Climate Week. If Sundrop Farms takes off worldwide, the charming and idealistic Charlie Paton could well be in line for a knighthood, even a Nobel Prize; the potential of his brainchild – the ability to grow infinite quantities of cheap, wholesome food in deserts – is that great.
There's just one problem in all this. Although he and his family built the South Australia greenhouse with their own hands, Sundrop has abandoned pretty much every scrap of the ultra-simple Paton technology regarding it as "too Heath Robinson" and commercially hopeless. Some of the Patons' home-made solar panels in wooden frames are still connected up and powering fans, but are falling apart. Nearly all the rest of their installation has been replaced with hi-tech kit which its spiritual father views with contempt. He dismisses Sundrop's gleaming new £160,000 tracking mirrors from Germany and the thrumming Swiss desalination plant and heat-exchanging tanks as "bells and whistles" put in to impress investors. Sundrop and Seawater have parted company and Paton accuses them of abandoning sustainability in the interests of commercial greed. He is particularly distressed by the installation of a backup gas boiler to keep the crops safe if it's cloudy for a few days.
But we will return to Charlie Paton later; sadly, perhaps, developments in the South Australian desert are now overshadowing the doubts and travails of their original inspiration. And they are quite some developments. "These guys have been bold and adventurous in having the audacity to think that they could do it," says the head of Australia's government-funded desalination research institute, Neil Palmer. "They are making food without risk, eliminating the problems caused not just by floods, frost, hail but by lack of water, too, which now becomes a non-issue. Plus, it stacks up economically and it's infinitely scalable – there's no shortage of sunshine or seawater here. It's all very impressive."
On the vine … the blemish-free crop is effectively organic, but it can't be marketed as such in Australia as it is not grown on soil. Photo courtesy: Hat Margolis
"The sky really is now the limit," confirms Dutch water engineer Reinier Wolterbeek, Sundrop's project manager. "For one thing, we are all young and very ambitious. That's how we select new team members. And having shown to tough-minded horticulturalists, economists and supermarket buyers that what we can do works and makes commercial sense, there's now the possibility of growing protein, too, in these closed, controlled greenhouse environments. And that means feeding the world, no less."
An unexpected bonus of the Sundrop system is that the vegetables produced, while cropping year-round and satisfying the supermarkets' demand for blemish-free aesthetic perfection, can also be effectively organic. It can't be called organic (in Australia at least) because it's grown "hydroponically" – not in soil – but it is wholly pesticide-free, a selling point the Australian supermarkets are seizing on, and apparently fed only benign nutrients. Sundrop is already being sold in local greengrocers in Port Augusta as an ethically and environmentally-friendly high-end brand.
Because there's no shortage of desert in which to site it, a Sundrop greenhouse can be built in isolation from others and be less prone to roving pests. Those that sneak in can be eliminated naturally. In this closeted micro-world, Dave Pratt with his trusty iPhone app is free to play God. Not only does Dave have a flight of in-house bees to do their stuff in the greenhouse (who also live a charmed life as they enjoy a perfect, Dave-controlled climate with no predators) but he also has at his command a platoon of "beneficial insects" called Orius, or pirate bugs. These kill crop-destroying pests called thrips, and do so – weirdly in nature – not for food but for, well, fun. So unless you feel for thrips, or believe food should only be grown in God's own soil and subject to God's own pestilences, Sundrop produce seems to be pure and ethical enough to satisfy all but the most eco-fussy.
Sundrop's founder and CEO, on the other hand, is not at first glance an ecowarrior poster child. True, there are plenty of posh boys dabbling in ethical and organic farming, but on paper, Philipp Saumweber could be a comedy all-purpose hate figure. He is a wealthy, Gordonstoun-educated German with a Harvard MBA, immaculate manners, an American accent, Teutonic efficiency and a career that's taken him from hedge-fund management to Goldman Sachs to joining his family's Munich-based agricultural investment business. But, in the typical way stereotypes can let you down, apart from being a thoroughly nice, softly spoken and clearly visionary man, Saumweber has also made a brilliant; but, ailing idea work, turning a charmingly British, Amstrad-like technology into the horticultural equivalent of Apple.
Soon after becoming immersed in agriculture as a business, he says, he realised that it essentially involved "turning diesel into food and adding water". Whether you were a tree-hugger or a number cruncher, Saumweber reasoned, this was not good. "So I began to get interested in the idea of saline agriculture. Fresh water is so scarce, yet we're almost drowning in seawater. I spent a lot of time in libraries researching it, Charlie Paton's name kept coming up, and that's what started things. He'd been working on the technology since 1991, was smart and although his approach was obviously home-grown and none of his pilot projects had really worked – in fact they'd all been scrapped – he had something too promising to ignore."
Despite having given Paton a large, undisclosed ex- gratia settlement when Sundrop and Seawater divorced in February – a sum Paton still says he was very happy with – Saumweber continues to be gracious about his former business partner, and says he wishes he was still on board, as he is a better propagandist and salesman for this ultimate sustainable technology than anyone else he's met.
"What we liked about Charlie's idea, as did the engineers we got in to assess Seawater Greenhouse, is that it addressed the water issue doubly by proposing a greenhouse which made water in an elegant way and linked this to a system to use seawater to cool the greenhouse," Saumweber recounts.
"What we didn't realise at the start, and I don't think Charlie ever adjusted to fully, was that even in arid regions, you get cold days and a greenhouse will need heating – hence the gas boiler, which cuts in to produce heat and electricity when it gets cold or cloudy, but which upset Charlie so much because it meant we weren't 100% zero-energy any longer. What Charlie overlooked is that you can grow anything without heat and cooling, but it will be blemished and misshapen and will be rejected by the supermarkets. If you don't match their standards, you're not paid. It would be ideal if that weren't the case, but we can't take on the challenge of changing human behaviour.
"So in the end, we had very different views on where the business should go. He'd found the perfect platform to keep tinkering and experimenting, while we just wanted to get into production. He's a very nice man and I share a lot of his eco views, but it wasn't possible to stay together."
When you visit the agreeable Paton family in Hackney it becomes clear the gas-boiler incident out in the desert was far from the whole reason for the fallout with Sundrop. There was also a serious clash of styles. Saumweber is a banker by training and lives in prosperous west London, while the Patons are artistic and live part of the time in a forest clearing in Sussex in a wooden house without electricity. Charlie, an amateur and a tinkerer at heart, a highly knowledgeable polymath rather than a scientist, is also a proud man, whose intense blue eyes burn when he discusses how his invention has, in his view, been debased by the ambitious young men and women who moved it on to the next level.
The difference was essentially political, an idealist/ pragmatist schism not unlike an old Labour/New Labour split. The Patons – Charlie, his wife, jeweller and art school teacher Marlene McKibbin, son Adam, 25, a design engineer and daughter Alice, 26, a fine art graduate – are a tight, highly principled bunch who gather almost every day for a family lunch, like a wholemeal and Palestinian organic olive oil version of the Ewings of Southfork Ranch.
The Seawater Greenhouse method, which they are still promoting actively, involves no desalination plant, no gleaming solar mirrors and little by way of anything electronic. Everything in the Seawater Greenhouse vision is low-tech, cheap to start up and reliant on the subtle, gentle interaction of evaporation and condensation of seawater with wind, both natural and artificial, blown by fans powered by solar panels. If things go wrong and production is disrupted by a glitch in this model, you just persuade people to eat perfectly good but odd-looking produce – or harvest less and stand firm by your sustainable principles.
Although the concept is attractive and the philosophy will chime with many a green consumer, the Seawater Greenhouse installation is less elegant. Dave Pratt, fresh to the team from growing tomatoes in Canada, almost went straight back when he saw the kit Adam and Alice Paton had painstakingly put together. "It was like a construction by the Beverly Hillbillies," Pratt says. "They had these 15,000 hand-made plastic pipes meant to work as heat exchangers, but they just dripped seawater on the plants, which was disastrous."
Paton's perspective on things is, naturally, a little different. "I did have a falling-out with Philipp," he says. "It was a joint venture, but we disagreed on a number of things. Being a cautious investor, he called in consultants and horticulturalists, and one said if you don't put in a gas boiler you're going to lose money and get poor produce. I was persuaded about the need for some heating, but it could have been supplied by solar panels. It wasn't such a big deal, perhaps, but it was a syndrome that ran through everything we did. Philipp is the king of the spreadsheet, and trying to make the numbers go black meant he just rushed everything. I'm all for the thing being profitable, but there are levels of greed I found a bit, well, not quite right. I wish him well, though, and if it's fabulously successful, then fine."
What next for the Patons, then? "Well, the settlement we got was enough to carry on fiddling about for some time. We're excited about getting a new project going in Cape Verde [the island republic in the mid-Atlantic], where they produce no food at all and they seem interested. And we have talked about a project in Somaliland [the unofficial breakaway part of Somalia], but that would be difficult as there's not even a hotel to stay in."
Charlie Paton, although the acknowledged founder of the idea of growing unlimited food in impossible conditions, seems almost destined to join a British tradition of hobbyist geniuses who change the world working from garden sheds and workshops, but, because they aren't commercial, and perhaps rather eschew professionalism, miss out on the final mile and the big payday.
"We will absolutely keep on at this in our own way," he says, "but I don't really feel that proprietary about it. The heart of the technology is actually a bit of soggy cardboard. You can't patent or protect the idea of evaporative cooling. The idea of using seawater to do that absolutely was a major breakthrough, but again, you can't patent it. The main thing is that it's us that's still picking up the plaudits, and I think that makes Philipp really angry."
They have got to be kidding me...a 220-storey tower. I am so terrified of heights that just looking at that rendition makes me nauseous. I think anyone who lives or works above the 4th floor has a secret death wish. It may be an amazing engineering feat; but, I'll never see the inside of it - by choice.
Broad Sustainable Building has built a number of their remarkable prefabricated towers in China, but none yet anywhere else. It's a shame, because they are extremely energy efficient, with their six inches of insulated walls and quadruple glazing. They are also extremely inexpensive, because of an absolute doctrinaire attitude to manufacturing efficiency and mass production using repetitive elements. They make Henry Ford look like a custom coach builder. The unrelenting focus on engineering has resulted in designs that can be most politely called utilitarian, (George Dvorsky at IO9 says "it looks like something a four-year-old designed with cereal boxes"). That's a bit harsh; the latest renderings are a great improvement.
China cannot pursue the American or European lifestyle, it cannot afford it: work somewhere and live somewhere else, using cars and roads to connect.
Sky City will be a community of about 30,000 people, with offices, schools, restaurants and even a hospital. Instead of driving, people will get around in one of 104 elevators. It's not a luxury building, but an attempt to be "much more balanced in terms of mixture of people of different ages, professions and income levels."
When BSB first floated the idea of Sky City, a 220-storey tower, they were not taken seriously in North America or even in China, where I am told that people like to see validation by others outside the country. So they have decided to wow the world by building the J220 in their own backyard, in Changsha, home of Broad. It is a gutsy move, and many are not sure it can be done. Engineer Bart Leclercq, who worked on the Shard in London, has doubts and tells Construction Week Online that stiffness and wind loading is the real problem on a building that tall.
In order to get stiffness in your building you need lots of areas of concrete and steel. And in order to get that all in place, you need an enormous amount of time to bring it up, put it in place, put it all together, pour the concrete and put the reinforcement in place... For the concrete to harden, you can only take the shuttering away after several days. You can only pour a few metres height each time. So no, I do not think it is possible to build a 220-storey tower as quickly as the company claims. If they manage to build this structure in three months then I will give up structural engineering. I will hang my hat and retire. I will be eating humble pie as well.”
I suspect that Mr. Leclercq will be eating his humble pie in the not too distant future. Our contacts tell us that the building is going through some design modifications suggested by the design review panel in Beijing, and that "most likely breaking ground is any day soon."
Check out the video of BSB putting up a 30-storey tower in just 15 days:
A land conservation group calling themselves Highland Titles has come up with a unique way to raise funds to conserve the dwindling highland forests and help conserve other Scottish ecosystems.
Have you always wanted to indulge your inner Downton Abbey fantasy, but didn't have the landed property to do so? Are you seeking the perfect present for the poseur princess in your life? Have you grown tired of your mail-order ministership and dream of a new novelty title to behold? Look no further.
To the potential dismay of Ladies and Lords across the Scottish highlands, the awesome land conservation organization, Highland Titles, is selling 'souvenir plots' on its estate in Glencoe Wood – granting the legal use of the Scottish title of Laird, Lord or Lady. But here's the thing; this isn't just a goofy gimmick. The title may have loads of novelty appeal, but it's all for a very noble cause.
Many, many centuries of industry and farming have pretty much decimated most of Scotland's forests – in fact, only 1 percent of the native woodland is all that remains. Highland Titles had the royal brainstorm to sell small plots of land to help fund the rescuing of woodlands, tree planting, maintenance and acquisition of land at risk of development – guaranteeing that it cannot be purchased or developed. Plot sizes range from one square foot to 1,000 square feet. Prices start at $49.99.
So you get a fancy title and a bit of land gets protected. But wait, there's more! When buying a one-square-foot plot, the new Lord or Lady will also receive:
•The title of Laird, Lord or Lady of Glencoe
•A high quality, full color, gift folder containing all your documents
•A legal title deed for land ownership, on velum parchment
•Master Title Deed to change your title on bank accounts, driving license and other ID
•A map of Glencoe Wood and directions as well as instructions on how to visit and find your personal plot (you can even camp on it, if you want)
•Information and pictures of the area, Glencoe Wood and the conservation project.
•A bumper sticker for you to proudly display your new status (Laird, Lord or Lady)
"We have created a new approach to raising funds to support the restoration of destroyed woodlands and preservation of land at risk for development," said Stephen Rossiter, marketing director, of Highland Titles. "It is imperative that we conserve our remaining forests and replace trees that have been lost for the sake of biodiversity, wildlife, carbon sequestration and the enjoyment of future generations. Extending the Scottish tradition of a descriptive title such as Laird, Lord or Lady is just great fun."
To purchase your very own Lord/Ladyship, visit Highland Titles.
Flower pots are great for all kinds of things - not just babysitting. Photo courtesy: delightfulchaos.com
I am a hopeless gardener. Life has no meaning if I'm not gardening. In the winter, I content myself with my indoor plants; and, planning next year's garden, of course. Besides, satisfying my craving for dirty hands, these uses for pre-owned flower pots recycle, reduce, reuse and repurpose pots that otherwise would have landed in the landfill.
The small, plastic conjoined pots that bedding plants come in make great containers in which to start next year's seed.
Use old pots to store your gardening tools - snippers, trowel, twine, whatever.
Flower pots make great gifts when decorated by hand. They don't have to be filled with a plant - put in anything you like. Photo courtesy: familyeducation.com
Old clay pots take very well to decorating. Cover them with paint, fabric, buttons, glitter - whatever is on hand. Fill pot with garden-themed items - seeds, gardening gloves, hand tool, etc. or a lovely plant.
This is so creative, it deserves a space where everyone can enjoy it. Photo courtesy: just another ragbag
Clean out plastic flower pots (decorate if you want) and place them under your bathroom sink to organize items such as bushes and combs, q-tips, and sponges.
Under the kitchen sink, they can hold all the small items that need a home - plastic pot scrubbers, j-cloths, etc.
Old flower pots do not need to go the landfill. Nurseries will always take back clean plastic pots.
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
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