Edward Linacre's Airdeop

Thanks to the inventive spirit of young Australian inventor Edward Linacre, there may one day be no such thing as a water shortage.

He recently won the £10,000 international James Dyson Award for a “low-tech” device – the Airdrop – that can draw water from the air, besting the work of 500 other inventors.

Linacre, a graduate of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, wanted to solve the drought problem afflicting farmers in parts of Australia suffering from drought conditions. His solution, Airdrop, can harvest 11.5 milliliters of water for every cubic meter of air in the driest deserts such as the Negev in Israel, which has an average relative air humidity of 64 percent. A small-scale prototype Linacre installed at his parents’ house created about a liter of water a day. Linacre will use his prize money for further testing on increasing the yield.

As reported in The Sidney Morning Herald, instead of using complex, energy-intensive methods such as desalination, Airdrop’s source of water is abundant – the air – and so it can be used anywhere in the world.

Linacre’s Airdrop can deliver water to the roots of crops in dry areas by pushing air through a network of underground pipes, cooling it down to the point where water condenses. The water can then be pumped to the roots of plants using drip irrigation methods.

This video interview  posted by gizmag helps explain the invention and the sound reasoning behind it.

Linacre said he was inspired by the Namib beetle, which survives in landscapes that get just half an inch of rain per year by consuming the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back. Similarly, the desert rhubarb can harvest 16 times the amount of water than other plants in its region by using deep water channeling cavities in its leaves.

“Biomimicry is a powerful weapon in an engineer’s armory,” said James Dyson, whose charity sponsors the award. “We chose Edward’s project because it was a very good and original solution to what has become a real problem.”

He said the device was a low-tech solution that could be installed and maintained by the farmers themselves. It powers itself using solar panels.

In addition to Linacre’s cash prize, a further £10,000 has been awarded to Swinburne University. Linacre said without the university’s help he would never have got his idea off the ground.

The James Dyson Award is run by the James Dyson Foundation and each year students of product design, industrial design or design engineering from around the world are invited to enter.

Photo: Arsineh Houspian, The Sidney Morning Herald

Biofuels developer, ZeaChem

Make another mark for alternative fuels and chemicals.

ZeaChem, a Colorado developer of biorefinery technologies that can convert renewable materials into sustainable fuels and chemicals, has signed an agreement with Procter & Gamble (P&G) for commercializing bio-based chemicals and other products.

The agreement was made public June 1. Under the multi-year agreement, the two companies will research, develop and commercialize ZeaChem’s  latest biorefinery technology, a process that uses renewable feedstocks like poplar trees and agricultural residues to produce high-yield, low carbon fuel emissions.

The deal fits well with P&G’s environmental sustainability vision. The company has indicated it intends to use 100 percent sustainably sourced renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging.

“Novel innovations from our suppliers, such as ZeaChem’s unique process to create bio-based chemicals, are critical to us achieving this vision,” said Len Sauers, P&G vice president for global sustainability.

The two companies will utilize ZeaChem’s existing infrastructure at its lab in Menlo Park, Calif., pilot facility at Hazen Research in Golden, CO, and a demonstration-scale biorefinery in Boardman, OR.

ZeaChem has developed a cellulose-based biorefinery platform capable of producing advanced fuels and intermediate chemicals. ZeaChem’s indirect approach leapfrogs the yield and carbon dioxide (CO₂) problems associated with traditional and cellulosic-based biorefinery processes.

ZeaChem has begun fermentation work on this new product platform using the same processes and equipment that the company used to prove and scale up its C2 product platform. The company says the new platform will enable it to ultimately deploy its technology for the production of a variety of bio-based chemicals and fuels.

According to Biofuels Digest, the companies have not described the nature of the target molecules. However, ZeaChem has already stated it will initiate research and development of its three-carbon (C3) product platform.

“Nature has generally dictated that odd numbers like C3 provide more opportunities to make money,” ZeaChem CEO Jim Imbler said in the interview.

ZeaChem’s technology involves a parallel hybrid system of fermentation and gasification. ZeaChem reports this hybrid process can achieve a 40 percent higher yield than other cellulosic processes.

The main contenders for fuel substitutes are biomass fuels, derived from organic plant matter. Ethanol-based bio fuels are extracted from corn. Biodiesel is made up primarily of used vegetable oil and grease. Jatropha oil is also being used to make biofuels. Now added to the list is cellulosic biofuel – a new concept in biofuels because it is not plant specific and can be generated from both living and dead organic plant matter.

Mike Yohay is the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms. Photo: Cityscape Farms

While a city may be dense with population, it is generally regarded as sparse with agricultural space, unless you hear Mike Yohay, the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms, which specializes in creating urban farms wherever there happens to be growing space, from vacant lots to rooftops.

These smart solutions come from entrepreneurial sustainability companies like Cityscape Farms, which  provide urban greenhouse systems for agricultural production with low water use.

“By growing fresh food within just a few miles of where it will be eaten, we will have healthier, better tasting produce and make our cities cleaner and more self-sufficient,” says Yohay.

Important for city farming, the system for growing food has no soil because it uses an aquaponics system. Aquaponics is a method combining aquaculture (fish cultivation) with hydroponics. This approach to growing uses natural fertilizer from filtered fish effluent, creating a closed-loop, pesticide-free organic system:

Yohay says the aquaponics process works this way:

• Water containing natural fish waste gets filtered to become organic nutrient feed for the plants
• Plants absorb the nutrients and the cleansed water is recycled back to the fish tank

One perspective of rooftop farming from Cityscape Farms. Sourcwe: Cityscape

Yohay says he also offers a program to owners of commercial rooftops to monetize their roof by leasing it to Cityscape Farms. A Cityscape team of architects and engineers will develop “site-specific greenhouse systems that are consistent with local building codes and zoning laws. We address every liability concern to assure a safe, structurally sound installation that will earn you income that didn’t exist before.”

Other benefits: helping the environment and the local food economy. The systems that are used created their own nutrients for plant growth and require less water.

On his website, Yohay cites two influences in the development of Cityscape Farms:

“Attending college in Iowa, where I witnessed topsoil depletion and environmental pollution from large-scale corn, soy, and livestock agribusiness. The second was living in La Amistad rainforest in Costa Rica, where for a year I managed an eco-lodge and participated in low impact organic farming that supported our local community.

“Looking critically at these two extremes, I became determined to find a happy medium: a modern way to feed people on a large scale without spoiling the land, air and water.”

Buckminster Fuller, designer of the geodesic dome Source: BFI

For those still considering creating one of this world’s next great solutions, there are but 15 days left to prepare and submit applications for the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Those standing on the sidelines should run onto the plying field; our world needs the help.

This important global event is considered by some to be one of socially responsible design’s highest awards. This premier international prize program awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that, broadly stated, “has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.”

According to the BFI Challenge, entering creates “an opportunity to become part of a network that is advancing and accelerating the practice of whole systems thinking and design to develop the kind of high impact global solutions we so desperately need.”

The Buckminster Fuller Institute, named after Buckminster Fuller, creator of the geodesic dome, was created to share and advance imaginative work that might lead the way to solving problems for global housing and infrastructure requirements.

15 days remain to enter the 2011 BFI Challenge. SOURCE: BFI Challenge

According to BFI’s press release, “Past entries included bold, visionary strategies, from a radical solution to urban mobility in the world’s largest cities to a strategy to dramatically increase crop yields and economic development in the grasslands and savannahs of Africa. While the entries cover a broad range of topics, the common thread among them is a highly integrated approach to design— one that is simultaneously comprehensive, anticipatory and aligned with nature’s fundamental principles. This focus on integrated design strategies is what distinguishes the Challenge from all other prize programs. “

The jury for this year’s challenge will include “systems thinkers and design pioneers across a wide spectrum of human endeavor are invited from all over the world.”

Past jury members have included Janine Benyus, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Helena Norberg-Hodge, John Thackara, Hazel Henderson, Danny Hillis, Alan Kay, Hunter Lovins, Bill Browning, José Zaglul, William McDonough, Adam Bly, Greg Watson and Vandana Shiva.

For those wanting to review the criteria that drive the selection of the winning solution click these links:

Challenge Criteria Video http://challenge.bfi.org/Challenge_Criteria

Challenge Criteria Webpage http://challenge.bfi.org/criteria

Steven Apfelbaum, founder of AES Photo: AES

Mitchell writes, “For more than three decades, Steve, and the AES team have developed land-use solutions to help farmers, companies, landowners, and communities around the world strike a balance between cost and ecology. From transforming dismal landfills and dusty iron mines into pristine preserves and prairies, Steve continues to show how ecosystem services result in healthy wild, rural, and urban landscapes while boosting the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”

She included an article for Green Streets to share that Mr. Apfelbaum recently wrote concerning the Gulf of Mexico and its unhealthy status even before the oil drilling disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident. What he proposes here should be seriously considered by all communities, landowners, businesses and farmers wanting to help turn overwhelming problems into solutions. And while this post is longer than usual, it is very much worth reading and sharing.

Apfelbaum’s article follows (our emphasis marks provided):

Apfebaum offers solid land-use solutions. Photo: AES

“The Gulf of Mexico is sick, but, in fact, it’s been ill for a long time, and it needs a bigger fix. Now is the time to look at the broader picture, which includes water, soil, energy and climate—more broadly, the health of our nation’s natural resources. A National Carbon Reserve would concretely address the source of the Gulf’s maladies and offer myriad side benefits, such as carbon sequestration.

“Before the spill, there was a dead zone in the Gulf that has reached the size of the state of Massachusetts. It is the consequence of eutrophication, the accumulation of the nitrogen and phosphorus common in fertilizers, which creates algal blooms, which, in turn, die, and deplete the oxygen in the water. In these so-called anoxic conditions, marine creatures simply can’t breathe.

“The Gulf Dead Zone’s main artery is the Mississippi River, which dumps its high-nutrient, but deadly, fertilizer runoff some 100 miles south of New Orleans. The problem is that the Mississippi’s vast watershed (covering 43 percent of the entire lower 48 United States) and much of America’s agricultural heartland are sick as well.

“The problems are well understood: years of poor planning for public and private land use; degraded habitat and agricultural tillage of farm fields that contributes to soil erosion and greenhouse gases; excessive dependence on industrial fertilizers on farmlands; dams clogged with sediment that never reaches the Gulf to sustain its wetlands.

“The solutions are clear as well. We need a healthy land ethic that focuses on regrowing soil and replenishing clean water in ways that are more efficient and less costly.

“Fortunately, farmers can improve their soil and increase its carbon content through such techniques as “no-till” farming, in which farm-seeding equipment inserts seeds into small cuts in the earth. Traditional tillage farming, or plowing, on the other hand, releases carbon into the atmosphere.  No-till agriculture can cut costs in as little as two years and can even increase crop yields by up to 10 percent. It leaves leftover plant matter on the land, building the soil, and that added healthy soil acts as a sponge to lessen water runoff and prevents nutrients from entering rivers and lakes (which is what creates dead zones).

“Responsible ecological conservation and restoration of non-farmland is crucial as well. Replanting native grasslands (see recent article on bamboo in America) and restoring drained wetlands, forests, and savannas can also reduce water runoff and erosion of soils, and conserve and store carbon. Land-use policies must change at the national level. Not only has poor land use resulted in habitat degradation, erosion, and the poisoning of our waters, it is a significant contributor to global warming. Yet in discussing measures to curb pollution and GHG emissions, the focus is invariably on the iconic symbols of fossil fuel technology–smoking coal plants, gas-guzzling cars, and, obviously, offshore drilling.

“Think again. From 2000 to 2005, 53 percent of existing GHG emissions were mitigated and stored in the surface soils and vegetation of our planet at no cost to us. This is one of the wonderful things that the right plants planted in the right location and way do for a living.

“The National Carbon Reserve would combine the best of American ecological and conservation thought and practice with classic public-private market values and incentives, creating a model of carbon management tied to land protection and restoration and more productive agricultural management. Here are some specific strategies:

• Use a smart ecosystem service planning process to develop a policy roll-up of private and public conservation and agricultural lands (nearly all of which are already mapped and known) to guide soil rebuilding around simple principles to allow plants to do the work they do so well. This alone could provide profound cost savings by reducing irrigation water and fertilizer needs, improving crop yields and, oh, by the way, encouraging some of the most efficient carbon sequestration benefits imaginable.

• Create an incentivized, voluntary initiative in which participants can sell the value of improvements in soil carbon on the open market. The program’s goals would be to rebuild soil carbon and organic matter in agricultural production and ranchlands and other lands, and to reduce storm water runoff and erosion and increase water infiltration, replenishing declining potable ground water supplies in many areas of the U.S.

• Decouple the politics and economics of food from energy by encouraging more locally produced, healthy food grown with sustainable practices to balance our food supplies and reduce time and mileage in its travel from farm to table.

“The Reserve’s system of land-use planning to improve soil and water and to manage carbon would start mitigating GHG emissions quickly, while our economic, financial and policy systems move toward more sustainable energy sources. Progress on many of the issues raised here is being made at the local, state and federal levels and should be encouraged, but a national program remains critical.

“This plan would, in the long term, help heal the Gulf, the Mississippi, and our other rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Ultimately, it could mitigate climate change—healing earth, water and sky.”

We are glad to pass these words along, Mr. Apfelbaum.

“Steven Apfelbaum is founder, chairman, and senior ecologist of the firm Applied Ecological Services, Inc., based in Brodhead, Wisconsin. He is also the author of Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm and the co-author, with Alan Haney, of Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land. For more than three decades, Steve and his dynamic team have contributed scientific expertise to more than 1,500 projects around the world.” – Maxine Mitchell

Mohammed Bin Abubakar, explains nursery to writer, Glenn Meyers. Photo: Oteng Foster

As gardeners go, Mohammed Bin Abubakar holds a unique position. He has built a forest where once there were only rushed rocks and the unsightly remnants of an old gold mine.

He serves as the reclamation coordinator at Newmont Mining Corporation’s Brong Ahafo Gold Mine in Ghana which started production a few years ago. One Newmont employee, Gloria Dwummah-Adu, says Abubakar has made a beautiful forest out of this mining wasteland and that many should follow this model.

Fondly, she refers to this 75-acre site as “Bin’s garden.” Now birds sing and the shade from the rapidly growing forest is a welcome relief to all who enter these woods.

Abubakar’s reclamation work began some time ago when Australian-based Normandy Mining employed him. When Normandy was sold to Newmont in 2002, he began working for Newmont Ghana Gold, Ltd. This is a green, well-designed forest that invites exploration.

Newmont Ghana employee, Gloria Dwummah-Adu in the reclaimed forest. Photo: Oteng Foster

“Wow! This is awesome!” exclaims MS. Dwummah-Adu.

Abubakar discusses how he built the forest. “We were tasked to establish a plantation to convince the locals that surface mining by the company will not destroy their land. And before that we established this nursery that you see here.”

He and his team then applied the knowledge they acquired from his training to reclaim the wasteland. They started with a nursery, which is now being used for other mining reclamation projects. Abubakar says that when they established this nursery, they decided to bring back the original trees, which used to be on the land.

To build this forest, Newmont, led by Abubakar, approached the chief of the town, asking that his village provide an area where the reclamation team could demonstrate its capabilities of reclaiming land. “And fortunately, there was some land – about 75 acres – he gave it to us free of charge to demonstrate to the people that if our company says we are going to reclaim the land it will be true,” says Abubakar. “Lo and behold, we established this forest which you see here.”

Many a mining operation should take a look at how this former mining site has undergone reclamation.

Of the many species of grasses, bamboo provides many uses. Source: Master Garden Products

Who knows? Perhaps one gateway out of America’s economic doldrums will come from a boom. There are plenty of people looking at what was once just regarded as a tropical and oriental product, bamboo.

As writer Harry Sawyers noted over a year ago in Popular Mechanics, “Bamboo has come into vogue as a green, sustainable resource that’s used for everything from cutting boards to clothing to wood floors. But until now, almost all of the bamboo in products sold here has come from overseas. That could change soon, as new planting techniques may lead to millions of new acres of bamboo shoots in the American South.” Some wonder if a plant like bamboo can revitalize farmland on the Mississippi Delta.

The American Bamboo Society (ABS) was formed in 1979. Today it counts over 1,400 members living throughout the U.S. and in 37 other countries. For those who are interested, the ABS issues a bimonthly Magazine and the Journal to disseminate information about the use, care, propagation and beauty of bamboo.

Bamboo forests may soon grow in America, Source: Popular Mechanics

Of interest, bamboo is regarded by many as a wood product, due to its hardness and durability. In reality, though, it is a grass. Considered the largest of the grasses, there are over 1600 species of bamboo, 64 percent of which are native to Southeast Asia. Thirty-three percent grows in Latin America, and the rest in Africa and Oceania. In North America there are only three native species of bamboo as opposed to the 440 species native to Latin America, writes master garden products

Bamboo varies in height from dwarf, one foot (30 cm) plants to giant timber bamboos that can grow to over 100 feet (30 m). It grows in many different climates, from jungles to high on mountainsides. Bamboos are further classified by the types of roots they have. Some, called runners, spread exuberantly, and others are classified as clumpers, which slowly expand from the original planting.

Author Paul Schneider has written prolifically about his love affair with bamboo, providing a cornucopia of information about growing the grass in colder climes.

“Bamboo has proven to be an aesthetic asset to our garden here in Cambridge, New York (north of Albany on the Vermont border; confirmed Zone 4). It mixes well with many other plants both perennial and annual. Depending on the species, it can be used as a tall or medium background plant, a “statement” plant or as a low border or ground cover plant.”

For others, it is grown more as a wood product. “To grow bamboos,” writes Schneider, “New England gardeners must be willing to accept the challenge of working with a plant that normally doesn’t grow in their climactic zone. And they must also understand that the taller bamboos will not grow to the height they would reach in Zones 5 or warmer.”

According to Patrick Malcolm, Golden Bamboo was the first of the Phyllostachys bamboo cultivars to be introduced into the United States, in 1882. In Alabama, where bamboo was to be primarily used as a fast growing windbreak, it was planted by southern tobacco farmers. The poles from the golden bamboo have probably landed more fish in the southeastern U.S. than any other means of fishing, hence the name, fishing pole bamboo.

For those wanting bigger and better, there is Giant Timber bamboo. Its dark green to golden stalks that grow to 100 feet tall, featuring 6 inch poles that are 6 inches in diameter.

There are fundamental ROI issues to regard, writes Sawyers: “Getting the revenue flowing could prove to be the biggest obstacle. Unlike cotton, which promises a return on investment at the end of a single growing season, bamboo crops must mature for three or four years before they’re ready for the first harvest.”

Land monitoring

This June the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), founded after the man who made the geodesic dome a household word, awarded its 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize of $110,000 to African-based Operation Hope for its promising work to transform degraded Zimbabwe grasslands and savannas into a sustainable environment.

The grand prize was well deserved. Here’s why: smart land management work like this can foster water and food security for millions of impoverished people that have suffered for years without such living basics.

Operation Hope was launched by the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe (ACHM) and its sister organization, New Mexico-based Savory Institute . The approach of these organizations to land management runs contrary to accepted practice of resting land from animal grazing. Instead, Savory seeks to re-establish the balance between plant growth and the behavior of herding animals. Predicting this outcome: the return of unusable desert to grasslands, restoring biodiversity, bringing water sources back to life, combating global climate change, and increasing crop yields to ensure food security for people. The approach is currently being practiced and producing results on over 30 million acres worldwide, states ACHM.

ACHM enhances food and water security and human livelihoods through training that utilizes livestock to restore degraded watersheds and croplands to health offering training programs targeting community NGOs. ACHM’s Grazing Plan is designed to improve land health, and to ensure livestock (and wildlife) have adequate forage year round. In the growing season livestock moves are timed to ensure maximum plant growth and regrowth, and in the dry season the plan rations out the forage that was grown to ensure it lasts until the next rains. Droughts are planned for each year. In all seasons, livestock moves are planned months ahead to avoid conflict with the needs of wildlife – for food, water, or shelter.

Savory targets the “Green Revolution, based on high input, industrial agriculture (massive inputs of petro-chemicals and herbicides, monoculture cropping, and confinement animal feeding operations), stating it has increased global food production tremendously, but has tended to severely degrade its ecological and socio-cultural capital base in the process.”

The result? “Horrific soil erosion, dead zones at the mouths of rivers, severely depleted levels of biodiversity, impoverished rural communities, soil fertility loss, and oxidation of soil organic matter have been exacerbated by the Green Revolution.”

Savory offers the Brown Revolution as a solution: “based on the regeneration of covered, organically rich, biologically thriving soil, and brought to fruition via millions of human beings returning to the land and the production of food.”

Savory contends that “slight increases in soil organic matter, over these huge extensions of the earth’s land surface area, will result in the permanent, safe, and natural sequestration of many gigatons of carbon.”

For nearly three decades, BFI has served an international network of Fuller-inspired innovators through the maintenance of a comprehensive Information Clearinghouse on R.B Fuller, including a detailed inventory of the practices and principles informing Fuller’s approach to design innovation.

According to the Internationasl Biochar Initiative, sustainable biochar is a “powerfully simple tool fight global warming.”

“Sustainable biochar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. IBI focuses on the need for quality and sustainability standards and assurances in the emerging biochar industry,” the website reports.

South America: students with biochar stoves Source: Biochar Initiative

For those wondering what kind of new invention bichar might be,  it is not new at all. The practice has been around for almost 2,000 years, where it was practiced in South America. The product, called terra preta, or “dark earth” that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer, or fertilizing agent.  But beyond acting as a soil enhancer, proponents claim biochar has the capacity to hold carbon. It is being produced in the United States, South America, and Australia, to name a few producing locations.

Biochar is a charcoal produced under high temperatures, using crop waste, animal manure, and other organic waste.

According to Kelsi Bracmort, an analyst in agricultural conservation and natural resources policy, “The combined production and use of biochar is considered a carbon-negative process, meaning that it removes carbon from the atmosphere.”

Take a thorough look, we shall be reporting far more on this product.

Weeds rarely are welcome in the garden soil. Getting rid of them is normally an arduous procedure with more bad sides than good sides, including blisters, aching backs, and time passed, which might have been better spent elsewhere. The one good side from weeding is probably the dead-tired, ‘sweat on your brow’ reward of seeing your garden rid of the unwelcome invasion.

Ghanaian villagers strip bark from invasive weed tree so it can be used for erosion control. Photo: G. Meyers

But if you’re an itinerant farmer in Ghana, living near the Brong Ahafo gold mine of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, one weed features another good side: it is being converted into a cash crop.

This weed, called Broussonetia papyrifera, or York, can consume arable land in a short time, growing 25-meter trees and a system of seeds and shoots that turns food-producing areas into wastelands.  Ghanaians may once have called it Devil’s Teak, now they see it as a raw material that can bring income to the villagers of Techeyre, who operate a micro business making biodegradable matting that is used for erosion control and slope stabilization at the nearby mining operation.

This micro business jute mat operation was conceived by Muhammad Bin Abubakar, an outspoken Newmont nursery manager who has left behind a large trail of good work, including growing a shaded forest where once there were only mining tailings. Bin, as he is known, says he learned of a way to use the tree when he worked at Newmont’s Indonesian operations.  According to Bin, one farmer, Amoafo Darkwah had to abandon his family’s two-acre cassava farm because of York infestation.

Project developer, Bin Abubakar, works with village members. Photo: G. Meyers

In the village of Techeyre, some 800 people, including Darkwah, join in stripping bark from these trees.  Bark stripped, the trees die within two weeks and will stop producing seeds. The dead timber can be used for minor construction needs or for cooking fuel, and much of the sawdust is used for growing at Bin’s nursery.

Then it’s time to treat the moneymaker, the bark. The fibrous material, taken from the bottom part of the tree, measures an average of one meter by five meters. This solid piece is first hammered flat so the fibrous structure can be pulled out, or woven into a continuous net material. The hammering process, where large hand-hewn mallets are used, resonates throughout the village with the sound of drums.

As Bin describes it, “ The mat is then woven into a mesh, just like chicken mesh, thus giving it the ability to trap eroded soil particles during storm periods.”

Beyond the environmental functionality of the jute mats, there is the micro business that has provided income for some 800 people where money or paying work are as scarce as the York is plentiful.

The difficulties posed by the York have been transformed into a solution, says Bin.

“So the jute mats are used for controlling erosion in our mining areas. Which now accounts for 800 people – ladies, men, and students in this area. And they are getting their livelihood from this work.”

We hope more micro businesses such as this one Bin has started begin popping up across Africa and other developing areas of the planet.