“1 in 6 people in the world lack stable access to electricity. Many people must rely on dangerous and toxic kerosene lamps as a primary source of light and spend upwards of 30% of their income on this kerosene. With the increasing developments in small scale solar technology, there is no reason why individuals and families should not have a safer, less expensive, and more reilable source of light. The LuminAID solar light is a cheaper, safer alternative to kerosene lamps.” ”Some of you may have heard us talk for some time now about finding a new name for our product. We are excited to announce that we are renaming both our product and our company. The Solar Light Pillow Project will now be known as LuminAID Lab, and our light is now the LuminAID solar light!  Our new name came to us with help from our talented friends Stevie Belchak and Jess Tom. While we are sad to retire the well-liked “light pillow” nickname, we felt the change was necessary in order to better market our product. We consider it one more of the many lessons learned so far in having started our venture. There are many new exciting developments to come, so be sure to join our mailing list to keep up to date!

“The LuminAID solar light proposes a new direction for solar technology. Flexible, photovoltaic film is laminated to polyethelenevinyl acetate plastic (PEVA). The LuminAID solar light inflates to produce a quality of light similar to a lantern. The LuminAID solar light provides 5 hours of light and fully charges in 6 hours. The inflatable core measures 9″ L x 9″ W. Printed on the core is a frit pattern that consists of white dots. The frit pattern diffuses the LED light.

“The LuminAID solar light inflates to diffuse light like a lantern.

“The circuit and photovoltaic panels are sandwiched between the two layers of plastic, protecting it from damage and making the pillow waterproof. When inflated, the LuminAID solar light can float. The outside layer of plastic can be printed with additional logos or patterns.

“Restoring normal life in regions affected by natural disasters or war plays a vital role in recovery efforts. Re-establishing electrical grid infrastructure in those cases can sometimes take weeks or months. There is a need for a solution that can be deployed easily and immediately and with minimal maintenance. Sustainable lighting solutions, including photovoltaic cells coupled to rechargeable batteries, are an ideal approach to providing on-demand lighting with no operating cost. However, current solar-charged light solutions are expensive and difficult to manufacture and transport. This makes them unattractive for large-scale deployment. The LuminAID solar light addresses these issues while providing a useful and portable form of light for disaster victims.”

Bravo!

With this in mind, the “New Year x(1)” practice of sustainability has been released as a very simple and painless way for each member of the world population to participate in contributing toward an increase in sustainability practices.

During the upcoming year, people can start their “New Year x(1)” practice as follows:

1. Use one less light each day, wherever it’s convenient. (reduces demand for electricity)
2. Buy one additional local product. (encourages local production to serve local communities)
3. Buy one less foreign product. (reduces supply chain CO2 emissions and demand for fossil fuels)
4. Turn the thermostat down one degree at bedtime. (reduces generation of greenhouse gases used to produce energy)
5. Buy one more product made from recycled materials. (promotes the economic engine that makes recycling a feasible business model)
6. Mow the lawn one time with a mulching mower (provides natural fertilizer for the lawn & reduces the need for so much chemical fertilizer)
7. Use one less plastic trash bag to collect the grass clippings. (reduces the requirement for more fossil fuels used in plastics manufacturing)
8. Eat one less hamburger. (reduces CO2 emissions from cow burps, the petroleum used for shipping, and the electricity used for freezing and cooking)
9. Rescue and put to use one item that’s headed for the landfill. (As Ben Franklin once said: Waste not, want not.”)
10. Devise one unique sustainable practice for yourself.  (choose from hundreds of options to spread new sustainable practices; the imagination has no limits – see Steven Sisters’ photo on natural pest control!)

A mixture of coffee and rum is placed in the bottom and then hung on the coffee tree. The bugs are attracted to the coffee smell, drink the mixture, get drunk, fall into the liquid and drown. Voila! Instant, natural pest control!

Such a list can grow exponentially for those who choose, but let’s look at the results from simple “New Year x(1)” math to measure effectiveness: 10 practices for each member of the population of this country – now counting at 308 million people – multiplies out to 3.8 billion sustainable practices in one year. Or if the world population of 6.9 billion people takes up this practice, multiplying by a factor of 10 will generate 69 billion more sustainable acts than were generated in 2010.

This is doable, quite easy to practice, and saves more than money. Cheers to the Future!

Happy New Year!

Vermeer drove a mobile CEB press from Iowa to the Rocky Flats CEB production site.

TSC Global, championing its innovative “Roofs for the World” program, met in Denver with a group of earth building advocates, including Partners Worldwide and Iowa-based Vermeer Tractors for a full production test run of the Vermeer’s mobile compressed earth block machine press.

Brad Wells, TSC executive director, says Vermeer drove its equipment from Iowa, setting up a mobile production facility to manufacture over 1000 compressed earth blocks (CEBs) which TSC will then use to complete the walls on a demonstration unit at its Denver headquarters. Wells believes this represents a new building paradigm for impoverished areas in the world.

The CEBs were manufactured on facilities west of Denver that had been donated by Church Ranch, where the team used “a mountain of blue ribbon dirt!” says Wells. The goal of this endeavor is to build durable, inexpensive structures that will resemble the Ugandan units developed by Moses Musaazi Kampala, as shown in this photo.

This October, a group of international business people gathered to observe Vermeer’s portable CEB press – the 714 Dynabloc Press. Vermeer and Faith Tech Connect developed the machine to use in worldwide poverty areas to build low-cost CEB homes and provide jobs to local residents in the process.  The blocks are produced using a mixture of clay-based soil and a small amount of cement for bonding.

“This is a forward-looking marriage of compressed earth blocks (CEB) and thin-shell concrete (TSC) Hypar roofs,” said Wells.  “This is the direction TSC Global is going: affordable safe durable shelter and post-disaster housing, post-disaster.  But we’re certainly not opposed to becoming involved with US domestic applications.”

The TSC roof, called a thin shell composite hyperbolic paraboloid, or TSC Hypar – a roof system designed by habitat pioneer, George Nez. He originally developed the roof for emergency resettlements in impoverished areas of the world as a low-cost shelter alternative to plastic structures currently found in many resettlement programs.

TSC Global proclaims the building methodology of the Nez roof has the potential for revolutionizing roofing and construction in the most impoverished and remote parts of the globe. The hypar roof has been used in many African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan.

Wells points out there are many options for wall infill, but this may be one of the most cost-effective solutions. “TSC Global believes that CEB is an ideal companion wall system for our roofs and the CEB people are big fans of our roofs for their walls equals a “1-2 Punch Dream Team.”  CEB is widely used, particularly in South Africa, but nowhere near exploited as we think it should be. If clay is available at a site and with attention to quality, this provides a very inexpensive and strong wall system.”

Nick Mallos, a scientist from the Ocean Conservancy, joined on the expedition to the North Pacific Gyre.

Embarking on an important journey this past August, the Ocean Conservancy set sail with San Francisco-based Project Kaisei to expand its research and help with some cleanup on the massive trash vortex that exists in the North Pacific Gyre. Four boats joined in the journey, including a barge large enough to haul away some of the trash that was found in this “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

The North Pacific Gyre, an area between California and the Hawaiian Islands, happens to be where trash from around the world is trapped – much of it plastic – due to four converging ocean currents. Some estimates report the gyre is twice the size of Texas, others argue its size goes double that of the United States.

The actual size of the garbage patch is a great question, says Nick Mallos, Nick Mallos, a marine scientist and member of Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris program who joined the expedition. He describes the trash vortex as being more like an archipelago in character, with parts being clear ocean, while other parts are dense and deep with trash.

Mallos collects data on microplastics, parts that have broken from bottles and packages into very small pieces that almost resemble confetti.  “There was this shimmering gleam of color because the water column just below the surface was littered with these objects. I was just astonished,” says Mallos. “In certain areas, the top three to six feet of water is absolutely dense with these microplastics. If you wave your hand in the water, you come up with these fragments on your hands.”

A sample of the ocean debris collected by Project Kaisei Photo: Project Kaisei

Joining on the expedition was Project Kaisei, an ongoing ocean cleanup initiative of Ocean Voyages Institute that tested ways to remove plastic from the ocean and find alternative uses for the trash. Since 1986, over 7.8 million volunteers have removed and documented 135 million pounds of debris threatening our ocean, lakes and rivers.

The 2010 expedition set out with a small fleet of three to four boats, including a barge, which will allow the team to bring back much larger amounts of debris than in the previous 2009 expedition. The team looked at remediation techniques, which include turning plastic into fuel, or other products, which can create a value for what is being removed from the ocean surface. The team also tested scaled-up trash catch methods. The report will be published in early 2011.

One goal of the expedition: to bring together new technologies, innovations, and capabilities that can both help clean some of the plastic debris from our ocean, as well as prevent it from entering in the first place.

In the course of four days through a part of the garbage patch, Mallos reports he and the team counted over 16 thousand pieces of micro plastics that were visible in a 10-meter swath in front of the boat. Plastics represented 95 percent of the junk they found. Mallos points out that the entire issue of human trash in the ocean is a challenging undertaking for the world population.

” As consumers, we need to systematically reevaluate our daily behaviors, and make choices like drinking from reusable bottles, eliminating our use of one-time shopping bags, and recycling,” Mallos says. “The sea of debris I confronted in this remote part of the ocean underscores the global nature of the problem and its magnitude. We need to devise a collaborative effort that incorporates consumers, businesses, manufacturers, and government. Together, we can craft marine debris solutions to mend our periled ocean ecosystem.”

We hope many pass on word of this endeavor.

“The Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali is not only the world’s largest mud brick building but also a model of ecofriendly and sustainable architecture. Though the current mosque was ordered to be built by the French colonial administration in 1906, its style follows African ones of the region. In fact, the mosque is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of the architectural style found in the very dry Sahel and Sudanian regions south of the Sahara, where Islamic influences are abundant. Other examples include the Agadez Grand Mosque in Niger and the Larabanga Mosque in Ghana.”

Thanks for this story, Simone!

That is when bloggers across more than 100 countries participate in Change.org’s Blog Action Day for clean water. The purpose of this event is to debate, brainstorm and raise global awareness around clean water. Participating bloggers will take this single day to write about this very important and ill-understood issue.

“Why Water?” asks the Blog Action Day website. Many people just take water for granted, like the photo on the left. But there are one billion people on this planet without enough water.

Change.org writes, “Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted. Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.”

Here is a list of suggested posts copied from the website:

• Water as a Human Right: In July, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over objection from the United States. Today, nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water. More Info »
• Women: In Africa, women are predominantly responsible for collecting water. They walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 40 pounds to gather water for their community, which is usually still not safe to drink. More Info »
• Polluted Oceans: Not only is pollution bad for the environment, it’s also expensive! Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year. More Info »
• Uninhabitable Rivers: Today, 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. That’s not surprising considering the fact that 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually. More Info »
• Food Footprint: Do you know the water footprint of your food? For example, 75 liters of water are required to make a glass of beer and 15,500 liters to make a kilogram of beef. More Info »
• Water Wars: Many scholar, researchers and political analysts attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. In fact, a report commissioned by the UN Development Program found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa. More Info »
• Technology Footprint: On an average day, 500 billion liters of water travel through US power plants to power all the technology that we use every day. For example, that shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million liters to charge those alone. More Info »
• Bottled Water: Even though people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled. More Info »
• Farmers vs. Animals: As water becomes scarcer in Africa, farmers not only compete with each other but also with other animals, including elephants. Forced into close contact with farmers, elephants destroy crops and wreak havoc on agriculture, causing farmers in turn to resort to violence in order to protect their crops and water sources. More Info »
• Children: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. More Info »
• Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now took 400 gallons of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 1800 gallons. Not wearing cotton? The dyes and synthetic fibers used to make your clothes create waste that’s among the many contributors to water pollution. More Info »
• Water Celebrities: A number of celebrities have taken up the cause of water and water rights, including Matt Damon , Adrian Grenier , Leonardo DiCaprio , and Will & Jada Smith .

Blog Action Day is an annual event that brings bloggers together to post about a worthy cause. In its fourth year, Blog Action Day has covered environmental issues, poverty and climate change. This year, water was chosen by user vote on Change.org’s blog. It is the first year that Change.org is taking on the event from Blog Action Day co-creators Collis and Cyan Ta’eed.

Blog Action Day is very much about grassroots activism, taking the philosophy that a lot of ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference. Change.org hopes that the volume of blog posts on October 15 will create a meme around water issues, raising awareness and creating a digital, global think tank.

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.

IDE's water technologies have had an important impact on poor rural farmers in developing countries. Photo: IDE

In Denver, an important art exhibition from developing countries opens in Denver, along with another feature concerning sustainability and affordable water technologies. The exhibition, titled, The Art of Dirt, has been organized by Denver-based IDE The exhibition takes place at the EventGallery 910 Arts and will run through September 25.

According to IDE, The Art of Dirt allows visitors to learn how simple, affordable technology design has improved the incomes and lives of the millions of people at the base of the economic pyramid. The exhibition includes photographs, videos and a tomato garden growing in the gallery that has been irrigated using IDE water technology.

IDE drip irrigation system in use. Photo: IDE

IDE, founded in 1982, strives to create income opportunities for poor, rural households in the developing world. This exhibition showcases some simple, pattern-changing technologies, such as IDE’s foot-powered treadle pump, and low-pressure micro-sprinkler and affordable drip irrigation that IDE has made available in developing countries.  This technologies have helped poor, rural families gain control over their water supply and opening up a new world of income-generating possibilities.

Dealing with water technologies like these started when IDE worked in Bangladesh in the 1980s, where the lack of access to water in rural villages was a widespread problem. IDE personnel believed that manually powered irrigation pumps could solve some of the water problem and allow farmers to increase productivity. As a result, IDE increased annual sales of manual irrigation pumps from 14,000 to 75,000 in a five-year period. After that initial success, IDE found a better solution in the treadle pump, which is more efficient and easier to operate than manual pumps. To date, more than 1.5 million treadle pumps have been sold in Bangladesh, creating 1.4 billion dollars in net additional income per year.

Today, IDE uses a market oriented development model to increase the income of the rural poor by improving market access, increasing agricultural production, and creating sustainable local businesses. IDE’s projects are country specific, aimed at increasing income for those living on less than a dollar a day in the most efficient and viable manner possible according to each region’s unique opportunities.

Over the last 28 years we have worked with more than 3.8 million families, increasing their aggregate income by over one billion dollars. Kudos!

Enel Archimede plant in Italy. Photo: Enel

This July the Italian utility Enel unveiled “Archimede”, one of the most important developments in the emerging field of concentrating solar power (CSP). The launch showcases this power plant as the first CSP  plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage.

Archimede, a 5 MW plant located in Priolo Gargallo (Sicily). The breakthrough project was co-developed by the utility, Enel, and ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development. The name, “Archimede,” refers to the rows of huge parabolic mirrors used to capture the sun’s rays, recalling the “burning mirrors” that Archimedes is said to have used to set fire to the Roman ships besieging Syracuse during the Punic War of 212 BC.

Energy writer Carlo Ombello writes that while several CSP plants already operate (see graphic above)  in the world, mainly in the US and Spain, they use synthetic oils to capture the Sun’s energy in the form of heat, using mirrors that beam sunlight onto a pipe where pressurized oil heats up. A heat exchanger is then used to boil water and run a conventional steam turbine cycle. Older CSP plants only operate at daytime – when direct sunlight is available.

In its press release, Enel writes that the Archimede plant is “the first in the world to use molten salts as the heat transfer fluid and is also the first in the world to integrate a combined-cycle gas facility and a solar thermal power plant for electricity generation.”

Because molten salts can operate at higher temperatures than oils (up to 550°C instead of 390°C), they increase efficiency and power output of a plant. With the higher-temperature heat storage that is allowed, the plant can also extend its operating hours to a 24-hour day. From an environmental and cost perspective, this news is good. A simplified plant design that does not use avoids the need for oil-to-salts heat exchangers eliminate the safety and environmental concerns of using oils. Molten salts are inexpensive and do not catch on fire like synthetic oils currently that are used in current CSP plants. In addition, the high temperatures of molten salts enable the use of steam turbines at the standard pressure/temperature parameters as used in most common gas-cycle fossil power plants. Translated, this means that conventional power plants can be integrated replaced with this technology without expensive retrofits to the existing assets.

Carlo Rubbia -- Molten salt pioneer. Source: Enel

The concept for using molten salts dates back to 2001. The Italian nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Carlo Rubbia (left photo), ENEA’s President at the time, started research and development on molten salt technology. One problem encountered in using molten salts is that they freeze pr solidify at around 220°C.

ENEA and Archimede Solar Energy, a private company focusing on receiver pipes, have developed several patents in order to improve the pipes’ ability to absorb heat and maximize the heat transfer to the fluid carrier.

Insiders believe the result of these and several other technological improvements create a state-of-the-art CSP plant at a price 60 million Euros. While the price is high for a 5 MW power plant, energy officials believe this model is scalable for a roll-out there is overwhelming scope for a massive roll-out in sunny regions like Northern Africa, the Middle East, Australia and the United States.

TSC Global's hypar roof is located next to the light ril tracks, just south of downtown Denver

Evidence of new buildings featuring an innovative and cost-effective roof can now be seen in a growing number of African nations, including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan, as part of a Roofs for the World initiative.

This roof is called a Thin Shell Composite Hyperbolic Paraboloid, or TSC Hypar, thus the name, TSC Global, which proclaims  the building methodology using this roof has the potential for revolutionizing roofing and construction in the most impoverished and remote parts of the globe. TSC Global executive director, Brad Wells, says that compared to the corrugated steel roof structures seen everywhere in the developing world, TSC roof construction requires a minimum in cut lumber, demands no power machinery for construction, and leaves almost no carbon footprint. In addition, buildings featuring these roofs are significantly quieter in rain and windstorms, and can be earthquake resistant.

Denver-based TSC Global was created to build, promote and fully develop this construction method, with the belief that there is real potential to dramatically enhance the overall quality and affordability of structures used by millions if not billions of people worldwide. It is now focusing on a potential rebuilding program for Haiti.

Photos: Brad Wells, TSC Global

A TSC roof is constructed as follows: an acrylic cement composite is applied to an arched hyperbolic paraboloid shaped cloth that has been stretched across a four-sided pyramid framework using wood or bamboo. When the acrylic and cement composite cures, the product is a far superior roofing alternative to corrugated metal and other roofs, contends Wells.

Even with a final thickness of approximately one centimeter, a TSC Hypar roof is strong enough to hold heavy weights. Hypar structures have been built for decades but the most closely observed demo structure was built in 1996 by habitat pioneer, George Nez, who has worked on United Nations and USAID emergency relief projects. The TSC website reports Mr. Nez’s structure has endured Colorado winds, freezes and thaws of as much as three feet of. In warmer climates, these roofs should last many decades.

Importantly, a venting and circulation system has been added to the hypar roof in hot climates, allowing air and cooking exhaust to escape. The top vent and cap is an important and simple modification, says Mr. Nez. Adding a ceiling and sealing off the attic space will also enhance cooling.

A TSC roof, reinforced with embedded chicken wire mesh demonstrates resilience to failure or collapse, says the TSC website, adding that the lightweight roof can decrease chances of injury or worse in earthquake scenarios, even in the most severe earthquake. Recent work in overall building design by Colorado School of Mines structural engineering professor, Panos Kiousis, suggests that simple wall-embedded cross-braced panels secured to a ring beam, with adequate fastening of roofs to posts, should create an earthquake resistant building, still at low costs.

TSC structures can be constructed easily in the most remote settings with no transport of large building materials or equipment. Wells says his target populations include refugee and post-disaster projects, urban “shantytown” replacement, and general commercial and residential building construction. He adds that a further goal for his organization is to offer training and micro-finance networks.