"Greening the Desert"

This is a very interesting video about work that renown Permaculturist Geoff Lawton has been a part of in the Middle East.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk&mode=related&search=

A Green Business Idea for Those Interested in Getting a Little Dirty

So, I keep having this thought that someone should start a business collecting all the compost-able material from restaurants and businesses. I recently read an article where a prison had gotten its inmates involved in a work project that gathered all the compost-ables from that one prison. The inmates then made large windrows of this good organic matter, which was sold to the public after it had been actively composted. This accomplished 3 key things: The inmates were learning a valid and employable skill during their incarceration, the prison was earning funds through the sale of finished compost, and the prison's waste removal costs dropped by something like 60%!

This is not rocket science. If businesses can realize a 60% reduction in their waste, they will gladly pay a fraction of that for a service that collects everything that isn't really garbage. I mean, just look at the packaging materials alone at a fast food restaurant. It will all end up in the trash can, but the reality is that almost all of it can be composted or recycled; the bag, the wrapper, the paper cup, the plastic straw and lid.

I think that if a service was started where an extra "composting can" was provided in one or two locations in fast food restaurants, many people would utilize them. Yes, it takes two extra seconds to sort your trash, but most people are embracing the reality that we are literally trashing the space we live in.

Seed Starting 2009!

Could we really power the world on saltwater?

Check out this link to a video concerning the use of radio waves to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen in saltwater so that it can be burned:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4271398.html

I first heard about this guy on PBS about a month ago, and I'm only now getting a chance to do a little research about his idea. There is a lot of concern, apparently, that the energy required to separate the elements is greater than the energy produced by the end combustion. This would mean a net energy loss, which is not sustainable.

I put this out there for all of us to ponder. What are the ways that the process could be made more efficient? Why do we leave it up to just think-tanks and engineers to come up with the solutions to these types of problems?

Very Simple, Automatic Plant Waterer --Could Be Used in Arid Climates

I was talking to my dad last week, and he was describing a homemade contraption he came up with to automatically water a plant while he was away on vacation. I thought the idea had good merit and a lot of potential for use in arid climates, so I'll share it.

Basically, what he did was to set a one gallon milk jug on the floor next to his blood banana plant. He stuck a short length of hemp rope into the jug, all the way down to the bottom, from what I gather. He took the other end of the rope and draped it over to the pot holding the plant and buried the end of it, just a little bit, in the potting soil. That was all it took to wick water from the jug to the pot. I think he was gone for about 2 weeks, and he said it seemed to have steadily watered the banana the whole time.

I will try to sketch up his set-up here in the coming days and get it posted as well.

Cardboard as Alternative Insulator?

So, my wife and I were sitting at our local coffee shop the other night when I was struck (not literally) by the cardboard sleeve on my mint mocha. Why had I never noticed this before?! The sleeve was essentially two layers of cereal box type cardboard, and yet it had enough insulating value to protect my hand from the hot coffee. That got me to thinking that perhaps cardboard could be a candidate for alternative insulation.

What you're up against is all the embedded energy that goes into recycling things like cardboard. There is a fine line in my mind concerning the benefits from using the energy to recycle the material (thus using less of the resources needed to constantly crank out "virgin" cardboard) and re-using the cardboard in close proximity & with minimal processing. In other words, while the cardboard might be a good insulator, using gobs of cardboard for this purpose only means that more new cardboard must be produced to keep up with the demand. What we need to look closer at is our demand for these products in the first place. Remember, the first step in the recycling paradigm is "reduce".