Trash to Treasure - EarthShip Construction.

What can you achieve with the discarded rubber tires and rammed earth??

Earthship Construction 

TerraCycle- A Green Revolution.

TerraCycle – The only company which manufactures numerous (approximately 350) products made entirely form waste and packaged entirely in waste.  Their motto – Outsmart waste! Their vision- Derive value from the waste and pass on those profits to the retailers and consumers.

The first ever product of TerraCycle, was a result of the founder’s vision to collect the organic waste from university dining hall and feed it to the worms. Worms decomposed the organic waste (at an amazingly fast rate) and produced poop, which had high percentage of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Just right as a nutrient for plants. Further liquefying the fertilizer proved to be user friendly, yielded more fertilizer from the waste. It made spraying on the plants easier, proved very easy to be absorbed (by the plants) and proved to be the best natural fertilizer there is for plant growth. This product, which was entirely made from the dining hall organic waste, was then packaged in another discarded material. TerraCycle researched that at least 200 million soda bottles of all sizes and shapes are used and discarded each year and all that was needed, was thorough cleaning of the bottles. No tedious process of crushing and melting the plastic bottles to extract plastic polymers which could be then molded into new bottles was needed. Neither was using tremendous amount of energy, transportation and fuel. The spray heads for the bottles were purchased from a company (that rejected a huge shipment because they changed their brand color) at a very cheap cost. The upcycled waste in the upcycled bottles was then finally packaged in the boxes of other products (turned inside-out) and the boxes were shipped to the final destinations. The product is still manufactured in the exact same fashion.

Since the business model demanded repurposing used bottles, Terracycle asked people to collect bottles for them. They set up ‘bottle brigades’ at local schools, churches and drives. There they interacted with the students and the people and educated them about importance of the reusing the bottles. A small donation was made for each bottle that was reused, which worked in the favor of schools and churches as a fundraiser. Community awareness and participation is still the back bone of their green business model.

TerraCycle products such as liquid fertilizers have practically no raw material costs since they are generated entirely from organic waste.  Process of upcycling has not just helped TerraCycle conserve energy and labor, but has also helped them to be economically viable. Their product is all natural, greener than most of the artificial fertilizers available, extremely effective and readily available in supermarkets (like Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc.) to the consumers without having to pay the premium price of ‘going green’. This marketing strategy has successfully helped TerraCycle reach out to the millions of consumers and also create a continuous cycle of demand and supply for their product.

Taking Waste Management to the next Level-

Terracycle has not just created a line of products made out of waste, but it has also created a radically new approach to manage our waste.  They are now an integral part of product planning for numerous leading brands. The brands like Target, Cool-aid, Kraft-Capri-sun, Honest kids, etc.  have launched “sponsored waste program” with TerraCycle to be socially responsible for their brand waste. Terracycle has set up hundreds of brigades across the country where people collect the non-recyclable materials like plastic bags, juice boxes, candy and various other wrappers, etc.  for TerraCycle. They have managed to upcycle this waste by applying innovative methods to re-purpose them into Target tote bags (from their plastic bags), handbags, pencil cases, backpacks, homework folders, lunch boxes, etc. (out of used juice boxes), rotary composter, rain barrel (out of used wine oak barrels), seed starter planting pots (out of used yogurt cups), Christmas ornaments( from used CDs), art pieces out of (e-waste generated by computers and cell phones).  The examples of ‘sponsored waste program’ are numerous and their vision is ever expanding!

Their products are simple, fun, re-invented from waste, have same or better features as the competition, easily affordable to everybody and have saved 52 million juice pouches, 5 million energy bar wrappers, 1 million soda bottles and 10 million cookie wrappers from ending up in landfills. They have actively educated, involved, and encouraged communities for collecting used products and have helped the giant waste generators take responsibility for their brand waste. They are environmentally friendly and one of the fastest growing and profit making businesses in America. 

TerraCycle, according to me, is setting up the most revolutionary model for future green products and green businesses within and outside of America.

_________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.terracycle.net

Szaky, Tom. Revolution In A Bottle. New York: NY, The Penguin Group, 2009

Why Sustainable Building Methods Matter-

We are one of the millions of species nature put on the face of beautiful Earth. Nature provided each species with a unique ability of survival. I believe our survival technique is our brain power. We have evolved from being primitive and living in the caves to not just building shelters, but building homes, building cities and even countries. Our nesting instinct is the strongest. Our built environment-  intense. It needs a great deal of time, labor and money. Our building methods are far more severe than how nature builds. It involves using a huge amount of natural resources and artificial materials. It consumes tons of energy and creates unfathomable amount of waste. It alters our natural environment and  exerts tremendous pressure on our real home, our planet Earth. 

We cannot rewrite our past, but we can most certainly make a shift from the present day’s unsustainable practices. As the most progressive species on earth it our utmost responsibility to create our built environment in harmony with our natural environment and make it conducive for life of the future generations to come.

Its quite true that we really need to take care of the grater problems and the smaller problems take care of themselves. When we decide to be the responsible species, and work hard towards making our home a better place, we include ourselves in the sphere of benefit as well. I believe specifying a sustainable materials is one of the important steps towards the big change we wish to make in our built environment. Specifying sustainable materials (which are renewable, naturally occurring, are sustainably developed and easily bio degradable) and specifying green processes (which will constantly work to minimize the adverse impact of manufacturing) can be our hope of mimicking nature’s way of constructing a world . A world, which is made up of -non (less)toxic, low energy consuming, non (less)polluting, reusable (thus waste reducing), multifunctional, durable and biodegradable products. A world, which is full of lush green, fresh, bright , vibrant and peaceful environment. Instead of  waste, pollution, toxic and contaminated environment.

When we began making informed decisions about the materials, the manufacturing processes and how we construct our world it can only help us on a personal level by offering us a healthier environment, cleaner air to breath, reduced levels of toxic fumes to breath, increased sense of well being, and a truly safe environment that all of us deserve.

The durability, long lasting quality, energy efficiency, and renewability of the sustainable materials can also bring about the cost benefits, which in fact is the primary factor in our decision making.  Therefor specifying sustainable materials is extremely vital , especially in the Architecture and Planning community. It can be a first step towards restoring our ecological, geological, environmental as well as our social and economical balance.

Reinvent and Redesign!!!

This exercise has made me realize few very important things besides the obvious fact of water conservation and water reuse.

It made me think about the disconnect between our present and future. And that, we HAVE to look beyond today to realize what is good for us tomorrow. I will always be an avid supporter of the two principals that I think I learned from this personal exercise- 

1. We have to reinvent the products that we use , not for just one product life but for the second or a third one too. I hope in future we can have soaps or body wash, that are not hazardous to us and our environment. I hope a simple filtration system is really enough to reuse our bath water for the plants. The ingredients that are not harmful for our skin are in fact the nutrients for the plants that they wont have to filter out. 

2.Using a home-made filter is definitely an eye opener, but it is most certainly not sufficient for the current times. We have to redesign our systems to  incorporate the technology for "recycle and reuse"  from the very beginning!

That is how, according to me,  we can claim to be "technologically advanced" species. 

consumption-easy, conservation...hmmm...not so easy!

Until now my life was easy. 

I have always used water with utmost care. We have a low flow-flush toilets in our apartments. And the water saving shower head. We mostly take showers than long baths. We keep turning the tap off while brushing the teeth, water our small patio garden only as much needed. And then we realized this was never going to be enough!

The project challenged me with an opportunity to take the water conservation to the next level! What is better than using water carefully? Re-using it! Conservationists have always insisted on recycling and reusing our grey water. Water that we use once for bathing, cooking and dish or clothes washing. Water that we can not drink,  but can certainly use for other purpose, such as flushing the toilets, gardens, washing cars, etc. 


Fact is we can not use this water without at least being filtered once.Good news is its not all that difficult! Researching, reading and building the sand- gravel water filter has been quite educational for me. What I realized was - that was not the hard part at all! The hard part was to use it!


I am not going to lie about how ridiculously inconvenient it is to collect the bath/shower water. To pour it mug by mug into the water filter and keep doing so till the sufficient amount of water is filtered to save at least one flush of potable water. If an average water consumption for a five minutes shower is approximately ten gallons, we should be able to save a number of flushes a day, but due to the water storage problem, lets just say we do manage to save at least two flushes everyday!


Does not look like a lot at this time, however,  I am a firm believer that EVERY SMALL ACTION MATTERS and that is sufficient enough for me to keep going on, for now.

Testing the water filter.

Experiment - 1

Garden soil + Water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSERWdr757Q

Experiment - 2

Simulated bath water!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISikuENPMOU

While I am quite certain that the water used with method body wash ( after filtration) is perfectly alright for flushing toilets, I can not say the same about using it for the gardens. Even the non-edible ones. 

True, the organic matter in the garden soil can filter many of the chemical elements present in my body wash as mentioned in my previous post, and that my plants are "smart" enough to avoid the chemicals being absorbed in their system to a great extent. But my small patio garden is also not equipped with all the good microbes, bacterias, earthworms, the sun rays, deep layers of healthy permeable soil and many such nature's weapons -the soil ecosystem in totality- to filter the chemical residues in the bath water. 

I would feel a little better if the personal care products that we use for bathing were designed with "the second life of bath water" in mind. For now, the scope of my water filtration project will be limited to using the filtered   bath water to reduce the number of toilets flushes in my household!

Filtering Bath Water.

Baths or showers are the essential to our life style. They wash away the dirt, perspiration and stress collected through our fast paced daily life. Water can have the most soothing and relaxing effects on our tired bodies and mind. But they require using soaps and can consume huge quantities of water!!While we can't avoid taking baths, we most certainly can avoid all that  "gray water" being wasted down the drain. 

Soaps are a major players in our baths. Filtering and reusing our bath water would be really easy as a blink of an eye (well not literally) if we did not use soaps. Millions of tons of soap ends up in our grey water through our baths. Various chemicals and artificial fragrances in soap are not just hazardous for environment, but they have now proven be be injurious to our health. 

Soaps and detergents  brands (that are aware of the water and health hazzard a soap can cause) have launched many environmentally responsible products which are more "natural" and more "biodegradable". Such as the body wash I use, by "method". 

method is now considered a leader in manufacturing greener products, packaged in environmentally responsible containers. Their products are made up of natural substances or derived from the natural substances with approved processes. Here is a link to the further reading for the queries about method label. 

http://www.methodhome.com/behind-the-bottle/natural from their website. 

I am extremely happy that I do not put parabens, phthalates, triclosan, EDTA or animal by-products in my system when I use this product. However I kept wondering  how on earth was I going to filter-

sodium lauryl, 

glucose carboxylate, 

lauryl glucoside, 

coco/sunfloweramidopropyl betaine, 

coco glucoside, glyceryl oleate, 

glycol distearate, 

glyceryl stearate, 

oryza sativa (rice) germ oil, 

oryza sativa (rice) bran extract, 

althaea officinalis extract, 

guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, 

glycerin, 

benzyl alcohol, 

olea europaea (olive) fruit oil, 

dehydroacetic acid, 

phenoxyethanol, 

benzoic acid, 

dmdm hydantoin, 

sorbic acid, 

fragrance (parfum)

..... and many such substances that are present in this body wash!

I might need all theses chemicals to clean myself if I pig-wrestled in a knee deep mud every day. Why do I HAVE to use all these chemicals on my skin which nature would most certainly filter out?