What hope do we have for the future?

It’s scary to think that we could totally deplete our resources and pollute our lands and waters until the earth can simply not replenish itself. We can’t expect that this earth is going to sustain itself if we keep destroying it. For us to have a future that is just as good as what we have in the present, we have to follow all the sustainable practice discusses in this blog series. There are so many books and magazines on how to be green and more sustainable practices that I’m sure we could all improve upon.

It starts with the involvement of the whole community. We have to be realistic with what we can achieve and work towards continuous improvement. If we started to diligently do all the small things in our homes to be more sustainable such as turning down the heat, installing low flow shower heads and faucets, weather guarding your windows and doors, consuming less water and materials and producing less waste. There are many things we can do, that are so easy and simple we should have been diligently doing them already.

As mentioned before about the Earthships, we need to start incorporating more recycled products into our production now and building design. The hope for becoming ‘off-grid’ seems that of a distant dream that will never be reached, and maybe it is. But we can start incorporating some of the ideas and concepts for saving energy from the Earthship into our homes and buildings. Incorporate recyclables into our homes, and find better uses for them instead of having to be reprocessed into something else, or tossed into a landfill.

With a growing population, the need for smart design has never been more important. We can all live more meaningful and sustainable lives by reducing our dependency on vehicles. We can start by doing little things like carpooling, or taking the bus more often. Even better ways would be biking or moving closer to work and completely reducing the need for a single occupant vehicle. The ideas of new urbanism can help us get away from he problems we face in our communities today.

Future production and design will need to utilize ideologies of biomimicry to reduce out waste and energy inputs. It is going to take a total shift in our way of production from extraction and reducing the materials we use to make endless amount of ‘stuff’, all the way through to disposal.

If we don’t start changing our wasteful ways we can be certain that this earth is going to reach its carrying capacity. This would surly be a miserable time to be alive. We will use everything up and leave nothing for the generations to come. In this weeks class, we watched the short film by Dr Seuss, The Lorax. I had never heard of it before, being the Dr Seuss fan that I am, and I was surprised that he had already written a book that seems to tell a grim portrayal of the future we are destined for if we keep on using all our resources. In this film, a greedy Once-ler moves into a beautiful town and uses up all the Truffula trees to make ‘things’ out of them. He uses up all the trees and leaves nothing for the animals and fish that inhabit the land. The Lorax pleads to the Once-ler to stop using all the trees and stop polluting the land for the animals but the Once-ler does not listen. The Once-ler’s face is never shown, and so it resembles the figure we have of the big faceless corporations. At the end of the film, the town has been destroyed and there aren’t even any trees left to make anymore ‘things’. All the animals and fish have to evacuate the land since there is nothing left and it has been so polluted that they couldn’t even survive in it. Unless people start caring about the earth and begin taking care of it, instead of just taking from it, we don’t have a future.

Its pretty revolutionary for Dr Seuss and I think all children should start reading this book so they can understand that we only have 1 earth, and if we destroy it, we don’t have a backup, and we are going to be left with nothing.

The information used to write this blog was taken from various classes in Sustainable Development taught by Dr Ling.

How is sustainable development in Practice?

With an increasing population and depleting resources, we are beginning to understand the need for new sustainable design. After using up large amounts of our resources, taking up too much space and consuming and creating large amounts of waste, we are finally starting to tackle these issues. A case of sustainable development in building homes out of waste and recylable products is a great example of how sustainable development is being put into place (ands its really neat too).

During presentations last week in my sustainable development class, two groups discussed the implementation of ‘Earthships’. Earthships are a sustainable way of developing homes, especially in developing countries where disaster has struck. One group discussed how Haiti is using this design as a way of reestablishing homes for the millions of people that were left homeless after the massive earthquakes struck the country in January of 2010.

I guess I’ll tell you a little about these Earthships. An Earthship is essentially a home constructed out of waste materials and earth! It’s a great way of using our waste to the fullest. The foundation of most Earthships are made of tires filled with earth. These structures enable the home to resist catastrophes such as earthquakes as they are flexible. In many cases plastic bottles, glass bottles, or aluminum cans are uses to enforce the earth and concrete walls, this also makes then look very pretty, as different coloured bottles can be used and can create a sort of mosaic-like wall that look like tiny windows.

These Earthships are a great way of using our local resources and waste and harvest energy from the sun. They are made to be ‘off-grid’ homes as they use the sun for heating as well as lighting, and the materials used for walls provide temperature regulation within the home. No fossil fuels are needed for energy in these homes. The design of the thick walls allows them to be heated by the sun until the temperature in the room is lower than the temperature of the walls, at this time the walls will radiate heat back into the space. The earth roofs and walls keep the home cool in very hot climates.

Water is harvested and store in cisterns outside the home.  The water is caught from the roof and is heated by solar energy. A water organizing modules regulates the water through the home, is used about 4 times and is treated them onsite in botanical cells.

Earthship residents are able to harvest their own food in the Earthship greenhouses, with the effort to produce enough food to feed the residents of each home. Expanded food production capabilities can be built through larger greenhouses enabling residents to have fish, chickens and goats for meat, cheezes and milk.

I think this is a great example of sustainable development in practice and I think that we should all live in Earthships, at least I want to live in an Earthship. It is a great way to address our global warming issue and has many advantages in design and energy and water conservation. I’m really excited to know about Earthships because my family owns property in Chile, and my brother and sister have always talked about building an eco friendly house, but this idea seems so much better. I’ve already discussed this idea with them, and I can’t wait to get started!

You can get more information on the Earthship Biotecture Website.

The information obtained to write this blog was taken from the Earthship Biotecture website as well as from classmates.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff

As North Americans, we are bombarded everyday with advertisements for the newest ‘stuff’ that we all apparently ‘need’. As consumers we are brainwashed into thinking that we need stuff to be happy. We see other people with stuff and we feel that we need it too. We are constantly buying more and more stuff, half of it we don’t even need. We are just satisfying our need to have the newest and best stuff.

Do we really need those designer clothes? Or more vehicles than there are drivers? Or every new video game console that comes out on the market? I know some people who do all of these things, none in my class of course. The answer to all these is no. We need to stop being so materialistic, greedy and wasteful. People replace things that aren’t even broken and then we just throw everything away or store it in attics and garages. We need to stop and think about how much stuff we buy and how much of it we actually need to survive.

In the video “The story of Stuff”, Annie Leonard discusses the life cycle of the ‘stuff’ we buy. She outlines it from extraction all the way to disposal. The chain of events starts at extraction from the earth, production of the product, distribution in stores, consumption and then disposal.

Annie Leonard, The story of stuff

She talks about how we extract mass amounts of resources, mostly from other countries, expose our workers to toxic chemicals during production for low wages, sell products in mass quantities in stores to give the consumer the cheapest price, probably cheaper than the total cost to extract and produce the good. So who pays? The country whose resources were depleted and the workers who expose themselves to toxic environments for low wages, just so we can get stuff at the cheapest price, making us want to buy more! So we do, then we throw it out, because now companies make products that have a short lifespan. It’s true when they say they just don’t make things the way they used to. It’s as if they think we have a bottomless pit to keep throwing all the old stuff that nobody wants any more into.

Clearly producing so much stuff is taking a toll on our resources. We put so much energy into production of stuff. The concept of Biomimicry is a great way to incorporate natural processes into our products. If we can design products from nature inspired models, we can obtain products using less energy, less waste, and lower toxicity, making it very sustainable.

Tubercle Technology for wind turbines

Biomimicry examples

·       Self Assembly (CaCO₃ in self-assembling shells)

·       CO₂ as a feedstock (plants can do this)

·       Solar transformation

·       Power of shape

o   Energy efficiency: whale fins- aviation wing design

o   Self cleaning objects: leaf shape

·       Quenching thirst by drawing water from air and fog

·       Metals without mining- microbes do this

·       Green chemistry

·       Timed degradation: mussels in ocean- threads dissolve within 2 years

The coolest cases of Biomimicry can be seen at this link. Some things we can do to reduce the amount of stuff we consume is to buy things from garage sales, make your own stuff, and just stop buying stuff.

Information taken from my sustainable development serious class, taught by Dr Ling. Other sources from this website, http://www.whatwomenmake.com/the-forest-for-the-trees

Sustainable Cities

Kitchener, Waterloo, Ont.

One of the biggest problems with maintaining a sustainable city is the issue of urban sprawl. With a growing population, we are going to run out of space if we keep building communities and neighbourhoods the same way. As of now, we have dug ourselves into a hole, where we are consuming large amounts of land to house a minimal number of people. Urban sprawl has many disadvantages, such as a loss in a sense of ‘place’, high dependency on automobiles, less interaction among communities and loss of natural ecosystems and farmland due to large land consumption. Urban sprawl doesn’t allow people to commute by walking or biking and decreases interactions among neighbours, increases social and health impacts, not to mention it is very expensive and inefficient.

By completely changing our cities, making them more compact and walkable, we will greatly increase our quality of life. Having more compacts communities will bring people and services closer together, creating greater interaction and simpler, cheaper ways of getting around. Having more walkable cities encourages attractive design and makes the best use of the land.

New urbanism is a concept that is trying to do just this; create more walkable communities. New urbanism is very similar to old urbanisms, before everyone had a car to get around in and lived in closer proximities to school, work and services. New urbanism actually strives to have all services within a 10 minute walking distance. You can check how walkable your house is in proximity to services in your area at www.walkscore.com. All you have to do is type in your address or postal code and it will give you a score out of 100 on how walkable your home is. When I typed in my home here is Victoria, I got an 83/100, very walkable! I already knew it would be better than my home in Ontario, as here I live within 10 minutes of the uptown Wal-mart centre and next door to the Mayfair mall. I also live very close to a grocery store, and many services on Douglas. However, my home in Ontario got a 27/100, Car-dependant. I did expect a low score, since my home is in a subdivision with one Mac’s milk, and it takes 10 minutes just to get there.

New urbanism encourages a walkable community but also offers better transit system for people who need to commute farther to work. An example this is seen in the use of mobility hubs in Toronto. They have integrating of travel and services. Some advantages of mobility hubs are that they offer a place for regional and inner city transit, connections for bike and car share programs, ferries and taxis.

Downtown Montreal

I love to visit my sister in Montreal, and the more I think about it, they have done a good job of minataining a sustainable city, well, if you live downtown. My sister has lived there for almost 15 years and she has never had a car. She lives close to downtown, and can get anywhere by taking the bus or metro, but she mostly walks.Montreal was named the 15th most sustainable city in Canada in the magazine for clean capitalism, Corporate Knights. The 2010 Most sustainable cities in Canada can be found in the link.

New city infrastructure is being developed all the time, it should be an initiative, or even a law, for architects to start building all buildings with the objective of creating a sustainable city.

Information from this blog was taken from a Sustainable Development Series class, taught my Dr. Ling.