The German-made Carla Cargo is a three-wheeled cycle trailer with an electric assist motor. It can be pulled by any type of bicycle (including a cargo cycle or an electric bike), and it allows you to carry heavy (up to 150 kg) and bulky cargo (a loading platform of 60 x 160 cm). Uncoupled from the bicycle, the Carla Cargo works as a hand cart for large or heavy loads. The vehicle weighs 40 kg including the battery, and has a range of 40 to 60 km.

The electric motor is built into the front wheel and can produce 250 watts as a trailer (up to 23 km/h), and 500 watts as a handtruck (up to 6 km/h). The lithium-ion battery has a capacity of 11 or 15 Ah. The vehicle has two disk brakes and a parking brake, which are controlled via the handle or the bicycle handlebar.

The Carlo Cargo sells for about 4,000 euro. The construction manual is freely accessible online, but only in German for now. The trailer/handcart is present at the International Cargo Bike Festival, April 16-17, in Nijmegem, the Netherlands.

Previously: 8-wheeler cargo cycle.

When the British colonized India, they imposed their own system of water management, which included the building of large-scale dams, sewers, and irrigation channels. This high-tech approach continues today, as the World Bank is urging India to build enormous dam projects to fight drought and depleted aquifers. The Indian government has followed its advice. Its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called dams the “Temples of modern India”. Since then, India has built over 5,000 dams and large reservoirs. [1]

However, before the British arrived, people on the subcontinent used traditional low-cost, low-tech engineering to collect rainwater for thousands of years. This involved the placement of thousands of small structures throughout rural areas which, in one way or another, catch excess rainwater from the monsoon months and allow it to slowly percolate into the groundwater during the dry season. To maintain and manage these structures, community-based management schemes were necessary. However, these were actively discouraged during British rule and following independence. As a result, in the 20th century many of these small reservoirs fell into disrepair.

In the 1980s, the Alwar district in the North-Western state of Rajasthan was one of the driest in all of India, even though older villagers remembered that its rivers used to flow in the past. Many farmers were migrating to the cities, as there was no longer any means of subsistence from the land. In 1985, Rajendra Singh—now known as the ‘Water Man of Rajasthan’—arrived in the area and started encouraging villagers to rebuild their old water reservoirs, or water johads. When the villagers had constructed 375 johads, the river began to flow after having been dry for several decades. [2]

By 2003, Singh, through the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh, had helped with the construction of over 5,000 johads and the rejuvenation of 2,500 old reservoirs, providing irrigation water to 140,000 ha. and 700,000 people. [3, 5] In 2015, 8,600 johads had been built, bringing water back to 1,000 villages. [4] The johads are incredibly cheap and productive—at 100 rupees per capita, they can raise economic production by as much as 400 rupees per year. Compare this to nearby Sardar Sarovar Dam project, which cost 300 billion rupees, and cost 100 times more per person supplied with water, and 340 times more per hectare irrigated. [3]

The design of water johads. Source: Anupma Sharma, National Institute of Hydrology

And yet water johads are extremely simple and low-cost structures that require no large equipment or expensive materials to build—simply a village of able hands and local elements. After digging a pit, the villagers shape the excavated earth into a semicircular mud barrier. A stone drain is sometimes set up, allowing excess water to seep into the ground, or connecting it with johads nearby. Essentially the johad will capture runoff from monsoon floods and allow it to slowly percolate into the water table during the dry months. When many johads are built in one area, they have a cumulative effect, resulting in the replenishment of whole aquifers. [5] In addition, it has been shown that the water stored in the aquifers does not draw away water from communities downstream. [6]

It’s important to note that water johads are place-specific technologies and cannot necessarily be replicated to other geographical locations or climates. They require steady sloping land—where each johad can feed water into another downstream—and a rainy season, where floods can fill up the reservoirs during the dry months.

In addition, constructing and maintaining thousands of water reservoirs also required new forms of resource management. Since the government refused to participate with the johad construction efforts, or recognize that they were effective—its policies remain tied to the development narrative. Villagers decided to take matters in their own hands and organize their own water management councils, which have now expanded to managing forests and parks through participatory and democratic methods. The result is what some have claimed a miracle: bringing water back to a water-scarce and impoverished area.

Building Community

An engineer might look at a johad and claim that it is far too simple a technology—there is no innovation here, let alone a miracle. This is true: similar technologies exist all over the world. In Mediterranean countries, for example, rain water catchments were built over a thousand years ago and continue to provide water to farmers during dry seasons.

Rajendra Singh attributes the success of the johads to the fact that the technology encourages people to work together, building community while addressing essential needs. This is in strong opposition to the large government-built dams, which have displaced millions of people in India and, on average, have increased poverty. [5]

So, perhaps the key innovation with the johads is that rather than relying on engineering expertise or governmental action, villagers have constructed the johads themselves through traditional methods and community participation. The result is the revival of a low-tech tradition that is far more cost-effective than high-tech dams could ever be.

Aaron Vansintjan

Sources:

[1] International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD). http://icold-cigb.net/GB/World_register/general_synthesis.asp?IDA=206

[2] The Water Man of Rajasthan. Frontline. Sebastian, Sunny, 2001.

[3] Water-harvesting in India transforms lives. Alternet. McCully, Patrick. 2003

[4] An ancient technology is helping India’s “water man” save thousands of parched villages. Ghoshal, Devjyot. 2015.

[5]. Water Harvesting: Alwar, Rajasthran. National Institute of Hydrology (Roorkee, India). Sharma, Anupma.

[6]. Traditional Water Harvesting Structure: Community behind ‘Community’. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 41, No. 7, pp. 596-598. Kashwan, Prakash, 2006.

[7]. “Dams,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, MIT Press, vol. 122(2), pages 601-646, 05. Esther Duflo & Rohini Pande, 2007.

Related: Madakas.

Almost a quarter of a million windmills worldwide will need to be replaced by 2030. The rotor blades are made of valuable composite materials that are difficult to recover at the end of their energy generating life. New generation rotor blades made of glass or carbon fibre composite material have average lifespans of between 10 and 25 years. Recycling of glass fibre composite is possible though complex. Recycling of the more highly valued carbon fibre composite is currently impossible. In many EU countries landfill of carbon composites is now prohibited. Thus, many rotor blades at the end of their wind turbine life are currently shredded and incinerated. At current growth rates, by 2034, there will be about 225,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually, worldwide.

The Dutch firm Superuse Studios has found a solution to the growing mountains of waste generated by the wind industry: making use of end-of-life rotor blades in design and architecture. The realised projects demonstrate the technical applications and potential for blade made designs and architecture. In their second life as design and architectural elements, rotor blades could be used for a further 50-100 years, or more. Blade made designs are durable, iconic, compete economically, and reduce the ecological footprint of projects in which they are used.

REwind Willemsplein

Public seating made from rotor blades was designed and installed for the Rotterdam municipality. The REwind public seating is located at Willemsplein, a public square at the foot of the well-known Erasmus bridge. The municipality was in need of durable, indestructible seating with iconic quality for people waiting to board harbour tour boats, but which could also be temporarily removed, when necessary, to make room for public events. Nine rotor blades from Friesland destined for incineration were used.

Public seating in Rotterdam. Picture by Denis Guzzo. More pictures.

Five blades were used for seating, three as backrests, and one as place marker. By adjusting the angles and positions of the blades ergonomic public seating with a diversity of seating options was created. Seating depths vary from 30 to 80 cm, providing upright seating to more relaxed lounging options. The 6 metre long blades are attached with bolts to 1m3 concrete aggregate blocks made heavy enough to keep the lightweight blades in place. The aggregate is 100% recycled concrete rubble from Rotterdam.

Wikado Playground

The first Wikado built at the Meidoorn playground at Oude Noorden, Rotterdam, was built for the same budget as a comparable standard playground, and has an ecological footprint fifty times smaller. The playground was designed to maximise imaginative play, social interaction, and children driven game development. The inherent properties of rotor blades make this material an excellent choice: weather and wind resistant, organic, ergonomic shapes, and a strong and rigid structure. The cylindrical portion of 30 m long blades has a diameter of 1.4 m and makes for interior play spaces. One of the five 30 m blades was used intact. The remaining four blades were cut into three sections.

Playground in Rotterdam. Picture by Denis Guzzo. More pictures.

The four cylindrical end sections were transformed into play towers that stand around the central play zone. Each tower has a distinct and recognizable character. The ‘towerflat’ has three rooms with peeking holes, the ‘watchtower’ with a former F16 cockpit on top, the ‘water tower’ with hand pump for children to pump water for mixing with sand, and the ‘slide tower’ to which the original slippery sides from the site are attached.

REwind Almere

Construction is underway of the Superuse Studios’ designed shelters for the thousands of daily commuters to use the bus-train transfer station at Almere Poort. The durable and indestructible shelter design uses four 30m rotor blades. Waste rotor blades are easy to find in Almere, Holland’s #1 wind-energy region. Stacked in a Stonehenge like manner two 30 m blades are used to create a large shelter. Two of these large shelters are being built. The changing shape over the length of the blades gives a shelter roof that morphs into different shapes depending on the angle from which is it is viewed.

A bus shelter made from rotor blades. Source: Blade Made, Superuse Studios.

Every part of the blade is used. The blades were cut in four sections to harness the different inherent qualities along the length of the blade. This gives construction pieces that are essentitally readymade for different construction purposes. The strongest and heaviest part (former connection to the wind turbine axial) is used as roof supporting columns, and the widest part of the blade for the roof. The tip of the blade is used for the long seating bench, and the circular end pieces are used for large planting pots placed around the site. Completion is expected by the end of March 2014.

Future Plans

Superuse Studios has been invited to partner with the Danish ‘Genvind Consortium‘,  a consortium of over 20 organisations, including Vestas, the biggest wind turbine producer of the world. The main goal of this consortium is to find solutions to the growing mountains of waste generated by the wind industry. Superuse Studios have joined the Genvind project to demonstrate how worldwide blade made projects that reuse wind rotor blades can play an important role in the processing of this composite material. The collaboration already resulted in very concrete plans for a blade made bridge in Denmark.

Thanks to Tim Joye.

The Johanson3 is a stable three-wheeler, with the driver leaning back rather than sitting (though sitting is an option). Feet rest on a plate, and pressing down on that plate creates a lean on the front wheel, turning the vehicle while the rear wheels remain solidly on the ground.

That makes for easy on-and off, especially for those who – owing to age, injury, or fashion choice (“skirts, saris, djellabas, and kimonos” are accommodated, according to Johanson3) – cannot throw a leg over a bicycle seat. Various models accommodate single riders or as many as three adults plus two kids, and can haul up to 660lbs of flesh and cargo. Read more: The J3, a trike that hauls freight, spares frocks.

The Johanson3 is available for pre-order and costs $3,150 – $3,900.

Livestock at waste management park in Bobbili, India

Lowly as it may seem, Bobbili prides itself on its zero-waste zone with a comprehensive recycling system that ensures nothing goes to the landfill. Their unique solution involves door-to-door collection of household waste strictly separated as dry and wet, and the 2010 ban on plastic. The spotlight of the scheme is the Municipal Solid Waste Park – a 8.5-acre site comprising a bio-compost yard handling 2.5 to 3 tonnes of organic waste a day. The most innovative part is the utilisation of livestock.

A 2012 report by India’s Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies states that “animals are the part of the solution, not the problem. The livestock’s potential contribution in solving environmental problems is equally large. The livestock contribute to tackle our environmental degradation by a variety of ways.”

By 2012 the park kept 4 chickens, 21 ducks, 6 pigs and other animals for different functions. Chickens are benefited from the insects in the waste, whilst pigs would gulp the food waste collected from hotels. Ducks take care of the leftovers collected from the fish market. Dogs are in charge of domestic leftovers. The ‘park farm’ is probably the first in the world to implement animal feed on a municipal level.

Solid Waste Management Park in Bobbili, India

The animal farm takes its inspiration from the history of feeding animals with organic waste. Dogs, especially domesticated ones, are effective in taking care of meat scraps. As a common practice in traditional pig farming, pigs often consume the leftovers, rather than energy and cost-intensive crops. Ducks and chickens respectively favour kitchen scraps and milling by-products. Given the extraordinary effectiveness of earthworms to decompose vegetable and food wastes, vermicompost is another key of this living waste management system.

Besides the fact that landfill relief means avoided methane emission, animal waste can be a sustainable source of natural fertiliser whose cost and carbon footprint are way lower than artificial ones. More importantly, because the system doesn’t involve complex technologies, it can be easilly implemented – though in a smaller scale – on household levels. Just by keeping dogs and resuming the tradition of backyard chicken, we can easily reduce kitchen scraps and contribute to a significant cut in food waste.

This is a guest post by Ren Wan, a writer and sustainability advocate who is based in Hong Kong. She runs JupYeah, an online swapping platform, is a managing editor for WestEast Magazine, and blogs at Loccomama. Ren previously wrote about Furoshiki, a square cloth that with different wrapping techniques can basically transport anything.

Click to enlarge. More pictures here.

Modern bags might have outshone Furoshiki, but recent years have seen its comeback as a green alternative to shopping bags, thanks to the ‘Mottainai Furoshiki’ initiative by Yuriko Koike, Japan’s Minister of the Environment, in 2006. “It’s a shame for something to go to waste without having made use of its potential in full,” said Koike. Like what beauty label LUSH has followed to produce, the modern Furoshiki Koike upheld was made of recycled PET bottles that, as the Minister put it, “can wrap almost anything in it regardless of size or shape with a little ingenuity by simply folding it in a right way.”

The above graph demonstrating different wrapping techniques went viral on the internet. A wave of shops emerged to sell fancy furoshiki. The Minister’s statement holds some truism because a furoshiki does wrap up almost anything of all shapes and fragility – from vegetables to bottles, from wine glasses to eggs, from a baby to a dog. Besides its diversity, Furoshiki is a great alternative to adopt also because of its portability, leaving almost no room for excuses like ‘I forgot to bring my own bag’. Most of the time very decorative because Japanese treat it as an artistic craft, a furoshiki makes a great scarf, headband or pocket square.

Light and small, it comfortably fits in your pocket or day bag, whilst some furoshiki clothes are big enough to a bag whose form you can change every other day. A personal experiment proves that it helps encourage shoppers to opt for less- or un-packaged options. To avoid unnecessary packaging I visit local grocery stores for unpackaged tomatoes and to the plastic bag addicts’ surprise, it is very easy and light to transport. Just think about how one piece of cloth has the potential to replace all shopping bags. Does it not make it one of the smartest solution to shopping bags and excessive packaging?

This is a guest post by Ren Wan, a writer and sustainability advocate who is based in Hong Kong. She runs JupYeah, an online swapping platform, is a managing editor for WestEast Magazine, and blogs at Loccomama.

Families living in traditional courtyard houses of Baghdad, without mechanical ventilation or heating, migrate by day and season for comfort. In September or October, they move around the courtyard to rooms facing south. In April or May they shift to the north-facing rooms. In summer there is a daily vertical migration, the afternoon siesta being spent at the lowest levels and the nighttime sleep traditionally being taken on the roof under the stars.

Picture: muhammadshnait91.tumblr.com

Such migrations mean that space is used with a freedom unusual in modern life and in the West. Recent correspondence from Mounjia Abdeltif-Benchaabane, a professor of architecture in Algiers, describes how rooms there have not traditionally been organized with regard to individual use or established purpose:

A living room becomes a sleeping room at night. Closets are full of mobile furnishings. In the morning everything is hung near windows to air out under the sun before being reused, perhaps in a different room. The kitchen is a multifunctional space. They cook on the floor even if they have modern tools.

A long-established Arab concern with privacy, in conjunction with the custom of migrating through the house, established the texture of some old cities like Baghdad. Since the roof is used for sleeping during nearly half of the year and the privacy of the family at night is fundamental, no house could look down upon its neighbor nor could one house look into the courtyard of another. The result was an effective building height control with advantages for solar access: no house could overshadow another, thus assuring wintertime light and heat to upper living spaces.

Quoted from “Ritual House: Drawing on Nature’s Rhythms for Architecture and Urban Design“, Ralph L. Knowles, 2006.

Steve Leppold writes us:

Here’s an example of a low-tech approach that is clearly superior to the motorized “solution”; and yet the expensive, fossil-fueled “upgrade” is being successfully marketed in developing nations like Nepal and India. One man from Canada is attempting to bring some sanity to the situation.

• The current “no-tech” method.
• The low-tech approach, being demonstrated in Nepal by Alexander Vido.
• The motorized “solution” that is being promoted by agricultural agencies.

Alexander Vido and his teenage son brought donated equipment to Nepal in 2012, and made this short video of their volunteer efforts. The project is described at Scythe Project in Nepal.

Thanks, Steve. The project’s website has lots of technical information. Previously: The Religion of Complexity.

“Our mattress is worn out. We need a new one, but I’ve been dreading buying a new one. I don’t like the waste of it all: The ignoble dragging of the old mattress to the curb. The prospect of sleeping on a brand new construct of toxic foam and fire retardants… In Greece, Italy and France mattresses are made by local craftsmen, and are stuffed with 100% wool. These mattresses basically last for life. When the wool gets compressed the mattress guys will empty it out, fluff it up, and re-stuff it, adding more wool if necessary.” [1]

“The bed Mary bought was made by Signor Oldani, a Milanese bed-maker and upholsterer. He made beds the Italian way, and the way we used to make mattresses in England before the introduction of short-lived internally sprung ones.

The beauty of the mattress is that when it needs a wash, the wool can be pulled out, stuffed, in batches, into pillow cases, put through the washing machine and after drying, carded back into fluffy pile before being returned to the mattress cover.

Every few years, it needs to be re-carded, as the wool slowly compacts, says Mary. In Italy during the summer, the mattress man, il cardatore, tours Italian homes, pulls out the wool from their mattresses, re-cards it, adds some more, as the process reduces the stuffing a bit, rebuttons and then sews the mattress cover back up again. Mary submitted her mattress to this process four times.” [2]

“Totally by chance, I found two places in Paris that still make their own 100% wool mattresses by hand… It was ready two days later. They told me to come back in 10 years to have the mattress redone: they pick it up in the morning, take out the wool stuffing, clean and refluff it, put a new cover on it, and then deliver it back to you before bedtime.” [3]

Read more: 1 / 2 / 3. Via Root Simple.

The architects consider their work to be a toolbox, a starting point for thinking outside the conventional norms and recepies. They argue that decentralized services are more flexible, provide more autonomy, and are more efficient in space, energy and materials.

Antoni and Blasco present, in their own words, an equivalent to Neufert’s “Architect’s data“, the book for architects that records standardized dimensions for centralized systems. “Micromachins” is written in French but the visuals dominate.

“Micromachins”, Damien Antoni and Lydia Blasco, 2011 [download the page to get the high resolution PDF-document]. Thanks to Yann Philippe Tastevin. Update: the architects have added a new link with colour pictures and English translation.

“GiraDora is a blue bucket that conceals a spinning mechanism that washes clothes and then partially dries them. It’s operated by a foot pedal, while the user sits on the lid to stabilize the rapidly churning contents. Sitting alleviates lower-back pain associated with hand-washing clothes, and frees up the washer to pursue other tasks. It’s portable, so it can be placed nearby a water source, or even inside on a rainy day. It reduces health risks like joint problems, skin irritation, and mold inhalation. Most importantly, it uses far less water and cleans clothes faster than conventional hand-washing.”

Hat tip to Kaan Ozdurak.

However, people obtained the same result much more sustainably before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. In hot, dry climates, we used porous earthenware jugs that were not only re-usable, but also kept water cool by taking advantage of natural energy sources.

The best known example is the Spanish ‘botijo’, an unglazed ceramic container that cools beverages by evaporation. Similar drinking containers can be found in other Mediterranean countries, as well as in Mexico (where it is known as a ‘búcaro’) and on the Indian subcontinent (where it is called a ‘ghara’, ‘matka’ or ‘suhari’).

The ceramic water cooler probably originated in the Indus Valley Civilization, which would make it 5000 years old.

Illustration: a Spanish botijo.

The botijo generally has a wide, spherical belly with two openings on top — a wide opening to pour water in the jug and a smaller drinking spout — as well as one or two handles to carry it. Traditionally, people drink the water directly from the botijo by holding it up and tilting it so that the water pours from the drinking spout.

Botijo-etiquette demands that the lips do not touch the drinking spout, as the water container is usually shared among several people, and of course the content can also be poured into a glass. The large opening is covered with a cork or a cloth after filling the jug, in order to keep insects out.

Botijos come in different sizes, but on average it contains about 3 litres of water, with larger ones holding up to 7 litres – enough to supply a small group of people with drinking water for a full day.

How does it work?

After the botijo is filled with water, it is preferably placed outside in the shade, although it also works when placed in the sun or indoors. The technology is based on evaporative cooling — the same process that keeps the human body cool by sweating. Because the ceramic jug is not completely water-tight, a small amount of the stored water filters through the pores of the clay and evaporates once it comes in contact with the outside, dry environment. Evaporation (the transition from liquid to gas) requires thermal energy, which is partly extracted from the water inside the jug, cooling it down.

The cooling potential of the botijo

The cooling potential of the botijo depends on — among other things — the shape, dimensions and material of the jug, the quantity of water that it holds, and the humidity and temperature of the outside air. It can be calculated precisely according to a complex mathematical model that was developed during a 1995 scientific experiment (PDF), which showed that under optimal conditions a cooling of up to 15 degrees Celsius can be obtained.

A botijo holding 3.2 litres of water was placed in an oven with a temperature of 39 degrees and a relative humidity of 42 percent, mimicking a hot Mediterranean summer day. It was observed that the temperature dropped by 2 degrees after 15 minutes, by 8 degrees after one hour, and by 13 degrees after three hours. In about 7 hours time, the temperature had fallen to 24 degrees, with a water loss of about 0,4 litres (eight percent of the water content). After that, the temperature slowly started to rise again. At lower outside temperatures (around 30 degrees Celsius), the cooling effect is limited to about 10 degrees Celsius. The cooling effect thus adapts to climate conditions.

Beware of tourist souvenirs

Importantly, a botijo should be unglazed in order to function properly. Glazed botijos – now often sold as tourist souvernirs – do not cool water. Glazed water containers were used to store water in cooler and more humid climates, where a porous container would be of no use.

Similar technologies

A somewhat similar cooling effect can be achieved using a canteen with a lined cover. If the canteen is submerged in water so that the cover absorbs liquid, and is then left outdoors until the cover dries up, the water inside it will have cooled. One can also observe the effect by placing a water bottle inside a thick, wet sock. Evaporative cooling is also the process behind the Zeer Pots – refrigerators that work without electricity – and it can be applied to the cooling of buildings and industrial processes. In fact, the botijo also helps to cool the environment in which it is located, because evaporation takes only part of the required energy from water — the rest is taken from the environment.

Mobile refrigeration device

Apart from the fact that the botijo does not use electricity, it offers a couple of further advantages. Firstly, it produces water that is cool but not nearly as cold as refrigerated water. Ironically, water that is cooled in a refrigerator is too cold for human consumption and can cause health problems.

Secondly, the botijo is a mobile refrigeration device — for which there exists no modern counterpart. Plastic, glass or metal bottles, which have no pores and are thus unable to ‘sweat’, start warming up once they are taken out of the refrigerator.

In contrast, the water in a botijo remains cool regarding of where it is taken, which explains why the device was traditionally used in Mediterranean countries both domestically and by farmers. Travellers often made use of the containers as smaller, cylinder-shaped botijos could be tied to horses. Even a modern, metal canteen with a lined cover does not offer the same benefits as a mobile refrigeration device, because it is not the water inside that cools the bottle. The canteen has to be soaked in water regularly in order to maintain the cooling effect, which is not always an option in a dry climate.

The importance of climate

With the advent of cheap fossil fuels, we have become accustomed to the idea that any technology works anywhere. This is seldom the case with pre-industrial technologies, which are most often local solutions. The botijo is no exception to this rule. It is especially suited for climates with hot, dry summers (type Cs of the Köppen climate classification). This climate prevails around the Mediterranean, and can also be found on the West coast in the United States (in California and Oregon), in South Australia, and in small regions of South-America (in Chile) and Africa (in South-Africa). The botijo also performs excellently in desert climates (type BW, which is much more widespread than the Mediterranean climate).

    With the advent of cheap fossil fuels, we have become accustomed to the idea that any technology works anywhere. This is seldom the case with pre-industrial technologies, which are most often local solutions.

However, the cooling function of the ceramic water cooler deteriorates as summers become more humid, as is the case in most tropical climates. Similarly, the human body is more sweaty in a hot and humid environment, because transpiration cannot evaporate.

Climates with cool and wet summers have less need for water cooling methods in the first place. This explains why some parts of Spain (notably in the north-western region) do not have a tradition of evaporative water coolers, but use glazed containers instead. This is also true for the areas near the coast of the Mediterranean, where the proximity of the sea raises air humidity.

Lifting the botijo

One of the disadvantages of a botijo is that it can be rather heavy for people who lack muscular strength. An average botijo filled with water can easily weigh 4.5 kg. However, there are some solutions to this problem.

Fundación Terra, a Spanish environmental organisation, launched a campaign a few years ago to promote the use of the botijo in homes and offices, and developed a system to suspend the bojito from the ceiling for easy drinking. In addition, they advise people to hang it above a plant so that spilled water does not get lost. In India, the drinking spout was replaced by a low-placed tap.

Kris De Decker (edited by Deva Lee). Sources: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10.

PS: If you are looking for a smaller container, check out these unglazed clay water bottles, presented at the Green Living Show in Toronto two week ago.

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Related articles:

• Storing food outside the refrigerator: Jihyun Ryou’s anti-fridge design
• Bog butter: storing food in soil
• Pottery refrigerators
• California Coolers
• India’s ancient stepwell architecture cools modern building
• Home made air conditioner
• Insulation: first the body, then the home

Korean artist Jihyun Ryou, a graduate of the Dutch Design Academy Eindhoven, translates traditional knowledge on food storage into contemporary design. She found the inspiration for her wall-mounted storage units while listening to the advice of her grandmother, a former apple grower, and other elderly. Her mission: storing food outside the refrigerator.

On her blog, “Shaping traditional oral knowledge“, Jihyun Ryou explains the motivations underlying her work, which actually go beyond food storage:

“This project is about traditional oral knowledge which has been accumulated from experience and transmitted by mouth to mouth. Particularly focusing on the food preservation, it looks at a feasible way of bringing that knowledge into everyday life. Through the research into the current situation of food preservation, I’ve learned that we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator. We don’t observe the food any more and we don’t understand how to treat it. Therefore my design looks at re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food, which is closer to nature. Furthermore, it aims to bring back the connection between different levels of living beings, we as human beings and food ingredients as other living beings. Through the objects of everyday life, design can introduce traditional oral knowledge into people’s lives through their experience of using it. Objects make invisible knowledge evident.”

Talking about fruits and vegetables as living beings sounds rather woolly, but it is actually true. Vegetables and fruits continue to live even after they are picked. They keep breathing, taking oxygen from the air and giving off carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat. By regulating temperature and humidity, it is possible to slow down this respiration, resulting in a longer storage time.

Storing food outside the refrigerator

While many fruits and vegetables benefit from the low storage temperature in a refrigerator (around 40 degrees F or 4.5 degrees C), this is not true for all of them. So-called fruit vegetables such as peppers, courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes require higher temperatures and decay more rapidly in the refrigerator. They need high relative humidity, though. The shelf pictured above gives these vegetables a suitable space. Through the ritual of watering them everyday, they will stay fresh. The water not only raises humidity but also cools the produce, assuring a temperature that is higher than that in the refrigerator but lower than that in the room.

The same principle is applied to the fruit bowl shown above, in which a perforated dish sits over a bowl of water. The concept is inspired by the old farmer’s wisdom to preserve fruits fresh before selling.

Damp sand

Keeping vegetables in slightly damp sand has been a storage method for many centuries. While low temperatures are favourable for vegetables like carrots, high humidity is equally important. Keeping them in wet sand can be a good compromise. In the design above, this concept is improved by burying the vegetables upright, mimicking their growth conditions – and making them last longer, says Jihyun Ryou. Just don’t forget to water them from time to time.

Rice absorbs humidity

Other foods, like spices, garlic, onions and sweet potatoes, require low humidity but higher temperatures, which also makes them unstuibale for storage in a refrigerator. Because it absorbs moisture easily, rice can be of great help here. In the design above, the cork lid of each spice container contains a small space holding rice, which helps to keep the spices dry without forming into lumps.

Ethylene gas

Some fruits and vegetables (notably apples but also tomatoes, avocados, bananas, muskmelons, pears, plums, and peaches) emit ethylene gas. This has the effect of speeding up the ripening process of fruits and vegetables kept together with them, which is why it is wise to store ethylene producing fruits and vegetables separately. However, when combined with potatoes, Jihyun Ryou says, they have a positive effect, because the ethylene gas prevents the potatoes from sprouting. The design pictured above consists of a wooden box that keeps potatoes in the dark (a more common way to keep them from sprouting), while the holes on top allow them to benefit from the ethylene gas emitted by the apples.

The same design could also be used to accelerate the ripening of tomatoes, a process that is used – on a much larger scale – by food distributors.

Does it work?

The more food you can keep out of the fridge, the smaller it needs to be and the less energy it will consume. The designs described above show a refreshing way to do that, although it should be remembered that these are artworks, not consumer products. Using similar methods when storing food in a basement or a specially designed root cellar – the traditional way – will give better results (more on that in a forthcoming article). Furthermore, some of the storage strategies followed by Ryou are not generally accepted. Most of the sources that I have consulted (books, not grandmothers) say that ethylene gas will promote the sprouting of potatoes, not prevent it.

Anyway, her work will certainly encourage others to search for alternative storage solutions based on traditional knowledge – and that’s what it is all about. Experience and experimentation will tell what works and what not.

More at Jihyun Ryou’s blog: “Shaping traditional oral knowledge” and in this video. She also offers a beautiful booklet. An overview of temperature and humidity requirements for most vegetables and fruits can be found here (.pdf).

We will publish more on low-tech food storage soon. Stay informed via email, feed, twitter or facebook.

Thanks for the tip, mom!

Related articles:

• The poor man’s refrigerator
• How to keep beverages cool outside the refrigerator
• Pottery refrigerators
• California coolers
• Bog butter: storing food in soil

“The first civilization deliberately to select eunuchs as officers of state was the Assyrian Empire, which dominated the Near East during the early first millenium BC. The practice was continued by its successors, including the Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great (559-529 BC) who, according to the Greek writer Xenophon, ‘selected eunuchs for every post of personal service to him, from the doorkeepers up’. Eunuchs were becoming powerful in China during the same period. They were especially influential under the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), when some held tremendous power simply because of their looks, and it was normal for emperors to have as many male favorites as the recommended magical number of wives. But most were of the professional variety, trained for a career in government.”

“The Roman civil service also employed eunuchs, despite the bans on castration imposed by various emperors. And, although the custom was condemned by the Church, the zenith of ‘eunuch power’ in the Roman world actually came after it was Christianized, under the Eastern Roman (Byzantyne) Empire, which ruled from Constantinople (Istanbul) between AD 395 and 1453. Thousands of young men entered public service by being castrated, providing the empire with some of its most distinguished  state secretaries, generals and even Church leaders.”

Quoted from: “Ancient Inventions“, Peter James and Nick Thorpe, 1994. Image: the Roman castration clamp, an invention that enabled much safer castration than earlier methods by avoiding damage to the penis.

The catapult seems to be en vogue these days. Following the drug catapult confiscated at the US-Mexican border ten days ago, here is a device used by the anti-government protesters at the Tahrir square in Egypt. Source: Al Jazeera. Via Liz McLellan.

“The FlatBed Truck is far more convenient than carting large items to and from a car or van. With this maneuverable vehicle, you can simple roll straight in and out of your business or factory. It even serves as a handy rolling work bench for working outside on sunny days.”

“The FlatBed Truck is also incredibly easy to store. Just flip it up on its end when not in use, and use the rear rolling wheels to move it against a wall or into a small space. The rolling wheels also serve as a back bump stop.” Trisled FlatBed Truck.

Standby power use is the electricity consumed by appliances and other equipment when they are switched off or not performing their primary purpose. It is responsible for 3 to 12 percent of residential electricity use worldwide (source, pdf). Freelance journalist Robert Buzink has a low-tech solution for this – all you need is a pair of scissors and a screwdriver. The text is in Dutch but the pictures speak for themselves.