The fireless cooker is a well-insulated box that keeps food simmering with only the heat of the cooking pot itself. As we wrote in 2014, a fireless cooker doubles the efficiency of any cooking device because it shortens the time on the fire and limits heat transfer losses. A fireless cooker is easy to make and may be one of the most useful low-tech devices around.

The fireless cooker shown is the one that serves in my household. Adriana Parra built it from an old chair and a styrofoam box, which is wrapped in textile and covered with a pillow made from a lap desk. The hole in the styrofoam is made to the size of a cooking pot. Marie Verdeil made the images.

Historic Zuni waffle gardens, circa 1919. (Photo courtesy of Kirk Bemis)

For the past 64 years, Jim Enote has planted a waffle garden, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls that he learned to build from his grandmother. This year, he planted onions and chiles, which he waters from a nearby stream. It’s an Indigenous farming tradition suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, where waffle gardens have long flourished and Enote has farmed since childhood.

“They are the inverse of raised beds, and for an area where it is more arid, they’re actually very efficient at conserving water,” said Enote, who leads the Colorado Plateau Foundation to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and water. Each interior cell of the waffle covers about a square foot of land, just below ground-level, and the raised, mounded earthen walls are designed to help keep moisture in the soil.

Read more: The Resurgence of Waffle Gardens Is Helping Indigenous Farmers Grow Food with Less Water, Greta Moran, Civil Eats, October 2021.

Dear Kris,

I thought that you might be interested in the two photos that I attach and which were inspired by your 2015 article on Fruit walls.

Living outside Dunblane in central Scotland, I have long wanted to be able to grow fruits, such as grapes, figs and perhaps peaches, that would not normally be successful here so a lean-to greenhouse seemed the only solution. However, as I would be erecting the greenhouse in an open  field the wall had constructed as well. Some years ago I visited the  walled garden at Meggich Castle, some 50km north-east of here, and saw various old apple and especially pear trees growing in the much neglected walled garden there (I believe that they have started on a scheme to plant new fruit trees from the old stock). However, reproducing such a walled garden, about 100 m square with walls 5 m tall, was an impossible (and impossibly expensive) task, so I looked online and found your article.

I was much taken with the photo in the article of a serpentine wall in the Netherlands, and so decided to copy the idea, and you can see the result in  my photos. The wall is 30 m in length and averages 3 m in height (it has to be stepped because of the slope in the field) and tapers from 40 cm thick at the base to 30 cm at the top. It is made from local stone, a form of red sandstone, some of which I lifted from the field when it was ploughed many years ago, and the rest from an old building in a nearby village. The building was a former smiddy (the Scots term; it is smithy in England) and you can see in the second photo two metal rings embedded in the stone of the nearest column which I believe would have been used to tie up horses when they were having new shoes fitted. I hasten to add that it was two local stonemasons that I employed for the construction, and not me!

I am now waiting for some paving slabs to be laid around the greenhouse and then I need to buy some trees. I already have five apple trees in my garden which usually do quite well though this year late frosts meant only the last two to come into blossom yielded any fruit; plums have not been successful and I have replaced them with pears. I hope that the new wall will provide enough shelter to grow quince and mulberry, amongst others.

I have recently come across others locally who have successfully grown grapes and one with a large conservatory with a vine on the south side and a peach on the north, both some 30 years old. This last I saw in the spring as part of the Scotland’s Gardens Scheme where people open up their gardens to the public, with the entrance fees going to charity. Usually they are just the gardens of the wealthy, but sometimes several residents of a village will all open their small gardens on the one day. https://scotlandsgardens.org/

It is surprising how many walled gardens remain in the UK; they were originally used to grow fruit and vegetables to feed the owners of large houses and their staff, but after the First World War, when staff shortages became common (many having been killed in the war), the gardens often fell into disrepair. However, over the past few years many are being restored and used as intended. This is no doubt helped by the gardening programs on UK TV, especially as some of the presenters have acquired walled gardens themselves from where they present their programs.

Once again, thank you for your article and indeed for your splendid website.

John Sanz

Low-tech Magazine featured Jonas Görgen’s mist shower in an earlier article. He did a second graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven that is worth mentioning: the clothesline that goes around the corner:

Revive the ol’ clothesline! This pulley system can move objects around the corner of a building. Following (or avoiding) the sun can help with making the most of the momentary weather conditions.

Modern buildings often trap the inhabitants into unsustainable practices such as using a tumble dryer or a large refrigerator. Making practical use of outside spaces of buildings is commonplace around the globe, from clotheslines spanning across streets in Italy to roofs crowded with jugs full of fermenting Kimchi in Korea.

It is not merely about resourcefulness, as these practices become part of the identity of a place.

In a reaction, he writes that “I wanted to think of a possibility to break out of the lifestyle that is dictated by the building in which you live”.

Source: Jonas Görgen.

What are the social and environmental impacts of carbon and low-carbon energy technologies in different places and at different times? To answer this question, we are faced with an epistemological dilemma. Before measurement takes place, we need to define where and when the phenomenon we are measuring begins and ends—to define its “system boundaries.” For instance, one liter of semi-skimmed milk, bought in a British supermarket, has an energy content of 380 kcal. However, to think of the milk in terms of energy also evokes the far-reaching social and environmental contexts that bring milk to the market.

Beyond the energy content declared on the milk carton, we can undertake a life cycle assessment (LCA)—expanding the system boundaries—to account for the energy (or the carbon, water, labor, or land) “embodied” in the milk via its production and distribution. We might include the energy content of processed cattle feed, electricity used to run milking machines, cooling tanks, water boilers, and lighting, energy inputs in alkaline and acid detergents, diesel for tractors, and a wide range of other energy technologies used in production.

We might expand the system boundaries further to account for the fuels needed to generate the electricity, run the chemical plant, fuel the milk tanker, power the dairy plant, and so on. Arguably, we should also account for the energy expended in the production of the electricity generator, the milking machine, the milk tanker and the tractor, fencing and the batteries storing energy to electrify it. But if an electricity generator and a battery are somehow embodied in a liter of milk, we have culturally come far away from what we normally understand milk to be. Where, then, should we draw the system boundaries around an object in order to gauge its social and environmental impact?

Image credit (CC). 

More than just posing epistemological problems, however, we argue that system boundaries present an ethnographic problem and that they should be exposed to cultural as well as political analysis. As cultural artefacts, system boundaries sustain different power-serving worldviews, and the way system boundaries are drawn in discussions on energy transitions calls into question how the existence of energy technologies relies on a geographical displacement of environmental load, including flows of resources, land, and emissions.

In discussions on green development and strategies for a low-carbon energy transition, there is a strong case made for technologically utopian solutions in which novel, more efficient technologies will enable a decoupling of environmental impact from economic growth. These solutions range from a complete electrification of transport to the mainstreaming of “cultured” meats, milk, and eggs to a wholesale transition to a solar economy. Depending on the exponent’s political allegiance, they often resonate with teleological imaginaries of technological progress inspired by the American “technological sublime” or the Marxist “development of the productive forces”. However, the socioenvironmental impact of green technology is contingent on the definition of system boundaries. A technologically utopian solution rests on narrowly defined system boundaries.

Read more: Cederlof, Gustav, and Alf Hornborg. “System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems: Assessing energy technology and socio-environmental impact.” Journal of Political Ecology 28.1 (2021): 111-123.

More papers by Alf Hornborg.

If you picture a flying machine, you probably imagine a craft which is heavier than air, somehow kept aloft with wings or propellers. Heavier-than-air flight dominates discourses about aviation. “Sustainable” crafts are designed to be as light as possible (whilst remaining heavier than air), so that they require less energy from whatever renewable source they use for lift. These machines include human-powered planes such as those using pedals to rotate a propeller. Lighter still are kites and gliders, which remain heavier than air, but rely on air resistance and lighter air around them to fly.

Less discussed are flying machines which are lighter than the air they fly through because the weight of their materials and passengers is counterbalanced by the hot air or light gases they contain. [1] Perhaps this is because most of us experience flight in passenger airliners, not Zeppelins. In theory, making lighter-than-air flight sustainable is simple: heat a container full of air with sunlight so that it rises. In January 2020, Leticia Noemi Marqués flew freely in the Aerocene Pacha solar balloon, the first Fédération Aéronautique Internationale certified fully-solar, untethered, manned flight. Previous flights of this kind went uncertified or relied on propane burners or inflation generators [2]. Aerocene Pacha flies on solar energy not from solar panels or batteries but absorbed directly in the envelope (the fabric of the balloon).

Solar balloons are a subcategory of hot air balloons, which rise because the hot air inside is less dense than the external air. Hot air and helium balloons were developed in 18th century French experiments. In quick succession in 1783, aeronauts achieved a series of firsts for ballooning. In November, the Montgolfier brothers launched the first animal-carrying hot air balloon (containing a duck, rooster and sheep). In September Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis D’Arlandes were the first people to fly untethered in a hot air balloon. This last balloon flew with the risk that the envelope would ignite from the embers which were used to heat the hot air. [1]

The solar balloon invented itself

The solar balloon awaited, latent, within this history. It could be said that the solar balloon invented itself in an accident in 1794, when a hot air balloon in France freed itself from its tethers and rose into the air purely from the heat of the sun. [2] The potential of this phenomena went unnoticed as balloon inventors moved on to design airships powered by the internal combustion engine, like Zeppelins. In the 1960s, Ed Yost refined the hot air balloon with the addition of a propane burner, which the fuel source used most commonly today. The risk of fire continues to haunt recent hot air balloons, prompting alternative designs which do not involve combustion. In the 1990s, Alejandro Uribe adapted the unmanned paper balloons Brazilian communities build for festivals to be fully solar to eliminate the danger of balloon-lit forest fires.

Solar balloons rely on the same principle as combustion hot air balloons, but with sunlight absorbed by the envelope to replace the burner. From 1972, Dominic Michaelis designed and tested a series of manned solar balloons with transparent polyester envelopes and black fabric inside to absorb heat. [2] Julian Nott used one of these to successfully fly across the English Channel in 1981. These flights were assisted by propane burners. Tracy Barnes performed the first fully solar balloon flight in 1973, using a tetrahedral-shaped single skin envelope. [3] It is unclear how the balloon was inflated. Aerocene Pacha is the most recent solar balloon flight to be manned, untethered and, ostensibly, entirely independent from fossil fuels. The team inflated the envelope with fans run on pedal power.

Manned solar balloons

Manned solar balloons combine the technologies of burner-heated balloons and unmanned solar balloons used in scientific research. An example of the latter was the 1977 Montgolfière Infrarouge (MIR), which circulated in the lower stratosphere, flying on sunlight in the day and infrared at night. [2] Infrared is sufficient to maintain altitudes of around 20 kilometres because the air is so thin. [4] Recent examples use simpler technology – the Heliotrope Solar Hot-Air Balloon costs around 30 dollars to make and can be “ram inflated” by holding the bottom open and walking it to and fro until it fills with air.

Researchers have also explored the potential of using tethered solar balloons to generate electricity. One wind-solar system, designed by Robert Grena, is aided by a small pocket of hydrogen and pre-heated by “charging” for a period of time in the sun. [5] When it is released, the balloon unwinds its rope from its windlass, which powers a generator. Wind-power contributes by pulling the balloon, and so the rope, horizontally. Grena proposes systems for deflating the balloon at its peak altitude, so energy is not lost from air or wind resistance as it falls. The simplest of these contraptions consists of rods fixed to the envelope which are held bent by taunt strings for the ascent and straighten when the tension is released for the fall, pulling the envelope shut.

Altitude and Distance

Do Aerocene flights and their ilk herald an age in which we are more likely to fly by solar balloon than passenger plane? Julian Nott proved that international travel via (primarily) solar-powered balloon is possible forty years ago, when he crossed the English Channel. Nott flew from a point northwest of Dover to Tournehem sur la Hem near Calais, making the flight distance over 60km. Aerocene’s official world record for solar-balloon flight distance at 2.55km (measured as the crow flies between lift-off and landing points) is less encouraging. Most solar balloon attempts, especially for scientific purposes, have focused on altitude rather than distance, so there is as yet unexplored potential.

If solar technology could be made as reliable as propane burners, they could carry passengers across the Pacific, which is the hot air balloon distance record of 7671km, set by Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson in 46 hours and 15 minutes in 1991 (far longer flights have combined hot air with other gas technology). [6] This would rival the human powered flight Guinness World Record of 115 km, set by Kanellos Kanellopoulos in 1988. [7] The problem remains that fully solar balloons need sunlight, and it is rare for the sky to remain unclouded for long journeys. Any transport system based on solar balloons would have to be opportunistic, where pilots wait for safe conditions and perhaps break journeys into short stages.

Francis Rogers.

Thanks to Nicolas Maigret.

Sources:

[1] Folkes, J. (2008). Balloons, airships and kites – lighter than air: Past, present and future. The Aeronautical Journal (1968), 112(1133), 421-429. doi:10.1017/S0001924000002384

[2] Aerocene Community, 2021. A brief history of Solar Ballooning and Aerocene. [online] Aerocene.org. Available at: <https://aerocene.org/a-brief-solar-ballooning-and-aerocene/#> [Accessed 11 July 2021].

[3] Brown, D., (1974). Sunstat: A Balloon that Rides on Sunbeams. Ballooning, XI(2), pp.5-9. Available at: <https://www.brisbanehotairballooning.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SunstatArticleinBallooning.pdf> [Accessed 11 July 2021].

[4] Bowman, D., Norman, P., Pauken, M., Albert, S., Dexheimer, D., Yang, X., Krishnamoorthy, S., Komjathy, A. and Cutts, J., (2020). Multihour Stratospheric Flights with the Heliotrope Solar Hot-Air Balloon. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 37(6), pp.1051-1066.

[5] Grena, R., (2013). Solar balloons as mixed solar–wind power systems. Solar Energy, 88, pp.215-226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2012.11.021

[6] Åkerstedt, H., n.d. CIA Notable flights and performances: Part 10, 1991-1995. [online] Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Available at: <https://www.fai.org/sites/default/files/documents/rpt_10_1991-1995.pdf> [Accessed 11 July 2021].
[7] Guinness World Records., (n.d.). Longest human powered flight (distance). Available at: <https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-human-powered-flight-%28distance%29> [Accessed 11 July 2021].

[8] Reay, D., (1977). “Man-Powered Rotocraft and the Persistence of the ‘Bird-Men’” In: The History of Man-Powered Flight, pp.249-262. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2013-0-02894-0

In view of the global resource and ecological situation, per-capita resource consumption rates in the rich world probably need to be reduced by 90%. This can only be done if there is a “de-growth” transition to some kind of Simpler Way centered on mostly small, highly self-sufficient and self-governing communities in control of local economies within a culture that is not focused on material wealth.

It is not surprising that the viability of such a vision is typically regarded as implausible. The aim of this study is to show that normal outer city suburbs could be restructured along the lines required to cut global impacts by the necessary amount, while improving the quality of life. Data on typical Australian consumption rates, food production yields, suburban geographies, etc. is used to estimate the achievable reductions.

The theoretical conclusion that such reductions could be made aligns with a study of the Dancing Rabbit Eco-village in northeast Missouri. Heavy cuts in resource consumption cannot be made without extreme change in economic, political, settlement and cultural systems.

Image: Lahminewski Lab, CC BY-SA 4.0.

From the Wikipedia page, which summarizes and links to all sources that are available online:

The chukudu is a two-wheeled handmade vehicle used in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is made of wood, and is used for transporting cargo. The chukudu generally has an angular frame, two small wheels (often of wood, sometimes wrapped with rubber), handlebars, and a pad for the operator to place their knee on while propelling the vehicle with their leg. On a descent, the rider stands on the deck like a kick scooter. On flat ground, the rider can put one knee on the deck and push the ground by the other foot like a knee scooter. Rubber mud flaps and shock absorber springs may be added.

In Goma, where chukudus form the “backbone of the local transportation system”, chukudus are made of hard mumba wood and eucalyptus wood, with scrap tires for wheel treads. These chukudus take one to three days to build, and last two to three years. The most commonly used size is about six and one half feet long, and carries a load of 1000 lbs. However, the largest chukudus can carry up to 800 kilograms of weight.

A small chukudu can be built in about three hours, using dimensional lumber and materials available in a hardware store. The chukudu is customizable to carry different types of cargo. To haul firewood some chukudus have a hole drilled in the middle of the sitting deck, and the operator can insert a stick to hold firewood in place. Others have a large basket to carry various loads.

Chukudus image colection.

DIY.

Thanks to Spencer Cappallo.

Theoretically, science is the contrary of religion because, while the latter is dogmatic, science should be anti-dogmatic, based on rationality and on an objective and empirical methodology. However,… science contributes to create the cultural system whereby we live and that gives meaning to our reality, which is based on some basic assumptions/beliefs: our “faith”.

The core of science has embodied the heritage of Christianity and Hebraism and, in a different way, could be practiced as a religion from many people. For western religions, the past was evil, the present redemption and future heaven. For science the past is ignorance/superstition, the present consists of progress using the tools of science, and the future consists in the positivistic promise of a sort of heaven in the real world.

Quoted from: Aillon, J. L., and M. Cardito. “Health and Degrowth in times of Pandemic.” Visions for Sustainability 14 (2020): 3-23.

Full issue of the magazine (Health and Degrowth Special).

Image by Kārlis Dambrāns – Mobile World Congress 2018, CC BY 2.0.

“It’s winter in northern Europe, and there’s no electricity. How can you dry your laundry? One of the best places of all is a laundry room in the servants’ quarters of a mansion house. A generous ceiling height means you can have frames for wet clothes and household linen in the warmest, dryest part of the room. The estate handyman would make them, and by the later 19th century he would probably add ropes and a pulley to raise and lower the rack. No need to climb on a chair to hang laundry.”

Read more: Drying clothes near the ceiling, HomeThingsPast.

“Of all the questions I get on Twitter the most common is this: ‘How do you build a town?’ We know well how it used to be done, but these last one or two centuries we have forgotten how to do it (with only a handful of notable exceptions during the last century).

The other day I was asked again, but this time with a set of premises that made the question a little easier to approach. I have anonymized all the details but the general idea remains: four guys (friends) with money have bought a suitably large piece of land in Texas and now want to create a car-free human-scaled town of the kind that I am always writing about.

In this text I intend to set out the most bare-bone basic premises for how to start a good town, what is needed to build something anti-fragile and sustainable under the above mentioned scenario.”

Read more: How to Build a Small Town in Texas, Wrath of Gnon, July 2021.

To create a human scaled town we first establish what is a good size, and this is simply one third of a square kilometer, or 82 acres, or 0.13 square miles. 80 acres was the upper limit for a good family farm in medieval England, and it is still the size at which the most flexible and efficient farms run, both modern and more old fashioned Amish family farms. It allows a town where no point can’t be reached on foot in 15 minutes, and it allows comfortable living for a population of 3000, which was considered the ideal size in medieval Europe: the upper limit of efficiency and comfort, productivity and harmony: more and you get crowded, less and you risk being without some important trades and activities. Even though the premise talks about a town of 600, we plan three centuries ahead for a maximum population of ca. 3000.

A good town (the urban) is clearly defined and set apart from the countryside (the rural). The suburban has no place here. Hence the town needs to be as clearly marked out and defined as the individual family lots will be: to here, but no further. For this purpose we will mark out land to be used as a wall, raised embankment, hedge, fence, moat, canal, etc. Some sort of edge which is not routinely nor distractedly crossed.

As for shape, I recommend a somewhat irregularly oval shape, near round in one extreme, or rice grain shaped in the other extreme, for the simple reason that the best towns and cities seems to be oval to some degree. As far as possible the existing topography should be kept or even enhanced. Perfectly flat land is only popular with boring developers. So: no bulldozing allowed. Existing trees should be left and existing paths should be left in place (even when slightly inconvenient). New paths and streets should follow the contours of the land. Anything historic (an old campsite, an ancient grave or remains of an old farmstead) should be kept and protected and venerated. History is in short supply in new developments, and interesting stories can be woven around something as mundane as an abandoned old cart or well.

Read the whole article: How to Build a Small Town in Texas, Wrath of Gnon, July 2021.

This timely new report analyses and ranks 69 European train companies and services according to six key indicators for combined bike-and-train travel, such as bicycle spaces in trains and the quality of bike ticket or reservation channels. The report’s rankings show that there is much room for improvement in Europe.

Only one train service, NS-DB (Intercity Berlin), which runs between Amsterdam and Berlin, scored in the “excellent” category. Operators that scored in the “good” category in facilitating bike-and-train travel include SNCB/NMBS, SBB, Deutsche Bahn and MÁV-START.

One fourth of the 69 operators and services scored in the “moderate” category, including České dráhy, SNCF and Trenitalia, while the rest perform either “poorly” or “very poorly” on most indicators, including Flixtrain, Greater Anglia, Renfe and Eurostar.

Abstract: “This paper describes how principles derived from degrowth can be a useful heuristic for designing an ICT system within energy limits. It does so by discussing the design choices behind https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com, an ongoing design research project that set out to build a ’low-tech website’. This research resulted in a design which is lightweight, tailored towards older and lower-powered devices, is powered by off-grid solar energy and thus designed with energy scarcity in mind. The project shows that values and frameworks theorized within the Computing within Limits community are technically applicable to practices of web development but also identifies hurdles to their more widespread applicability.”

Coppicing & pollarding trees could provide us with energy, materials and food — but also with a lot of glow-worms (or fireflies), a research paper argues:

The glow-worm Lampyris noctiluca (Linnaeus, 1767) (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) is thought to be declining in the UK. Average glowing counts at 19 sites in Essex, south-east England, changed from ca. 20 glow-worms per km of transect in 2001 to ca. 5 glow-worms per km in 2018.

There is a clear signal of climate warming and drying effects on glow-worm numbers, but a substantially greater proportion of variation in glowing female counts is explained by local-scale site factors, such as unmanaged scrub encroachment. Brash and wood chippings provide habitat for glow-worm larvae while bare ground is important for glowing females.

Management that increased site populations included scrub clearance on a seawall flood defense embankment and coppicing in an ancient woodland. Sustained favorable management of sites by coppicing and scrub cutting may buffer populations against declines caused by climate drying and warming and benefit other insects such as butterflies.

In the UK, the widespread cessation of traditional coppicing in ancient woodlands in the 20th century has had a detrimental impact on the insect fauna associated with open woods:

Glow-worms were said to have disappeared from many Essex woods in the late 19th century, and have become very rare in Epping Forest, possibly due to the cessation of traditional pollarding (cutting of trees at approximately 5 m off the ground to prevent deer browsing re-growth) in the 20th century. Anecdotal evidence from Shut Heath Wood suggests that coppicing of willow has been beneficial for glow-worms over many years.

In the summer after winter coppicing had taken place there was often a number of glow worms in the coppiced area. Once the coppice had grown, even after 1 year’s re-growth, glow worms declined in the coppiced area. This indicates that glowworms may have a continuous cycle of building up abundance in newly coppiced (cut) areas, before declining or moving to an adjacent cut area (also known as a coupe).

Railways

Railway lines, used or disused, also offer a particularly good habitat for glow-worms, perhaps because the track bed (ballast) has a plentiful supply of the calcium which snails need to build their shells:

Most of Britain’s railway network was built at a time (1800s) when glow-worms were much more widespread, therefore providing an excellent system of ‘corridors’ along which isolated habitats could be colonized. Railway lines, both disused and active, provide ideal glow-worm habitats, with egg laying occurring in exposed, well-drained areas on top of embankments, while larvae may need the moisture gradients present on the steep slopes to forage.

Read the whole story: Gardiner, Tim. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out! Reversing the Glow-Worm’s Decline.” (2021).

Image: Fireflies in the woods near Nuremberg, Germany, exposure time 30 seconds. By Quit007 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons.

Hospital beds are defined as beds that are maintained, staffed, and immediately available for use. Total hospital beds include acute care beds, rehabilitative beds and other beds in hospitals.

North America: 2-3 beds

The USA had 9.18 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants in 1960, compared to 2.87 beds in 2017. Canada had 2.52 beds per 1,000 in 2017.

Europe: 2-8 beds

Europe had 9.52 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants in 1980, compared to 5.38 beds in 2018. However, there are notable differences between European countries.

In Central Europe, the decrease is relatively limited and the number of hospital beds remains at 6-8 per 1,000 inhabitants:

• Germany: 10.5 (1960) → 10.12 (1991) → 8.24 (2007) → 8.3 (2013) → 8.0 (2017)
• Austria: 9.94 (1985) → 7.75 (2007) → 7.27 (2018)
• Hungary: 9.30 (1994) → 8.16 (2000) → 7.19 (2007) → 7.01 (2018)
• Czechia: 10.11 (1980) → 6.62 (2018)
• Poland: 6.68 (2003) → 6.54 (2018)

In some Western European countries, the decrease is more pronounced, with the number of hospital beds now at 5-6 per 1,000 inhabitants:

• France: 10.5 (1974) → 8.34 (1998) → 7.06 (2007) → 5.91 (2018)
• Belgium: 8.30 (1970) → 7.64 (1989) → 6.27 (2007) → 6.20 (2013) → 5.62 (2018) → 5.58 (2019)

In many other European countries, the number of hospital beds has decreased to around 2-3 per 1,000 inhabitants — similar to the numbers in the US:

• Norway: 3.60 (2017)
• Finland: 8.25 (1993) → 3.61 (2018)
• Netherlands: 7.5 (1965) → 5.8 (1990) → 4.34 (2007) → 4.7 (2009) → 3.17 (2018)
• Italy: 8.97 (1960) → 3.91 (2007) → 3.40 (2012) → 3.14 (2018)
• Ireland: 9.03 (1980) → 2.97 (2018)
• UK: 4.08 (2000) → 2.76 (2013) → 2.54 (2017)
• Denmark: 8.10 (1970) → 4.54 (1997) → 3.69 (2007) → 2.43 (2018)
• Sweden: 14.18 (1960) → 2.86 (2007) → 2.14 (2018)

Finally, some European countries started with much lower numbers:

• Spain: 4.66 (1970) → 3.25 (2007) → 2.97 (2018)
• Greece: 5.79 (1960) → 4.2 (2018)
• Portugal: 3.96 (1985) → 3.45 (2018)

Asia: +10 beds

If we look at China, we see the opposite trend. The number of hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants grew from 1.44 in 1965 to 4.31 in 2017. China now has more hospital capacity per capita  than the US and a great deal of European countries. The countries with the most hospital beds are also in Asia. In 2017, Japan and South Korea had 13.05 and 12.27 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively.

Kris De Decker

Data: Eric Wagner. Graph: Kathy Vanhout.

Sources

• https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/hospital-beds/indicator/english_0191328e-en
• https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.BEDS.ZS?end=2015&start=1960&view=map&year=1960
• https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
• https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
• https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/hlth_sha11_hf/default/table?lang=en
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/184955/us-national-health-expenditures-per-capita-since-1960/

Image: Marktplaats.

The lavet is a typically Dutch invention that was mainly used in social housing in the 1950s and 1960s. It was produced up to 1975, with a total production of about 1 million. The lavet is somewhere between a sink and a bathtub. It consists of a plateau with a raised edge, in which on one side is a 40 cm deep tub with a diameter of almost 60 cm. Unique to the design is the multi-functionality. The lavet fulfilled the functions of a bathroom and laundry room but required ​​only one square meter of space.

The tub was very suitable for washing (several) children, but adults could also take a hip bath with some dexterity. There was even the possibility to take a shower standing in the tub. The lavet was also great for hand washing clothes. The manufacturer of the washbasin marketed a washing machine and accompanying centrifuge that fit in the washbasin. The tub was also practical for gardeners: they could rinse large quantities of vegetables in it before preserving them.

Image: Marktplaats.

Image: Ralph van der Kamp. Source: Joostdevree.nl.

Image: Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed.

Thanks to Melle Smets.

Sources: 

• Het lavet, Joostdevree.nl
• Het Lavet, Wikipedia NL

Update:

Reader Ramino sends us some information about a similar artifact in Argentina. “The MASI (Mueble Artefacto Sanitario Integral) was developed by the Argentinian research institute CEVE (Centro Experimental de la Vivienda Económica, a joint between an NGO and the  national research council). It is (was?) made of plastic, to make both production and installation simpler and cheaper, as it is designed for cheap social housing. It seems there are two versions (one wider, and  one more compact), which integrate sink, toilet and shower, and the main idea is to reuse the sink’s greywater to fill the toilet’s deposit. Unfortunately, I don’t think it has had a very big adoption.” See:

• http://www.ceve.org.ar/componentes-1.php
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6CH7rDBjcY

Nettles for Textile is a website dedicated to all things nettle related, especially the sharing of skills and techniques that will help to best utilise this incredible resource for local textile production. There’s also a great selection of references on the historical use of nettles.