Exhibition on Appropriate Green Building material for construction

An exhibition organized on the occasional of World Habitat Day 2011.

Water saving sanitary Fixtures: HansGrohe's new product with water re-use function. The water from the wash basin is stored in the container below it which is used for flushing the commode. 

FIRST EARTH - a documentary on Ecological Architecture

Click on the picture or here [ FIRST EARTH ] to watch full documentary.
Because we believe that as many people as possible should have the option of seeing the FIRST EARTH film, regardless of their financial abilities, for a limited time only we are making beta versions of the 12 chapters of the film available over the internet for free! The DVD version of the film has high-quality video and audio and includes extras.
The individual chapters of the film can also be watched separately from one another. It won't have the same effect as watching the whole film from start to finish, but as part of our vision to make the content as accessible as possible, the chapters can be viewed one at a time.
Chapters 1 through 12 - The Entire Film
Chapter 1 - What's Wrong With Architecture
Chapter 2 - African Earth
Chapter 3 - American Earth
Chapter 4 - Why Earth
Chapter 5 - Empowering Earth
Chapter 6 - Another Earth Is Possible
Chapter 7 - European Earth
Chapter 8 - Arabian Earth
Chapter 9 - Urban Earth
Chapter 10 - Inner City Earth
Chapter 11 - International Earth
Chapter 12 - Future Earth

Panic of LP Gas Shortage: Panacea could be Fuel Briquettes

Women making Briquettes in Balambu, Kathmandu

It is not a new to have news of fuel shortage in Nepal. LP gas and Kerosene fuel imported from India are being extensively used not only in urban areas but also in rural areas. Obviously, they are more efficient and less polluting in compare to firewood fuel. But the problem is, they are not indigenous products hence have to depend fully upon India. Supply, pricing, quality control, for everything, the users are dependent in Indian Fuel market. In many of the cases, this dependence has been exploited in inter-governmental and internal politics.

Notes from Nabeel Hamdi's Lecture at NTNU

This article is just a compilation of the quotations of Prof. Nabeel Hamdi which I have been able to note in his lecture today. I've just put them as I scribe them in my notebook hence you'll not find it as an organized article. These quotations are really touching and inspiring hence I wanted to share with people who cares about these issues. Also slides and the video of lecture (somewhere in same topic) will be useful to you. I found three examples at the last section are very interesting, worth to think over. We may generate many discussion topics from the contents of this lecture. Please comment or add more idea on this to build on it as more useful resource. 

Tao of Physics

I just watched an documentary on one of a controversial and popular book The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. It is a book by physicist Fritjof Capra, published in 1975. It was a bestseller in the United States, and has been published in 43 editions in 23 languages. After watching this video I felt I must read this book once. The author himself has narrated his observations, inspirations and positions. I am trying to present here some of the key highlight that I've grasped from the documentary.

It's main subject of discussion is the parallels between modern physics and easter mysticism in the time when mysticism is considered a s black spot in modern science. Hence, it took lot of attention as well as criticism.

Motivation for running a Local Eco-club

To disseminate my acquired knowledge and materialized them I need to culturize them. This idea of Eco-club will focus on educating local youths about different environmental issues and ways of ecological lifestyle. The target for this movement are those young people from different backgrounds. Let's see, to what extent my dream can come true.

Homemade solar water heater

The are two Youtube videos and channel of Debesh Raj Bhattarai showing simple home made solar water heater. It consists boiler tank of oil plastic barrel and the absorber panel is our of 1/2 inch black polythene pipe coiled and rested on the a conical stand. Enjoy watching it and try yourself capturing solar power for you house.

Latter one video is another variation of same system. It has mentioned that the system can heat water up to 130-150 degrees (F ??) from 8:30am to 4pm.

Extreme of Inflation: unbeilivable

A news about extreme inflation in Zimbabwe is unbelievable. The reserve bank had to print up to one hundred trillion (100,000,000,000,000) dollar note in 2008. Instability in political situation and inability to cope the situation, reserve bank put much effort on printing the notes rather than solving such dire state. This news mentions an incidence of rise in price of a bread from 2 million dollar to 25million dollar in a day. This has benefited the debtors who have taken loan from bank. Many of the debtors cleared their loans taking advantage of this situation whereas Bank fall in trouble.

http://epaper.ekantipur.com/showtext.aspx?boxid=13354984&parentid=12172&issuedate=1722011

ECO-SAN : FECES -----> FORTUNE

One of the ways of utilizing fece and urine as resource is displayed in this video. ECO SAN is basically an improved design of toilet in which feces, urine and water is separately stored. Every time defecation, some ashes or soda or leaves were dropped in feces compartment. It takes 1 year to fill and takes 5 months to get fully composted. In this period feces turn into very rice organic fertilizer. The documentary shows, that compost fertilizer is sold in 5 Rs per Kg. Similarly urine mixed with water is a very good fertilizer which has been proved for greater yield. The water used of cleaning the hand and anus is passed through a simple gravel filter and can be passed to the kitchen garden.

More examples in Nepalese Context

"Get 1 Rupee for peeing once.
Get 1 Soap for providing 10 litres of urine
Get 1 Cleaning Brush for providing 30 litres
This sounds funny but very serious !!! - Could be a panacea for the Sanitation problem of cities."

[BBC Nepali RADIO] [Sanitation Updates (a Blog) ]features an practice in Western Nepal of Buying Urine.

[ URINE BANK ] in Siddhipur nepal

A checklist for Eco-House

"7 secrets of sustainable architecture" an article in SPACES is an nice frame work to understand ECO-house design. In this link there more resource links so worth to refer it.

The following checklist is an list of substantive measures:

Insulating building envelop

1. SIP panels

2. Trombe wall construction

Locating different elements :

3. Trees as shading and microclimate

Renewable energy and resource use

4. Radiant floor heating: Solar energy systems has installed in Patan Hospital.

5. Solar water heater - Vaccum tube, simple home made pipe qoil

6. Solar PV cell

7. Rainwater harvesting

8. Geo-thermal energy - 125 ft down 55 degree temperature

9. Bamboo flooring – relatively far more renewable than wood – avoids loss of trees.

Use of recycled materials

10. Recycled content counter top

11. Use of briquettes as fuel

12. Demolition Material reuse

13. Recycled tiles for roof.

Replenish Natural Resource

14. Ground water recharge

15. Hardscape - permeable

16. Drain taken to the yard to recharge pits

Recycle waste – use as resource

17. Waste Separation

18. Disposal

19. Composting

20. Bio gas plant - household or Communal

21. ECO-SAN toilets - Urine collection, Feces composting, waste water reuse

22. DEWATS - composite of septic tank, biogas, reed bed treatment

23. Grey water flush

Resilience to disaster

24. Earthquake resistance.

Low energy and resource use

Appliances

25. Low-Flow water fixtures

26. Energy Star Appliances

27. Microwave heater for cooking - no heat loss.

Building Material

28. Alternatives to brick - compressed mud brick, concrete blocks

29. bond of brick - Rat Trap Brick Masonry

Healthy Material

30. no-VOC paints

31. Avoid carcinogenic material like asbestos etc.

Ecological life style

32. urban Farming - kitchen garden, terrace garden, or farm

33. Plantation - ecologically designed landscape

34. Be Productive - No or less lawn

Settlement Planning

35. Compact planning

Urban Agriculture in Kathmandu

Urban agriculture is one of the subjects that is talked much urban sustainability. To address different ecological consequences and inflation in food stock, it is promoted. Kitchen garden, farming and terrace farming are some the examples. Nepali times writes a feature on inspiring deeds of a retired researcher, a senior horticulturist at NARC (tional Agricultural Research Council), Dr Kedar Budhathoki.

After retirement, he got more active in producing 'Srijana', a breed of tomato, developed by his team 6years ago in his farm. He exported 60 tonnes of tomato last year to india of worth 2.5million.

Spurred on by his own success, Budhathoki is promoting Shrijana to Nepali farmers. The company is supporting 50 farmers' groups in and around Kathmandu to grow Shrijana by providing free seeds, fertilisers and training on cultivation techniques

read more ... http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/2011/02/16/Nation/17933

A idea of creating Vlog or Blog on sustainable urban Development in Nepalese context.

This idea click on me when I was watching some of the vlogs. In nepal, I've not seen any such media which continuously follow up the urban development issues. In the age of information and technology, Nepal is loosing this opportunity. Of course, to run any such media, one has to plan adequately so that it can sustain for long and the content would be resourceful.

This could be done in collaboration of the different disciplines mainly IT professional, Media experts and Urban planners in support of Government, local government and activists. Those supports could be in form of cooperation, information, advertisement. Business houses has to be incorporated in these missions. Blog and Vlogs are extremely cheap technology relatively other paper publication and easy for access.

One of the beauty of blogs is it archives all the contents leading to become itself a huge storage of resources full of different media such video, audio, photographs and animations at one place.

An Idea of Eco-Tol

After doing fieldwork for my thesis and rigorous analysis of the field data I came to following findings :

1. Bagmati river is in the process of rapid degradation leading to unrepairable damage of public health and cultural life.
2. The main features of degradation is water pollution and transformation in river morphology.
3. Main cause can be pointed out to the rapid urbanization but more should be pointed to the inability of people to cope the rapid urbanization.
4. Waste generation and disposal, water use and disposal, expansion of built up area took in such a conventional way that doesn't consider even a bit about the Holy river. I would say it an inability of the society to build on the cultural knowledge with respect to the changing circumstances.
5. This has resulted disgusting state of the mother river of the city whereas rest of the population are living thirty.
6. From fieldwork I gather ample amount of evidences which shows the traditional city dwellers still have strong personal and communal attachment to the river which they express through different cultural activities and traditions. Many traditions have been died out because of recent societal restructuring. But, still we have lots of informations about those traditions.
7. The city dwellers interact with the river through some specific meeting points. Traditionally having some historical, religious and cultural significances, these sites were established as cultural sites. Locally, it is also called 'tirtha'.
8. Along the through length of Bagmati and its tributaries, there hundreds of such site where some dozen site are prominent. Each of those sites hold a group of dweller as stakeholder who are connected culturally with the site and ultimately with river.
9. In case of Shankhamul, those dwellers are living in the traditional city of Patan in cluster neighbourhood locally termed as 'Tol'. Though, the government admistration does not recognize this traditional spatial division, very strong sense of community lies in these Tols.
10. Idea is to exploit the affection, culture, religion Tol-politics and general politics for the sake of improvements in Bagmati. This point outs to work with Tols units.
11. To run a Eco-Tol Movement.
12. Guita - accomodate 200 households and some 900 people. They have strong community feeling. They perform various social and community functions together. Traditionally they are united through a organization called 'Guthi' but these days new form of social organzaitons are proliferating such as cooperative, Tol Sudhar Samiti, Youth Clubs, Maa Pucha, Machaa pucha and Community Library.
13. To give awareness program and skill development program base on these social formats to run environmental project themselves.
14. Another opportunities I am seeing is, these tols area phisically very different that the newly developed area. They have big chunk of open public spaces in form of Lachhi, Nani, Bahal, Bahil, Pond, community Garden etc.
15. These open spaces could be used as waste water treatment area and other environmental recycling and reusing fuctions.
16. If these function could be run based on the notion that waste turning to asset, they'll run it very effectively.
17. The motivation for them could be : Severe Water Shortage, and cultural connections to the Bagmati river.
18. If this idea is absorbed, the model can be replicated to 50 such Tols in Patan and numerous (??? tols) in Kathmandu.
19. New area could be addressed through similar but in differen model.
20. Bio-Gas generation plant has be registered in Carbon trading (CDM kyoto protocol).
21. Working in tol based strategies are not a fully new idea. Yala Urban Health Programme (YUHP) has formed THP volunteers (Tol health programme). They are serving for different health campaigns such as vaccination, child health and maternity health program.

An Eco-House to Adapt oneself into Eco-friendly life style

A Eco-house : Elain Brook, an Photographer and Ecologist suggest to live environmental life exemplifier her own lifestyle.

She acquired a old house and converted to a eco-house which includes feature as below:

1. Rainwater harvesting for the garden pond accomodating frog and slug like creatures
2. A kitchen garden growing fruits and vegetables.
3. She dries the excess fruits and vegetable for future use.
4. Composting.
5. her car is vegetarian : runs from chip-oil i.e. the waste oil from the restaurant after frying the food for many times. Restaurant had to throw them because they are carcinogenic.
6. Use of solar energy through a) Solar water heater, b) PV cells, c) Conservatory - tomato growing and warm living space (a glass house), d) wood burning stoves.
7. Small Swimming pool covered with plastic or glass where water is heated by the excess water from solar panels.

She said she got all these inspiration from the 12 years spend in Himalayas where people are living in hardship, in very limited resources but still they are living well with cohesive social bonds.

She introduces from the Ecological footprint concept that to sustain current lifestyle we need 3 earths which is impossible. Hence, only the way we have is to adapt our life style to reduce that footprint.

She stress " need to experiment by each individuals how one can live eco-friendly"