Posts Tagged ‘new systems/services’
Seedbombing and the Guerilla Gardening Movement
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on August 11th, 2010
Source: Worldchanging
This article from Worldchanging provides a good insight and relevant links into the growing (sorry) Guerilla Gardening Movement, particularly in the USA:
The popularity of guerrilla gardening is growing. National Public Radio recently covered two stories on the subject, one on American seed bombing and another on night-time planting in London. We’ve covered guerrilla gardening at Worldchanging before (as well as the related topic of public food foraging and mapping), so we thought you might be interested to know about a new guerrilla gardening tool: tech savvy seed bombs that use biodegradable casings and are available at Etsy shops, ice cream trucks, grocery stores, and even vending machines! You can find seed bombs with local varietals categorized by geographic regions in the U.S. at Visualingual’s Etsy shop and at Anthropologie.
Common Studio founders Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud have given new life to Karlsrud’s father’s old gumball machines and turned them into seed bomb dispensaries in a project they call Greenaid. For a quarter and a turn, the Greenaid vending machines dispense seed bombs made up of clay, compost and seeds to guerrilla gardeners in California, Minnesota, Illinois, and North Carolina.
[...]
Read the full article by My Tam Nguyen and Amanda Reed.
—
Concentrated Cleaners: Reducing Impact
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on August 5th, 2010
Source: Springwise
Forward-thinking manufacturers are working to decrease the amount of packaging used for their products. Some offer concentrated formulas, others sell refills in bags instead of containers. Now, a Canadian startup has come up with an innovative solution we hadn’t yet spotted: refill cartridges that consumers dilute at home, with tap water.
Developed by Planet People, the iQ line of household cleaning products features small cartridges of plant-based concentrate. Consumers fill a spray bottle with ordinary tap water and pop in a cartridge. The coloured concentrate visibly mixes with the water, and voila: a full bottle of cleaner. iQ comes in four varieties: glass, bathroom, floor and all-purpose cleaner. All made with non-toxic and environmentally sustainable ingredients.
Besides reducing packaging and plastic waste, the system obviously cuts down on transportation, reducing fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. And—appealing to people’s wallets as much as their conscience—iQ passes on packaging and transportation savings to its customers. iQ starter kits, which include a spray bottle full of solution and a first refill cartridge, retail for approximately CAD 6.49, while cartridges are approximately CAD 2.79.
—
Bike Assembly Station at Portland Airport
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on August 2nd, 2010
Source: Port of Portland via Springwise
Cyclists traveling to and from Portland International Airport have a new tool for at least one leg of their journey. A new bike assembly station on the lower terminal roadway will enable people traveling with bicycles to more easily assemble and disassemble their bikes before and after flights. With many travelers visiting Oregon and southwest Washington to take advantage of bike tourism and to participate in the region’s many bicycle events, the new station will help cyclists more quickly prepare their bikes for travel, whether it’s away from the airport on the PDX bike path or for a return flight home. The station is also available to airport employees who bike to work.
As an extra resource, Travel Oregon and the Port of Portland have basic bike tools available for check-out by cyclists assembling or disassembling their bikes. Cyclists can stop by State Welcome Center, located near bag claim carousels five and six, to borrow a pedal wrench, air pump, or just to peruse literature about bicycling resources in the region.
—
EV Recharge Stations: Re-purposed Phone Booths
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on July 7th, 2010
From “Phone booths repurposed to charge electric vehicles“:
Now that mobile phones are ubiquitous, public phone booths are fast becoming obsolete. In a bid to find a viable new use for its 13,500 phone booths around the country, Telekom Austria has begun converting them into battery recharging stations for electric cars, scooters and motorbikes. Unveiling its first phone booth-turned-recharging station in front of the company’s Vienna headquarters in May, Telekom Austria announced plans to convert an additional 29 phone booths by the end of this year. During the initial trial period, recharging is free. The company eventually plans to charge a single-digit euro sum for the recharging service, with payments to be made via mobile phone.
Telekom Austria’s forward-thinking scheme comes at a time when, of the total 4.36 million cars on Austrian roads, there are only 223 electric cars and 3,559 hybrid cars registered -the Austrian motor vehicle association, VOeC, predicts that the number of electric vehicles in Austria will rise to 405,000 by 2020.
—
Daily Dump: Waste Management Design
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on July 1st, 2010
Via Worldchanging
From the case study by Bryan Boyer & Justin W. Cook for Helsinki Design Lab:
With a background in entrepreneurship, and experience co-founding one of India’s leading design schools, Poonam Bir Kasturi was no stranger to big challenges when she began to take note of the amount of waste filling Bangalore’s streets. Running a business and even creating a new school from scratch were successful projects built on Kasturi’s creativity and intellect, but as structural challenges, they were known quantities—familiar institutions for which many models existed. To address her growing interest in Bangalore’s waste, Kasturi would have to redefine the boundaries of the problem, while also designing the right kind of approach to the challenge. With the ultimate goal of improving India’s ability to manage its waste, Kasturi created the Daily Dump, a business that offers composting and recycling products and services actionable on an individual level, yet primed for coordination in a larger network of action. In the wake of failures left by many top-heavy, centralized approaches to waste management, The Daily Dump’s bottom-up, instant on solution is a powerful alternative.
At a basic level, the efficacy of waste management depends on three key factors: the attitude of individuals, the practices that those individuals engage in, and the extent to which municipal services enable and support these practices and attitudes. Failure in any one of these areas damages a community’s ability to manage their waste. Similarly, isolated accomplishments within one part of the system will not yield significant results without coordinated accomplishments on the other factors.
The Daily Dump was born out of recognition that Bangalore was a messier city for all of its growth and that the municipality and various NGOs attempting to fix the situation were stumbling. Due to evident corruption and bureaucratic sluggishness, efforts to enhance the centralized waste infrastructure were deemed by Kasturi as an important long-term effort, but one in need of a more immediate counterpart.
With municipal services faltering, Kasturi’s focus turned to attitudes and practices. The Daily Dump was established as a for-profit social enterprise in order to give the organization a high degree of flexibility in pursuing their goal of improving urban waste management in India. Free from any obligation to donors, the organization is able to change tack quickly to act on opportunities as they emerge. Using the market as a persistent reality check, the growth of the Daily Dump comes at a relatively slow pace but is fundamentally durable and road tested.
From the outset, the Daily Dump was designed as a business with three critical aspects: it would promote waste management generally rather than its own products, it would provide education in addition to tools, and it would offer a “clone” model which allows like-minded parties to duplicate the business.
Read the full case study on Helsinki Design Lab.
—
Toy Rental Service for Businesses
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on June 14th, 2010
Source: Springwise
Image: dougitdesign via flickr CC
From “Toy Rental Service Targets Businesses with Waiting Rooms“:
Serving Vancouver, B.C., Lucky Duck Toy Box provides a wide assortment of toys for kids aged newborn through five years old. Parents or grandparents simply choose a subscription plan—ranging from CAD 24 to CAD 69 per month for 3 to 12 toys—and pick out which toys they’d like to start with. Lucky Duck then delivers those within days. A month later, customers login once more to choose their next set; when their delivery date arrives, Lucky Duck swaps the old ones for the new ones. For businesses, Lucky Duck Toy Box offers a like-minded solution to the problem of old, dirty, worn out toys in waiting rooms. Instead, it delivers a fresh assortment of sanitized playthings to keep businesses’ youngest customers safe and entertained. All toys are lead-tested, inspected and cleaned with environmentally friendly products. Weekly and custom delivery plans are also available.
—
Libraries as Virtual Supermarkets: Food Security Innovation
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on June 11th, 2010
Source: Sustainable Cities Collective
From “Libraries as food desert oases” by DNaim:
NPR reports on a clever strategy being rolled out in Baltimore to provide fresh food to underserved neighborhoods. It’s being dubbed the Virtual Supermarket. Two library branches have been selected in urban locations where the nearest grocery store is basically inaccessible to anyone without a vehicle. The city public health department helps residents place food orders online using the library computers, and the bag of groceries is delivered [to the library for pick-up] the next day from a local grocer.
This program is up and running with the help of a $60,000 federal stimulus grant. According to the NPR story, there are currently a couple of dozen subscribers. This number may grow as people wade into the technology.
There’s so much to appreciate about this innovative approach to food access. Delivery costs are held down, because the the orders are aggregated for each day and condensed into a single drop-off point. Libraries get to broaden their horizons a bit, a trend Wendy Waters discussed a little while ago. Some more assistance with computers can only help knock the digital divide down a notch. And, of course, more people get to enjoy the nutritional food at fair prices most of us take for granted.
The department plans to expand Virtual Supermarket to other sites with additional programming, such as cooking demonstrations. Apparently, other cities are watching all of this very closely. Philadelphia has long been known for being on the forefront of food access solutions, but it looks like Baltimore is finding it’s own niche.
Read this article by DNaim on Sustainable Cities Collective, or the original article on NPR.
—
Compost Cab: Food Scraps Pick-Up Service
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 28th, 2010
Source: Springwise
…For every 50 pounds of organics the company collects, customers can receive five pounds of fresh compost and one pound of worm castings in exchange.
–
Read it on Springwise:
The average American family produces more than 500 pounds of leftover organic material every year; composting not only keeps that waste out of methane-generating landfills, it also produces nutrient-rich, fertile, natural soil. Composting may be the right thing to do for the environment, but it can be hard to get around the smell and the mess—particularly for urbanites without expansive yards. Compost Cab is a new service about to launch in Washington, DC, that can be called upon to handle all the dirty details.
DC-area consumers begin by signing up online. Once it launches, Compost Cab will then provide them with a standardized bin equipped with a sturdy, compostable bag liner. Each day clients will fill the bin with their organic material, and once a week—on a reliable, fuel-efficient schedule—Compost Cab will pick up the bag, leaving behind only a clean bin with a new liner. The cost is simply USD 8 per week per bin; no long-term commitments are required. Compost Cab’s primary composting partner is Engaged Community Offshoots (ECO), a seed-stage urban farm in College Park, Md., that uses finished compost to grow natural, nutritious food for local kids.
At least as interesting is that clients who have been with Compost Cab for nine months or longer can claim some finished soil in return. Specifically, for every 50 pounds of organics the company collects from them, they can receive five pounds of fresh compost and one pound of worm castings in exchange. Those who choose not to claim their share, meanwhile, can ask Compost Cab to donate it on their behalf to ECO. Compost Cab is a production of Agricity LLC, a Washington, DC-based company focused on sustainability.
—
Urban Revitalisation: Empty Shops Network
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on May 27th, 2010
Source: guardian.co.uk
From “Dan Thompson’s innovation: the Empty Shop Network” by Lucy Siegle
Dan Thompson describes his main skill as “charming keys out of people”. Ever since he was gifted a former bakery in Worthing which he made into an impromptu art gallery, he has been reviving disused shops with creative ventures and quirky commercial schemes. “It’s very easy,” he assures me. “It’s a question of speaking to property developers and landlords, and explaining what you want the space for. In most cases you’ll find they just want un-let properties to be looked after. Neighbours also like to see footfall and traffic. Breathing life into old shops brings town centres back to life.”
This is not about squatting. Each of Thompson’s Empty Shops Network (ESN) projects abides by a “licence to occupy”. Acquiring short, very cheap leases for pop-up shops and arts ventures is simple at the moment: experts predict one in five of the shops currently lying empty will never again see service as a commercial enterprise, as a nation of shopkeepers realises it has too many shops.
But the ESN believes that for ventures as diverse as seed swapping to recycled jeans, the right outlet is out there somewhere. Today Thompson is particularly excited by Coventry: “We’ve got one arcade where we’ve opened a gallery, a digital arts centre and a theatre. We want people to hang out in town centres, be inspired!”
Although he’s steered clear of old Woolworths (too big), he did install bumper cars in a former Allied Carpets showroom in Shoreham. And he allowed himself a wry smile when he visited the Gucci pop-up shop in central London recently. “It was amazing to see a luxury brand do what we’ve been doing for 10 years,” Thompson says. The informal shop economy appears to be booming.
Article by Lucy Siegle
—
Shared Earth: connecting gardeners with gardens
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on May 17th, 2010
Source: Treehugger
“I’ll provide the land, water and materials if you’ll provide the work. We can share the produce 50-50.”
–
“It’s an obvious problem in urban and suburban jungles around the country: many people are eager to garden but have nowhere to indulge their green thumbs. And plenty of homeowners have gardens in need of tending. Enter SharedEarth.com. Taking the Craigslist model to gardening, it helps match up prospective gardeners to those with gardens, for free. Think of it as sharecropping 2.0 — or a kind of dating site for garden lovers. The idea has already inspired a trend (and a TV show) in the UK. The implications for the U.S. could be huge.
Consider less wasted land, lower greenhouse gases, more local, homegrown food, stronger community bonds, and perhaps the chance to make some extra cash. It’s the kind of thing that Malcolm Gladwell can dig, apparently. And while it’s just getting started, the site’s already shared almost 26 million square feet of land. Just before the site launched on Earth Day, I spoke to the founder, internet entrepreneur Adam Dell (Michael’s brother) about the site and where it grows from here.