Peepoo: poopee.
Anders Wilhelmson has created a biodegradable bag called the Peepoo, which sounds like a great idea, if only people would buy it. Basically, it’s a bag you take a dump in, then, after tying it off and burying it, the bag decomposes and turns the fecal matter into fertilizer.
This makes several assumptions, however. The first is that you’ve got the science and engineering right and won’t spread disease when using human feces as fertilizer. That’s a big one. The second is that people will use it as instructed. I mean, think of it this way: sure, you have a bag to pee in but no toilet paper to wipe your ass with. That creates all kinds of problems, namely, infectious bloody diarrhea. That said, this product wasn’t meant to address that anyway. The poorest of all these assumptions is that people will actually buy it. Think about this one: who buys bags to poo in? No one, normally, except for avid backpackers…
And that, actually, is the right market for this: sell it to backpackers and hippies; hope that USAID and other aid groups buy a bunch as a result. Trying to sell this outright to aid groups is a crappy idea (no pun intended). It’s too much of a gamble and requires too much sensitization — and that’s only acceptable in an emergency (e.g., Haiti or Chile).
Here’s an article in the NY Times.
Aquaponics: my future backyard “what the hell is that?”
A look at Rob Torcellini’s greenhouse.
It’s all part of a home experiment he is conducting in a form of year-round, sustainable agriculture called aquaponics — a neologism that combines hydroponics (or water-based planting) and aquaculture (fish cultivation) — which has recently attracted a zealous following of kitchen gardeners, futurists, tinkerers and practical environmentalists.
A couple quick video explanations makes it more clear:
Here’s some great engineering:
Faith and Sustainable Technologies offers free plans.
If you know of bigger or more easily scalable systems, let me know: jsong@jamessong.com
My, how things have changed.
What’s new:
1. Apparently, the Ugandan government has been on a standards binge, bearing down on Chinese businessmen for failing to import things of quality. The problem? The measures they use are largely subjective (e.g., pulling at shoes to see if they come apart), and some items they are complaining about are actually made in Uganda.
2. Cissy, my hapless lawyer, got married.
3. The migration of workers from China is palpable. Children no longer shout ‘mzungu,’ but ‘China’ instead. And Ugandans have started to adopt a sensitivity to the Chinese: they nearly all try to speak with a Chinese-inspired accent, which, in typical Ugandan fashion, sounds as ridiculous as it seems.
4. Those meddling European consultants keep trying to improve working conditions in Uganda, but are just fucking it all up. For instance, Uganda’s thinking about a minimum wage. The problem is that it’s just another tax on foreign investment, since Ugandans are the ones who set the market wages to begin with, and are the only ones able to flout regulations with ease.
Europe, America, just leave Africa alone. Clearly, the progress you’ve failed to make in the last 50 years should tell you that you’re not helping anyone.
5. Plastic scrap is now sold at a whopping 1000 shillings a kilo. Who would’ve known it could go so high?
6. Traffic is now everywhere, all the time (we’re up to the UAM series of license plates).
7. Nakumatt may be going down the tubes: I’ve never seen so many closed shops.
8. Puppies! Chicken and Beef procreated, making 8 more. Naturally, I’m calling the one we’re keeping McGangbang, a fusion of chicken and beef.
What hasn’t changed:
1. URA: still bureaucratic as ever.
2. The guys at Surgipharm are still rude.
3. Emirates service still sucks (it figures: Beatrice has gone to Canada).
Upcycling Plastic?
The NewScientist reports a process in which polyethylene plastic bags can be “upcycled” into nanotubes.
Pol made the nanotubes by cooking 1-gram pieces of HDPE or LDPE at 700 °C for 2 hours in the presence of a cobalt acetate catalyst and then letting the mixture cool gradually. Above 600 °C the chemical bonds within the plastic completely break down and multiwalled carbon nanotubes grow on the surface of the catalytic particles.
A lot of catalyst is needed to get good results – about a fifth of the weight of the plastic being converted – and it cannot easily be recovered afterwards. But Pol says this is still one of the cheapest and environmentally friendly ways yet found to grow nanotubes.
OK. Hear me out. HDPE plastic melts at around 250 °C (depending upon how pure it is; HDPE melts at a higher temperature than LDPE). Knowing that, how is it that you can cook it at 700 °C without having it burn?
“Recycled” does not mean “clean”
Environmentalists would like us to start being more Norwegian, wiping our asses with harder, recycled paper, since the softer stuff we love is made (largely) from old-growth forests.
The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper — in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts — are shorter. The web often is rougher.
However, all recyclers know that recycled paper is filthy. Recently, a bunch of workers at a recycling plant found cash hidden in some recyclables:
In 2006, the body of a 50-year-old woman was found on a conveyor belt. “That was the worst,” Gurney said.
But Tuesday, the feeling inside the station at 301 Carl Road was far from morbid.
Sometime between 8 and 9 a.m., sorters who earn nearly $14 an hour discovered a few of the $100 bills getting sorted in a machine called the “in-feed conveyor belt,” Gurney said. The piles of junk then snaked throughout the spacious building, finally getting shot from a conveyor belt, like a mechanical shower head attached to the ceiling.
Hope you caught that part about the dead body, because that’s exactly why you shouldn’t use recycled paper: you just don’t know what’s in it. Indeed, I don’t even wipe my nose with recycled paper — ever — because, as a recycler myself, I know better.
Dear Diary
I’ve been in Uganda exactly one week now. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
Monday (June 15): Slept for 5 hours then worked all night. Threatened to kill someone for starting a fire near a pile of plastic.
Tuesday (June 16): Threatened to cut someone’s hand off with a butcher knife. Initially thought I might be having a fit of rage, being jetlagged and all, you know, the kind of rage that comes when you’re not thinking straight and desperately need a blowjob to calm you down. But six hours later I threatened to cut Peter’s hand off. Turns out it was just that kind of day.
Wednesday: Found out that the thugs that wait for me outside of my factory had died from eating some local herbs they’d stolen. There is a god, after all.
Thursday: Slept, then worked for 20 hours. An askari (security guard) begged me to teach him kung-fu.
Friday: Worked, then drank. Apparently, a whole new club scene opened up in Kampala while I was away.
Saturday: Waited outside my factory gate until 5am to assess how many thieves would come to attack me. Turns out everyone there knows me now and won’t bother me — a terrible thing since they attacked Robert just a few months ago.
Sunday: Saw Robert and had a look at his elephantitis. Jesus.
All in all, a great start to my summer holiday. Kisses.
Ross Bleckner’s BS
Ross Bleckner, painter and now UN goodwill ambassador, recently traveled to Gulu district, Uganda, to teach former child soldiers and abductees how to paint.
Using thousands of dollars’ worth of paint, brushes and paper shipped from New York Central Art Supply in the East Village, Mr. Bleckner, 59, worked with a group of 25 children — former abductees and ex-soldiers — for more than a week at a Roman Catholic aid center. The children made 200 paintings that will be sold at a benefit at the United Nations headquarters next month at which Mr. Bleckner will be appointed goodwill ambassador. Several of the luminous paintings are now on view in the front window of the clothing store Moschino in the meatpacking district, whose company is providing money to support the Gulu project.
Fantastic. Use the suffering of children for commercial gain. What a great way to desensitize the masses to the problems in northern Uganda.
“One of the things we realized about a fine artist, a painter, in this role is that the work that emerges from it really needs no translation, no dubbing like a documentary or music — it’s immediately accessible to anyone who sees it,” said Ms. Monasebian, whose office estimates that human trafficking generates $32 billion a year in profits, third only to drug and arms trafficking.
Wow. . . this is unadulterated ignorance. Artistic work actually does, at times, require explanation. J.D. Salinger, for instance, suggested people nowadays are too dumb to understand his subtext. And art, as it relates to painting, is sometimes confusing to laymen. Take Jackson Pollack. Most people do not “get” his work right away — sometimes never. People tend to say “my kid can do that,” but what they fail to grasp is Pollack’s deep understanding of color: you can’t approximate Pollack’s work because you don’t have the color mastery that he had. This knowledge is not intuitive.
In addition, children’s paintings, too, can be abstruse. Sometimes, especially within therapeutic play contexts, a child might draw things that require professional interpretation (for instance, relative size of self compared to others, relative size of genitalia); moreover, remember Columbine and Virginia Tech? These situations all show that we are poor interpreters of obvious attempts to communicate. It is not immediately accessible.
“What this mission accomplished is what I call microcreativity,” Mr. Bleckner wrote in a catalog of the children’s work. “It is a personal interaction which gives someone the tools to create something that they can be proud of, and which can help them on the arduous path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.”
What my mission in Uganda accomplishes is what I call EMPLOYMENT and EDUCATION. It’s a personal interaction which gives people the tools to FEED THEIR FAMILIES and BETTER THEIR LIVES — things they can be proud of, which can help them on the relatively easy path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.
I don’t understand this continuing celebration of mediocrity. It’s as if we’re all too easily fooled by flash and sparkle. It’s like we’ve left intellectualism and probity thrashing in the wake as we sail forward for the sake of sailing forward. Where we are going is uncertain.
Self-mending Plastic — recyclable?
The NY Times reports that University of Groningen-based researchers have developed a thermoset plastic that heals itself when heated. The idea of recycling thermoset resins — often used in printed circuit boards (PCBs) — sounds great; however, its usefulness needs to be considered with more depth:
a) Recyclables are at the mercy of practicality. If it is too difficult to source thermoset plastic scrap, then it doesn’t matter if the material is recyclable or not. (Note: this applies to popular use only; military use of these materials may differ, especially if the end-product is used in espionage.)
b) A plastic’s recyclability is also a function of it’s value. If, for instance, new thermoset resins are cheaper to buy virgin (new) than to source and recycle old end-products, then recycling stops making sense.
The researchers demonstrated that the material can be shredded, melted and remolded at least seven times with no loss of mechanical properties. Their discovery, they say, adds to scientific understanding of the nature of self-healing materials, and with more research may eventually lead to the full development of recyclable thermoset plastics.
c) Though the material can ostensibly be recycled, you have to take into account the recycling process. A plastic bag may be easy to recycle, but not when it’s been used to pick up feces. Likewise, thermoset plastic may become recyclable in the near future, but how easy is it? Circuit boards are full of non-plastic contaminants, for example; how do you go about purifying it in a way that keeps the process profitable (recyclers won’t touch scrap unless it’s profitable)?
There are many, many people developing all kinds of things that are newly recyclable or made from recycled material. Problems arise because these same people have little knowledge about how things are recycled; for example, plastic shopping bags made from recycled material are actually harder to recycle (because manufacturers mix in unknown materials and quantities when using recycled material). The bottom line, then, is that problems (yes, problems in general) need deeper insight. We’re always so concerned with coming up with new ideas, with making our knowledge wider. My contention is that we need to focus on depth, we need to make our ideas better.
Solomon’s Digging Tools
Solomon is one of my employees. His job is to support night operations and attend the gate after the sun comes up so the day crew doesn’t have to get into scuffles with the thugs at 7th Street. Recently, Solomon had the fingers on his right hand cut off because Jeremiah was screwing around and turned on the grinding machine while it was being cleaned. (There goes that law career . . .)
I found the following safety video on Buzzfeed. Sadly, it doesn’t quite do the job I need it to do (I just don’t want to be shooting and editing industrial video footage all summer), but it’s good for a laugh.
Rethinking Recycling
Plastic recycling, though relatively young, is very traditional in its ways. There are a few simple elements — supply chain, processing, delivery-usage — that see surprisingly little variation, even across diverse contexts and motivations. However, one concept continues to gnaw at me — it’s just that good: it refuses to be ignored.
Simply, the people who buy recycled plastic material tend to be plastic manufacturers that 1) are having credit problems and cannot finance the purchase of virgin (non-recycled) raw material or 2) use recycled plastic to make products where quality is not paramount (recycled plastic is notorious for its inconsistancy).
It seems to me, then, that plastic recycling can be reinvented as a financial services business. Specifically, the plastic recycler grants a line of credit (or loan) to the manufacturer which is paid in recycled plastic material in lieu of cash. The manfacturer can then focus solely upon manufacturing and, after selling the end product, can begin repayment with interest — an easy effort when you combine good repayment terms with profitability. Hence, the plastic recycler is invested in the health of both businesses, which, in turn, should enhance profitability for both parties (the recycler can buy plastic waste from the manufacturer at reduced fees via contractual stipulation and manufacturer is assured better support from the recycler as profitability becomes essential).
It seems like an obvious way to make an extra 6% a month; best of all, the recycler will finally have some leverage over the manufacturer in plastic bag production.
How ’bout them strawberries?
My father overcame poverty and institutionalization (he was an orphan) as a young man to build a new life in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, NY. One of his few friends from that period was an Italian man named George, an auto-parts dealer who loved to fix cars with his massive hands — socket wrench in one, pastrami sandwich in the other.
George once told us about an uncle’s strawberry farm out on Long Island. It was a glorious enterprise, drawing tourists from all over to sample what were undoubtedly the largest, sweetest strawberries ever seen. Larger than apples, they would say, streams of juice streaking across extended chin, dripping, making the pavement sticky in the oppressive summer heat. Sadly, my sister and I were never allowed to sample the strawberries; worse, we were never told why.
Years later we thanked dad for that. Turns out the secret to growing good strawberries is to use lots of fertilizer. The secret to growing award-winning strawberries, however, is to use human feces as fertilizer. Apparently, when it comes to growing fruit, our shit is magical. It makes everything grow well.
I was reminded of this while watching Kristof’s feature of SOIL, a non-profit that works to turn your crap into fertilizer:
The project looks supremely promising, and the scenes are surprisingly African, though I’m unsure why they rely on motorcycle taxis for transportation. I use them whenever I’m in Uganda, and I can say unabashedly that they are completely unsafe and unsuitable for transporting guests from the NY Times.
SOIL must, however, address the obvious problems my dad had with the strawberries: how do you keep the production safe for humans at all levels? How do you ensure the raw fecal material isn’t contaminated and, if it is, how do you purify it for production? Due diligence, folks. You’re putting your shit in my food; I need to know I’m not going to get infected with E. Coli. Even if the strawberries are to die for.
Myopia
“My goal is just to survive,” said Luo Guoliang, an executive at the Yang Xin Long Fu Company in Shandong province, which makes polyester and polypropylene filaments for fabric and rugs, all of it recycled material (NY Times, March 11, 2009).
The plastic scrap market has gone down the tubes for one reason: we bet it all on China. Recycling, in America, works like this: you buy stuff, you use stuff, you throw some stuff away, and sometimes you send stuff for recycling. What you probably don’t know is that China was buying all of your crap, just so they could sell it back to you:
> Plastic bottles (PET) are made into polarfleece (as well as some other types of cloth).
> White paper is usually made into toilet paper.
> Cans are melted down and made into roofing sheets or nails or other goods.
My contention with recession-era recycling is that Africa still needs these materials and is still able to recycle them. Many African nations would love to get cheap or free raw materials, yet, because the Chinese have such a strong infrastructure and massive market share, it makes it impossible for smaller players–with their small budgets and lack of influence–to penetrate.
It’s time to recognize the other players.