The Story of Stuff

Teaser Trailer about a site that shines awareness on consumer culture and the forces behind it. To view this video in it's entirety, go here:
The Story of Stuff



Couple of the main points that this 20 minutes video shows:

- Only one percent of all the new stuff bought after 6 months is still being used. The rest either trashed or filling up people's increasingly large homes. This is an almost unbelievable statistic, have to check where they got that figure from.

- Victor Lebow on how to keep the economy growing after WWII, "Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

- President Eisenhower's council of economic advisors chairman stated:
"The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods."

- Paul Wachtel writes in The Poverty of Affluence: "Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but something we need. The idea of more, ever-increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and our security, and we are caught up by it as the addict is by his drugs."

How does an unsustainable economy keep people spending money on stuff?

- Planned Obsolescence

An endless market is created by introducing rapid, disposables, one time use items, basically designed for the trash heap, so you have to go out and buy it again. Examples, disposable diapers, cameras, brooms, carpets, etc. Upgrade the motherboard on the computer, and likely many other things will need upgrading as well, many just get a new computer to avoid the hassle of incompatibilities. Disconnection from the earth as a whole system is literally written all over these products. It is a symbol of our disconnected separate thinking state of mind. The video discusses designers figuring out a way to keep consumers loyal to their products while at the same time making components break fast.

- Perceived Obsolescence

Convince the consumer to throw away stuff that is still useful. How to do that? By changing the way things look, basically, changing the fashions often, whether that is for clothes or gadgets. Look at advertising, it appeals to people's manufactured self image, "do you really want to look, breath, show yourself in that way?", with our product, xyz, you will look cooler, more color coordinated, get more happiness, more girls, look younger, act more confident, show you care, etc, etc. Basically preying on people's insecurities, and limited self image. The video mentions the example of shoe fashion changes each year. An important element in this conditioning is creating a perceived value to the user. Again, this comes from a disconnected, separate thinking self identity, one that puts ficticious value judgements on people things and planet.

How to keep people from questioning their conditioning and continue shopping?

- Carpet bomb them with advertising, a bombardment of the average person of 3000 ads per day.

- Telling the consumer that they are not happy, unless they buy xyz. Similar to a priest a few centuries earlier telling people that they are sinners, and they can only go through the church to get a chance at eternal rewards. Basically by projecting small identities onto the consumer.

- Keep the nasty stuff or REALITY out of the field of vision, as though it doesn't exist. Examples are the cartoony happy chickens running around on the farm (instead of the undignified factory farms where they are fattened up with who knows what, beaks cut because they are stuffed in small cages so they can't kill each other, avoiding humane killing to save a penny, etc), the bugers that grow on trees, the face that suddenly looks 50 years younger. It truly is the "matrix" of manufactured happiness, version of reality. The advertisers have no incentive to show where the stuff comes from, as that would bring out the citizen, or perhaps move people's heart, which is in conflict with the non-feeling, non-connected consumer persona which just wants to consume, neural networks which are encouraged to grow like weeds in people's heads and sanctified (endorsements by public figures, heros, or celebrities).

- The connection between national happiness falling and consumerism rising is made. We have the gross national product as a standard for wealth, Butan has the gross national product of happiness. Different emphasis, different outcome. While neither might be the best way to go into the future, it sure would be nice to have product life cycle cost, national wellness, and impact on environment or future generations included in this mix.

- More time off is not neccessarily better if it is not quality time, but less time off in order to buy more, which creates a cycle of even more work to pay for keeping up with the Jones's.

Bicycling Spokane and bike to work in Spokane

Nice street relatively quiet street to bike on.

Biking underneath brown's edition along hangman's creek, then under the I-90 freeway and towards Cheney-Spokane road through hangman valley.

Biking towards the merge with Spokane river, then up the hill into Brown's edition.
Along the downtown library
The view towards the court building and the falls.

Courtesy of metro spokane, this is a great idea for Spokane as well. Imagine a car free Sunday on the majority of Spokane's streets, great way to encourage downtown business, health and wellness for people living here, a win-win.





For more information on Bike to work, go to their web site:
http://biketoworkspokane.org/

Sterling Engine Tour

Here are some good sources, courtesy of Justin Bell

• The best one, in myopinion, is the first one. Good introduction to Robert Stirling and his engines
  http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/courses/371/abhishe/main.html
  
• American Stirling Company
  http://www.stirlingengine.com/faq/one?scope=public&faq_id=1
  
• Guide and refrence and a touch of engine theory
  http://www.stirlingengine.com/catalogs/catalog1.pdf
  
• Coffee cup version
  http://jlnlabs.ifrance.com/jlnlabs/html/stirling.htm
  
• Animated version
  http://web.mit.edu/2.670/www/spotlight_2005/engine_anim.html
• In use by San Diego gas and Electric? Worlds largest array?http://www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htmhttp://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/11/69528http://pesn.com/2005/08/11/9600147_Edison_Stirling_largest_solar/
• Tin Can version by University of Austin
  http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/courses/egr112/StirlingEngine/stirling.html
  
• Space Craft Versiomhttp://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15063

WVO (waste vegetable oil) burner

Experimenting with the same principles as used in the truck (getting the oil hot so it vaporizes, combusts, and flows easily). There are biodiesel stoves out there, notably the kuma stove that is being sold across the State border in Hayden, Idaho. But again, I don't like the idea of putting more effort/resources into making bio diesel, when surely something can be done with just straight veggie.



It works very simple, get a fire going hot, then turn on the valve, and let it drip on something that is hot as well, and it will sustain itself, well not consistently with a 1/4 inch copper tube. This is where others start adding compression and fans etc to make it consistent.... For me it is just experimenting, not getting too technical. The oil gets stuck sometimes in the needle valve, presumably because at that point the oil is only room temperature, I'm using a lot of hydrogenated stuff that I don't really want to put into the truck. Continue to experiment. The nice thing is that I can use the really bottom of the barrel oil for this purpose.

Couple of observations:

- When it is a good fire, it is really hot, I have never seen our stove get this hot with wood, there are several metal layers in the top of the stove to get a clean burn, and the top can still get red-hot, even with a fan blowing air over it, to get the hot air out of the insert. One has to be cautious with this stuff, if there is anything flamable near that stove. There is about 2 feet of copper tubing in the stove, so when it is hot, and the drip is not very fast, it will come out vaporized, like a torch. It also helps to have the oil warmed coming in. (which you pretty much have to do when it is hydrogenated anyway)

- The black light fluffy stuff is I assume soot, or unburned fuel. If not very hot, you get a coat on the metal in the stove, so I crank it up periodically and put some more wood in as well, this burns it off in the stove. Will have to examine the chimney at some point to see how that looks. Probably bigger issue with smaller flue. When looking at what comes out of the chimney, during a good hot burn, there is just heat, hardly any smoke, so clean burn. When just a small burn, you see the fluffy stuff fly out, as well as a little black smoke, not more than a wood fire though.

- Putting some grease in a metal bucket and letting it boil in the fire, will also create a really fast hot burning fire, once it starts boiling, but the dripping allows much more control.

Both our stove dealer and a fire fighter didn't think this is a good idea, (this is to be expected, since this is an unpredictable fuel) so I'm not advocating it, nor doing it at this point, as our dogs ran off with a grease rag and leaked it on the nice couch...

Harvesting and crushing Black Walnuts

Some folks don't really care about the fruit on their trees, but are nice enough to share them with others, such as through graigslist, so I went in and got some of these difficult nuts, perhaps 150 lbs or so. This is the fun part driving over them, powered by vegetable oil of course.



Got some strawbales as well, not enough to insulate the house though, but perhaps enough to make a cold frame to grow salad in the winter.

Gardeners can find plenty of leaves for free in bags during the fall

Brown's edition and the South Hill are good places to get your free mulch for your organic garden. I like to mow them up some more, then spread them on my vegetable beds, they also discourage weeds that way. Folks have already put the leaves in bags for you and they are on the curb. Why not grab some...

Shift Happens - All Things Change - Ceaseless Transformation is the sign of the times

The "Shift Happens" video creates a space for reflection on the exponential fast paced times we live in where adapting to change will be highly valued. But sometimes "no change" or keeping the status quo is subsidized as in for example the meat and ethanol industry, creating an artificial market place. Will these subsidies, obstructions, or lack thereof improve the welfare in the world or not, it is not black and white. As H.L. Mencken once pointed out, it is difficult to get a man (or congressman in this case) to understand something when his income (big campaign contributions) depends on his not understanding it.



Another quote relating to environmental changes that business will have to go through, "The winners will be the folks that don't resist change, but look at ways to apply innovation and ingenuity to capitalize on the migration toward a lower carbon economy." Ken Ostrowski.

Growing bio-fuel from algea on a vertical closed loop set-up

View a video here
http://www.globalgreensolutionsinc.com/i/misc/Vertigro/

Sequesters carbon dioxide while producing useful liquids.

You can grow per Acre:
18 gallons of oil per year from corn
700-800 gallons of oil per year from palm
20.000 gallons of oil per year with open algea system

1/10 of the state of New Mexico could produce enough energy for the US when growing algea.

Bioneers Satellite Conference first time in Spokane

Would have loved to attend most of it, but could only attend a few sessions by local folks. It is great to have this event in Spokane. Here is their site http://www.sustainspokane.org/ and the main Bioneers web site

Saranac First Platinum Certified Green Building in Spokane



Some of the Saranac's features,

- Rooftop garden (reduces urban heat island effect, plants convert CO2 back into oxygen, and natural cooling for the summer, insolation for the winter)

- Reused insolation (denim)

- Ground source heat pump (50 degree ground temperature gets pumped up in the summer for cooling and heating in winter) They also reuse waste heat generated in the restaurant.

- 230K solar PV array (will pay for itself in 12 years) installed by Eco Depot

- Daylighting (sensors adjust the indoor lighting depending on ambient day light coming in)

- Roof rainwater collection (used as gray water for toilets and irrigation)

- Dual flush toilets and no-flush urinals

This deserves extra attention (it has already been featured in the local media), as it is indicative of a trend with consumers becoming more and more conscious of their harm and resource footprint which hopefully, is an infectious and unstoppable trend, regardless of whether the gas prises fall again to comfortable lows. It is easy for folks to think only the rich and powerful, or "leaders" can do things like this, but each one of us has a specialty, a unique contribution to make, maybe it is not related to spending money to make green buildings, perhaps it is to make a difference towards beauty in other ways. It does not matter what occupation or environment one works and lives in, you can directly affect those around you. Just by becoming a more conscious human being, one starts changing the world around oneself, automatically. To say one can't make a difference is deep down a way to avoid taking responsibility. As the african proverb says, "One small mosquito can make a difference in your night's sleep." So it is with each one of us, by doing what we know best, we can make a big difference in the world. So who are you?


See Community Building

Kettle Crest Trail Labor Day Weekend

Start at the bottom of this page, as I've not figured out how to load the images chronologically. (click on images to enlarge)




A big fire on the way back north was burning west of Chewelah, they had already dispatched a bunch of air tankers.

Somewhere near profanity peak.

Ryan Creek cabin was our last camp site, it took a while to find any water. The book says 100 yards beyond (it doesn't say follow the trail for another 100 yards, the spring is under the growth to the left of the trail), however, this site is barely used, so the place is overgrown, and it took us about half an hour to find the small water hole. According to what we read this would be the last place with water, since we only had a few quarts left, this was important, since the walk out to Deer Creek summit was another 9 plus miles, excluding the half a mile or so steep trail back up to the main trail.

On the west side of Lambert Mt.

Most springs wer protected from cow trampling by putting fencing around it, with a pipe emptying out in a trough.

Midnight Mt, we passed the old stage coach trail that went through the pass.
Lots of burned area, with fireweed. No huckleberries on the whole trail, must be too dry near the crest.

No problem finding springs (see above), even though the ranger station at Kettle Falls said there everything was dried up on the 30 plus mile trial. (The Republic ranger station had better info on this trail)This was not the case, while we were prudent to have at least 3 Liters with us at most times, the only point after which there was no more water was about a mile and a half past the Ryan Creek cabin, old trail 30 junction. There were two trickles after this junction, the third trickle in the next valley filled up our pan within about a minute, so pretty good. After that there was nothing for the next 6-7 miles to Deer Creek Summit.

Wapaloosi in the background.

Copper Butte above.

Click above to view a large version of the panorama

Above, Jungle hill in the foreground, Columbia Mt in the background, taken from Wapaloosi Mt



Above, Sunrise
First campsite above, with sunset

Mike is a great hiking partner.
White Mountain behind Sherman Peak.

Starting up from Sherman Pass, up the north side of Columbia Mountain, you can see above the view towards Sherman Peak.

The hail was bigger than I have ever seen.

This image above is the night before about 30 minutes after the thunderstorm passed over our house in southwest Spokane.

We had good luck with the weather, as we had hail and lightening the night before departing from Sherman Pass

Hybrid bicycle using a bike engine for longer commutes.
(that would otherwise have been made with a car)

This was a project for a friend of ours, who wants to commute to work by bike for health and lower carbon footprint reasons, but just can't do that big hill, so a bit of internet searching later we came up with the bike engine. We would have wanted to go electric, but the weight is an issue. This engine is only about 14 Lbs, so you can still jump curbes with it. Since this is a gasser, we wanted the quitest and least polluting one.



Not an easy install for this particular new Mt bike, the spokes were wrong, needed 36, bike store gave the wrong wheel. Next challenge, a quick release axle, those things look weenie and are weenie since the engine fork won't fit over that, so we replaced that with the axle that came with the kit. Next challenge, protruding things above the axle, so the fork that holds the engine wouldn't fit, sawed and filed those off.

Above: The engine drives the kevlar belt that is connected to the grey plastic drive ring that fits on all the spokes facing it's side. Note the handle or lever with the black ball that tensions the belt for when you turn on the engine. There is very little drag when you untension it for just bicycling.

Note the extra muffler piece below. This only adds about 12 dollars. The sound on idle is very low, you can speak normally standing next to it and still hear others comfortably. Full throttle it is a bit more noise, but not bothersome at all.

Quick list of reasons to get this for this particular application:

• 250 Miles/Gallon if you ran it continuously (bicycling is very easy with it, so that should stretch your mileage and lower your carbon footprint per purchased gallon by a lot more, plus you can easily kill and start the engine while biking, so on downhills and flats you can just keep the thing off and just use it for assist going up a steep hill)
• No need to replace costly batteries every other year
• Emission wise very efficient, will post more data when I get a chance
• relatively quiet, nothing like a lawn mower

Bike purists most likely won't approve of this, and they have some good arguments, however, the thing to keep in mind is reducing our addiction to fossil fuel, carbon/resource and harm footprint, the size of a bike engine footprint versus a big 2-3 thousand pound car should be enough reason to encourage this commute alternative. Secondly, there is still pedaling needed, to get started, going up hills, it is hybrid, no moped.

Here is a nice electric bike with regenerative braking, at a steep price of 5K
http://www.metaefficient.com/archives/electric-bikes/the_mantra_ms1_electric_bike.html#more

The Big Green Bus Stops in Spokane




Yesterday at around 6:45 the Big Green Bus stopped in front of the almost finished Leed-Certified Saranac Community Building. There was a punk band inside who invited us over for Vegan cup cakes, after we finished transferring 45 gallons of waste vegetable oil over to their bus. Lucas and Merritt liked the filtered stuff and mentioned the only places with good oil so far they encountered were Taco Bell and Wendy's, they didn't like the stuff they found in McD.


They have a pretty good on-board filtering setup that allows them to just dip off the top of the grease bins, and filter through these in the rear.

Lucas shows the custom gauges and modifications, they have not needed to wire the Vegthems yet, as they maintain a nice and hot 180 degrees for the oil.

Esther shows off the floors inside, really nicely done by one of the sponsors, EcoTimber.

There were several bunk beds inside the bus. These 3 students were happy with the break from having to all be in this bus, there is not much room for 11 students. They enjoyed the quiet of Spokane, no big fanfare. Tomorrow they head off to Glacier, it was neat to visit with them and hopefully they will make lots of people think about energy and sustainability and then act upon this increased awareness. After all, like Edward Abbey said, "sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul".

Most recent posts have been about the Grease car project, now grease is similar to Greece, so the next posts are from a vacation in Greece, where the cars are very small, and the mopeds smoky. Smart cars are very common in Greece, and so are solar water heaters.