Tag Archives: energy

Solarpunk transformative living

Solarpunks should definitely check out LifeEdited, started by Treehugger founder Graham Hill. Their first prototype apartment was built in NYC to see how much life you could get out of a relatively tiny apartment. They managed to reduce their impact on the environment by fitting a 2-bedroom apartment with room to serve a dinner party of ten in a 420 square foot space!

After an even smaller second apartment, they’ve designed an entire off-grid house with solar panels, battery backup, composting toilets, and since it’s in Maui, plenty of room for surfboards. While all three projects had substantial funding, the underlying techniques used to enhance the spaces are applicable anywhere and and serve as a great inspiration on how to more efficiently use the space you have.

LIFE EDITED_MAUI_JAN2018_IMG_8645 LifeEdited Maui

All of the furniture in the apartments and house is multi-purpose. In a place like New York City, where price per square foot is so high, even for renting, the high price of a transforming Murphy bed/couch from Resource Furniture would quickly pay for itself, although if you’re more inclined to DIY, then you can find Murphy bed kits for $200-300 without the mattress.

Transforming tables and folding chairs are often easier and cheaper to get. We have a dining table with leaf that we can remove when we want to save space. This gives us enough room when family visits for eating, but the ability to have a smaller table when it’s just two or three of us. My parents have a gate-leg table for family visits with chairs that fold up and fit inside the table so it only takes a small amount of room unless needed. A gate leg table and a Murphy bed would be great if you like having friends over for dinner but live in a small space.

I shouldn’t find the composting toilet in the bathroom to be the most exciting feature, but I do.

Composting toilets eschew the current trend of flush toilets by treating waste in a waterless or low water manner, composting the waste instead of using clean water to flush it miles away to a treatment facility. I’ve mostly seen them used in off-grid cabins and tiny houses to date, but hope that systems with remote waste collection will allow for usage in more urban environments in the future. Especially in the U.S. where we treat all of our water to drinking water quality (a whole post in itself), using clean water to flush waste back to be treated again is just silly.

Do you have any cool pieces of transforming furniture? Have you used a composting toilet? Let us know about any pluses or pitfalls below, and thanks for stopping by!

via LifeEdited

Photographs by Shawn Hannah

A few Murphy bed DIY kits/plans (I have no affiliation with any of the following; just thought they might be helpful to start your search if you’re interested.)

And a set of plans for a gate-leg table and chairs: http://woodarchivist.com/3259-folding-table-chairs-set-plans/

A human-powered modular tool station

1 Reply

Solarpunk is about being friendly to the environment, so I’ve been thinking a lot about areas where human power could be used instead of electricity. I drew up this (very) quick sketch of a modular table that could accept a wide range of tools. It’s based on the old treadle sewing machines, but I think it could also use more conventional bike parts and be pedal powered. I’m not sure what the advantages are of treadle vs pedal, so if anyone knows why the old sewing machines used that system instead I’d be very curious to know!

Sketch of a human-powered base for various tools. Loosely based on treadle-powered sewing machine tables.

A rough idea of a human-powered (treadle or pedal) modular system

Treadle sewing machine. The sewing machine folds out from the center of the table when needed.

Caleb Spears from Portal Bikes said that Portal was using a modified cottered bottom bracket spindle to drive the attachments for their system. I think using a similar setup would be beneficial when building the table since tools could then be interchangeable between both systems. Caleb mentioned that the Portal Bikes usually have one person pedaling and one person operating the tools. Having a PTO hookup on either the inside or outside of the table to allow one-person operation of smaller tools and two-person operation of larger mechanisms would be ideal.

Picture of a cottered bottom bracket spindle with a notch cut in the end. The notch allows for the attachment of various tools.

This is the spindle picture I was sent by Caleb at Portal Bikes

I think my next steps will be to make a mock-up of the system in LEGO to see if there are any obvious flaws with the idea. If you can find an old treadle base for a reasonable price, I think it would be a great starting point for a full-sized prototype.

Treadle base with no top

Be sure to sound off in the comments if you’ve ever used a treadle sewing machine or any other kind of human-powered tools! Thanks for stopping by!

Photo credits:

Jim Hammer: “Singer Sewing Machine” (CC-BY-SA 2.0 license)
Caleb Spear: Picture of Portal Bikes PTO Spindle
gettheshot75: “Treadle Sewing base” (CC-BY-SA 2.0 license)

Solarpunk jobs webinar (updated)

Solarpunk and how climate affects diet

Leave a reply

Climate One is an excellent podcast put out by the Commonwealth Club of California on a weekly basis that I would recommend to all solarpunks. It features luminaries discussing the environment regarding our energy and water future. The most recent episode, “Climate on Your Plate,” is a remix of several previous episodes on the subject of climate change and our food systems.

One of the main takeaways that I think is surprising for most people concerned with environmental sustainability is that grazing animals can be an important component to sequestering carbon and rehabilitating our farmlands. Nicollete Hahn Niman, author of “Defending Beef,” points out that grazing animals have always been an integral part of the nutrient cycles of grasslands. Mismanagement of animal agriculture (see CAFOs) has played an important role in climate change and the reduction of ecosystem vitality in soils. While Kip Andersen, director of “Cowspiracy,” disagrees with the entire concept of animal agriculture, he and NRDC Food and Agriculture Director Jonathan Kaplan agree that eating less meat is a win for the planet.

While eliminating meat from your diet completely might be difficult or impossible based on a number of factors including health and social customs, Brian Kateman, President of the Reducetarian Foundation, suggests that everyone can lower their meat usage a little which can help the Earth a lot. One of the main tools towards this end is implementing “Meatless Mondays” where you eat no meat on Mondays and the rest of the week is up to you.

Also discussed is the role of GMOs and organic food in the development of sustainable agriculture. One of the main dangers of current commercial farming is the overuse of pesticides like glyphosate, a.k.a. Roundup. This often gets lumped in with the use of GMOs as many of them do currently come bundled with pesticide use (Roundup Ready), but GMOs are a technology that is unfairly vilified by many environmentalists. While the overuse of pesticides is dangerous, appropriate use of GMOs to reduce water and pesticide use in organic farming operations is possible.

TL;DR: Cows and GMOs aren’t the problem, the industrial food complex is. To learn more check out “Climate on Your Plate,” a podcast from Climate One.

Green Jobs: A review

1 Reply

green-jobs_orig

Green Jobs: A Guide to Eco-Friendly Employment (2008) promises the following on its back cover:

> Get up to date on the green movement’s latest trends
> Choose a career that’s good for the environment — and for you!
> Go for extra training, if needed
> Learn about the exciting advantages of “green collar” employment

Let’s look at how it stacks up…

This book was published in 2008, so we get an interesting snapshot of the “green revolution” right before the Great Recession caused a major setback to climate action. Having 10 years of perspective on where things have gone gives a bittersweet read of what the authors expected of the future. A few of the technologies touted in the book have proven to be dead ends, including a particularly bullish look at fuel cells. Refreshingly, there is some treatment of the geothermal industry which is an often overlooked part of the energy puzzle.

As far as finding a career in the green industry goes, this book has a lot of good resources on companies and organizations to investigate, broken down by job type and skill set. Some of the companies are now defunct, but there is enough information here to get you started looking into interesting industries and finding positions that are a good fit for your particular set of skills and training.

Many community colleges and universities now have programs either in green trades or degrees available. Many of these programs were just starting in 2008, so there may be good programs now in your neck of the woods. As a quick example, the solar industry now employs more people than the coal industry, and most of those workers are in the solar installation business. A large number of schools offer training for the skills you need to install solar panels all around the United States. I suspect this is similar in other countries, but I’m not super-familiar with education abroad.

The primary advantage of getting a job in the green industry is having a job that aligns with your personal values. Some other possible benefits include getting help with cycling or using public transit to go to work. Some companies are headquartered in LEED certified buildings as well, reducing your impact and exposure to VOCs further. Most green jobs will come with your standard benefits of 401K, health insurance, etc. as well.

TL;DR: Green Jobs is a good read, and while some of its information is outdated, it is still a solid starting point if you want to get a job in environmentally sustainable businesses/organizations.

Disclaimer: I use Amazon affiliate links to help keep the lights on here at Solarpunk Station. I borrowed this book from my local library, so you might check out yours to see if you can read it for free. If you do decide to buy, using the links here will help keep the site running. Thanks!