A picture is worth a thousand words

Wake up in the morning, packing your lunch in a plastic box, taking a bag… Midday it is time for a coffee and a cigarette maybe… 5 p.m. why not a soft-drink? These are regular acts we do day after day but have you ever thought where all these disposable items go after used? Recycling is still on working process and governments know they can also save money through this initiative,citizens have the last word though.

Check out the decomposition rates of your everyday-use items and think twice before you get them!

 

Vertical Garden in Madrid

Sometimes there are surprises you don’t expect that make your day. That is what happened to me last Saturday when a friend told me about this vertical garden in Madrid. The green structured is situated in a centric hotel inside its patio. It is around 850m2 of vertical gardening platform.  Unfortunately we were not able to visit it properly because it is within a private property. Also the season now it is not the right one, much better would be to visit this place during summer time when the terrace on the roof is opened. However when the receptionist was busy we used the occasion to go into the meeting room just under the vertical garden. Thanks to the glass ceiling we could admire the colourful wall full of plants and flowers even thought it was late so there was lack of light.

These pictures, which were taken by the Architect & Photographer Alberto de Juan, show the impressive image we had when the room’s light was turned off into the room. Hope you enjoy it.

Finally just let me introduce you an interesting video about how to built a vertical garden!

The vertical garden showed in this post is located in Hotel Mercure, Plaza de Santo Domingo, Madrid.

Carbon Footprint Calculation of kilogram veal meat

Veal meat is a commonly processed meat in Spain. What is its carbon footprint? Feeding animals is one of the most expensive practices in food industry.  Big amounts of fodder are needed in order to make stockbreeding grow. This fodder in turn is a big consumer of land, nutrients, petrol, chemicals among other materials which were resourceful better used for cropping instead.  Not only meat production is awful for the environment. It is important to remember that nowadays agriculture follows the same intensive practices, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC – around 10%-12% Greenhouse gases emissions come from land use change and deforestation [1]. Therefore the food industry has a significant role in climate change.  Vegetarianism, buying local product or even eating less but more quality meat could help to reduce GHG percentage.

Here is a brief presentation of carbon footprint calculation to estimate how many kilograms of CO₂e are produced by kilogram of veal meat.  The calculation is based on an extensive cattle farming within an annual Life Cycle. Every year 80 calfs are sacrificed and 80 and 200 kg of clean meat are ready for sell.  In this case calculations were done by air.e, a professional Carbon Footprint Calculation and Eco design Software (ask for demo here: http://www.solidforest.com/en/index.html)

[1] IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change. Chapter 8: Agriculture, http://tinyurl.com/ms4mzb – Wilfrid Legg and Hsin Huang. OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate, Climate change and agriculture, http://tinyurl.com/5u2hf8k

European Mobility Week – Calle La Palma, Madrid 012

At the middle of September  of this year the city of Madrid took part in the European Mobility Week 2012. The capital took seriously the task to drive the city into Sustainability with a wide number of measurements.  The aim of this year was reducing Madrid’s high traffic density by encouraging sustainable modes of transport, recovering urban spaces to pedestrians and improving public transport. The responsible of this was the Agenda 21 and the Environment Department  nevertheless  the local authorities were the only one, also business and citizens made a set of actions to incentive new transport’s alternatives.

La Palma Street  is an old known in Madrid. It is situated in down town, full of history and into a neighbourhood with active inhabitants. In order to re-activate this area, people from La Palma St. organize themselves to create a participative place where everybody can be heard. Lot of examples can be shown as this website where little shops are advertised http://www.callelapalma.com/ . Having a quick look you can see the nice warm atmosphere coming from an initiative from people to people.

Here is another good example. Due to this event, people from La Palma make the street up in order to show how nice would be the area without cars. The road was dressed up with full of amenities for the public: a free hair cut, books, colour pencils, bikes, benches… Enjoy it!

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A Smart Solution for Oil Spills – Time to Use Waste as a New Resource –

Here we go with a brilliant idea coming from Slovenia. From the Technological, Environmental and Logistics Centre (TEC Ltd, http://www.toc.si/ ) researchers have achieved the way to transform paper waste from paper industries into a product that is able to absorb fuel spills.

More information here:  http://phys.org/news/2012-10-paper-solution-oil.html

BLINGING STYLE FOR THE NEW AGE EARTH WALKER

Reblogged from thedailywhateva:

The most ingenious of wallets you will ever come across, coming to you from the heart of Mauritius, tag this item if you like it

Recycling workshop – In collaboration with Mission Verte, Mauritius Island

A good friend of mine, Sophia half Mauritian half Mexican, is running the communication area of the NGO Mission Verte. This organization is in charge of take care about the environment of the island through some actions such as environmental education at schools or business, awareness campaigns or waste management among others.   

Sophia, as a great professional of communication, sets up a  series of meeting across the island promoting a green attitude. There was an occasion in which I could collaborated with her having the opportunity to show my work in recycled wallets. Theses are made by used milk/juice cartons and very easy to make! Just don’t throw away the milk carton once is finished and find a way to turn it into a new creative thing! There were also bracelet made with bottle tops and nice flowerpots.

Hope this helps as an inspiration for green minds!

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Thanks to Sophia and also to Mauritian Wildlife Foundation which was also in this event. I leave both websites

Mission Verte:  http://www.missionverte.com/

Mauritian Wildlife Foundation: http://www.mauritian-wildlife.org/application/

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Recycling workshop