Biomimic travel

      One of my biggest energy inefficiencies is the amount that I travel, so for my product design, I decided to look into incorporating nature into air travel. The animals inspiring my new design are the bottlenose dolphin,  kingfishers, and clams.
       Kingfishers are the head of my design, quite literally in fact.Kingfishers were an inspiration to the design of a new bullet train in japan, because the design of their beak helps reduce the amount of noise caused by the train breaking through the air around it. Applying this design to the nose of an airplane should have similar effects, making the plane quieter so it will be less irritating to those who live around the airport, and since it is, by nature, designed to reduce drag for the bird, it will also increase fuel efficiency, and possibly allow for greater plane speed, so you can get there even faster.

          All of the wings on the plane will reflect the shape of the fins of the bottle nose dolphin, which are the most efficient shape when considering hydrodynamics, which should be helpful in terms of flight because the speeds at which planes cut through the air make it seem like a firmer (more fluid like) substance.
            Clams will help with more interior aspects of the plane. Joinlox technology takes the sealing mechanism of clams, making it a cost effective way to join mechanics of the plane, along with being more cost efficient in terms of transport, handling and storage. Since this product is more flexible, it can allow the planes to have a more complex curved structures that was not previously possible.

             (On a side note the coloring of the plane reflects the coloring of the animals involved in it's design, specific to where on the plane their nature was incorporated)

Grameen Bank Assignment

                  Microcredit is a loan financed by a small institution/organization/ or individual, generally with the goal of helping poor families/individuals pay for the start-up costs of a business that will hopefully bring said parties of out poverty.  The most notable point of the microcredit loan is that it does not involve a legally binding contract or collateral to back the loan. They also tend to have more flexible payback structures, and since many of the loans come from non-profit ventures, defaulting on the loan simply means the organization doesn't get it's money back, not that the person getting the loan has to declare bankruptcy and pay a bunch of fines. Essentially, the person giving out the loan has no interest in making a profit, only in keeping the program going. In the case of the Grameen foundation, the person requesting a loan also has to join a group of borrowers.

This group requirement makes Grameen Decision number 16, "We shall take part in all social activities collectively" exceptionally easy to do, because there is already a social network in the community set up by the foundation, and nature of their loan contract. I also personally like decision 6, 7, 8, and 12, and while I find 11, "We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughters wedding. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage," to be a positive concept I would hesitate to enforce it, because it tends to be a cultural practice, and while I do not approve of dowry's personally, I do believe that they can be an important part of an areas economic structure, and would require conscious and involved effort to get rid of, instead of just requesting that it not be practiced. Child marriage however, I do think should be gotten rid of. So if I were to star a branch of the Grameen foundation in bellingham, I would ask that my borrowers stick to 6,7,8,12 and 16, and would also try and find ways to discourage dowries without forcing a family to give up a large portion of their expected income, and would try to enforce that they don't practice child labor.

In order to start said branch, first obviously, I would have to talk to the Lighthouse Mission staff (which I actually did today, for a different class project, they're quite nice)  about supporting a local branch of the foundation, and getting a little office space from them to start running it out of. Hopefully they would allow me to start my campaign by letting me use their donor list to get some funding prospects started, and then from there I would try to get other local business to host a 'Grameen Night' where they donate a portion of their funds to the foundation, which would hopefully get a larger portion of the community interested int the foundation, and my particular cause with minimal investment in advertising.

Since I do actually plan on going into the non-profit sector I do have a particular goal in aiding  'fourth quadrant.' That is to say I would prefer to have the loans go to people who are starting sustainable businesses, not only in terms of the environment, but also sustainable in terms of providing work and useful education for their children. Because while it can be simple to help one person in need start making money, it only helps that one person, funding programs and initiatives that educate and provide opportunities for younger generations helps ensure that in the future, programs like the Grameen foundation won't have (at least as much) of a reason to exist.

Along with funding their particular course of action, I would also like to be able to help these entrepreneurs make sure that their business is as sustainable as possible, and hopefully get a list of guidelines for sustainability generated by Western students, staff, and Bellingham locals that would be separated by country, and then into regions, to give the people an idea as to how they could in the future, expand their operation to include more people (if possible).
 

A new thought

My powerbill finally came today, so we are now signd up to PSE's green power program, along with getting e-bills instead of paper ones.

I have also gone on my first real grocery trip, and decided to try to only buy goods that were made in country, preferably  from no more than two states away. In terms of food items I mostly succeeded in the two state rule except in the case of my favorite spreadable item, peanut butter.  For a reason I don't quite understand, peanut butter seems to come from New Jersey. I did opt for an organic variety in a glass jar, with the hopes that organic companies do their best to be sustainable, and because I know the glass jar will be put to good use in my house before it ends up in the recycling bin. I also convinced my roommates to buy 7th generation paper towels, though that most likely only worked because they were on sale.


Which brings me to my new goal, which isn't exactly a personal goal, but is a goal none-the-less, to get my roommates to start being more environmentally friendly. I am a long way from convincing them to stop buying mass produced (and largely flavorless) giant bags of frozen meat and processed treats, but I am working on getting them to turn off lights they don't need, use the recycling bins for all recyclables, and to try and conserve more water. This last bit has been proving the most difficult, given that one of my lovely roommates likes to have the water on full hot and full blast when doing the dishes. I did discover that we have a water saving running option on our dishwasher, and have since been promoting its usage, when the dishwasher is actually full.

Besides the two states rule, I haven't come up with another affordable option to offset my consumption of travel resources as of yet.

Clean Green

This morning, while brushing my teeth I started contemplating the sustainability of my toothpaste. Is it better to use Toms of Maine? Or some kind of tooth powder? Or should I start using my Dr. Bronner's as toothpaste (it says I can on the bottle, but it's lavender...and I really am attached to that minty clean feeling).

Then I started wondering about my toothbrush itself. It's plastic, and I am supposed to throw it out and get a new one every three months, so I decided to look into it a little further and discovered that "it's reported that over 25 000 tons of toothbrushes end up in landfill in America each year" thanks to Green Living Tips. They had a list of ideas for post toothbrushing uses for a tooth brush (after you've bleached it, presumably with a relatively environmentally friendly bleach) such as:- Scrubbing in between tiles, Knocking off dust that's caked onto other items, Comb cleaning, As a paintbrush for the kids art projects, Cleaning a cheese grater, cleaning jewelry in conjunction with baking soda, upholstery and carpet stain removal, Applying hair dye, Scrubbing dirt off hard skinned fruit and vegetables, To clean car battery terminals, Cleaning mud or dog poop from shoes.


While all these things are useful, I also looked into actual tooth brush recycling programs and found the following:


Preserve toothbrushes are made from recycled materials, and you can send them back to the company to get re-recycled. They also offer a replacement subscription, so that you never have to think about buying a new brush, they mail you a new one every three months. This is the only company I found that actually takes back and recycles your tooth brush.


The following two companies make toothbrushes with replaceable heads,


Eco-Dent makes a replaceable head tooth brush, which limits the amount of waste produced


Radius has a brush called Source whose handles are molded from recycled US Dollar bills/Recycled Flax and Recycled Wood all blended with recycled polypropylene resulting in a bio-plastic that is 100% renewable or recycled. They also have replaceable heads. And they look cool. and you can tell your friends that you brush your teeth with dollar bills.


As for toothpaste options I found a German company called Weleda, which makes a salt toothpaste in environmentally friendly packaging, and while they do have a North American business center, it says nothing about local production.  There is also obviously Toms of Maine, and Eco-Dent also makes an organic tooth powder.

Update on Green progress

Buying local produce has so far been quite simple, but certain other goods (such as dried pasta, rice, and the like) has so far seemed impossible, and while I would like to be able to buy things like fresh pasta from the Bellingham Pasta Company, I do have a certain budget that I have to operate in. As soon as I find a little more time to do the research I'd like to look into which companies come the closest to being local producers.
As for using Green Energy, we have just transfered all the bills from an old roommate into my name, and I haven't gotten the account number yet so that I can sign up for the Green Power program, but as soon as it shows up I plan on it.
I haven't made any progress on buying things in recycled containers, because I haven't had to buy anything other than food, though I do try to bring back the plastic bags I get bulk food items in to reuse them.

As for my travel, I'm looking for carpools to get to most of the places I need to go, but I can't cut out flying for certain things. I did look into websites that let you purchase carbon credits, but I need to do some more budget planning before that becomes a real possibility.