Allotment gardens: grow your own vegetables!

The allotment gardens are on the up and up! Take your wheelbarrow and pitchfork, and go looking for one of the existing allotment gardens in Belgium.

The concept?

You grow your own food without any use of toxic substances in city gardens available for everyone. You can obtain advice from neighbours or friends if you don’t have “green fingers”. The idea behind the whole concept is that natural material may not be lost. You reuse materials in order to get your own food and to protect the environment.

Looking for a good reason to participate?

Don’t hesitate no longer! Those who don’t have the space to have a lovely garden or those in favour of social contact (and you have to admit, that goes for all of us), will love the idea. You can grow your own vegetables, weave a wall of willow branches like a real scout or produce your own honey by building a beehive.

Where can you find these green places?

Even in a university town like Ghent, allotment gardens are popping up. You can discover the real gardener in yourself in one of the four allotment gardens in Ghent: one in Sint-Amandsberg, one in Gentbrugge and two in the city centre of Ghent.

For more information: 

http://gentintransitie.com/
2013/02/19/volkstuinen/

Are you into growing your own food? Would you like to spend some hours in these allotment gardens together with friends? Let us know in the comment section below!

Alexandra, Thomas and Ellen

Is an OTIS-house your type of dream house?

Have you ever heard of OTIS? And no, we don’t mean the famous elevator company. OTIS is the abbreviation for Optimal Travelling Independent Space. It’s a new and compact concept of living, invented by a group of students.

What’s the idea behind the concept?

Sixteen students studying ‘Renewable Energy and Ecological Design’ at the Green Mountain College at Vermont and their professor Lucas Brown created a small, movable and ecological house that fits the new American dream. The re-interpretation of the American dream is typical for generation Y, who prefer a nomadic lifestyle. When they’ve finished their studies, today’s youngsters don’t want to pay huge mortgages, but instead they want their own mobile space with very low upkeep. Moreover, they want to reduce their footprint as much as possible.

How does it look like?

The tiny OTIS-house measures only 6.5 sq m and can be towed on a standard-sized trailer by any normal car. The pod-shaped house has a lightweight, sustainable and aerodynamic structure. Inside, there’s a  a table, a composting toilet, a bed, a system that collects rainwater, a washbasin, a wood-burning stove and a 120W solar panel that provides electricity.

                  

The idea of having a sustainable and movable house looks nice and cosy but we think 6.5 sq m is way too small to live in day in, day out. But, in our opinion, it can be an ideal solution for young people with a demanding job and an active social life who don’t spend a lot of time at home. So, is living in an ecological and movable house something for you or do you prefer living in a ‘normal’ house? For those who are interested: the price tag is between 8000$ and 10000$.

Do you want more information? Have a look at the site of the Green Mountain College http://www.greenmtn.edu/news_events/new_releases/otis-a-new-take-on-the-american-dream.aspx, or watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fBm6yoDj8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvkhvvy2iQRCuw80CuIdOKw

Ann-Sophie, Sofie & Hélène 

Our solution? The nPower PEG!

Hi ecological MTB friends!

Our team has chosen the nPower PEG. It is the world’s first mobile device charger that generates renewable energy from movements like walking, running and biking. Keep the PEG in your briefcase, backpack or purse and go about your daily activities. As you move, or walk/bike to Rommelaere, the PEG continually recharges its internal battery with your untapped kinetic energy. Just connect the hand-held PEG to your iPod, laptop or any other electronic devices via USB and stay connected with your favorite devices on the move!

About the designer

Aaron LeMieux began thinking about generating renewable energy from his own movement during a long-distance backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail. When he realized how often he had to stop to charge his devices, he also noticed the untapped kinetic energy from his backpack as it moved up and down against his body. That’s when the idea for the nPower PEG was born.

Like or dislike?


Sarah, Klara and Klaas

USBCELL: Rechargeable USB batteries

Many disposable batteries employ heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium as an electrolyte. At the end of the product lifecycle, these batteries are – along with their toxic materials – disposed. As a result, our environment is suffering from the so-called electronic waste or e-waste. Manufacturers of batteries are obliged to provide battery recycling methods such as dropoff points at retailers in order to reduce the impact of battery disposal on the environment. Despite these efforts, a lot of people don’t dispose the dropoff point, but just simply throw them in the garbage bin, creating toxic landfill.

As I was wandering on the world wide web, I discovered an invention called the USBCELL. A revolutionary new rechargeable battery that can be recharged hundreds of times simply by plugging it into an USB port on your computer. In other words, we no longer have to worry about missing charge adaptors or cables, which is not only saving us money, but also hassle.

IMO it’s a great eco-friendly alternative for the classic alkaline batteries! Do you agree?


Jacinta.

Portable solar chargers: good for the environment and creativity!

Hi bloggers!

Spring is coming to town: birds are singing, the sun is shining and little by little it’s getting warmer. Are you also looking forward to those picnics and long summer nights outside? But of course, how could we forget, there is MTB and the huge amount of assignments…

Actually, we did a little brainstorming about it and we concluded that it would be nice to combine business with pleasure. The University of Ghent could offer a rental service of portable solar chargers that allows the MTB community to use their electronic devices outside. In our opinion, we have to spend many hours in fusty classrooms, so it would be healthy to get a breath of fresh air once in a while. Moreover, some fresh air stimulates creativity and the sunshine will contribute to our good mood.

Let’s enjoy the nice weather and make our assignments together! What do you think?

Marjoke, Emmeline and Sophie

The Fairphone: technology and sustainability combined

In times where bigger is better and newly bought smartphones are  obsolete after a few months, the dutch-made Fairphone offers a refreshing look at things. This phone puts social values first and targets a completely different group of buyers than traditional players like Samsung and HTC do. The people behind Fairphone believe a smartphone should stand the test of time and they want to change the mentality that electronics are disposable.

How does the Fairphone reach these goals…

By using durable materials and applying the cradle-to-cradle idea, a much more sustainable smartphone is made. Add conflict free tin & tantalum and attention for worker welfare and this smartphones beats all of its competitors when looking at social values. Even more, the company behind Fairphone made a commitment to keep improving their phone’s fairness. For instance, they want to be the first manufacturer who uses fair-trade gold and they hope to ban all plastic in future Fairphones.

… and what about its specifications?

Of course, the primary goal of the Fairphone is being a smartphone and this is something the makers didn’t forget. On their website we read: “We’re not just a bunch of do-gooders; we’re making a super cool, high-performance smartphone packed with features bound to impress”.  With Android 4.2 Jelly Bean wrapped around a dragontrail glass 4.3 qHD display, 16 GB of internal storage and an 8 MP rear camera, we only can agree with this statement. Naturally, the Fairphone can’t compete with the latest Samsung Galaxy S4 or the HTC one but with a price of 325 euro they don’t have to at all.

Wrap up

With the Fairphone focusing on durability and social responsibility, it fills a gap in the smartphone market no other manufacturer has set foot ashore. The phone offers decent specs and fits perfectly in the midrange segment. Now that you know our opinion, we want to know yours! Have a look at their website (http://www.fairphone.com) and tell us in the comment section what you think about this eco-friendly innovation.

                                                                                                      Alexandra, Ellen and Thomas

 

StuJardin

Hey fellow bloggers!

To start off gently, we won’t introduce you to some kind of new high-tech ecological miracle, but we will discuss something nearby. In last week’s session, we couldn’t help but notice that only a few people knew about the project StuJardin, presented by the girl from UGent1010. We thought this would be a great opportunity to learn more about the project.

The people of UGent1010 saw that students in Ghent absolutely love being outside. As soon as the sun comes out, all the parks in the city are flocked with them. Since having a green thumb is hip these days (we all know the highly admired tv-gardener Bartel Van Riet), the action committee wanted to offer something to those who don’t just want to sit around or play games outside.

So thanks to StuJardin we can all take our gardening skills one step further than the little basil plant on our windowsill and go to the Faculty of Bio-Engineering for some real sowing and weeding. There are weekly sessions but everyone is free to come and go whenever they want. There’s even a picnic bench to eat your own-grown treats immediately, for those who don’t want to let the grass grow under their feet!  ;)

Visit their website at http://student.ugent.be/stujardin/

Green love,

Emmeline, Sophie and Marjoke

Recycle! App

Since January 15th 2014, Bebat, Fost Plus and Recupel have launched a new mobile application for smartphones and tablets. The app is called “Recycle!” and has to become the ultimate reference for every question concerning collection and recycling of garbage in Belgium.

Bebat is a non for profit association that collects empty batteries. Recupel is an organization that handles discarded electronic devices and Fast Plus is an organization that promotes and coordinates the recycling of packaging material. Those three enterprises cooperated and achieved this joint initiative “Recycle!”, only with one main goal: informing people unambiguously. Despite the fact that Belgium belongs to the world’s top recycling countries, there are still too many people doubting about the rules of collecting, sorting and recycling garbage. The new application wants to provide all the necessary help in this matter.

            

“Recycle!” has principally three main objectives: first of all it explains the user what and especially how to recycle and it gives him matching advice. It explains not only how to sort and recycle household waste, but also any other type of garbage such as hazardous waste, industrial waste, bio-medical waste and etcetera. Some types of garbage are collected at home, but you can also dispose of it at collection points or container parks. That’s why, secondly, the application shows the user his city’s bin collection days and it even offers the possibility to install reminders of these days. Lastly, the application adds information about container parks and collection points. It can display their opening hours and it reports the shortest way to get to those points as well.

This new useful application is available for android and for IOS as well. You can download the application on the App store for IOS and on the Google PlayStore for Android, all for free. Other and more initiatives are certainly necessary, but this app is already one measure in our fight for a cleaner environment.

What do you think about this subject: do you think this application will be efficient? Would you use an application as "Recycle!" and do you think it wil make any difference? 

Click here to read more: www.vmx.be

Klara, Klaas & Sarah

Greening the urban environment: Green roofs for city buses.

Nowadays, it’s all about greening the urban environment. A peculiar way to do so, is by sticking an air-purifying garden on top of a moving bus!

In our current sustainability-driven society, people are more interested in making their city greener. But these green areas are not always available…

Marc Granen found a solution to this spatial problem by conceiving the idea of a garden on the rooftop of a public bus. The main idea is to convert existing spaces in the city into green spaces.  His mission is to expand the garden area in urban environments, increase the absorption of CO2 and give public transport a new ecological and tourist attraction.

A side benefit of these green rooftops is that they cause the temperature inside the bus to decrease by 3.5 degrees Celsius, thus reducing the amount of fuel necessary to run the air-conditioning.  

The major drawback of this idea is the fact that the garden on top of the bus significantly increases the weight of the bus, thereby increasing the fuel consumption. This additional weight also means that the bus can transport less passengers, leading to more fuel consumption per passenger mile.

We believe that these gardens are a fun idea and - let’s face it - they look awesome! (Check out the video below) But we doubt that the benefits in terms of absorption of CO2 will transcend the negative effects of additional fuel consumption and exhaust of CO2.

Can you imagine these buses driving around in Ghent?

Click here to read more about this subject.

Ann-Sophie, Hélène & Sofie

Meet "Britain’s most respected green energy boss"

You're all familiar with Ghent's pride and joy Vooruit, the renowned arts centre, mainly used for concerts and other cultural events, and adored in equal measure by both students and non-students for its coziness, good food and cold beer. In fact, many would call it their 'real alma mater', as it's only a stone's throw away from our actual university.
From Thursday through to Sunday Vooruit hosts the Mind the Book festival, an international 'meeting of the minds' for authors and their readership. You can chat to your favourite authors, attend lectures and participate in debates on a wide variety of topics.
Of particular interest to us taking this course is the interview with Jeremy Legget. Legett, a geologist by training, is a British green-energy entrepreneur, author and activist. He is founder and chairman of Solarcentury, the UK’s largest independent solar electric company, founder and chairman of the charity SolarAid and chairman of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an organisation that uncovers the enery risks for investors. He is know for advocating renewable energy and a rapid (managed) withdrawal from fossil fuels.


 He wrote four books spanning energy, climate change and oil depletion, and regularly contributes to the Financial Times and the Guardian. On Sunday February 23rd, he will be - amongst other things -  discussing his book "The Energy of Nations", in which he discusses consumers' blind faith in cheap fossil fuel and the systemic risks of oil supply, climate shock and fincial collapse. He challenges policy makers to face the huge challenges in fuelling the future.
So, if you have some time to spare on Sunday, please pay a visit to Vooruit, have a Triomf beer and listen to Legett's insightful views on the road to low or zero carbon energy.

Tickets: http://vooruit.be/nl/show/detail/7639/Mind_the_Book_dag_4
Website: www.jeremyleggett.net

Astrid

Blog kick-off 2014!

Dear all,

a very warm welcome to our 2014 IBCE blog!

Here, over the coming weeks you and your classmates will be able to post items on GREEN innovations and comment on posts made by others.

As you know, the driving force behind this blog (and our entire course) is the concept of innovation; what does this mean to you, what have you read or heard about it recently, which innovations have you been confronted with lately, etc. 

For the purpose of our first ECO INNOVATION Award we focus on GREEN innovations, so keep that in mind as you scower the media and the internet for interesting topics to write about.

We urge you to post a minimum of 6 items (per team) on this topic during the course, which amounts to more or less one entry a week. 

Feel free to browse your peers' entries and comment on them. This is a blog, after all!

Happy blogging!

Astrid