This post is writen in English (top) and Italian (bottom)

In English
[ego mode ON]
The second issue (April 2009) of Wired’s Italian edition has just been released and guess who’s article is featured in page 33…

You guessed right! My article on the Pasona 02 project, writen while I was living in Tokyo, has been published from page 33 to 36 (for now only available in Italian in print and online). I describe Pasona Group’s idea of creating an underground hi-tech greenhouse to provide food in a city environment and train unemployed people (mainly freeters, that are Japanese unemployed people with a lot of free time that take occasional short time jobs) on a sector that is growing in demand. Japan produces only about 28% of the food it consumes and imports the rest. But even that small percentage of production is at stake due to the lack of qualified workers. A by-product of the greenhouse located in the Otemachi financial district skyscraper is the production of fresh oxygen that the visitors to the dining area can enjoy while they eat the food yielded by this futuristic experiment. Using hydroponics and new techniques based on artificial light, the Pasona 02 project offers a partial remedy to the lack of agricultural areas of the country of the rising sun, which in a mere 378,000 squared km holds more than 128 million inhabitants.

In italiano
Il secondo numero di Wired Italia (aprile 2009) e’ stato appena pubblicato e tra pagina 33 e 36 trovate un mio articolo su Pasona 02, scritto mentre abitavo a Tokyo. Il testo lo trovate online qui.

In questo pezzo descrivo l’idea del Pasona Group di creare una serra nel sotterraneo del loro grattacielo nel distretto finanziario Otemachi di Tokyo per produrre cibo fresco in un ambiente cittadino e allo stesso tempo formare ragazzi senza lavoro (in particolare dei “freeter” ovvero persone che hanno molto tempo libero e lavorano solo occasionalmente) alle tecniche di agricoltura che oggi sono molto richieste. Attualmente il Giappone produce soltanto circa il 28% del cibo che consuma, e deve importare tutto il resto. Ma anche questa bassa percentuale e’ a rischio perche’ la manodopera qualificata scarseggia. Un prodotto secondario della serra e’ dell’ossigeno fresco che oggi viene respirato dagli impiegati di Pasona Group che usufruiscono degli spazi della mensa, mentre godono anche dei cibi prodotti da questo esperimento futuristico. L’utilizzo dell’idroponica (per la coltivazione in assenza di terra) e nuove tecniche basate su diversi tipi di luce artificiale, Pasona 02 vuole proporre un rimedio parziale alla mancanza di terre coltivabili delle isole nipponiche che nei suoi scarsi 378.000 kmq ospitano piu’ di 128 milioni di abitanti.

[ego mode OFF]

The Masdar City project being built in Abu Dhabi will be the first sustainable city built from scratch to feature state of the art zero-carbon and zero-waste green technologies and, according to me, will work as a living lab for testing new innovations to later apply in existing cities all over the World.

Though the news is not fresh, I recently read on L’Internazionale magazine an article on the Masdar City project promoted by the Abu Dhabi arab emirate through the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, and being realized by Foster + Partners.

Abu Dhabi is one of the major oil producers, so they can be considered partly responsible for their impact on our ecosystem (I say partly because they produce oil only because someone is willing to buy it, so both actors are equally involved in the process). They launched the Masdar initiative as a way to explore new alternatives for when oil will run out (or won’t be required) and to become a leader in the new green technologies that sooner or later will take the place of their actual main industry.

Some of Abu Dhabi’s advantages to promote this project are: 1) that they can dedicate 22 bilion dollars to it (that is 9 zeros, or 22,000,000,000 dollars) and 2) that they can create a new city from zero. Obviously both aspects can’t be easily replicated by other states. Because of this I consider Masdar City will be a great lab to test new technologies, layouts and other innovations that could later be applied by existing cities… I guess that demolishing and re-building them won’t be a feasible alternative

Key numbers on Masdar City:

• 22 billion dollar investment
• 2007-2023 the time lapse for the project, though it should be inhabited since 2016
• 6 square kilometers the area occupied by the city
• 50,000 citizens will live in it and 40,000 will commute into it daily
• the projected daily water consumption per inhabitant will be of 80 liters (while the consumption of the most efficient present technologies is of 180 liters/day per inhabitant)
• no cars will be allowed into the city which will have an electric “light-rail” transport system including personal “pods”

In order to achieve the zero-pollution and zero-waste objectives, some of the key technologies that will be developed, researched and installed at Masdar City are:

• solar energy production and storage
• carbon capture tech
• wind turbines
• wastewater purification and recycling
• intelligent waste management
• electric transport systems

The official website and wikipedia article include in depth details that I invite you to read (there’s no sense in copy/pasting them here). This is another interesting article by NPR.org

BTW, they have vacancies for new jobs, so if you’re interested check this out.

Only time will tell if the Masdar City project will be a world leader for innovation or just a marketing bluff. I’m hoping on the former.

I don’t try to be an eco-hero but to test on myself if it is possible to severely minimize the use of certain disposable products. I live in Tokyo, a city which has a lot of eco-friendly habits but also some very nasty ones regarding the use of disposable materials like: chopsticks, plastic beverage bottles and plastic bags. Japan in general, and Tokyo in particular, is full of vending machines with the ones selling non-alcoholic drinks being the most ubiquitous of them all (according to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association an average 1 vending machine every 22 inhabitants!). It is very comfortable to be walking around and just grab a drink from one when you are thirsty, specially during the hot and humid summer months. You can find them: on the street, in the subways stations and train tracks, inside buildings and hotels, in shops and even on the mountains! They generate an immense amount of PET and other plastic bottles. Fortunately, Japanese people tend to be very clean and mindful about recycling, so probably a big part of them do not end in landfills, but anyway they are still mostly waste (I wonder how many of them end up as useful recycled products).

A similar thing happens with disposable (mostly wood or bamboo) chopsticks: once required for hygienic reasons, nowadays Japanese consume more than 25 billion chopsticks per year, 95% of them imported mainly from China and other Asiatic countries. It is a huge industry but it’s becoming unsustainable for a world that is getting “hot, flat and crowded” (Tom Friedman dixit). A similar problem occurs in China, where more than 45 billion are consumed each year. It is not only about the waste produced by these tons of chopsticks but also the fact that with actual population growth rates and consumption, there is not enough bamboo to produce them and we are depleting bamboo forests at a higher rate that the time needed to regenerate them.

And what about plastic bags? Japanese are maniacs regarding packaging, in particular of food. While it might be a nice thing for presents, it is more often ridiculous to have something packed in 3 stratus of plastic, paper, etc. Even when you buy a bar of chocolate the salesman will try to put it inside a plastic bag.

I believe that in most situations the use of these products (one-use plastic bottles, chopsticks and plastic bags) can be avoided and we could make a positive impact on the environment. I understand that some industries will suffer but I also think that when a constraint is applied, a full array of new opportunities can bloom.

The solution I am testing on myself, to fully understand the implications, is to carry my own reusable chopsticks, an eco-bag that fits in my pocket and a plastic bottle that I can refill with tap water. These should apply for at least 70-80% of my everyday situations. There will be times that I won’t be able to avoid the use of these kind of disposable products, but I hope those to be the exceptions instead of the norm. And if I get a plastic bag to carry something, I will use it for my home’s garbage. If I want to buy a beverage apart from tap water, say a sports drink, I’ll buy a huge 2 liter bottle at the supermarket and refill my carry-on bottle.

I found the tools for this experiment, portable chopsticks, 500ml drink bottle and eco-bag, at (yes, you guessed right!) Muji, one of my fav stores. These guys usually sell very “environmentally conscious” products.

Most restaurants that serve their food in ceramic (or non disposable) must do the washing somehow, be it manually or in a dishwasher. Why not offer reusable chopsticks or cutlery and was them too? It is said that Japanese people don’t want to use chopsticks used by others, so they should carry their own. As a matter of fact, there’s a movement called “bring your own chopsticks” though in my everyday life I haven’t seen much people doing it. More on the “My-Hashi” movement here.

What would happen if everyone adopted a similar attitude?

How many trees would be saved?

How much garbage would never be produced?

How much less oil  (for making plastic produts) could we consume?

]]> http://www.gchicco.com/2008/11/09/experiment-eliminate-the-use-of-disposable-chop-sticks-plastic-bags-and-bottles/feed/ 6 http://www.gchicco.com/2008/10/21/electric-cars-from-south-africa-and-germany/ http://www.gchicco.com/2008/10/21/electric-cars-from-south-africa-and-germany/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:42:08 +0000 Gian http://www.gchicco.com/?p=60

has to spur from big and small companies alike (and governments and individuals too of course). Wired’s Autopia reports that a South African company, Optimal Energy, is working on an all electric car.

On the 15th anniversary of Nelson Mandela receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, South Africa is gaining attention for another world-friendly achievement. This time, it’s an electric car from Cape Town-based Optimal Energy that’s grabbing headlines.

The Joule has been the darling of the Paris Auto Show, and it’s easy to see why. The six-passenger car has a purported range of 250 miles, a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds, and an out-of-nowhere backstory worthy of a Greg Gumble voiceover. Edmunds Inside Line reports that cost estimates are between $22,000 and $28,000 with an all-too-familiar release date of “somewhere in 2010.” Production will take place in So

uth Africa and the finished product will consist of about 50 percent local content.

Read the full article here.

and that the German automaker BMW has just unveiled an all-electric Mini.

BMW’s finally pulled the wraps off the 204-horsepower all-electric Mini it is bringing to America and says the car could be here as early as next year, although just 500 people will be lucky enough to get their hands on one.

BMW says it will lease the Mini E two-seater to “select private and corporate customers” in California, New York and New Jersey under what is essentially a big R&D project to develop EVs through its Project i. “Putting some 500 cars on the road under real daily traffic conditions will make it possible to gain widely applicable hands-on experience,” BMW says. “Evaluating these findings will generate valuable know-how, which will be factored into the engineering of mass-produced vehicles.”

Read the full article here.

Next time you need to buy something, buy an old thing!

(if you don’t know the “green thing”, you can discover it here: www.dothegreenthing.com)