Written by Caroline / 25 February 2010 /

At Azeotropy 2010, IIT Bombay's fest held in early March, students will be competing on effective Life Cycle Assessment - the analysis of the energy and resources used in the complete life cycle of a product or system. It will be an amazing learning for hundreds of students, to understand more about the power fo Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool for evaluating true sustainability. As the organizers say, "By this competition, we aim to encourage the use of LCA as a tool for corporate decisions as well as governmental policy-making in India."

The exact challenge is: "You have to carry out a Life Cycle Assessment of the "Production of ammonium nitrate from Natural gas" to calculate the total energy consumption of the process and make a poster for the same. System Boundaries are from Cradle to gate i.e. from raw material production to factory gate, and does not include the impacts of further supply chain or distribution mechanism. You have to estimate "energy consumption per unit production" that have incurred (directly or indirectly) during the process.

Written by Caroline / 24 February 2010 /

We've just found out that the Solar Car Tour in the Philippines has launched! Follow them online on facebook or check back here as we share some of the media they've created! We got the following incredible email from Vince Perez, the former Minister of Energy in the Philippines, head of WWF Philippines, and an Alternative Energy global guru. He wrote:

We finally did a similar project to Caroline's and Alexis' Climate Solutions Tour in India.

We have formed a corporate consortium and built a 100% solar power car dubbed “Sikat” (rays of the sun) in partnership with a local De La Salle University.   Sikat is currently on a one month national road show from south to north of the entire Philippine archipelago, visiting a total of 14 engineering schools in 14 different cities around the country.

Written by Caroline / 15 February 2010 /

During the late summer of 2009, two expeditions took me north into India, once to Himachal Pradesh to visit Spiti Valley travelling through the Rohtang Pass, "the end of the inhabitable world", and once to the famous Valley of the Flowers in Uttarakhand. In both places, I met creative and passionate individuals committed to changing the waste cycle - which otherwise sends loads of plastic waste from urban centers to meet tourist demands for bottled water and packaged foods up in the mountains, where it is left as an unfortunate legacy of the tourist recognition of the beauty and sacredness of the mountains.

I visited the Manali recycling center, and saw their waste compression unit. Waste is compressed into lower volume, higher density blocks which can be brought down to major cities to be recycled. In other areas, communities are attempting to manage waste in their own way.

Written by Caroline / 12 February 2010 /

The Maurya Sheraton has been composting its waste for over two years, processing almost 600 kilos of food waste generated daily from the six restaurants and hundreds of rooms inside the hotel, along with about 200 kilos of plant and yard waste daily, turning it all into high grade fertilizer. In doing so, the hotel has been able to eliminate all external chemical fertilizer use in the hotel's expansive lawns and has gotten international publicity for its work.

In discussions with the hotel's administration, we learned that they have been able to reduce costs dramatically by producing their own fertilizer, and the costs of the composting unit - about 10 lakh, or 20,000 USD - was paid for within the first year of usage. The excess fertilizer generated is donated to "The Ridge" - the forest lung of Delhi that has one portion running opposite the Maurya. The gardens alongside the road are all maintained by the Maurya at low cost due to donated compost.

Most interestingly, this entire unit takes up a very small amount of space and requires only two staff to manage the entire system. Both staff people are completely deaf, and were trained by Maurya Sheraton and Excel (the technology provider) to fulfill their roles using sign language.

Written by Caroline / 10 January 2010 /

In the summer of 2008, I spent three months with Infosys working on a number of projects with the Infosys team. Recently, I found this video of the solar golf cart designed while there: powered by both the building-integrated solar panels on the roof of the cart, and powered when plugged into the grid.

Written by Caroline / 12 December 2009 /

For the past year, some members of the community in Defense COlony have been pushing for more sustainable waste management for their Resident Welfare Association (the community organizations, called RWAs). A few women were able to create a composting area within a park in Block A, and find a financially sustainable model to employ a few former wastepickers to manage collecting, verifying appropriate sorting, bringing food waste to the composting areas, and managing turning the compost heaps.

By looking at other models for waste management, the team at the India Climate Solutions Project are exploring ways to replicate such projects -- either by generating community investment from an RWA or interested residents OR by generating investment from an outside party that would recover costs through future sales of compost.

Written by Caroline / 10 November 2009 /

The team at Kriti hosted a powerful training for students and other young people on how to make gift bags from newspaper, as a sustainable & beautiful alternative to plastic. Kriti hosted this event in partnership with the American Center in celebration of Earth Week.

 The process is incredibly simple, and requires only newspaper, glue, and a bit of string. A hole punch helped, but the kids I was working with moved right ahead making the holes to hold the handle with their scissors!

Written by Caroline / 15 October 2009 /

This post is part of Blog Action Day, 8414 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day and together calling the US to take serious action on climate. Sign their petition here.

Here in India, we started on the Road to 350 a long time ago. It’s been one year since I quit my job and decided to drive across India in solar powered and electric cars with 350 literally written all over them (that’s our Revalution to the right!), to show the world that there is a Road to 350 ppm (the safe upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere). We know that The Road to 350 is a path paved with solutions that are beautiful, powerful, and inspiring. We worked to demonstrate that there is no silver bullet, there is no single solution — that there are 350 and counting! The Road to 350 drives straight through October 24, straight through COP15, and straight onto the future that we are creating every day we wake up and commit to being the change. As it gets closer to October 24, I’m more and more inspired by those actions planned that are showing what the Road to 350 looks like – what our world of solutions will be! We hope you can join us on 10/24 on the Road to 350.

Written by Caroline / 09 September 2009 /

During the summer of 2009, a team of ICS interns worked with some businesses in Delhi to create greater demand for alternatives to plastic bags. Julia Lurie, Lucia Cowles and Neha Bhargava organized a successful stall at Dilli Haat, with the support of many wonderful volunteers from Manzil. The team showcased products made from waste, including Conserve's purses, belts, and wallets, and tote bags from Darpana. The stall also featured bags from Small Steps, alternatives to plastic bags that fold into a small pouch for easy carrying. The wonderful volunteers from Manzil had also created many varieties of bags made of newspaper, decoarated with beautiful drawings or collages made of tissue paper and scrap fabric from donated saris.

Written by Caroline / 26 August 2009 /

It's so exciting when the work that young people do on the ground begins to be the influence for international political change! The example that Greenpeace's Solar Generation gave us in Kenya this week is one such example. 25 youth of Kibera participated in a twenty-day solar workshop, much like those we saw at Barefoot College in Rajasthan. They ended with the skills they need to install and maintain solar photovoltaic panels, to fabricate self-assembling solar lamps and to market all kinds of renewable energy technology. Robert Kheyi, project coordinator for the Kibera Community Youth Programme, said: “The workshop and practical installation of solar power are a critical opportunity for us to develop our own skills in renewable energy installation. Not only do we get to act against the devastating effects of climate change in Kenya, but also develop a source of revenue.”

Yet, this project is SO exciting because it combined this work on the ground with major political action. These young Kenyans began their work by installing solar panels on the Senator Barack
Obama School in Kogelo and on the roof of the house of Mama Sarah – the US President’s grandmother. Mama Sarah said: “I am very pleased that my home has been improved thanks to solar energy and I'll make sure my grandson hears about it. Solar power is clean, reliable and affordable, unlike paraffin that is widely used in the area. Also, we now have qualified youth in the
village who can help with the upkeep of the systems.” The rest is from Greenpeace's press release on August 20 about their project. I hope to share pictures soon!