A Japanese Subway sandwich shop has started growing hydroponic lettuce right in the middle of the store ! Not only is this hyper-local lettuce healthy, it’s a great visual centerpiece for the space.
The Japanese are very inventive when it comes to being space efficient . This is an eco-idea that many hotels , restaurants, canteens , communities across the world can adopt. It is understandably impossible to grow all ingredients locally . But , every bit counts.
(via Inhabitat )
“A kitchen surrounded by fertile soil where vegetables and herbs thrive … Where daylight shines in from all sides and where the chefs are free to express their creativity daily using the best the season has to offer. It seems an obvious concept, but I spent twenty years surrounded by white tiles under fluorescent lighting before I came up with it.” – chef Gert Jan Hageman
Restaurant De Kas has its own greenhouse and garden near the restaurant, where they grow Mediterranean vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. They also have a large field about 10 kilometres from Amsterdam in the Purmer Polder, where they grow seasonal vegetables.
In the world teeming with McDonalds , Pizza Hut and other industrial food serving outlets it’s wonderful to see a restaurant that is built around fresh food grown and harvested by the restaurant team.
De Kas is more an exception because of the sheer space needed for such an initiative . Yet , that are restaurants with the luxury of space who choose to adopt the beaten bath. Increasingly hotels are beginning to grow some herbs / vegetables in their gardens (hotels tend to have more space than a restaurant ).
What’s striking about De Kas is the combination of eco friendliness and style that makes it so distinctive.
An Indonesian businessman contributes to environmental wellness on a bike connected to a generator inside the “100 percent green” Crowne Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen. The energy produced by pedaling guests is stocked in a battery before being injected into the hotel’s power supply.
The Crowne Plaza’s concrete and steel tower is covered in some 1,500 solar panels that produce 170,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to power 55 households. In the basement of the 86-meter (232-feet) skyscraper there is a geothermal well which covers the hotel’s heating and air conditioning needs, slashing its energy bill by about 90 percent.
And in each of the 366 rooms, personal care accessories are biodegradable, taps are equipped with water-saving devices and all light bulbs are low-energy.
But that doesn’t mean the Intercontinental chain’s first “all-eco” hotel has clients roughing it.
“Everything was thought out with technologies respectful of the environment, without sacrificing quality, comfort, and the feeling of being at a four-star hotel,” spokeswoman Toemmergaard insists.
Wall coverings, carpeting, and even the feet on the design furniture are made from recycled materials and are guaranteed not to contain chemical products, while the computers have power-saving screens.
And the guests who redeem their electricity-production vouchers dine on organic food, and the high-tech kitchen grinds all its garbage and sends it to a local biogass central to be transformed into fuel.
Brilliant idea . It would taken the hotel meticulous effort to plan , create and source all the materials. The end result is an eco-hotel that’s an inspiring example to all businesses to think non-linearly and holistically about sustainability.
The eco-paradise wasn’t an easy sell to the slightly sceptical Intercontinental chain, Toemmergaard concedes.
“Often, when people think environmentally friendly, they think of smaller organic products that are less appealing than traditional offerings,” she says, adding that there had been a real fight “to convince the chain we had made the right choice.”
In the end, the franchises’s owners agreed to carry the project through because they believed Copenhagen needed a hotel that reflected its green ambitions, Toemmergaard says.
The bicycle-filled capital, which is “one of the world’s showcases for the environment and quality of life, which wants to become the first emission-free capital in 2025, should have a hotel that fits that image,” she says.
The carbon-dioxide neutral hotel cost some 125 million euros (156 million dollars) to build and is about five percent more expensive to run than a normal hotel, but the owners expect to make up the difference.
“In five or six years we will have a return on our investment that shows that it pays to make an effort for the environment,” Toemmergaard says.
( via physorg.com )
Florists , hotels , any place that has flowers to dispose should start to compost them instead of tossing it into the garbage pile.
Highly doable. Solutions like these definitely help make a Cleaner Planet.
p.s – political parties in India should take to composting flowers considering the quantity of floral garlands they use to garland not just their ‘live’ party bosses but also their statues and hoardings.
Brilliant , thought provoking presentation by Rory Sutherland . Relevant for organizations / groups / individuals .
Seemingly small stuff makes a HUGE difference .
Use a cloth bag daily !
The Indian state of Sikkim is working towards the goal of 100% organic agriculture by 2015 .
Organic farming combines ecologically-sound modern technology with traditional agricultural practices including crop rotation, green manure and biological pest control to ensure reduction or total elimination of chemical inputs. In several parts of Sikkim, farmers have succeeded in growing completely organic maize, paddy, ginger, cardamom and turmeric while expanding the practices to other horticultural crops.
The first step came in May 2003, when the state government withdrew the subsidy on fertilizers. From 2006-07 onwards, the transport and handling subsidy and commission to the retailer was also withdrawn. Alongside, the government also adopted a seven-year plan to phase out use of chemical fertilizers, by gradually replacing these with organic sources.
“The government had taken the decision because it had seen the adverse impact of chemical fertilizers on our soil, water and on human health, considering ours is a biodiversity hotspot,” says S K Gautam, secretary in the department of food security and agriculture.
Wonderful to see the concerted , sustained , planned efforts to make an entire state organic . Yet another reason to visit this beautiful spot of the pale blue dot we inhabit.
Print minimally . If you need to print consider Ecofont . The free version can be downloaded from Ecofont’s site .
The font basically has dots . At a document level print they are practically impossible to distinguish from the normal print. The dots ensure that lesser ink is needed for the printing . Thereby extending the life of the cartridge .
Useful in all work that requires printing – banks , offices . Airlines and Railways can use it to print tickets. At Clean Planet we have now installed this as the default font for documents that need to be printed. We’ve also become a lot more conscious of paper usage . Both factors put together we are refilling cartridges less frequently than before.
More than the font per se what we really like is the approach of finding creative solutions that extend the life of products , solutions for everyday tasks. Imagine the benefits of extending this approach to re-designing products , processes , packaging to make them more resource efficient..
What do you do after you have read the newspaper ?
1. Wrap gifts – no more hunting for gift wrapping paper . Neatly pack gifts in newspaper . Make a card with left over regular paper and pieces of cloth / use a flamboyant fabric to tie the unusual ensemble
2. Make envelopes from newspaper . Splash a bit of color . And voila – you have envelopes that make you feel like writing letters.
3. Pens from newspaper (not possible perhaps to make at home )
4. Newspaper bags – use fabric strips to make the handles , color the bag , stencil messages on the bag
5. On days when you can’t get dried leaves – add newspaper shreds to your composting bin.
The ultimate eco bag !
It may not be possible for all to expertly and quickly fashion stable bags from cloth . We can however use cloth creatively wrap gifts.
Ditch wrapping paper . Instead use cloth – old saris , stoles , scarves, dupattas . Being in the clothing biz we get fabric swatches of varying dimensions on a regular basis . Some of them are used to wrap objects , gifts . The end result is always delightful – for us and the recipient.
p.s – we’ve been thinking about the number of items one can make from a sari. In a few weeks we should be able to share the fun creations from a sari
A mechanical foot pedal powered washing machine that requires no electricity by Remya Jose . The kind of innovation we need to create a sustainable world.
When free of the constraints of convention the solutions that emerge are truly amazing.
Time to rethink and Rework a lot else..
