Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

I subscribe to the weekly email sent out by to Eco Geek. I'm particularly interested in small scale inventions and developments which could, with a little will, be applied here in Indonesia.

Street Lamps Powered by Garbage

A cool new design concept marries composting with clean energy: garbage-powered street lamps. The Gaon Street Light from designer Haneum Lee keeps food waste out of landfills while keeping streets illuminated. The street lamp features a garbage bin at its base where food products can be deposited. The waste is then composted and the methane from the waste powers the lamp at the top.

A No-Draw Charger

AT&T has just announced a USB-based telephone charger that does not pull electricity from the wall when it's not charging a phone. I don't know about you, but my charger is plugged in 100% of the time. That charger pulls a tiny amount of energy from the wall 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Multiply that by 100 million chargers in Indonesia and there's probably at least one coal-fired power plant dedicated entirely to that wasted power.

Better yet is a charger which doesn't draw any energy at all from the grid.

Pedal Your Way to a Charged Cell Phone

Nokia has just unveiled a way to charge your cell phone without hitting up the grid – a bicycle charger kit. Dedicated cyclists may never have to plug a phone into a wall again. The Bicycle Charger Kit mounts onto the handlebars of your bike and includes a holder for your cell phone. The charger plugs into the phone and then your pedaling does the work. The faster you pedal, the faster the phone charges. At just shy of 4 mph, the charging starts and if you can up your speed to 8 mph, the phone will charge as fast as being plugged into a wall outlet.

Going at 8 mph (13 kph) is rarely possible in Jakarta, but perhaps they can be installed in fitness centre machines.

Bead-Filled Washing Machine Uses 90% Less Water

A new washing machine design uses 90 percent less water and reduces utility bills by 30 percent by cleaning clothes with tiny plastic beads. The machine by UK company Xeros Ltd uses 3mm-long nylon beads that can get into all crevices and folds of clothing and absorb stains and dirt. Stephen Burkinshaw, a polymer chemist at Leeds University, discovered that nylon beads at 100 percent humidity could attract stains away from clothing and into the center of the beads, preventing deposition back onto the clothes.

Solar Refrigerators Save Lives
The distribution of vaccines through the developing world is sometimes limited by a lack of available refrigeration for the storage of the vaccines. In some parts of the world, more than half of the vaccines spoil before they can be administered. Millions of lives and billions of dollars are lost due to a lack of refrigeration. A new solar refrigerator developed by the Appropriate Technology Collaborative can provide lifesaving cold storage for vaccines with an inexpensive system that can be built from locally available materials. The refrigerator needs no electricity and should require only minimal maintenance since it has no valves or moving parts.

There are of course other bits of Green Stuff which may otherwise be overlooked.

Such as Whale Poo.
Australian scientists have discovered that whale poo is not only helping ocean plant life to flourish, but also increasing the ocean's ability to absorb CO2. Because whales' diets are made up largely of iron-rich krill (small crustaceans), their droppings are a great fertilizer for marine plants, helping them to grow like weeds (or algae). These plants then do their part by absorbing CO2 as they grow, a process that scientists have tried to amp up (unsuccessfully) in Antarctic waters with iron fertilization.

It makes sense, therefore, to sign the latest petition being organised by Avaaz.org.

In one week, the International Whaling Commission will hold its final vote on a proposal to legalize commercial whale hunting for the first time in a generation. The outcome rests on whose voices are heard most clearly in the final hours: the pro-whaling lobby – or the world's people?