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?

A recent commentator suggested that I have little positive to say about Indonesia. That is somewhat unfair, but then that depends on perspective and expectations.

For example, for a couple of years or so Dalton Tanonaka has had a column in the Jakarta Post’s monthly magazine (inaptly named Weekender). For his final column he has listed 35 gripes about living in Indonesia, but there’s possibly only one of his that I might put in my list. However, “not saying ‘I love you’ more than I have in my life” is, perhaps, more of a regret or personal ‘failing’, and one for my psychoanalyst rather than you.

And “rarely finding my size at a department store sale” is something I got over long before I came here – and discovered back street tailors.

So, have I got gripes? Sure.

But today I’d like to accentuate a few positives.

There is now a blog called Good News From Indonesia. I can but agree that the recent hosting of the “World’s Biggest Geothermal Energy Forum” was a good thing. Well, not so much the hosting of the conference in Bali (where else?), but that SBY announced the intention that Indonesia, which has 40% of the world’s potential geothermal energy source, aims to become its biggest user.

(I’ll leave to Meidyatama Suryodiningrat to accentuate the negatives – which are all too obvious.)

There’s a blog emanating from the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. called 1000 Awesome Things which has a focus on what the author thinks are feel good moments.

Some, such as the smell of fresh bread, money or new mown hay, we may nod our heads to in recognition and inwardly smile. Some, especially hay fever sufferers thinking of cut grass, will shake their heads and wince. I did when I read that seeing a license plate from far away is a reminder we’re all tied together from the edge of our driveways to the edge of your driveways. Dusty towns, big cities, open fields, and tree-lined lanes may lie between us … but the truth is we’re all in this together: bouncing in cars, swerving down roads, spinning in place, flying through space.

As I recently said, I prefer trains.

Anyway, just this once, I’m going to list a few of the truly awesome things that have made me smile in a non-cynical way over the past week.

1. I had a taxi driver who never made me wince at his speed, didn’t try to male conversation with inane questions about my nationality, didn’t answer his handphone, didn’t have bloody awful music playing on his radio and, above all, didn’t ask me for directions.

2. I actually gave some money to 3 elderly (and very short) buskers who arrived at my gate. They were playing keroncong music, in tune, and if I’d had a recording device would have posted a sample here. They were really that good.

3. I discovered an Australian group called The Necks, an experimental jazz trio from Sydney, Australia, who play improvisational pieces of up to an hour in length that explore the development and demise of repeating musical figures. If you can groove to gamelan, check them out – their Sex is truly wonderful.

4. Charlton beat Leeds and now stand a slim chance of automatic promotion. Today is crunch day. But there’s only one other Charlton fan that I know of here, so sorry I mentioned it.

5. A major (international) publisher wants to meet me with a view to commissioning me for a major writing project.

… erm … I think that’s it.

And how was your week?