Energy Independence

"Zabaleen" is the Arabic term for those visionary and enterprising people whose culture revolves around recycling. The Zabaleen are experts at "transforming one man's garbage into another man's gold" and aspire toward a net zero-waste economy. Applied and supported this could lead to true energy independence, not only by radically reducing our demand for "raw materials" and hard to extract natural resources but by recycling other less obvious phenomena and materials that are now wasted.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Melting plastic bags

http://www.instructables.com/id/HomemadePlastic/
Posted by T.H. Culhane at 2:50 PM No comments:
Newer Posts Older Posts Home
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Followers

Statistics

Yesterdays kitchen garbage is today's clean cooking fuel and nutritious container garden fertilizer

Yesterdays kitchen garbage is today's clean cooking fuel and nutritious container garden fertilizer
T.H., Sybille and Kilian Culhane on Hanna Fathy's roof in the Zabaleen region of Cairo after drinking biogas fueled tea from the ARTI India Biodigester that Culhane learned to build during the India Youth Climate Network Solutions Tour, January 2009 and brought to Egypt for the first time in February of 2009. Solar CITIES has now built five units in Cairo, particularly to benefit Coptic families whose pigs were slaughtered due to misunderstandings of "swine flu" issues.

The Zabaleen ethic

There is no such thing as "garbage". Nothing should be wasted. A Zabaleen looks around him or her and asks, "what new use or value can I find in this object, this environment, this moment." The Zabaleen ethic, if properly applied and supported, could lead to true energy independence by making use not only of what we traditionally call "trash" but of other wasted commodities: embedded solar radiation found in light, heat, wind, hydrological cycles, geothermal mass and biomass and from the synergistic behavior of microbes, plants, fungi and non-human animals. We can all be Zabaleen...

About Me

My Photo
T.H. Culhane
Thinking of interning with Solar CITIES in Santa Rosa (US) or Cairo (Egypt) or Essen (Germany), donating ideas, time, resources, or labor or making a contribution? We can be reached at thculhane@gmail.com
View my complete profile

Blog Archive

  • ►  2012 (3)
    • ►  December (1)
    • ►  November (2)
  • ►  2010 (171)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (4)
    • ►  July (17)
    • ►  June (83)
    • ►  May (6)
    • ►  April (8)
    • ►  March (16)
    • ►  February (20)
    • ►  January (10)
  • ▼  2009 (26)
    • ►  December (3)
    • ►  November (4)
    • ▼  October (1)
      • Melting plastic bags
    • ►  August (17)
    • ►  January (1)
  • ►  2008 (3)
    • ►  December (2)
    • ►  October (1)

My Blog List

  • SOLAR CITIES
    1 month ago
Simple template. Powered by Blogger.