quarta-feira, 17 de dezembro de 2014

Urna Bios

Urna Bios


What is it?

The Bios Urn is a biodegradable urn, made of coconut shell, created by Gerard Moliné in 1997. The purpose of the urn is when you deposit the ashes of a deceased person in it, the ashes will grant the nutrients needed for a seed of a tree of choice to germinate.







What is its purpose?



The intent of the urn is to offer a an alternative for remembering deceased people in a natural, sustainable way. That way, it is a form of turning death to life.






Why should I use Bios Urn?

It is a creative and innovative way to provide a solution to the current lack of trees. Its price is very reasonable(U$100), and its function imply an environmental, social and economic improvement for a growing problem: overpopulation and metropolis growth.



Pedro Bezerra
Taina Neres


Self-Sustaining Technologies

A system is self-sustaining (or self-sufficient) if it can maintain itself by independent effort.

Whereas self-sustainability is a quality of one’s independence, survivability applies to the future maintainability of one’s self-sustainability and indeed one’s existence. Many believe that more self-sustainability guarantees a higher degree of survivability. But just as many oppose this, arguing that it is not self-sustainability that is essential for survivability, but on the contrary specialization and thus dependence.


100% Sustainable Homes

   

Just because you want to live in completely self-sustaining home, doesn’t mean it has to be primitive, as if it were separated from the 21st century! Believe it or not, these homes actually have quite a lot of modern amenities you would find in a typical home.




No matter what climate it is, Earthships can grow their own food and crops year-roundOptionally, you can choose to build a fish pond or chicken coop for a continuous source of eggs and meat.




Even the most arid and bitter climates are no match for an Earthship, which uses one-of-a-kind rain harvesting system to provide a brilliant use of water recycling. First, water collects on the entire roof of the Earthship. This water funnels down into a cistern which pumps it into sicks and showers.




Thanks to the wind turbines, and an entire roof dedicated to solar panels, you’ll never be short of power, just as long as you aren’t being too aggressive with your electricity use.








Self-Sustaining Street Lamp

 Most solar panels turn on and turn off automatically by sensing outdoor light using a light source Solar streetlights are designed to work throughout the night. Many can stay lit for more than one night if the sun is not available for a couple of days. Older models included lamps that were not fluorescent or LED. Solar lights installed in windy regions are generally equipped with flat panels to better cope with the winds. Latest designs use wireless technology and fuzzy control theory for battery management. The street lights using this technology can operate as a network with each light having the capability of performing on or off the network.

Lucas César Felicíssimo
Leandro Luiz Duarte Teixeira
Pedro Henrique Silva

Informática 2A - CEFET-MG - Inglês - Professora Gláucia Moura



Sources:http://www.agkgreenenergy.com/solar_streetlight.html
http://earthship.com/a-look-at-the-models-of-earthships
  http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/earth-ships.jpg
https://lukkin.com/photos/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.highexistence.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F09%2Fearthship2.jpg&w=699

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/4c/f4/1c4cf425492d425e278698d34ff27409.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSPukgsBQBCMqM4aEotvrRmdvN2zYVI16aSpvDIMcp8dCrBL1V8Ng9vJA
http://earthship.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/home_earthship-150x150.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRt0XLwKpeXJQUJD50_FksxdBF2N1oAdlUJryL53T9r5U-OSepexw

terça-feira, 16 de dezembro de 2014

Environmental Awareness: Conserving water

Environmental Awareness: Conserving water
           

          Water is one of the resources necessary for human survival. However, some people 
do not realize its importance, wasting several gallons of water a day with attitudes that could be prevented with small changes. In this page we will give some tips on how to avoid the waste of water in our homes.


1 – Take shorter showers: Baths and long showers use at least 4x the amount of water as a 3-5 minute shower.


2 – Re-use old water: Use the water from the washer again to wash the yard or watering the garden.


3 – Washer dishes once a day: If you're hand-washing, save up your dishes for one wash and use a third the water. You can rinse them throughout the day with warm-up water to make your evening job easier. All rinse water can go in the garden.



http://davidmarkbrownwrites.com/wp-content/uploads/
2011/03/wasting-water-large.jpg

4 - Capture rainwater: Install gutters on your roof and drain the rainfall into barrels for use in the garden. One inch of rain falling on one square foot will catch over half a gallon of rain.
 
          If you have any tips, create a blog post below and help minimize the waste of water in our home, planet Earth.








Matheus Barbosa and Rafael Massoni



                                                                                                                  http://civildigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Recycle-
                                                                                                                         Of-Waste-Water-and-Waste-Management.jpg

sexta-feira, 12 de dezembro de 2014

Recycling


      Currently everything is easier due to technology. And with that at an earlier age children are entering the virtual world. And with that comes the consequence of the loss of two pieces of childhood, the creative part and the contact with parents. A very good and healthy way to display that creativity is through imagination. And why not use this for good, having fun while the parents are present? Recycling can be a great answer.
To know how to recycle all waste, to respect the environment, and to know what to do to preserve our nature are some of the teachings that parents can pass on to their children. Only then they'll grow with the mindset that everyone needs to fight and do their part to save and preserve our planet.



But what is recycling? It is to "turn the old new again." To recycle we must learn to separate the types of waste in each particular color, such as: paper in the blue trashcan, glass on the green one, plastic goes in red, yellow for metal and organic materials to brown.





  
When we create, for example, toys made from recyclable materials, we can teach children the importance of this act for nature, awakening in them the creativity and also strengthening their ties with the family, since the parents will help in the manufacture of the toys.

Karolini Lacerda e Natália Luciane.

quarta-feira, 10 de dezembro de 2014

The 3 R's



Very simple things can be done to lessen the impact on the environment from our actions, but simple does not mean it's easy to do. The fact is that this requires awareness and willness.
Also known as the three Rs of sustainability (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) are practical actions aimed at establishing a more harmonious relationship between the consumer and the environment.
  • Reduce: Reduce means to purchase goods and services in accordance with our needs to avoid waste, evaluate what is important and what is absolutely superfluous and seek to reduce the latter, in addition to verifying the quality of what you buy and if your quantity is sufficient or exaggerated. A very good example is some fine chocolates. If you go to a store you will see that they are expensive, please notice the giant amount of material for the packaging they use! All that packaging will end up in the trash.
  • Reuse: Remember those cups of curd that ended up being part of the household? This is a classic example of reuse. Reusing means giving a new use for things, preventing them from becoming garbage. But who thinks reuse things is something tacky are sadly mistaken. Several workshops are already using the concept of reuse to develop new parts, as decorative as utilitarian. An idea that can also give you an extra money and still avoid more waste production.
  • Recycle: Finally we come to the last of the R's, but this does not mean it is  less important. Recycle everyone knows what it is. Recycling is the solution to what can not be reused and even depending on the type of material recycling is not the solution. Properly recycle involves a larger network, because first we need collection points to allocate the material, then we need the awareness of people to gather, separate and take to the posts the garbage that can be recycled.


The idea is to minimize the waste that happens in the production, in addition to the degradation of the environment by the extraction of materials. To this we must attack the two ends of the chain, production (involves buying less and better) and the destination (involves transforming waste into new things). Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, despite still being voluntary attitudes of some people, already show signs of being the inevitable attitudes to follow in the future. The shortage of material to produce, pollution of air and water, lack of energy and other factors are leading us down a path that was already forgotten, the path that one day that everything ends,  even though we have large quantity of it .



Selective Waste Collection

    


Selective waste collection is the collection of recycling materials (paper, plastic, metal and glass) that should not be mixed with general waste from homes or workplace. It begins with the separation of organic and inorganic materials, and then with the right disposition for reuse and recycling. 

    People should make the separation in their homes and the waste of selective collection are sent to the central screening. This previously separated and collected material in homes and businesses will be divided according to the type, only to be pressed and subsequently sold to recycling companies.

   People should take some precautions with household waste. Simple lamps, glasses, crockery and glass packaging may not look dangerous, but are a potential risk as they can break when you handle then. We must seek a more rigid material for packaging, such as paper, cardboard, cans, plastic bottles or milk cartons. Broken glass can be packed in cans of milk powder or chocolate. Another possibility is to cut in half a milk carton, promoting a snap. 
     We can say that the selective collection has several benefits for the population, such as: Increased service life of landfills from the reduction of waste that will no longer go to these sites and increasing the life cycle of the raw materials of each waste collected and recycled.

Marina Santos and Rafael Martins