Category: Impact Journalism Day

Solar panels on our roofs will soon be a thing of the past, says Markus Weingartner. That’s why the part­time inventor builds solar furniture, writes Christian Zürcher, Tages­Anzeiger, Niederglatt (Switzerland)

 

The table in the garden of a family home in Niederglatt, not far from Zurich, looks like many  a garden table – simple design, chromium steel, matt finish. But there’s a difference: one leg reveals a cable that runs along the ground and ends up in a power point.

The table leaf is black and turns out to be made of glass, covering a set of solar panels. “My solar table – an energy-producing piece of furniture,” says Markus Weingartner, an engineer, father of two, hobby innovator and furniture creator. The “solar table” generates 280 kilowatt­hours of electricity a year, enough to cover 30 per cent of a person’s energy consumption or to power an e­bike for 70 kilometres every day.

The Swiss authorities did not warm to Weingartner’s concept for a long time because unlike rooftop panels, the electricity generated by the table is fed directly into the private grid through a power point. It does not have to be sold into the public grid and then repurchased, and it can be used instantaneously.  “Most people don’t even know that this is now possible,”

Weingartner says. Although the Federal Inspectorate for Heavy Current Installations (ESTI) took a lot of convincing (Weingartner: “It was a battle”) it eventually sanctioned the idea.

This made Switzerland only the second country after the Netherlands to allow such a feed­in.

Originally, railways were Weingartner’s abiding passion. He studied electrical engineering,  joined ABB, the Swiss­Swedish engineering group, and began developing railway software programmes. He moved to South Africa for several years to help develop the country’s railway network. Upon returning to Switzerland in 2005, Weingartner redirected his professional career by adding a post­graduate diploma in photovoltaics. (“I’d been interested in this area since I was 18,” says Weingartner, who is now 49.)  He founded his own business for solar installations and employs five people. He calls it his “routine business”.

He broke out of the routine in 2013, when he designed his solar table because he anticipated a change:

“Ten years from now we won’t be seeing a lot of solar panels on small roofs anymore.”

Although solar technology becomes ever cheaper, he says, installation costs will remain high while feed­in tariffs (i.e. compensation rates) will fall. For an individual, installing rooftop panels will become less and less viable. “The trend goes towards large­scale installations and cost­efficient solar parks.”

Weingartner, who also builds solar panels for flower pots and side or coffee tables, sees a niche market for his solar furniture: “Ecology­minded people can do something for the environment without needing to obtain a building permit and having to spend 30,000 francs on a solar installation.” So, is the table, which costs CHF 3,400, also a mission statement?

“Possibly,” Weingartner says, but he prefers to paint a broader picture. He uses phrases like

“The sun is a democratic source of energy” or “The electric grid is today’s energy internet”. Anybody can feed into the grid and purchase from it, it has become a “free market”.

While energy producers once pretty much cornered the market with their power plants, photovoltaics now gives many people the opportunity to become electricity suppliers. In short: for Weingartner, the solar table is the first step on his family’s path to “energy self­sufficiency”.

At least that’s the idea, his vision. The reality is different: Weingartner’s solar table is hardly a bestseller. He has sold some 30 pieces so far, but he needs to sell at least 300 to cover his expenses – high in the hundred thousands. It’s difficult to find his furniture on the internet, let alone in the social media. “There’s room for improvement,” he concedes. Nor have any of the big furniture chains, such as IKEA, Interio or Micasa, added his invention to their product lines. Weingartner knows why: “The margins are too low.” Micasa’s Service Centre told “Tages­Anzeiger”: “We take suggestions from customers on board and evaluate them on a supply­and­demand basis.”

This leaves the furniture and garden shows. Weekend after weekend Weingartner carts his solar furniture around Switzerland. The experience is not encouraging: “People stop, have a look, say ‘Wow, what a super idea’ and amble off.” So, is the willingness to invest in renewable energy overestimated or eroded by double standards? Weingartner wouldn’t put it that harshly, but says: “It’s what people do that counts, not what they say.”

India, the dream market Florian Stahl teaches marketing at the University of Mannheim in Germany and knows a thing or two about launching innovative products.  “It takes time to market new ideas and inventions,” he says, because human beings are basically tradition­bound and it is difficult to sell them change. “The important thing here is communication.

You have to convince people that the product is the same, but better.” Small companies find this difficult, he says, because they lack the resources for broad­based advertising campaigns. An alternative would be guerrilla marketing via social media or trying to sharpen the distribution process – either direct distribution to the end­seller (Stahl: “In this case rather difficult”) or via production licences (Stahl: “Probably the best solution”). Weingartner sees some merit in the licensing option since he considers himself more of an innovator than a furniture maker. “In future, we will also offer a do­it­yourself solar table.”

He has a longer­term vision as well: he wants to travel around India in ten years’ time and see lots of furniture connected to power points – “now that would be it!”

For more information:

Website: http://energiemoebel.ch/

Joel Barquez still remembers vividly that fateful day of December 12, 1997. Barquez,  founder of Blood Donors Network, was hospitalised for dengue fever at St. Luke’s Medical Center.

“My platelet count had dropped to critical level and the only thing that would help me with my condition would be to undergo blood transfusion. Unfortunately for me, it was also the season of dengue. I realized that the supply of blood was low when the doctor had to tell my relatives to call as many people as they could who could donate blood. And they did,” Barquez said.

Today, eighteen years later, Barquez said nothing much has changed.

“Today in 2015, we are still in that same scenario that every time someone needs blood, the patient’s relatives have to call or text as many people as they can. Some hospitals ask  for replacement donors twice the amount that the patient had used in order to replenish their blood supply,” he said.

According to Ernesto Datu, head of the Blood Bank at St. Luke’s Medical Center, during the summer break and Christmas season, blood supply is at its lowest level and cannot keep up with the demand.

“People are more apt to be traveling and partying, enjoying the much­needed time off, which means fewer donors. Some medical procedures during December have to be suspended until January when blood would already be available,” Barquez said.

He said that time as well as money are of the essence, yet just having to search for blood already means time and money wasted, not to mention the physical and emotional trauma that people can experience.

As such, Barquez decided to set up Blood Donors Network, a web­ and mobile­based  application for hospitals, health centers and the Red Cross that provides direct access to compatible blood types from its network of 100 percent voluntary non­remunerated donors.

The innovative idea is a crowd­sourced web and mobile platform for the Red Cross, hospitals, blood donors and recipients.

Through these web and mobile applications, blood donation happens in the social sphere through gamification by providing these blood donors “hero badges.”

As such, they would be recognized among the blood donors community, health organizations and agencies nationwide.

Barquez said that hero badges have already been given to some donors when the app was launched in June 2014.

The web and mobile­based app specifically provides a solution to help communities meet their blood supply needs by increasing the acquisition of new blood donors and more importantly, establishing a comprehensive data of donors.

At present, the Network is currently beta tested in two products ­ the Blood Institutions and Blood Donor.

The Blood Institutions is exclusive for international humanitarian organization Red Cross as well as hospitals.

“Its features are available in the web and eventually in the mobile platform (iOS, Android, and Windows). These users can manage blood requests, check the number of donors and their blood type affiliated in their institution, as well as updates donation record of the blood donor,” Barquez said.

To access the network, the username and password of the user are predefined when there is already an existing licensing agreement.

“They can manage blood requests that could directly send to a maximum of 100 blood donors that are geo­ and blood type­targeted. This saves time and money when searching for the specific blood type needed instead of the usual random process,” he said.

The Blood Donor on the other hand is available in web and currently developing the mobile platform.

Under this platform, when an institution sends a request of B+ blood type, donors with that particular type of blood would receive an SMS.

Participating hospitals in beta testing include St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City and Global Bonifacio City while Cardinal Santos has also expressed its intention to participate.

The organization has also partnered with Smart Communications and Chikka both for SMS messaging.

The Asian Development Bank and Microsoft Philippines support the project, Barquez said.

Asked how many patients have benefitted, Barquez said there is no actual data yet but there are thank you notes through social media.

“Currently, we do not have actual data regarding the number of patients who benefitted from the app. All we have got are thank you notes received through social media. I also experienced for the first time that I was personally thanked by the wife of the patient who was at the ICU that time last April 3, on Good Friday. I underwent platelet apheresis so that her husband would be able to have his immediate operation due to internal bleeding,” he said.

Moving forward, Barquez said that once the Blood Donors Network is done with its beta tests with selected hospitals, the project would be scaled up by June 2015.

“Once, we are done with our beta tests with selected hospitals, we are going to scale up by releasing the version 2 of the application by June 2015. We will propose the app to other hospitals in Metro Manila that have their own blood banks, as well as to university organizations that are very much involved in blood drives,” he said.

By 2016, the goal is to go nationwide, Barquez added. Indeed, the days of searching for much needed blood by families of desperate patients may soon come to an end, thanks to the Blood Donors Network.

 

For more information

 

Website: http://www.blooddonorsnetwork.org

 

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/en/video/blood­donors­network

Plant first, ask later: this is what a handful of volunteers in an ordinary town in northern England did, and from it sprang a worldwide grow­it­yourself revolution, writes  Anna Polonyi

 

If you take the local train north of Manchester, England, you’ll see a Hollywood­style sign on a hill that reads KINDNESS in large, white letters. It overlooks Todmorden, an old cotton mill town that is unlike any other in West Yorkshire. It’s the birthplace of an urban gardening revolution that is quietly growing worldwide, much like the herbs and vegetables planted everywhere in the town.

“I still get a thrill when I pick an artichoke here,” said Estelle Brown in front of the local police station. Brown is one of the 30 or so core volunteers who make up Incredible Edible Todmorden, the gardening group that has made their small town famous around the world by claiming public land and growing food for everybody.

It started with part of a curb here, a corner there. Seven years on and 400 volunteers later, it adds up to about a thousand fruit trees and two dozen raised beds around town: cherries and pears by the health center, rhubarb and broccoli in front of the community college, potatoes and kale in the train station parking lot. Anyone can pick what they please: herbs year­round and for the rest, volunteers stick a “pick me” sign into the ground when it’s ready.

“We don’t like to call it guerrilla gardening, because that reminds us of macho warfare. We’d rather call it naughty but nice,” said the chair, Mary Clear, whose kitchen doubles as the group’s main headquarters. Her motto: “Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission.”

This applies to much of the movement, which appropriated public land, root by root, until the local council finally created an “incredible” license, allowing residents to grow food on patches of unused public property for up to three years.

The people of Tod have tapped into something both old and new. During the Second World War, the extensive “Dig for Victory” campaign in the United Kingdom encouraged people to grow their own food in public spaces, including Hyde Park in London.

Over the past decade, interest in urban gardening has grown. While consumers wish to reduce the distance their food travels, city officials worry about food sourcing. “The volcano eruption in Iceland in 2010 was a wake­up call for many. Transport was disrupted and the grocery shops were empty within a matter of hours,” said Catherine Simon, who advises foreign groups on how to start their own initiative. If cut off from the rest of the world, most major European cities would be able to feed their inhabitants for no more than four days, she said.

Incredible Edible Todmorden never set out to make the town self­sustainable; the produce, all organic, meets less than 5 percent of the population’s food needs. Incredible Edible takes the idea of traditional community gardens a step further by being open­source: growing public food on public property. And supporting local food and businesses is at the heart of its mission. “We don’t seem to have leaders of the world who want to put kids’ future and the environment center stage,” Pam Warhurst, one of the founders of the movement, said. “So we thought, why not do it here, locally, to show it can be done.”

She showed us around the Aquagarden, a social enterprise that sprung out of the movement. The experimental learning center breeds fish and recycles their feces to grow plants without soil. The restaurant across the street will soon be putting local tilapia on its menu.

What began as an idea has now grown into an international movement. Similar initiatives in over 20 countries from Australia to Senegal, Cuba and Japan are using the Incredible Edible name.

Local councils in France and other parts of the United Kingdom have adopted “incredible” licenses.

In southern France, the deputy mayor of Albi recently pledged to help the local “incroyable comestible” team grow enough food to sustain all 68,000 inhabitants by 2020, becoming the first officially backed Incredible Edible town.

One of the many people Todmorden has inspired to be naughty and nice is 24­year­old Emilien Buffard, who started an edible garden in Rosario, Argentina. With a few medical students interested in therapeutic herbs, he claimed a patch of public lawn for produce. “People at first were pessimistic. They said it might work in Europe, but here there is too much theft and vandalism,” Buffard said. “But why steal something that is already yours?” The garden has since become a local landmark, yielding avocadoes, lemons, oranges and eggplant.

Todmorden’s climate is unlikely to grow anything as exotic as Rosario. But the modest crew of volunteers who get together to dig twice a month are thrilled to see that their story has inspired many others.

“Incredible Edible has made the town famous,” the mayor Michael Gill said. “It took off more than anyone could have expected, and people now come from all around the world to see for themselves.”

 

For more information

Website: http://www.incredible­edible­todmorden.co.uk/

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/en/video/incredible­edible­collaborative­food­movement

Geared  with  a  GPS  (Global  Positioning  System),  three  village  communities  in  the Sambas  Regency,  West  Kalimantan  created  their  village  maps.  By  creating  maps,  they wanted  to  prevent  land  conflicts  and  avoid  the  threat  of  land  claiming.  Three  villages  are Lela, Tri Mandayan, and Sebagu in Teluk Keramat Sub­District, Sambas. “Why should (we) create a map? Because there are the threat of land conflicts between member of communities, between villages, and threats from the outside, the entry of the palm oil companies to Lela.

We are concerned about these threats “said Iskandar, a member of the Lela Village Mapping Team in Sebagu Village, Sambas, Wednesday (15/4).

All  this  time, said Iskandar,  Lela  has  never  had  a  detailed  map  of  the  village  that includes region border. As a result, boundaries near neighbouring villages were still unclear and  only  based  on  each  other  claims.  Thus,  land  conflicts  between  Lela  villagers  with neighbouring villages could occur at any time. “I experienced it when I was about to clear the forest for rubber plantation”, he said.

Iskandar told, a few years ago, he cleared a forest land for rubber plantation on the border of Lela Village. He started to clear the land from shrubs and small trees. However, a few days later a man came to claim the land and stated that the land was not included in Lela Village region. “It didn’t end with physical violence, only some arguments, “he said.

Departing from similar experiences shared by other villagers, as well as concerns of the threat of land claiming by the palm oil company that wanted to enter the village that time, the community agreed to create their village map. Mapping began in June 2011 accompanied by Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) Sambas. Preparation of maps was done with methods of participatory, involving Lela community participation.

“This  participatory  mapping  activities  is  one  of  the  SOLVE  (Strengthening Livelihoods  and  Reduce  Local  Vulnerability)  programs.  The  background  was  the  land conflicts in some of our assisted villages. We focus this program in Lela village for the first time,  then  in  Tri  Mandayan  village  and  replicated  in  Sebagu,  “said  Lina  Lumbanraja, Coordinator of Economic Development Project WVI Sambas.

According to Iskandar, to draw up maps, they formed Team 10 consisting of 10 Lela villagers.  This  team  received  mapping  basic  technique  training  by  Participatory  Mapping Network (JKPP), one of WVI’s partner. They were taught to measure the coordinates using GPS then turned the coordinates into an image map. “Some were tasked to operate the GPS, the others were in charge to record the GPS data,” he said.

After mastering the use of GPS, Team 10 was divided into two groups work towards border village. It took five days to tour the border of Lela village. Team had to go in and out of the forest  and  villagers’ fields to record the  coordinates  of the  border.  “Based  on GPS data, we drew the map on milimeters block paper and then copied it onto the tracing paper, “ said Iskandar.

Lela’s region map was drawn simply on a sheet of tracing paper. Villagers drew it by hand, no computerization. Although the finished the village maps, there was one important hurdle,  that  is  the  boundaries  have  not  been  approved  by  the  neighbouring  villages,  like Sungai Kumpai, Puringan, Pedada, and Berlimbang in Teluk Keramat sub­districts and Jawai  sub­district.  “Although  there  is  yet  approval  from  neighbouring  villages,  but  now  there’s alsmost no land conflict. They know we have the village map, “he said.

Learning from the Lela village experience, Tri Mandayan communities followed suit in  creating their village map. Pardi, Leader of Tri Mandayan Village Mapping Field Team said, mapping team was also trained by JKPP and accompanied by WVI Sambas. “To get the village boundaries coordinates, we slept in the jungle for 10 days, because Tri Mandayan has vast forest, “he explained.

In  the  thick forests, sometimes satellite signals  went  weak. Team members  had  tot climb the tree several times to ensure GPS get a strong signal, to ensure the accuracy of the data.” For 18 days we collected the data from the GPS,” he said. Learning from the weakness of Lela village, Tri Mandayan village formed negotiating team. The task of negotiation team was  to  have  agreement  with  the  neighboring  villages  about  the  borders.  Unfortunately  the negotiation team which  comprised of some  community leaders did not move  as fast  as the mapping team field.

As a result, after the Tri Mandayan village map was finished, the village border had not  been  agreed  yet  by  the  neighbouring  villages,  namely  Semata  Village,  Sub­District Tangaran; Pedada and Sekura Village, Teluk Keramat Sub­District. “We are hampered by the map validation, because there is no agreement,” he said.

More Smoothly In Sebagu the mapping ran more smoothly. Negotiating team moved  ahead of team field.  After  the  village  boundaries  agreed  with  neighbor  villages,  like  Tanjung  Keracut Village, Teluk Keramat Sub­District; Piantus village and Sekuduk, Sejangkung Sub­ District; and Tri Kembang Village, Galing Sub­District, the field team worked with  borrowed GPS from WVI. “There is no problem. Once the map was completed, the validation was done by the Head of Piantus Village, Sekuduk, Tanjung Keracut, Tri Kembang and the Sub­District government”, said Basuni, former Head of Sebagu Village.

Once approved at the Teluk Keramat Sub­District level, Sebagu map was submitted to the  Governance  Department  of  Sambas for  approval.  However, since  the  2013  up  to  now Sambas Goverment has not yet  approved the map made through  active participation of the villagers.

According  Basuni,  Sambas  Goverment  wants  to  match  it  first  with  Sambas  region  map.  Though  they  have  to  undergo  several  hurdles,  Sebagu,  Tri  Mandayan,  and  Lela communities  now  feel  relieved  and  proud.  Now  they  know  the  exact  boundaries  of  their village. With the village map, the land conflicts between communities have been prevented successfully.

“For  the  people,  the  problem  of  land  conflicts  nowadays  is  zero,”  said  Safirudin, villager and also member of Sebagu Village Mapping Team. (Erwin Edhi Prasetyo)