“The Labour-led government believes New Zealand should aim to be the world’s first truly sustainable nation,” Building and Construction Minister Clayton Cosgrove said. “We know the way we design our buildings and homes will be central to that effort.

“Every building component, even the humble nail, has a carbon cost, or simply the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that were created in making it. In a truly ‘green’ building, that cost might be included in the building’s overall energy efficiency.”

Mr Cosgrove said the government is conscious of the world-wide research underway into the environment impact of buildings, and New Zealand needs to be exploring these issues in-depth to ensure it is on the best possible path. “Using the projected lifetime CO2 emissions of buildings as the principal measure of resource efficiency under the new Building Code is worth considering. This approach would take into account energy and water efficiency, construction materials and construction waste.”

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Straw + clay + water = cob, an old construction technique that can be used for walls, benches and entire homes. The folks at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, California are mixing it with their hands and feet and using it to rebuild their intern center- a project taking shape from recycled and sustainable materials, like broken concrete, straw bales, clay and wine bottles.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKdpTz2pSTg]

AEVIA Reveals the Source

It’s a shame to let runoff go to waste when it can be used indoors and/or for irrigation. The benefits of rainwater harvesting can include the relief of strain on other water supplies, the ability to build or farm in areas with no other water supply, cleaner water, increased independence and water security, lower water supply costs, reduced flood flows, reduced topsoil loss, improved plant growth and a greater understanding of natural cycles.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

A cistern is a receptacle built to catch and store rainwater. They range in capacity from a few litres to thousands of cubic metres (effectively covered reservoirs).

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Greywater is household wastewater from kitchen sinks and bathroom tubs – anything except for raw sewage. In many countries in the Middle East and North African region, untreated greywater is used for irrigation purposes due to the environmentally and politically determined water scarcity of the region, and is stored in privately constructed holding tanks. Along with risks to human health in the holding and reuse of this water for irrigation, the hiring of private parties to regularly empty these tanks is a cost burden on households, as public infrastructure is not always available, especially in rural areas. The safe treatment of this water can provide an alternative. But how can this water be treated in a cost effective and simple way for individual households to own and utilize? These short films document the catalyst, innovation, implementation and outcome of one effort in the West bank and now adopted for use in Jordan and Lebanon.

See Greywater Reuse in the Middle East – Part 1

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Lehigh University wants to take esoteric ideas on environmentalism down from the ivy towers and put them into practice with the construction of a $55 million environment and science building.

With a roof covered by plants for insulation, the 130,000-square-foot building would cut into the sloped campus and rise to five stories at its highest point and use the eco-friendly innovations to reduce fuel and water use, according to plans filed last month.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a green roof is made of vegetation and soil planted over a waterproof surface. Drainage and irrigation systems also can be layered on the roof. Environmentalists tout the roofs as able to regulate interior temperature and protect the underlying roof from the damaging effects of sunlight and extreme temperature changes.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Making art is hardly easy. We struggle to express truth among the ruins of our culture, to bring beauty into disordered lives. Sometimes, circumstances just roll over us, flattening our creative energies.

What can we do? Much, because the Word became flesh.

At the beginning, our Triune God had worked with such joy and wisdom that his material world was drenched with goodness. Unalloyed goodness. Indeed, we were the pinnacle of his workmanship. But, we crashed…and shattered the relational intimacy for which he had designed us.

End of story? No, there is hope, because the Word became flesh. God’s goodness has graced us. In Jesus, he has freshly dignified our bodies and lifted up the material world.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is the solar radiation that reaches the earth. This energy can be converted directly or indirectly into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity. It is used for heating water for domestic use, space heating of buildings, drying agricultural products, and generating electrical energy.

Solar energy supplies electricity to several hundred thousand people around the world, provides employment for over ten thousand and generates business worth more than one billion dollars. In the future, the pace of change and progress could be even more rapid as the solar industry unlocks its hidden promise.

The benefits of solar power are compelling: environmental protection, economic growth, job creation, diversity of fuel supply and rapid deployment, as well as the global potential for technology transfer and innovation.

The underlying advantage of solar energy is that the fuel is free, abundant and inexhaustible. The total amount of energy irradiated from the sun to the earth’s surface is enough to provide more than 10,000 times the annual global energy consumption. Yet these benefits remain largely untapped; most energy decisions today overlook solar power as a modular technology that can be rapidly deployed to generate electricity close to the point of consumption. Phasing in solar photovoltaics therefore requires a shift from centralized to decentralized power production, offering far greater control to individual consumers.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

In manufacturing terms, exponential population growth means more factories taking up more land, using more raw materials, and allowing more emissions and waste into the environment. Demand for products and services will grow, but the availability of supplies isn’t guaranteed. Competition for Earth’s finite resources will heat up and it’s easy, yet unsettling, to imagine the socio-economic and political consequences.

A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell

“To achieve and maintain world-class sustainable manufacturing, you need continuous improvement – not just of your capital assets but the utilization and return on your raw materials, utilities and human resource assets as well,” says John Blanchard, principal analyst for CPG industries at ARC Advisory Group. “Manufacturing companies should recognize that it will become increasingly difficult for manufacturing operations to drive new growth and margin without considering manufacturing ‘sustainability’ in their business decisions.”

The benefits are practical as well as financial. Blanchard explains, “Maximizing the utilization of assets always brings a return on investment. If you can bring a packaging line from 50% efficiency to 80% efficiency without buying new equipment or using more energy, then you have reduced the cost per unit of product and demonstrated one of many approaches toward achieving world-class sustainable manufacturing.”

AEVIA Reveals the Source