work wisdoms: lenten break

It certainly is.  Today is the last of my 6-day break from work.  Here in the Philippines, lenten break usually means going out of town and heading to the beaches.  I watched the news last Thursday and Friday and sure enough, Bora and Puerto Galera were overflowing with local tourists. Someone said that Manila was like a ghost town.  Well, It was really nice because there was no traffic when we did our Visita Iglesia last Friday.  We were able to visit 8 churches and we even swung by my Grandma's house for a visit.  I had a lot of fun. We do this every year and for each church we visit, we would buy some sort of snack or eat a meal.  We call it Station of the Foods haha.  We ate Puto from Laguna, puto bumbong, corn, drank buko juice, and then ate lunch at Aristocrat's (first for me).

There was a tv show that called it "staycation" which means, staying at home for the vacation.  A lot of people, instead of going to the beach and spending money for travel and accomodation, just bought inflatable pools and filled it with water.  Then they cooked barbeques and had fun with their family.  Happiness, in whatever form, will always be grand.

It felt good to do something different everyday and accomplish a lot of things.  I dragged my family to the hospital to get their first shot of the anti-HPV vaccine, cleaned my shoes and clothes and fixed my closet, went to confession and visited churches, visited my grandma, went swimming, went to a hydrotherapy spa, visited a friend who gave birth last week, got a pedicure, a haircut and a hot oil treatment, wrote the script for the comic book project I've started with one of my friends, submitted a short scene and gave a critique to the internet writing workshop, added some more scenes on the short story I'm writing, wrote this blog entry, exercised everyday and took care of my dogs, tried out the new restaurant here in our village and watched four great movies! (Sooner or later, Flipped, Mozart and the Whale, Kiss of the Spiderwoman).

It felt rewarding to finish a lot of things that are not related to work.  These last few days were quite fruitful.  I didn't feel tired at all. It was one of the best vacations I had in my life.

"Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction." - Anne Frank

in bloom

My mom bought these flowers made of recycled materials at a bazaar. They look better than plastic flowers. I'm trying to find out who made these. My sister said they came from Baguio but she didn't know the actual name of the shop that sold them. I found a blog entry here; it's about paper roses created by Women’s Livelihood Organization of Imelda Village in Baguio but I wasn't sure it was them, but still, kudos to them as well!

If anyone out there knows please tell me, so I can give them proper credit and an award! Very creative!

phone cords, styrofoam
and magazines

vase made of recycled paper

paper hibiscus

straw roses

flowers made of Coke, Royal
and Sprite wrappers

loofah

Before writing this entry, I had always associated the word "loofah" with the scrubber used for cleaning the body.  I never thought it's the actual english name of a vegetable, and it's a vegetable I'm very familiar with.  We call it "patola" here in the Philippines. I always associate it with the yummy dish, "patola with miswa".

In Paraguay, the loofah is improving lives. In a project headed by social activist, Elsa Zaldívar, local women in Caaguazú started planting and processing the vegetable. They made products like mats, slippers and insoles out of dried loofahs. It was a successful venture and they were even able to export it to Europe. It gave the women a steady source of income.

However, a lot of raw material were still wasted, so Elsa got the help of industrial engineer, Pedro Padrós, to see if they can use it to build houses for the people.

“We want to find sustainable housing alternatives for the poor, while also discovering new markets for their agricultural products, particularly the loofah. This is a perfect combination,” she says.

Pedro was able to create a machine that melts plastic, and he mixed the result with loofah and other vegetable fibres. After lots of experimentation, they produced a sturdy material that's lightweight, safe and recyclable. They also received a grant from Inter-American Development Bank for the development of another machine that can produce the housing panels.

“Because we’re using fibres that are completely renewable, we can stop using lumber for construction. That’s very important in Paraguay because we’ve already reduced our original forest to less than ten per cent of Paraguay’s territory,” Elsa said. “We’re running out of trees.”

As a result of her work, Elsa was awarded the Rolex Award for Enterprise last 2008. They will be using the money to fund the creation of a promotion centre, three model houses that showcases the loofah panels and a video that details the project for other interested groups.

Sources:
http://rolexawards.com/en/the-laureates/elsazaldivar-the-project.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa
http://keetsa.com/blog/recycle/paraguay-homes-built-out-of-loofah-and-corn-husks/
http://earthfirst.com/low-cost-housing-made-from-loofahs/
http://www.resnicowschroeder.com

concrete alternatives

Aside from shipping containers, people are continually finding other eco-friendly alternatives in building houses.  With all that has been happening-- extreme changes in the weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil shortage, I think there's an increased awareness in everyone about the dismal state of our planet.

Ever seen the movie Back to the Future?  There's a scene where Doc arrives in his DeLorean and he's running low on fuel, but instead of filling it up with gas, he fills it with trash.  A car running on garbage-- that's pure genius.  Well, we may not have that yet (this looks bogus) but people are looking into using garbage for building houses.  The use of plastic as an aggregate for cement is one of the alternatives for concrete.  One of the cities here in the Manila have bought a pulverizing machine to try this out.  Another company in Massachusetts, Conigliaro Industries, already have several projects made with their Plas-Crete.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="250" caption="salt building, http://www.conigliaro.com"][/caption]Aside from plastic, other waste products can be used as fillers.  GigaCrete™, the brainchild of British architect Andrew Dennis, uses waste paper, recycled cardboard, recycled polystyrene, agricultural waste fibers, and paper sludge as fillers.  About 80% (by volume) of GigaCrete™ products can be composed of these waste materials.

Bitublock, from Dr. John Forth of the University of Leeds, is not yet market ready but it has potential. It's also made from waste products like recycled glass, metal slag, sewage sludge and incinerator ash.  These are mixed with bitumen, a sticky binder used in road paving. The end result, is a "high-performance product that is about six times stronger than the traditional concrete block".

There's a lot of promise in all these efforts.  One thing though, from some of the comments I've read, there are still some people that would rather spend their money on something that's been proven to last-- and proven to be safe.  They may think it's great that we're doing all these for the environment, but there's still some hesitation on using these products.  I hate to end this negatively but I've been trying to search for a high-profile project that uses these materials and I wasn't able to find any.  I don't know, I guess it's all relatively new and it may take some time to catch on.


Sources:
http://www.americanrecycler.com/07used02.html
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/15/bitublock-concrete-will-be-obsolete/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/gigacrete_an_al.php
http://www.conigliaro.com
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/21/plastic-concrete-repurposes-landfill-waste-into-building-bricks/#

container houses

As everyone knows, a huge flood happened here in Manila about a week ago (and there's another storm up north this week). There were several municipalities hit by typhoon Ketsana: Marikina, Rizal, Pasig and Laguna.  I'm not sure how accurate this is but I heard that people living in those places are now moving out and selling their PhP 15 million houses for only PhP 5 million. It's a big discount but I don't know if anyone's buying.  Most people are now going for real estate situated on higher ground.

Here's an idea, how about getting one of those houses made out of shipping containers? If you want to move, you can simply have your house transported to another lot. It's durable-- designed to withstand tough conditions, as well as cheap and environment friendly.

port-a-bach.com

You need to have it insulated though and I'm not sure what will happen if lightning strikes.  Also, you should bolt it down so it doesn't get stolen or displaced when a big flood comes, like what happened here:

shipping container displaced by the flood, stuck on road divider
from PinoyExchange.com - '40 ft. shipping container as a house'
posted by KuyaDanny

For those interested to learn more about this topic, you can visit http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/.  It contains tips, links to companies that build container houses, background info on the industry and even a history of shipping containers.   According to them, "shipping container housing can represent a real solution to social and ecological problems".  I agree.  Who knew that inside that cold hard steel lies a warm cozy crib?

Sources:
http://www.pinoyexchange.com