Week 9: Repair Cafe

In this throwaway society of ours, there is now a movement afoot in which people are fighting back against short-lived consumer goods. In fact, there are many different groups, all over the world, organizing events where people can bring in broken items to have volunteers take a stab at repairing them. Last Saturday there was one such event in Windisch. 

A full list of the upcoming Repair Cafes all over Switzerland can be found here: https://www.konsumentenschutz.ch/repaircafe/schweizer-repair-cafes/ 

 The concept was formalized in the Netherlands in 2010. You can read about it on Wikipedia, among other places. Have you ever visited a Repair Cafe?

Week 7: Solarstrom

Strom = electricity.

There's not much sunshine to be had at the moment, but let's consider the possibilities anyway.

This is a shed at PSI where people can plug in their electric bikes to charge them up while they work. What you can't see in this photo is that the roof is made of solar cells AKA photovoltaic panels.

Cows in the corner

I don't know if you can even see the animals in the upper left corner. Perhaps you can make out some flecks of brown and white. For shots like these I do miss my old power-zoom point-and-shoot.

There are these bits of land around Villigen that are used to pasture animals during the summer months. I should try to find out more about how the system works.

Today's side topic is lab-grown meat. I quote from The Independent newspaper (link) in the UK, to describe how it came about:

... the culmination of years of work by Mark Post, a medical physiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. 

And about the points in favor of the stuff:

One assessment, published in 2011 by scientists from Oxford University, estimated that cultured meat uses far less energy than most other forms, apart from chicken, and some 45 per cent less energy than beef, the most environmentally destructive meat.

They also found that synthetic meat needs 99 per cent less land than livestock, between 82 and 96 per cent less water, and produces between 78 and 95 per cent less greenhouse gas. In terms of relative environmental damage, there was no contest. 

I think the greatest challenge will be to get people to eat it. But for the sake of the world, I hope something will change in the meat business.

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Purgatory of a sort

One of my readers yesterday asked about a temporary (aren't they all?) storage site for the detritus from certain types of power plants. There it is, in the shadow at the bottom of this photo.

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Parts in the production of cement

I can't give details on what all the bits here are, but I'd like to mention the fuel that runs this plant. Half of the energy needs of the furnace is met by coal and the other half is made up of a whole mishmash of stuff such as old tires, used solvents, plastics, dried sewage sludge from water treatment plants (remember the ARA post - link - from some time ago?) and, um, animal meal. According to Holcim, the plant uses state of the art technology to scrub the flue gases. One of the components of the filtering system is activated charcoal, which is then itself used as fuel.

20080920

Muldenkipperfahrten!

At the quarry from yesterday's post. I suspect this was the main attraction for most of the children: a ride to the pit area on the dump truck. There were a lot of people in the queue and only one truck could be accomodated so the trips were necessarily short. Even so, we had to wait through four loadings before we got our chance on the Muldenkipper. Sadly, I wasn't able to fight my way to a 'window' seat so my view and photographic opportunities were severly restricted.

Holcim has permission to exploit this quarry until 2045. As they complete the extraction from one region of the quarry and move to another area, they reforest the former. There are also a couple of biotopes (rudimentary Wiki entry here) that they've created, to support the amphibians in the area.

20080920

Another recyclables drop off point

We're about done with the various options available to us in Villigen for disposal of common unwanted material. PET (Wikipedia article) bottles and sundries can be dropped off at most grocery shops (including the small Volg we have right in the village, old post here.) Pictured above is the Coop (pronounced cope) supermarket in Würenlingen, just across the river Aare from us.

20080825

Recyclables drop off location

The Gemeindehaus (parish or town hall) I mentioned yesterday is also the local drop off point for a few other types of unwanted products.

The red container is for steel cans (the wheel is a crank to run a press that flattens the cylinders.) Aluminum - cans, foil, lids from yogurt and other containers - goes into the yellow. The green is for oil, both motor and cooking. The grey, I'll have to get back to you on the grey as I couldn't read the sign from outside the fence (it's locked up on Sundays.) Barely visible way in the back is a container for old clothes. These are supposed to be items that still have useful life in them.

Not pictured in this photo are the containers for glass, batteries, flourescent bulbs, Nespresso capsules (old post here), some sorts of building materials and styrofoam peanuts.

20080824

Paper pick-up day

Altpapiersammlung

Four times a year our paper is picked up for recycling. The various social groups in the village take turns to do the pick-up. Today the Freizeit Club (recreational club) performed this service. In this photo they're collecting the paper from the Gemeindehaus (parish hall).

A post from last year:
Altpapiersammlung

20080823

Green waste pick-up day

While we're on the topic of garbage and refuse. Fridays are green-waste pick up days. In the summer it's every Friday while in the winter it drops down to every other Friday. If I understand it correctly, there's an electronic chip on the individual containers which is read out when the waste is collected and this information is used to calculate the charge for the transportation.

We (the residents of my building) share this container pictured here and we use it for both garden and kitchen waste. Some people have their own compost piles.

20080822

Onto the next thing

Firewood, maybe. If you're at all curious about the environmental impact of heating with wood, visit the Canada-based woodheat website.

A quote from there:

"Whatever energy source you choose, its use will have an impact on the environment. The best energy sources are renewable and the best of those are solar power and wind power because their environmental impacts tend to be low. As good as they are, though, they do have their problems and limitations. Wood is another renewable energy source with its own problems and limitations, some of which can be managed and minimized, others of which cannot. But when it is used effectively, wood is a fine fuel compared to the fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, whose consumption leads to global warming. "

20080701

ARA Schmittenbach

In the vicinity of yesterday's area. ARA = Abwasser (waste water) Reinigungs (cleaning) Anlage (facility). The waste water from Villigen and a few surrounding villages is treated here before being discharged into the river Aare.

Total number of residents served by this facility: 6040
Volume of waste water handled in 2007: 999000 cubic meters

20080701