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Monthly archives: September 2009

Swedish invention cleans water with help of the sun

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Solvatten demonstration in Nepal.

In many places of the world clean water is a scarce resource, which makes life hard for around one billion of people and causes a lot of diseases.
Now a Swedish idea can help people who lack access to clean water to purify the water themselves. The Solvatten (“Sunwater” in English) system works as a 10 liter container, which uses UV light and heat from the sun to kill microorganisms. Here is an animation that describes how it works.

Helps stopping deforestation

Where people do not have access to electricity water is often purified through boiling on a fire, which contributes to deforestation. Using the light and heat from the sun could save a lot of firewood.
Right now Solvatten is being tested in Nepal with money from the United Nations.
In an article the inventor, Petra Lundström, says that her invention has received interest from Unicef as well as from the government of Sri Lanka.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 10, 2009

Seasonal gold lights up the forest

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Chanterelles
Photo: Anne Skoogh.

Every year I have the same experience: All of a sudden the air has become high and crisp and there is something about the light that tells me that summer is gone. I never feel entirely ready for autumn to come, but one has to try to remember the nice things about it too.

Dinner from the forest

One good thing about autumn is for example the great variety of nice seasonal food which is available even here in the northern part of the globe. 
Last weekend I was out on one of the islands of the archipelago outside Stockholm. Taking a walk in the forest, I and my friend suddenly realized that we had lost ourselves totally. Then we discovered the mushrooms; large patches of golden yellow chanterelles dotting the dark green moss. In the end I had to take off my coat and use it as a bag, and when we finally got back to the hostel where we stayed, the heap in my coat was about the size of a football. Dinner that night was delicious.

Reducing emissions

Cooking in a way that follows the seasons is a much less environmental demanding way of eating than having everything all the time. For example, eating locally grown iceberg lettuce while we can grow it outdoors causes up to 16 times less CO2-emissions compared to in wintertime, when it has to be grown in a heated greenhouse far away and then being transported here.
But causing fewer emissions isn’t the only advantage of eating seasonal food, I would say. For people like me, with bad fantasy when it comes to cooking, it’s also a good inspiration to start with the ingredients of the month. With the awareness of climate issues increasing steadily, there are more and more cookbooks with recipes that follow the seasons.

The other day I found a great slideshow on the international green blog Treehugger, showing one Swedish dish for every month of the year. So I suppose it’s time to make pumpkin soup now.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 7, 2009

Criticized road project approved

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Artists Samuel Jarrick and Shiva Anoushirvani measuring out the “Civilization line 2050″ outside the government chancellery  in Stockholm.

Last week I wrote about how decisions of how to use revenues from congestion charges have been debated here in Sweden. Should the money go to investments that will reduce car traffic or to new road projects?
Yesterday one of the projects which has been most criticized in Stockholm – a traffic bypass that will cost around 27 billion kronor ($3.75 billion) to construct – got the government’s approval.

The road will touch some very beatiful and delicate nature areas including world heritage Drottningholm, and the decision has caused an intense discussion, dividing the population into those who think that new roads is the only way to solve today’s traffic congestions and those who claim that investing in new roads will only sustain more car traffic.

Yesterday after a press conference at the government chancellery Rosenbad, journalists were met by protesters outside the building. Two of them, Shiva Anoushirvani and Samuel Jarrick, were making an art performance called ”Civilization line 2050?”, where they symbolically measured out a future sea level.
”According to the Nasa scientist James Hansen sea level rises will be much bigger than what the UN panel on climate change, IPCCC has predicted. But there is also a more philosophical message in this, which has to do with how long you can call yourself a cilivized society if your way of living is making it impossible for people in other parts of the world to prosper”, Samuel Jarrick told me.

Radio Sweden did a feature in English about the ”Förbifart Stockholm”.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and other institutions have been criticizing the traffic bypass for increasing CO2 emissions in the Stockholm region by 80 percent by 2030. Sweden’s environment minister Andreas Carlgren argues that this road will be built for a future generation of vehicles, that won’t emit as much as those we have today.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 4, 2009

Visibility makes us waste less food

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Photo: Casey Lehman.

Every year Swedish school dining halls which are serving the pupils their lunch throw away food worth more than 27 million dollars, according to a new study made by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Not only is this a waste of money, but these up to 30 000 tons of vegetables, meat and fish (“natural” waste such as potato peel or fish bones was not included) also require a lot of resources and cause great emissions when they are produced.
The study shows that the losses could be cut down to around 50 percent. This would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions with up to 30 000 tons of CO2-equivalents per year.

Transparent containers 

One of the ways of making the pupils throw away less food is to make the amount of food that is actually left in the garbage more visible. Carola Magnusson, who is running a private operator supplying schools with ecological food, says that one of the schools started out with a hole in a steel bench, where a black trash bag was attached. The food that was thrown in there just sort of “disappeared”. But when they instead started using transparent containers, the pupils could see how the garbage was accumulating, she says. The food is also made from scratch, and leftovers are used to make new food, tomato soup being put in the pasta sauce, dry bread becoming crumbs for meatballs. In this way food waste has halved. But lastly, say the experts, there is a really good secret of reducing waste: To make tasty food.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 3, 2009