Up up and away

By Julian Broadhead

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, is unfortunately a phrase I often hear quoted about friends’ inexplicable and suspect love choices. But like all good sayings, it’s relevant because it’s true. So much is dependent on our perceptions and opinions, as individuals and a society. Luckily for us, our perceptions are not fixed but instead exist in a constant state of flux, evolving and adapting to the ever changing world around us. The result is that the unimaginable can soon become second nature.

Our attitudes to waste in modern society provide a relevant example because, in recent times, we have gone from giving little or no consideration to how we consume and dispose of goods, to a greater questioning of this behaviour and renewed emphasis on the opportunity for recycling and reuse. The latest embodiment of this is the growth of upcycling; where recycling means re-creating  the original raw material (such as paper, glass or metal), upcycling involves taking ‘waste’ and using it to create a product or material of greater quality and value. 

Driving this reassessment has been the opportunity for creativity. Where recycling is generally a specialised, industrial process, anyone can upcycle. Influential blogs such as Inhabitat are full of great ideas that you almost think you could do yourself and in fact, sites like the fantastic Instructables will show you exactly how. Nor is that all, the latest potential source of inspiration is WeUpcycle.com. Started by two students from Vienna, the original aim of the site was to profile 30 ideas in 30 days but it is proving so popular that they are now extending the life of the project by a day for every concept submitted. 

Anything can be upcycled, it just depends on your perception; I for one have been taking vast amounts of retired luxury hotel bed linen and turning it in to beautiful bags. So next time you find something you like but aren’t sure what to do with it, just try looking at what it could be rather than what it’s not.

Give it away

By Shane Solanki

Collectively, we’re starting to question what we value. We’ve started to realise en masse that it’s not just money that makes the world go round. From gift manifestos to transition initiatives, we’re all putting into place systems which encourage us to be nicer to each other, and the world around us. 

Transition initiatives are community-led responses to the challenges of peak oil, climate change and economic stagnation. They’re based on the assumption that we all experience a life disconnected from the land, the environment and our communities; that we’re running out of things like oil and coal; that we can use our creativity, ingenuity and adaptability to solve or current crisis; that it’s up to us to act now, not the government or “someone else”; and that “if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.” Totnes in Devon, and Brixton in South London, are two examples of transition towns. Both have their own currency, redeemable in local shops and businesses, helping to reduce “food miles” while also supporting local firms.

Should we be dusting off our socks and sandals? Ask the New Economics Foundation, an independent think tank which increasingly works with partners like the UK government on issues like social policy, democracy and participation, moving towards a fair and equitable banking system, and addressing the very real prospects of climate change, rising sea levels, over-population and over-consumption.

All very well, you might ask, but what can I do about this? Grass roots movements start, effectively, in your pocket, and how you choose to spend every penny. You could be like Burning Man festival goers, forgo money, and barter or gift your way through life. You could be like No Impact Man, and decide to completely eliminate your personal impact on the environment for the next year. Perhaps you don’t need to be so intense; you could buy slightly less meat, purchase fair trade products, try and make a trip to a farmers market once a week instead of a supermarket. You could swap your car for a bike, or, like these fine fellows pictured at Ambient TV, you could make the most of your local canal network by starting a water taxi service. The fare is a conversation. Not too much of a price to pay, huh?

Something to chew on

By Julian Broadhead

Chewing gum. By its very nature only a small thing but in many ways, our attitude to it is symbolic of some of the challenges we face at a broader, societal level.

Let me explain; chewing gum is a disposable commodity, which we consume for a few short minutes (usually until the flavour runs out) before getting rid of it at our convenience, often with no consideration for the impact on the environment and others. This is particularly obvious in cities, where our laissez faire approach can be observed on pavements and picked off the soles of our shoes. It seems apathy is widespread, despite the fact that it costs councils (funded by our taxes) three times the price of a single piece to clean it off.

As always though, there is a different way of doing things. Not reusable chewing gum just yet but instead, a way of recycling chewing gum.

The idea was developed by product designer Anna Bullus, who spent months in a laboratory finding a way to turn used gum into a usable plastic, called BRGP (Bullus Recycled Gum Polymer). The result to date has been the creation of the Gumdrop Bin Project, which offers distinctive pink bins (made from BRGP, naturally) for your flavourless deposit, with the whole thing then being processed to create more BRGP for more bins, in an ever growing cycle. Even better though, there’s no reason why BRGP cannot be used more widely in a range of roles currently filled by normal, oil based plastics.

Not only does the Gumdrop Bin Project offer the environmental benefits of turning waste into a new material, it is also an opportunity for city dwellers to make a positive, more considerate choice about their own surroundings. That can only be a good thing and although the initiative is still in its infancy, we are hoping to see more of the bright pink bins in the near future.

Pop! There it is

By Dagmar Hoogland 

This post is about an intiative a dear friend from Capetown is involved in. It’s called Greenpop and is so simple and so great!

This is how it works:

You donate a tree (or ten) and Greenpop will plant it in under-greened schools, creches and community centres.

Or, if you like to be more actively involved, you sign up as a volunteer, meet up one free morning, put on your gloves and start digging. Then planting. Then stepping back and voila, another tree is planted on the South African needy grounds.

The chosen sites have local people who will care for the trees, especially in their early years so they can get well established and flourish.

Call it  a TREEVOLUTION; In three months Greenpop has planted almost 2000 trees in under-greened schools around Cape Town, and they are continuing. Urban greening is positively linked to community upliftment and improved pride of place. Through beau-tree-fication and community involvement, South Africa’s grey areas can get greener.

Check out their site here to see how it works and all the different sorts of trees you can choose from. Do you fancy Wild Olive, Wild Peach or what about a Camphor Bush? Besides all the information needed to take part or make your donation there is a list with facts. I especially like fact nr. 15:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is NOW”

‘Nuff Said

Flushed with success

By Anokhee Shah

Clean, accessible and most importantly, sustainable sanitation is a global issue. Sustainable toilet blocks should minimise consumption of local resources and continue to be maintained and used long after the builders have left. The ‘Ikotoilet’ is a toilet block that solves a long standing sanitation problem with an easily replicable model, and also contributes to important research on waste reuse.

David Kuria, an architect and founder of Ecotact, the sustainable sanitation consultancy behind the Ikotoilet, decided to improve sanitation in cities by initiating a toilet revolution. He wanted to transform public toilets from places to be avoided into attractive focal points for communities. The model is a corporate funded building, which is then self maintaining, as a toilet block as well as a place of social, economic and aesthetic value. The architecturally attractive block includes toilets, showers, sanitary bins and hand washing.  The entrance charge is used to employ full time cleaners, friendly staff who use the rainwater harvested from the toilet roof to keep the toilets clean and fresh. The building itself is no longer only a toilet block, it is a vibrant toilet mall housing small local enterprises. There are kiosks selling sodas and local snacks, electronic money transfer, shoe cleaners and even beauty salons. The toilet malls have become social hubs and are places to be proud to ‘do your business’ in either sense of the phrase.

The Ikotoilet is also taking sustainable resource use a step further by collecting liquid waste from one of the blocks. This is being used in Ecotact’s innovative collaboration with a Kenyan agricultural university, on ways to process urine on a larger scale for use as an affordable urea based organic fertiliser.

The Ikotoilets are serving over 30,000 visitors a day with 40 toilet malls across Kenya. The future will see Ikotoilets across East Africa with young sanitation entrepreneurs receiving the support to replicate this model. And with the continued university collaboration, the Iko toilets could one day be producing affordable organic fertiliser for farmers.

Bounty castle

By Chris Speirs (photo Vanessa)

It’s 6pm, and I’m getting ready for my weekly cycle home from London’s Kings Cross. Black cloud and horizontal rain streak across the glassed building opposite, reminding me to once again stow my paddle and goggles. Then I remember… it’s Thursday! I leap from my seat. I have bounty awaiting me at the castle.

The castle is a magnificent Victorian water pumping station in Hackney, now home to a climbing centre, and the bounty is our weekly organic veg box that Growing Communities, earlier that day, have hidden away in the ramparts of the castle.

Growing Communities established the first box scheme in London, with the “aim of creating a more sustainable, re-localised food system - changing what we eat, how we eat and how it’s farmed.” The scheme harnesses the local communities’ collective buying power to source food locally, and support small farmers. And has accomplished something truly special with it’s ‘urban market gardens’. These community-focused gardens are springing up all over Hackney, including the grounds of the castle itself. They offer volunteers training, apprenticeships and employment in organic gardening, and supply the very salad that members collect and feast on throughout the growing season.

This week I arrive at the foot of the castle looking like I have completed a lap of the moat. I peel off my goggles and enter the secret code to the door. As it swings open I snag my bag of veg, cross our order off the list and sneak a quick peak. I find some familiar friends, and some acquaintances I have yet to meet. With the organic bounty safely slung across my pannier rack, I slip back onto Green Lanes and paddle home.

The bag comes complete with news from the scheme, veg identification and recipes.  This week my new edible friends are crown prince pumpkin and jerusalem artichokes. The latter of which, they explain, is a relative of the sunflower. It can be eaten raw, roasted or fried, and tastes deliciously like water chestnuts.

Niqabization of the population

by Shane Solanki

Ever since some dudes in New York started stealing power from street lights to power up home made sound systems to provide the sounds for block party street jams in the late seventies, graffiti has grown from being one of the essential five elements of hip hop to a global phenomenon registering the voice of the people. The simple political protest of scrawling your name on a wall, of marking your territory (amidst a plethora of signifiers which encourage consumption and submission to corporate interests), is one which governments have struggled to contain or understand; take Banksy’s work, once demonized and now deified worldwide. Princess Hijab is the pseudonym given to an anonymous artist who cheekily paints veils onto models on billboards in Paris, capital of the first country in the world to ban the niqab from public spaces. Other artists choose to travel the world to scrawl upon walls, making political statements which spill outside of galleries and institutions. Two of our current favorites are Seth, whose current sabbatical in India and China is pictured above, and Bluu.  

Street art can also be staged, instead of scripted; flash mobs worldwide create protest through performance. The most well celebrated of the flash mob phenomenon is Improv Everywhere, based in New York, but you’ll find examples planet wide; take My Mother’s Funeral, a performance organized in Bombay which manipulated the tendency of the Indian populace to stand, stop and stare at any kind of public spectacle on the street, to distribute messages about personal responsibility in the light of environmental awareness. In a country where the government are doing relatively nothing to stop the mountains of man made waste created every day, perhaps it’s only through public art, performance and spectacle that education can begin. Power to the people.  

All under one roof

By Julian Broadhead

Feeding the population of a major city is no mean feat, requiring production and logistical organisation on an industrial scale, and thereby extending the influence of urban centres far beyond their physical boundaries. 

Judging by the number of times  it crops up as a theme here on VivaCity though, this is clearly a situation that makes many people uneasy, prompting questions about where our food comes from, how it is produced and our relationship to it. For those concerned with such matters, the immediate solution appears to be bringing food cultivation into the urban environment and taking personal control, ranging from keeping chickens in your back garden to planting orchards in train stations.

The latest and slightly different addition to this list of food activists is particularly exciting. FARM:shop is an initiative founded by the ‘eco-social design practice’, Something and Son.  

Based in a formerly disused shop in Dalston, London, it is a farm, shop, cafe, exhibition and meeting space all rolled into one. More than all this though, FARM:shop is an experiment in urban food production, with the expressed aim of combining the best of traditional and modern techniques to grow as much food as possible in this limited space.  In practice, this means chickens on the roof and poly-tunnels for vegetables in the garden, whilst indoors there is hydroponic growing, aquaponic fish farming and mushroom cultivation.

So, could FARM:shop represent the shape of things to come? Its founders certainly think so, as this project is merely the beginning of a larger FARM:London initiative, designed to encourage the production of food (and other materials)  in the greater London area, both recreationally and commercially. For us at VivaCity, it is this ambition that makes FARM:shop so exciting and inspiring, and no doubt we will not be alone in following its progress in the coming months with some interest.

Necessity, the mother of invention

By Andy Marks

Slums, shanty towns, favelas, it is estimated that 1 billion of us now reside in these products of extreme urbanisation.

Lagos, a mega city of 16million, has three quarters of it’s residents living in slums. The city is growing at such an extraordinary pace, that by 2015, it is predicted to be the world’s third most populous city, behind only Mumbai and Tokyo.

This astonishing city is home to an astonishing place, the Olusosun rubbish dump, which is home to an astonishing community. For in the Olusosun rubbish dump, 1,000 people live, there are three cinemas, restaurants, a barber shop and a mosque.

Here, the local economy is based on the daily delivery of 3,000 tons of rubbish which is expertly filtered by hand. Here, rubber, plastics, copper aluminium, brass, zinc and more is found, sorted and sold. Here nothing is wasted and everything is a commodity. This vision of resourcefulness and extreme recycling prompted visionary architect Rem Koolhaas to say “What is now fascinating is how, with some level of self-organisation, there is a strange combination of extreme underdevelopment and development.”

What is most striking though is that beyond the human ingenuity, there is a closeness, interdependence and trust between the rubbish dump dwellers. Crime rates are low, people don’t lock away their valuables (partly as the means to do so probably don’t exist), it is self-policing with honour and dignity evident, and there is hope that people are working for a better future. Laudable, humbling, an impressive entrepreneurial spirit all at the same time.

The Olusosun rubbish dump, was documented recently by the BBC2 series Welcome To Lagos, which follows the lives of two people who live and work on the dump. One of them, Eric aka Vocal Slender, was saving money to realise his dream for studio sessions and photographs, to become a recording artist.

Is the Olusosun rubbish dump a vision of the future, when 75% of us will live in cities (by 2050), up from just over 50% today? A future where resourcefulness and ingenuity are the currency, everything must be recycled, and economies are locally based? If so human ingenuity will prevail as it has done before. 

The picture accompanying this post is by the French photo artist JR, from the Women are Heroes series, and features the slum of Kibera in Nairobi.