Sept 21Beth Rattner, who's working with McDonough & Braungart on a follow-up to "Cradle to Cradle" Responses to Cradle to Cradle: - What do I do next? Make it local. - The biological metaphor. does it hold up? - surprising that it's made from plastic - infinite growth - vagueness - what if the book was only available from the library? if it were online, people would probably print it anyway and printers are horrible for many reasons. - not shaming. - what's the point at which we break this cycle? how do you interupt existing systems? - getting the point for real eco-effectiveness takes a long time and for a long time it won't appear to be different from regular effectiveness - reframing values beyond money and efficiency to include more human and holistic - instead of fighting system, working with it. recognizing how industry and technology can be positive part of the whole. - what are the incentives? how do you motivate people? - as individuals, how much can we really change? in our jobs, we don't have the power. we need good pitches. sell the tool itself first, not the price of it. get them to fall in love with the look and feel or the quality. - green and sustainability are passe terms. it's about quality. - class issue. there are those who can't afford these better products. how can we also communicate that it's worth it. Beth's take on it is that it's about a personal relationship to something - like some of us feel about macs, or mud coffee. talk about what's good for you - how grass-fed beed tastes SO much better than that factory stuff. - Abe's thesis from last year. thresholds at which the value supercedes concern about personal cost. How do we get people to use better materials here at ITP? -Subsidize it - bring it here - convenience factor. work with materials class? on tom's site, list only better sustainable materials. teach sustainable design instead of industrial design class. experiential - get people using them and liking them better. group purchase. - Materials Connexion. www.materialsconnexion.org? - ITP has a membership. you can use the database to search for products and then schedule a trip to meet with someone there to look at products. - Budget projects - better planning beforehand. Making us more aware of what we're using and how much of it - like the way that tracking every cent you spend for a couple days keeps you thinking more about what the value is of things you buy - junk pile. too much of a junk pile. if you want something from it, what about having to add something of equal value. - Deposit system - internal craigslist instead of junk pile? public swap that stays, instead of just posting on the listserv. - or, just a bulletin board with notes (we don't want to login to one more thing!) - incentive design things so you can take it apart and reuse or sell. - sell materials, including books, back to new students. what system can be established? - what is the incentive to get people to sort their junk? have a party - a swap meet. social hour. - clearly labeled bins - we need to determine categories. wire, wood, plastic, electronic parts, fasteners and glues, containers, hardware, etc... - expectation and social pressure works. like in japan and switzerland. - on the side of the rolling shelves - we should put up bulletin boards now- one for needs and one for wants - one of the design classes or something have an assignment to make a project only with things from the junk shelf. - do you impede people - get it in their way or make it a more positive experience - social hour on fridays good time to do things - how to capitalize on that? - junk yard raid challenges. - make functional/art things out of things normally in the trash. Coffee cup idea. Andrew is heading it up. - Coffee cup day. everyone saves them and something is made on the floor - like a sculpture - to show people how much waste we have. a visualization of how much we use. can do it with different materials. - goal of that to get people to use coffee from the coffee maker? or get people to bring in a coffee mug and take that out. coffee mugs could replace the photo wall. - Goal: see a visualization of the volume of the waste we produce. maybe another bin for the liquid. - But what's the point - lots of people have the awareness and don't change behavior. - we need to present alternatives. make your own cup. - Make something from the cups. recycle paper cups in a Paper Making drive by. Alice. Blender, cook, screens, etc. - now PComp has a week about project boxes. could time this with that. - could go to particular class - like Tucker's. - "What I do with it when I'm done with it?" question - Simple project challenges - light the floor with coffee cups - Follow up the visualization with the alternative idea. - coffee cups need to be cleaned - that uses water. better cleaning idea? - 1st phase - collection, visualization, reuse - 2nd phase of this is real mugs as an alternative? - could we use this project as a start point to think about the whole water-energy system here. for example, coffee grounds great for plants. - coffee machine on the floor. issues involved: how much does it cost? how much will the coffee cost? how much will it use in terms of resources? Elevator - shame people? - bell ringing a deterent? - nyu card swipe. - game to see how fast you can get up the stairs or often you use the stairs - what's the incentive? faster going down? - see the elevator first - as simple as putting up a sign - reminding people? sometimes that's enough - do a study of time - faster to take stairs or elevator? swipe at top and bottom. would people remember to swipe? what about just tracking the number of people and tracking that with a visualization - try to reach a goal like those money-raising thermometer. worth playing with design - great light and sound on a swipe would be an incentive. - how much energy are we really changing if just itp is using elevator less? - Information on the stairwell as you go up - how many calories you're burning - snack or coffee machine in the stairwell would be a motivator Recycling - more recycle bins needed Energy - projector, lights on even when classes aren't using them. some way to so - lights. CFLights have a bad quality of light, but okay with a shade. LED lights same issue. gets back to quality issue. - Motion detectors would be easy to request from the school because they're already putting those in. - Solar panel order? Who wants to go in on one to experiment with? Using DC to DC converter extends reliability of the circuit. solar panels in parallel increases current, in series increases voltage. so usually solar panels in grid of groups in series put into parallel. want to get total current for circuit, so need to draw twice from battery. Converting to AC for floor would need inverter circuit. - it would be good to start on these issues in PComp. solar panels would encourage you to leave the floor. solar panels would be more intuitive than batteries. but it's hard to fit everything into Intro. - a knowledgebase online is important. reassemble older blogs... - we should all start powering our projects with solar panels and rechargable batteries. Off the Grid - Need to start with logging data about how much energy is being used. Do an audit of energy used. Using a amp meter, Kill-a-Watt devices. Jeff and Rebecca. Solar One's parent company does energy audits - get them to come in? - Start by offsetting? Asking NYU to purchase the amount of windpower equivalent to what the floor uses? - Is solar viable? Ask Jeff Fedderson. - Change habits so we reduce energy, so we're not wasting alternative energy too. |