environment

The disposable mobile

It might seem strange for a company that makes cheap pens and disposable razors looking around for a new cutting edge (sorry for the bad pun, couldn’t help it!) product to decide to start producing mobile telephones. But this is what BIC® has decided to do. The phone comes with 60 free minutes, a charged battery, and prepaid SIM card installed.

According to the press release:

Available in citrus orange and lime green, with innovative packaging, the BIC® phone will appeal to consumers who like easy-to-use and pay as you go products. It also meets specific phoning requirements, serving as a back-up phone if needed (e.g. a second line when advertising the sale of an apartment, a car … which leaves the main phone line free).

The phone focuses on basic use, in other words sending and receiving calls and SMS. It’s cheap (Suggested retail price: €49 including tax includes 60 minutes talk time) but not intended to be disposable (battery loader included). The prepaid number is valid for 12 months but then needs to be extended.

So the company does not intend the phone to be disposable but the way in which they talk about it and “look and feel” of the packaging and phone – feels very disposable. So this is all we need now, a cheap addition to the pile of plastics, electronics, toxics, batteries and packaging which will be added to the current environmental mess.

Posted on by mklang

Aweful truth: The real cost of green

While much of the world suffers from lack of food, malnutrition and occasional starvation the rest of us seem not to have noticed. Via Monbiot I became aware of a terrible little fact:

The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”   (World Bank, 2008. Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks)

Something worth sharing…

Posted on by mklang

The future of street art

A Banksy murial on Portobello road was sold on ebay for £208,100 (approx. $400,000) the price did not include removal costs. The wall belonged to Luti Fagbenle who felt that he could not “really justify owning a piece of art worth as much as it is.”

The Banksy mural on Portobello road

(Photo by Cactusbones) (CC by-nc-sa)

Street art has been growing for a long time and Banksy must be seen as one of the most widely known artists in the genre. But he is not alone. As Art Threat reports the world’s first Urban Art auction at Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers will be held on February 5th.

What does this mean for the future of Street Art? Art Threat has written an interesting comment on street arts ephemeral nature as an important feature and Banksy has added a comment on the his webpage:

“Aren’t street art auctions a bit lame?
I don’t agree with auction houses selling street art – its undemocratic, it glorifies greed and I never see any of the money.”

So the artists don’t get paid and the artwork is ripped, literally sometimes, out of their context – how will this effect the art? Previously the most exploitative use of graffiti has been street art photo books. These products raise exciting questions about copyright and graffiti (blogged about this issue earlier here and here) but selling the works raises other exciting questions.

The person buying the work will most probably remove it to display it elsewhere. This de-contextualizes of the art but it also adds a disincentive to the artist. Now it is not enough to know that your work will be painted over but it may also be removed and sold to enrich someone else. Your work may become a commodity to be regularly bought and sold without the artists control or permission. Should the artists be concerned?

(Story on BBC & Observer)

Posted on by mklang

Is the people's car a good idea?

The Indian Tata corporation have presented their new car the Tata Nano at a car show in New Delhi. The car is being described as as a people’s car due to it’s low price (100,000 rupees or $2,500). It will go on sale later this year. The main market for the car is to provide cheap motor transportation to developing countries. The Nano is a four-door five-seater car with no extras (no air conditioning, electric windows or power steering) and has a 33bhp, 624cc, engine at the rear.

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Simply looking at the specs above make me concerned. I would not like to be among the five people in this car when it gets hit by a truck.

Is producing a cheap people’s car really a good idea? While I am pretty sure that Tata Motors will sell lots of cars I did not mean this question as a risk analysis in a business venture.

Considering the experiences of all highly motorized countries the car has caused plenty of trouble. The implementation of a personalised transport technology means that it will become a natural part of the infrastructure. It will be used and the costs to the environment in the forms of pollution and overcrowding will be felt.

In addition to this the personal car has also changed the way in which we organize ourselves socially. Were we choose to work, live and socialize depends very much upon the transportation possibilities around us.
But is it fair for someone living in a motorized community to preach the environment and social change? Sure these are the downsides to adding to the amount of cars on the roads. But what about the needs of the people to travel in countries where cars are today an un-affordable luxury? Should the motorized societies be allowed to preach to the non-motorized from the driver seats of our SUV’s?

(via BBC online)

Posted on by mklang

The Story of Stuff

Don’t you just love it when you find cool stuff online? When you find something that someone has worked on to create and perfect so that others can enjoy? I do.

The film The Story of Stuff attempts to educate consumers about the costs of all or stuff. Or as the question of the film is poed in the begining of the movie – how can it be that a radio can cost as little as 4.99?

The online blurb explains:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

I am particularly fond of the quote: “You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely”.

So go to the site watch the movie, download the movie (its CC licensed) listen and learn. How can our stuff cost next to nothing…

Posted on by mklang

Tellytubbyland

Most human differences can be overcome, but there is one unbridgeable divide. The world is split between people who play golf and people who don’t. Each faction regards the other as an alien lifeform. One is astonished that any human fails to see that life without golf is not worth living. The other watches grown men in two-tone shoes dragging a bag of sticks round Tellytubbyland, and shakes its collective head with incredulity.

One of the best writers in the fields of injustice is George Monbiot. He dares to ask the questions most of us prefer to avoid. He then takes the answers to their logical conclusion. These traits have earned him praise and criticism. For my part he is one of the most important journalist/writers of our time. In a recent column he picks an easy target environmentalism and golf and explains simply and logically the negative effects of the sport.

One study suggests that an 18-hole course requires, on average, 22 tonnes of chemical treatments (mostly pesticides) every year: seven times the rate per hectare for industrial farming(22). Another shows higher rates of some cancers, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (which has been associated with certain pesticides(23)), among golf course superintendents(24). Courses consume staggering amounts of water(25). Many of them are built on diverse and important habitats, such as rainforests or wetlands. In some countries people have been violently evicted to make way for them.The problem is particularly acute in South East and East Asia, where golf is big business, and land rights and the environment are often ignored by governments. There are hundreds of accounts of battles between peasant farmers or indigenous people and golf course developers. In one case in the Philippines in 2000, two farmers resisting a course planned for their lands were mutilated and dismembered then shot dead(26).

Read the whole article Playing it Rough (originally published in the Guardian 16th October 2007) at Monbiot.com

Posted on by mklang

On my desk & wall

Following a recent low-key trend here comes a totally frivolous posting about what is on my desk and the wall in front of me. On my desk at work I have the usual telephone, screen, mouse & keyboard. Penholder, Far Side calender, bottle of water, coffee mug with skull & crossbones, camera lens cover, envelope with posters, cd collection, my rings, train ticket, mobile phone & hands-free… Actually this is my desk in a rather tidy condition.

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On the wall in front of me is a bookcase with the stuff that doesn’t need to be instantly available such as a nostalgia Mac Classic and Mac Newton, a globe which lights up and my poster of Tintin et les Picaros.

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There is also a collection of PhD’s presented at our department some other strange books “The Memoirs of Field Marshal Kesselring” and a history of Karate, a small pile of useless papers and an empty lunchbox…

So, whats on your desk and wall?

Posted on by mklang

On Happy Danes, Morose Finns and Liberal Swedes

Since attempting to explain the differences in personality between Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Finns to my Greek flat mate in Lund last night I have not been able to drop the concept of geography and personality.

Naturally this is an old and distinguished discussion including such greats as Montesquieu and Hegel – so I will not go into an argument with these guys!

Montesquieu posited (in Esprit des Lois) that since the laws are a based upon the ways in which people live their lives and the way in which people live their lives “has as much to do with geography as with climate”. Therefore both law and personality are part of a complex function of nature, geography & climate. Of course Montesquieu believed that geography and climate are constant (no global warming back then!) and therefore do not play a part in social change. Hegel also followed the same ideas

The unchangeableness of climate, of the whole character of the country in which a nation has its permanent abode, contributes to the unchangeablness of the national character. A desert, proximity to the sea or remoteness from it, all these circumstances can have an influence on the national character (Hegel – Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III; Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind).

But what I wanted to add was this.

Not only are people different in different locations but also I behave differently in different locations. But is this just a coincidence? Is my behavior in Lund and Göteborg conditioned somehow by climate? Or is my personality changed by distance from my well-known surroundings? And how important is the fact that I am (literally) surrounded by good espresso houses in Lund affect my behavior? If I could transfer Lund physically to Göteborg (or vice versa) would behaviors (my own and others) change?

If the answer is yes then would that mean if we could physically transfer the northern Finnish town (of slightly depressive people) Sodankylä (67°22′ N, 26°38′ E) to coastal region Denmark (57°22′ N, 9°42′ E – the present location of the happy people of Løkken) that the people would all become extroverted and jovial?

Am I on to something or have I just had too much strong coffee on a Wednesday morning?

Posted on by mklang

Unhappy lists

The National Geographic website contains plenty of wonderful reports and pictures. This makes the website well worth visiting regularly. The website also now contains two new unhappy lists. One is the ten most polluted places in the world: La Oroya (Peru), Noril’sk (Russia), Linfen (China), Sukinda (India), Chernobyl (Ukraine), Kabwe (Zambia), Dzerzhinsk (Russia), Vapi (India) and Sumgayit (Azerbaijan)

The abandoned lead mines in Kabwe

It is all too easy to see that pollution has occurred somewhere else (preferably far away) and to forget that pollution has occurs as part of larger global system where even those of us in unpolluted countries are responsible and will be affected by the consequences.

The second list is the announcement of the most endangered species of 2007. These are the Western Lowland Gorilla, Chinese river dolphin, Egyptian vulture, Santa Catalina Island rattlesnake, Banggai cardinal fish, Gharial and Coral. This list is the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. There website is another which is well worth visiting both for their images and the sobering information.

Banggai cardinal fish

Posted on by mklang

Oil of the World

This map shows the world with each country’s size in proportion to their share of the worlds oil reserves.

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Click for larger image

Unsurprisingly the worlds largest consumers (North America, Europe and China) have very little oil of their own. Looking at the map of the world in this way is interesting since it shows a power relationship other than the one we expect (i.e. we are dependent).

The map can also be seen as containing geopolitical implications – since the “west” is dependent upon oil then the countries with large oil reserves are necessary to maintain our lifestyles. Whether the oil supply is protected through friendly or unfriendly means is just a question of politics.

(via The Sietch Blog)

Posted on by mklang