Posts

Sanitation is badly off track

Does the community led total sanitation scheme work? http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/30/mdg-sanitation-offtrack-but-community-led-approach-is-working

Greywater system

I found this video yesterday on greywater. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DfNlxlk-A&feature=feedf  There is lots of support for this out there.  I was most excited to find detail of what they do with their indoor washing machines. L2L3way-labels.preview.jpg This is all from greywateraction.org .

WATER: Charles Fishman ('The Big Thirst') on NPR's 'Fresh Air' today.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135241362/the-worldwide-thirst-for-clean-drinking-water Reposting from Michael E. Campana's  tweet , author of   WaterWired .

TOO MUCH water-related psuedoscience

Finally, a website summarizing all of that water-related psuedoscience! http://www.chem1.com/CQ/gallery.html Here in Loma Linda, there is someone who actively promotes a "Japanese Water Technology" which has the therap eutic ability to treat "arthritis, diabetes, low energy, premature aging, high cholesterol and even cancer." This is most likely a member of the alkaline water craze category of water-bunk pseudoscience quackery that  Professor  Stephen Lower  of  Simon Fraser University  eloquently describes in his website .  

World Toilet Day!

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Nov 19th, 2011 is   World Toilet Day ! A lack of proper sanitation affects 2.6 billion people, almost half the worlds population. A lack of proper sanitation hurts women and girls more than men and boys.

The evils of Voluntourism

See this recent article in the Guardian about Voluntourism :  "Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do" The PEPY group in Cambodia turned me on to this. The article references a report by the Human Science Research Council Report I n recent decades, the tourism industry has thrived, grown and diversified to encompass a wide array of travel activities, with alternative volunteer tourism leading the way. Well-to-do tourists enrol for several weeks at a time to build schools, clean and restore river banks, ring birds and other useful activities in mostly poor but exotic settings. AIDS orphan tourism has become a niche market, contributing to the growth of the tourism industry. AIDS orphans ‘have economic valence' and ‘orphanhood is a globally circulated commodity', as some researchers have phrased it. I am a supporter of "fun tourism". An old concept that our productive society seems to have forgotten. Eco-tourism, "

Online Home Water-Energy-Climate Calculator

Are you wondering how much water your household uses? The Pacific Institute  offers a great free tool to estimate your homes energy use. I went through the survey and the website gave output many pages of statistics, figures and tables. It appears that the pacific institute's ultimate goal is to help us realize the embedded energy that we move through when we use water. Embedded energy is the total energy used by a utility to collect, treat, and distribute water to the customer and to treat wastewater. The calculations have many assumptions built in. I was battling it's assumptions for leaks, but then I read the fine print.  The website operates on the assumption from an AWWARF study finding that states nearly all houses have leaks. The study, Residential end uses of water is linked here .   http://www.wecalc.org/