“So how should a city’s waste management options be designed? Labels such as those of UCT’s campus receptacles and Hoan Kiem Lake’s bins would communicate the importance of both recycling and reducing one’s waste. The placement of these ideal designed options would consider where disposer traffic was likely to be highest and what waste would be generated based on activities occurring. The ideal design would also be replicated through a…
climate change vignettes
Climate change, changes to long-standing weather patterns in response to changes in the atmosphere (forcings), is happening today, perhaps has always been happening. In our world today, the largest forcing is human produced greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and other byproducts of various human activities. Change can mean different things for different people depending on where one is. It could mean more rainfall, warmer dry spells, frequent intense storms,…
design ingredients for sustainable waste management – i
“Urban areas concentrate not only economic and social production, but also waste production. Waste that is often addressed at the end of a long chain of actors- manufacturers, retailers, consumers, disposers, municipal councils, collectors, recyclers. And thus waste’s final destination and the impacts of the same are made invisible. The problem of what to do with waste is externalised by actors along the chain of waste production, an externalisation aided…
the goldman prize and the just beginning fight against lead poisoning
In late April the 6 regional winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the ‘Green Nobel’, were announced. Phyllis Omido, a Kenyan single mother won the $175,000 prize in the Africa region for her 7 year effort to shut down a used lead acid battery (ULAB) recycling factory in the informal settlement of Owino-Uhuru in Mombasa, the largest coastal city in Kenya. Soon after the prize was announced,…
on resilience
In another reflection piece from Cape Town, I wrote about resilience in cities- the inspiration was a day when electricity was out in Langa, a black township where we lived for a few weeks. But now that load shedding– scheduled periods when electricity is out in different parts of the country- is a common thing in South Africa, this piece rings even more true. You never miss the water till…
a bogota kiss
I took this picture on my second-last day in Bogotá. I love that the lovers are portrayed as old. The piece is called El Beso de los Invisibles- the Kiss of the Invisibles. It’s based on a photo by a journalist of 2 homeless lovers, Hernán and Diana, living in Bogotá’s ‘Bronx’. It was painted over 6 days by a team of 5 graffiti artists from Colombia & Peru, including…