The Duck Rice

Takao, a rice farmer in Japan has created an innovative and also very effective way of production based on symbiosis on between varied species of animals and plants in his rice paddies: the ducks feeds on insects and weeds and their droppings enrich the soil, promoting the development of plankton, which feed the fish. Also the aquatic plant called azolla supplies nitrogen for the plant's growth. The environment can provide their own maintenance and protection, without any chemicals. An innovative and also profitable review of production's methods.

Sources:

North K 2010, TCLocal, Visioning County Food Production Part Six: Rural Agriculture, accessed 23 March 2014, < http://tclocal.org/2010/07/>.

Tacio H 2012, How integrated rice-duck farming can help control methane emissions, accessed 23 March 2014, < http://trc.dost.gov.ph/trcfile/Technology-Snapshots/Others/rice_duck%20farming0001.pdf>.

From downcycle to upcycle

Diminish our consumption and reduce our waste is not bad, and actually the 3R's politics - reduce, reuse, recycle -  is worthwhile, but the process keeps on and on, the base of our production and the design process works against success. So, being less bad is no good.

What could be effectively successful would be to change the process from its origin. Why a building just save energy instead of produce it? Why can't factories produce effluents that are drinking water? Why can't our products be designed with components that could be fully separated when recycled so they could be reused as a new one, without loss of its potential? Why can't

our waste help the environment through its nutrients that can be food for plants?

The upcycle principle goes beyond the actual recycling process - in which some valuable materials are combined to other elements, making them useless or less durable, or capable of being recycled for only a few times - it is based on the 'endless' use for valuable raw materials and on the return of nutrients to the soil after waste materials decomposes, instead of polluting it with toxic components, and so, making a cyclic process that preserves the resources, the environment, and us as well.

Source - Braungart, M; McDounough, W 2009, Cradle to Cradle: remaking the way we make things, Vintage Books, London.

Re-thinking

One of the ways to change this "viral" behavior is to change our acts, our production, and specially our design.

This is the main proposal in Michel Braungart and William McDonough's "Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way We Make Things", which talks about our process of designing things, our conception of waste and development and about questioning these concepts through a innovative view.

One of the their main principles is to change the "cradle to grave" concept by rethinking the design process, which is nowadays based on production of non durable goods which, intentionally or not, become waste almost instantaneously. Moreover, they are designed in a way that some of its valuable elements can not be recycled or re-utilized. The "cradle to cradle" principle is based on this conceptual change by designing not for now, but for tomorrow, making a product that could be used and reused, that its components could be easily fully recycled without waste.

One of those groundbreaking readings!

Reflection

Nice Street Art by Pejac. Express by itself what is going on in our whole planet.

<http://www.pejac-blog.blogspot.ru/2011/03/mancha_25.html>

Exemplifying

Virus are simple structures and intracellular parasites, depending on the cells to multiply. Its reproduction can be extremely fast: a single virus can multiply in a few  hours thousands of new viruses. Most virus infections result in the death of the host cell by lysis and once the new virus are in extracellular medium they will infect other cells, restarting the cycle.

<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm>

The graph shows the (no, not virus) human population growth over the centuries. One can think how surprisingly successful we are, have existing for thousands of years and just in the last centuries, especially in the last one,  having achieved the technology and its benefits that allows us to live longer and 'better'.

Right, that graph is for sure an example of a successful living organism. But the mankind's 'viral' reproduction demands more and more resources, and behaving like a virus, destroying the source of our success we will not have any success in a long term vision.

Warning

<http://www.mpgtuning.co.uk/drivers-running-out-of-fuel/>

Suppose you are travelling by car for hours and realize that you are almost out of fuel and still far from your destiny. Would you keep pushing to get there as soon as possible or would you slow down to save fuel in order to get there without problems?

Now suppose you are running a marathon and starts to feel exhausted. Would you run faster to finish it soon or would you slow down to finish it safely?

So, if I say to you that our planet is getting pushed to its limits, and our demand for its resources is being continuously increased what would you say, is it time for keep on pushing or is it time to slow down?