Archive for the ‘home and living’ Category
August 11th, 2007 | 
Author: the U.K. based programme WRAP (Waste and Rescources Action Programme) published a report in the spring of 2007 with the findings that prefabricated buildings could cut construction waste by a staggering 90%! by increasing the use of off site manufacture and modern methods of construction. this is adding to the cost and time predictability as well as health and safety benefits construction companies already count on with prefabrication.
The biggest parts of the waste flows from a construction site are plasterboard <36%, timber <25% and packaging <%5 (wood pallets, shrink wrap, cardboard) as well as concrete, bricks and cement.
Since march this year (2007) there has been an Industry agreement in place in the U.K to increaase the recycling of Gypsum from plasterboards.
The targets of the agreement being: (form the WRAP website)
- to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill from manufacturing operations in Great Britain to 10,000 tonnes/year by 2010; and
- to increase the take back and recycling of plasterboard waste, for use in plasterboard manufacture, to 50% of new construction waste arisings by 2010.
In addition, all parties have agreed to work with other parts of the supply chain to develop processes to reduce the amount of wastage generated in new construction and to make further progress towards achieving the ultimate objective of zero plasterboard waste to landfill.
In 2006 about 2.5 million tonnes of plasterboard was used in the U.K of this about 300.000 tonnes ended up as waste. which accounts for about 12%! reducing this to 10.000 tonnes would take it down to 0,4% or save up to 290.000 tonnes of material! reducing the amount of waste by a factor of 30 for plasterboard.
Posted in micro compact home or m-ch is a prefab with potential, measuring 266cm*266cm*266cm its very compact, no big area foot-print, it costs a mere 25k-34k euros (depending on contract) 
and is currently shipped to all parts of europe (at an extra cost of course). there is also there is a low e-home version (low energy home) which includes a vertical windmill and PV-solar panels. the picture is a capture from the web page it links to. aka. not mine. check it out at: http://www.microcompacthome.com/index.php.
Friday evening in Ekenäs (Tammisaari in Finnish) archipelago while waiting for the sauna to warm up.
I spent the weekend in my familys cottage enjoying the surroundings and the stillness of nature.
The water level this weekend is the highest I’ve ever experienced out here, it’s been very high on all occations I’ve visited the archipelago this year. This however does not yet reflect from ice sheets melting on Greenland or anywhere else. It does however show us the difference in landscape we will have to become used to in the near future as the climate is warming.
The high waterlevels (according to The Baltic Sea Portal) have during July been up to 30 cm (1ft) above normal in the Bay of Finland (Hanko and Helsinki are the closest). For a short explanation about what affects sea levels, have a look at the Finnish Institute of Marine Research‘s pages.
More pictures on Flickr among them the tallship Europa we met in the archipelago.
Yesterday I bought a Bialetti Venus (6 cups) espresso maker in stainless steel, 
I have been using one of their aluminum ones (3 cups) I bought for work at home, I can’t live without atleast one proper cup of fair-trade organic espresso per day, but I felt it was time to get a proper one for the household finally.
I have been searching for a cooker that, once bought, would serve me for a long time (rest of my life if possible) and one in stainless steel I think could. Even though I haven’t cooked more than two pans I’m quite happy with the purchase and I’m sure the taste will improve even more in half a dozen pans or so. No electric cookers for me PLZ!