Biofase has been working with biodegradable plastics ever since 2012, when Munguia was still a student. And since Mexico is so well known for its culinary dishes featuring the ever-popular guacamole, it only seems natural that he would choose to work with such a locally abundant resource. On top of that, avocado pits usually just end up being thrown away and burned along with other household waste at landfill sites.

Firmly believing that there was more to be done with those pits, Mungía spent 18 months researching and devising an efficient way to extract a biopolymer from each pit. This biopolymer could then be molded into any shape, thus facilitating the creation of the company’s signature eating utensils.

The post This Company Makes Biodegradable Plastics from Discarded Avocado Pits first appeared on Dornob.

Paper

Food with Fashion designs paper straws that are colorful and biodegradable. These straws come in a variety of styles and patterns, from “Rainbow Chevron” to “Multicolor Stripes” and “Green Daisies.” Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and Easter straws go great with table decorations, and there are even straws to complement wedding and baby shower decor. How do Food with Fashion’s straws hold up in drinks? “They are durable, biodegradable, and food-safe,” says the company. “The thick coating allows them to last for hours in water and other liquid beverages!”

Bamboo

Glass

Stainless Steel

The post Hate Plastic Waste? Try These Clever Straw Alternatives first appeared on Dornob.

The post Slurp Up: New ‘Soup Sticks’ Combine Chopsticks & Straw first appeared on Dornob.

It is inefficient and unsustainable to haul human waste back in from remote festivals and other places typically populated with port-a-potties. So why not use on-hand materials to make something simple and green?

Thus L’Uritonnoir by Faltazi which turns an everyday farm item into a urinal by means of simple funnels attached on various sides and connected via a loop running around the perimeter. The composted results can be recycled right back into the local land.

“An uritonnoir is a hybridisation of two everyday products, an urinal and a funnel (literally in french, “urinnoir” et “entonnoir”). This system is used either used in public spaces during festive events (slotted into round bales) or in private gardens (slotted into small straw bundles). L’Uritonnoir is an utensil filling a volume of straw (carbon) with urine (nitrogen) in order to compost it during a 6-12 month period and convert it into humus.”

The flat-pack design makes it easy to transport and deploy then clean or discard, minimizing waste and transit costs and making for easy assembly at events. A stainless-steel alternative is less portable but easier to clean and reuse. Urine is naturally rich in nitrogen, an essential nutrient that boosts plant growth.

“The round bale stays and composts on-the-spot. Six months later the manure can be used by local farmers. The following year, it can be used as a giant planter to be enjoyed by new festival-goers !”

About the designers:

“The Faltazi are designers, of the industrial kind. They have collaborated with the SEB group, and have designed for them steam irons, vacuum cleaners or electric jugs. They designed products for Schneider Electric, Baby Buggy for Bébé confort. They produce prospective projects as Monsieur Faltazi, Ekokook Kitchen or “Les Ekovores” . The Faltazi are often described as being atypical, but what they are involved in doing is to propose a concrete vision of the world and of their profession. Their commitment to ecology and society, their genuine aspiration to help develop a sustainable world, combined to their practical experience of industry makes their approach all the more interesting and unusual.”

The post Compostable Straw Urinal for Outdoor Events first appeared on Dornob.

Green is great in theory, but few projects manage to blend both an environmental mission with an elegant-yet-relevant aesthetic as well as this modest ecological project by Studio 1984.

Set in rural Alsace, France, the architecture of this tiny house made with straw bale references local traditions and vernaculars with its visible wood framing, simple metal roof and straw-based exterior, but balances these with a minimalism of detail and modern-scale fenestration built to purpose.

The result is recognizably contemporary while also being respectful of context and history. Images of the area show what drove the inspiration, but the creative ways original tropes are transformed in the new structure as well.

From the firm:

“ In search of the architecture of the lesser impact, the “nest” is largely inspired by agricultural vernacular constructions. Its familiar shape and texture pay homage to traditional barns and are an attempt at restoring their discreet charm.”

“This pastoral imagination dictates the choice of local materials widely available such as straw and wood, the environmental impact of which are virtually nil. The reference to rural heritage far from generating an archaic habitat is the support for technical innovations in terms of comfort, ambiance, and energetic efficiency.”

“A strong ecological requirement in materials used for construction as well as in the long-term use of the building were our main concerns for this original event. As such the use of local, healthy, recyclable, and efficient materials were required.”

“Enhancement of local economic fabric also contributes in making this experience a model of sustainable, responsible and ecological development. Through this project, we have tried to bring our contribution to reflections based on architectural quality. In a project approach that we want the most comprehensive possible, we have experienced a locally relevant and suitable for development response.”

The post Eco-Friendly Pavilion with Regional Style first appeared on Dornob.

Cave dwellings surrounded by stable rock can survive for thousands of years, but dwellings on the water all sink sooner or later. Yet in rural South America, one group has lived on moving  islands made of living reeds continuously for hundreds of years.

Everything floats with them on their giant lake – homes, boats, furniture and more. The Uros islanders fish and craft, anchor as necessary but move across the surface as well. As the eight-foot-thick beds of reeds these people and objects rest upon slowly sink below, more is added above to make up the difference. Each step yields 2 to 4 inches of give underfoot.

A watchtower on a large central island recalls the original purpose to their flight from land – enemies encroaching on all sides, forcing them to build upon the water.

The reed type used (totora) has evolved to have multiple purposes – part of the root is consumed as foot or utilized in tea, while other parts help hangovers or are wrapped around hands, head or neck to help keep cool. Today, some homes are slowly modernizing with motorized vehicles, solar-power panels and yes, even a local radio station that rides with the residents upon a bundle of reeds.

From BBC:

“The islanders traditionally lived from fishing, hunting birds and trading with the Aymara people on the mainland. Over the years, the two peoples intermarried, with the Uros eventually abandoning their own language for Aymara. Now they also make money from the tourists who visit them.”

“One of the non-native islanders who knows the Uros better than anyone else is Mairo Moya, a 29-year-old Peruvian tourist guide. He came to Puno to study anthropology and spent three months living on the islands.”

“‘What it teaches you is that man can adapt to almost any environment. These people have been here for hundreds of years and they are proud of what they have achieved, literally creating their own land,’ he explains, sitting with his legs crossed on one of the islands.”

The post The World’s Longest-Floating Mobile Homes first appeared on Dornob.

So-called ‘truth windows’ are part of a weird and wonderful tradition of cutting false windows, ironically enough, into the inside walls of homes. From simple to ornate, these framed openings act like built-in wall decor. But instead of becoming simply additive art, they show off the normally-hidden structure that helps hold your home up, insulate it and let it breathe — the inner anatomy of architecture, as it were.

Truth windows are especially intriguing when they’re used to reveal the natural building materials disguised behind more conventional-looking surfaces, like straw bale or complex timber frames. While most of these inner workings are covered with plaster and therefore invisible, truth windows leave a small section unfinished so we can see what’s inside. Sometimes they’re glassed over or covered with an operable door, giving the unexpected feature an interactive component. Truth windows are a fun way to highlight the elegant simplicity of green building techniques, but they can be incorporated into all different kinds of architecture, from the historic to the modern.

As pointed out over on BldgBlog, this leads to all sorts of interesting project ideas that go beyond quaint rural houses — consider the notion of “installing upside-down periscopes on the sidewalks of vertically dense cities such as New York City, London, Istanbul, or Jerusalem …. allowing everyone to peer down into subterranean infrastructure, exploring subways, cellars, plague pits, crypts, sewers, buried rivers and streams, scanning back and forth through the foundations of missing or war-destroyed buildings, even zeroing in on lost ships.”

Equally neat, though, one could imagine seeing this installed in the sides of skyscrapers and other large-scale urban structures — a kind of ongoing, open-ended educational project that lets pedestrians and visitors on streets and in buildings learn something about the fabric holding their surroundings together.

Images via SolarVillage, BuildingNaturally, and DKS Architecture

The post Truth Windows Show Hidden Structure of Straw Bale Homes first appeared on Dornob.