Energy Independence

"Zabaleen" is the Arabic term for those visionary and enterprising people whose culture revolves around recycling. The Zabaleen are experts at "transforming one man's garbage into another man's gold" and aspire toward a net zero-waste economy. Applied and supported this could lead to true energy independence, not only by radically reducing our demand for "raw materials" and hard to extract natural resources but by recycling other less obvious phenomena and materials that are now wasted.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Tanzanian Biodigestor at Joram's house

Sybille, Kilian and I have arrived in Paris directly after successful Africa research and technology transfer trip to present our findings (and new biogas melodic-mnemonic song) at UNESCO conference.

April 29 at 12:08pm ·

Thomas Henry Culhane

Photo shows our latest above ground biodigestor design at the home of Joram Soloman overlooking Lake Tanganyika, where we stayed the last couple of nights in Kigoma. Joram's family has 12 cows and over 30 goats providing plenty of microbial starter culture for the kitchen-waste system we built; we can also use the compost pile (behind the digestor) to heat the reactor.

April 29 at 12:12pm

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The Zabaleen ethic

There is no such thing as "garbage". Nothing should be wasted. A Zabaleen looks around him or her and asks, "what new use or value can I find in this object, this environment, this moment." The Zabaleen ethic, if properly applied and supported, could lead to true energy independence by making use not only of what we traditionally call "trash" but of other wasted commodities: embedded solar radiation found in light, heat, wind, hydrological cycles, geothermal mass and biomass and from the synergistic behavior of microbes, plants, fungi and non-human animals. We can all be Zabaleen...