These breakthroughs sometimes evoke the feeling of "Of course! I should have thought of that myself!" Creative thinking isn't magic. It is the way that progress occurs, and it is our best hope for solving the many environmental crises facing our planet.
I have recently discovered a few important advances which promise huge environmental rewards. These ideas have come about due to generous applications of "out-of-the-box" thinking, but in hindsight, see if you don't have the "Of course!" reaction.
Clean Water, Free Labor
In South Africa, Trevor Field had a brilliant idea about how to provide clean, drinkable water where there currently is none, and do it with free labor. But that's not all! His project provides free playground equipment for the local schools, and provides AIDS awareness messages to the community. All of that from a single, simple, out-of-the-box revelation!
What was this brilliant idea? Mr. Field has designed a merry-go-round on which school children can play, and which doubles as a water pump! As the children push the merry-go-round, they also pump water to fill water tanks. A single such pump can provide enough clean water from deep underground to serve a community of 2,500 people. In another stroke of genious, he realized that the pump and storage tanks, once installed, become a prominent feature of the local landscape, so he sells advertising space on the tanks and raises enough revenue to maintain the merry-go-round pumps.
The labor to pump the water is free and the maintenance of the pumps is free! How's that for ingenuity and fortuitous benefits? It's pretty remarkable, but there's even more to the story.
One of the advertising messages Mr. Field provides on his tanks is an AIDS awareness message. Says Trevor Field, "I want this message to get through to these children, before they become sexually active. I think it can make a huge difference!" Indeed it can! Watch a video about this remarkable man and his idea.
Biofuel Breakthrough
The second example of out-of-the-box thinking which has yielded huge promise, is a simple, yet ingenious new way to make biofuels. Biofuels are fuels which are derived from biomass (plant material) instead of petroleum. They promise a way to break our dependence on petroleum and the many environmental risks and detriments that come with it.
Biofuels require much less transportation, less refining, and less scarring of the planet than petroleum. They also are sustainable and do not use up non-renewable resources. However, it is now generally understood that the current way of producing biofuels is rife with problems which challenge its economic and environmental viability.
Current efforts to capitalize on biofuels have mostly involved creating ethanol from corn. This has some very distressing problems: it is relatively expensive; it uses up food resources (food being diverted/converted to fuel is a major factor in the rise in food prices that we are currently seeing), it consumes a lot of water, both in the growing and in the manufacturing, and it does not produce a dramatically higher amount of energy than it takes to produce it.
However, out-of-the-box thinking may be able to provide a solution to at least some of the issues with biofuels. Dr. Stickland, Michigan State University, has engineered enzymes that allow plant silage (waste) to be turned into fuel. This allows the corn, for example, to be produced for food, and the waste left in the fields can then be used to create ethanol. Food is thus, not diverted to fuel. Cellulosic ethanol - not corn ethanol - can also be produced from wheat straw and rice straw, and other plant materials that currently have little economic value. Listen to this story at NPR's Science Friday.
Weeds to Fuel
Take the idea of using wasted silage for biofuel production to its logical conclusion, and you deduce the next big idea: using kudzu as your feed stock for bio-ethanol. Kudzu is a non-native weed that has invaded most of the southern states. It grows and spreads so rapidly that farmers and road-maintenance crews have a hard time keeping it under control. With its ability to grow in harsh conditions, and its remarkably fast growth, (and not having any current commercial use) kudzu would make an ideal candidate for providing the biomass necessary for a sustainable biofuel initiative. Read about it in this article from the Chattanooga Times. Also of interest is this article at NPR about a high school student with big ideas about kudzu and ethanol.
These breakthroughs portend great benefits for our environment and offer a sorely missing ingredient for environmental intiatives - hope. One of the main impediments to achieving a critical mass of public lifestyle changes is overcoming the attitudinal resistance that so many people have. There is a palpable feeling of hopelessness in our culture due to the belief that "my small contributions won't help."
But if people can see large-scale projects making a difference (reducing pollution, repurposing wasted products into fuel, making drinkable water available in places where it currently doesn't exist without wasting fuel to transport it) then they start to see how their individual efforts can combine and coalesce into a massive intitative for change! By providing hope, and some feedback mechanisms whereby people see results of their efforts, they get "rewarded" and motivated to redouble their efforts. It might even inspire more out-of-the-box epiphanies, creating a sustainable cycle of breakthough - hope - breakthrough.
There can be no doubt that our environment is in trouble. But mankind has always found a way to surmount the insurmountable. With so many bright minds ruminating on solutions, we have real reason for hope. By looking outside of the box, we will find the right answers.
Life begins on the other side of despair - Jean-Paul Sartre
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