Rachel Pott
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Author Archive for Rachel Pott – Page 2

Tie die shirts for the plastic-eating microbes
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· April 5, 2016 
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Feed Your Unwanted, Tragic Clothes to Plastic-Eating Microbes and Help Revolutionise the Fashion Industry

Posted on Collectively.

Don’t throw away that old sweater/dress/tie-dye T-shirt from Khao San Road – just feed it to hungry little microbes and give ‘fast fashion’ the boot

It sounds like ethical sci-fi, but that’s exactly what Akshay Sethi and Moby Ahmed are proposing. Their company, Ambercycle, is making recycling more profitable and efficient, thanks to plastic-munching microbes that break down polyester clothing to its basic substances, ready to make 100 per cent renewed polyester that’s just as good as brand new stuff.

After chowing down on our old threads, the hungry little organisms produce raw chemicals for fresh polyester, starting the production process anew. Today’s plastics are produced from crude oil derivatives, meaning that their manufacture is at least partly influenced by the price of oil, and is also subject to the economic, political and environmental ramifications of oil extraction. Ambercycle proposes that this process is stripped back and simplified; using entirely recycled materials means there’s no need to extract more crude oil, ensuring more cost-effective and environmentally friendly production.

A polyethylene terephthalate polymer chain. But you knew that already

A polyethylene terephthalate polymer chain. But you knew that already

Catchily dubbed the ‘polyester digester,’ the microbe eats PET, or polyethylene terephthalate – the most common type of polyester, used to create anything from clothing to carpets to water bottles to building materials to automotive components. The ravenous microbes can still get their snack on even if the polyester is combined with other materials, like in a cotton-polyester-blend shirt.

Unsurprisingly – given the vast potential benefits at stake – the fashion industry has jumped on it. Ambercycle won €250,000 in the Global Change Award, a challenge led by fashion giant H&M’s Conscious Foundation.

 

In UK alone, 9,513 garments are put into landfill every five minutes

 

With ‘fast fashion’ still a big problem (consider the fact that in UK alone, 9,513 garments are put into landfill every five minutes) and the global population increasing, it seems that the market for new clothes will keep growing for the time being – though, let’s also remember that there are efforts to halt the throwaway tide, from people like Livia Firth and the crew behind DFYnorm.

Perhaps, then, the focus should be on changing the lifecycle of our products, instead of expecting fundamental changes in how we approach clothing. As a representative from the H&M Conscious Foundation puts it: “To close the loop is a way of letting people live at a standard they aspire to, but without the impact on the environment.”

Right now, the biological method behind these magnificent microbes is at test tube stage, as it were, with proof of concept and a focus on scaling the processes. The aim is for production to be underway by late 2017.

Cactuses

A polyethylene terephthalate polymer chain. But you knew that already.                                         (Photo: Flickr/Quinn Dombrowski)

Ambercycle’s long-term vision of enabling all fabrics to be made from 100 percent renewable chemicals is ambitious – but it’s also admirable, and who’s to say it’s not achievable, too? The company’s innovation certainly seems like it has the potential to radically transform the fashion industry and close that damned loop in the process.

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Categories : Collectively
Tags : clothing, entrepreneurs, fabrics, fashion industry, fast fashion, innovation, microbes, oil extraction, plastic, polyester, sustainability
Peek Vision - Peek Retina smartphone camera
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· January 31, 2016 
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Testing Your Eyes Is Now as Easy as Taking a Photo – How to Turn Your Smartphone into a Retinal Scanner

Posted on Collectively.

A tech-focused eye-health company, Peek, has had the foresight to design affordable smartphone apps that test for diseases such as cataracts and glaucoma

Testing your eyes is now as simple as taking a photo. With a smartphone, an inexpensive 3D-printed adapter and free software, eye care that typically requires expensive, bulky, fragile equipment can fit in your pocket and go anywhere in the world – even to the middle of the Antarctic. Designed with non-specialists in mind, Peek has developed a Portable Eye Examination Kit that can be operated with minimal training, while still providing accurate, high quality results.

Their greatest development is Peek Retina, an adapter that turns your smartphone into a retinal camera, using the flash to scan the retina for visual impairments and disease – such as cataracts and glaucoma, as well as diabetes and high blood pressure – with the accuracy of a $25,000 camera, for only $100.

An eye with an anterior polar cataract (Flickr: Community Eye Health)

An eye with an anterior polar cataract (Flickr: Community Eye Health)

The Peek Acuity app replaces the standard eye chart, and works even for those not familiar with English, while SightSim presents a live smartphone simulation of how someone with a visual impairment sees the world.

All the information from these tests can be stored and texted to remote clinicians for diagnosis. In developing countries, where there simply aren’t enough trained eye health staff to go out to every location, this helps more people to be diagnosed and connected with appropriate services.

“Our prime ambition is not to develop a company that’s hugely profitable. Our ambition is to eradicate blindness”

A few weeks ago, Peek formed the Peek Vision Foundation, a registered non-profit. From the start, Dr. Andrew Bastawrous, an ophthalmologist and the Peek research lead, said, “Our prime ambition is not to develop a company that’s hugely profitable. Our ambition is to eradicate blindness.” The technology has been designed, trialled and tested on the ground with healthcare workers, so it can complement – not replace – the hard work they’re already doing.

On top of a highly successful crowdfunding campaign, Peek continues to receive incredible backing and support from charities. MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness are partnered with Peek to distribute the retinal camera adapter to clinics in Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania, Mali and beyond.

A school screening program, funded by Seeing is Believing, facilitated the vision tests of 20,0000 Kenyan children by their teachers in less than two weeks, and the program will be scaled-up and implemented in India. Support also comes from the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, a major sponsor of Peek’s work, as well as Combat Blindness International, Vision for a Nation Foundation and many more.

Initial public release of the adapter is set for April 2016. As the team continues to develop apps – tests for detecting cerebral malaria and colour blindness, and a pediatric vision test, ‘Peekaboo’, are in the works – it becomes more conceivable that the average person will be able to monitor and manage their ocular health far better in the near future.

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Categories : Collectively
Tags : blindness, cataracts, crowdfunding, eyecare, glaucoma, International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, MSF, ophthalmology, Peek, Peek Retina, Peek Vision Foundation, Peekaboo, retina, smartphone, technology
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· December 18, 2015 
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SheFarms: Sustainable Women-led Farming

Posted on Innovate Development.

In the wake of the recent Paris Agreement and the call for developed nations to provide $100 billion annually to developed countries to combat climate change and foster greener economies, agriculture – the source of 33 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions – must be a focus.1 More specifically, women, who make up 43 percent of farmers in developing countries, must be a focus.

Women have disproportionately less access to productive resources and opportunities, reducing their yields by 20-30 percent.2 For agriculture to develop, women must be able to access information, training and tools, including business expertise to facilitate the sustainable and successful growth of their businesses. SheFarms, recognizing the negative impact of this gendered gap, is developing a one-stop-shop application for women farmers across the developing world, providing information and resources in collaboration with local nonprofits.

SheFarms is an agri-tech startup that aims to combat climate change, food scarcity and gender inequality by empowering and investing in women farmers. Communities will be able to access all this information through the SheFarms app, while on-the-ground partnerships will facilitate the provision of farming tools and fertilizers. Currently, a team of five is behind the business, reaching from the Netherlands – with founder Tiambi Simms and co-founder Margot Barreveld, in charge of overall strategy, business direction, funding and operations – to Botswana and Zimbabwe with Moesi Modikwa, Kudzai Bushu and Kwasi Darkwa, for their back-end and business development.

 

Core Functionalities

Three core functionalities guide SheFarms: social, environmental and economic. Socially, the app provides an interface for creating and connecting communities across the developing world. Individuals can build profiles, ask each other questions and share best-practices, and nonprofits can see feedback and compare the experiences of different women, allowing them to measure their impact and identify specific challenges the women face. As the customer base grows, the information will become more collaborative, with the opportunity to rank the effectiveness of information.

Environmentally, the app will provide information on sustainable farming practices, including soil management, mitigation and biodiversity, all of which will also help increase crop yields. Climate forecasting information will help farmers be better prepared for the rainy and dry seasons.

As 60 percent of African farmers trade few or no products, economic information is an important element.3 Speaking with the women, SheFarms heard that “Yes, we’re small holder-farmers, but we want to be able to expand,” says Simms. “SheFarms gives women in these rural communities, these marginalized communities, a voice.” By providing up-to-date market prices, they’re able to be more entrepreneurial. “They have more negotiating power, more buying power. And that’s increasing the economy, increasing their confidence in who they are as women.”

SheFarms recognizes that their information must be communicated in a culturally-sensitive and accessible format, with respect for traditional farming practices, albeit an extremely difficult balance to achieve. A couple other organizations are providing similar information, but not all-inclusively and often with the use of text messages, which are inaccessible to illiterate individuals, the majority of whom are women. Much of their information will be communicated with the assistance of pictograms and videos, to help minimize misinterpretation.

 

Community Representation

SheFarms teamThe success of their business is also dependent upon trusting relationships with women farmers. At this stage, and for the next 5-10 years, they remain largely dependent on nonprofits, who have already developed a level of legitimacy and representation within the communities. Nonprofits will be able to purchase a license for the SheFarms app, while the women farmers will pay a small fee every four months or so (the cost has not yet been released).

They are currently in negotiations with their first partner, who will be able to test and provide feedback on the first working prototype. One challenge will be negotiating the limited separation between SheFarms and the non-profits, as well as securing funding in a notoriously unstable sector.

The business had the opportunity to develop through business competitions, namely the ClimateLaunchpad and the AMPION Venture Bus (more information here). Both of these avenues provided opportunities for SheFarms build their core team, gain exposure and develop their business model – with mentorship from serial entrepreneurs and investors.

While the team’s current focus is on incrementally introducing their business, their aims are long-term and expansive, with the knowledge that changing behaviours will take time. Says Simms, “SheFarms is going to have a very big impact. And it’s not going to be immediate, but it is going to happen.” The app – they have a working demo at the moment – will be piloted in English-speaking African countries at the start of 2016, with the aim of expanding across at least three continents, with multiple languages, in the next three years.

To learn more about SheFarms, or to help build and grow with the business, visit the SheFarms Facebook page.

  1. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/paris-agreement-key-climate-points-1.3362500 ↩
  2.  http://www.fao.org/sofa/gender/key-facts/en/ ↩
  3.  http://www.africa-newsroom.com/press/agritech-is-the-future-of-farming-the-german-ministry-of-international-cooperation-and-development-supports-the-creation-of-agriculture-startups-in-southern-africa?lang=en ↩

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Categories : Innovate Development
Tags : AMPION, app, biodiversity, climate change, ClimateLaunchpad, COP21, entrepreneurs, farming, food scarcity, Paris Agreement, SheFarms, smartphone, soil management, sustainability, technology, Women
Dounreay Decommissioned Nuclear Site
Posted by Rachel Pott 
· December 7, 2015 
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Nuclear Decontamination with a Side of Whiskey

Posted on Innovate Development.

Can we use crab shells, spent grains from whiskey distilleries or coffee grounds to clean up a nuclear site?

Tests are currently underway in Scotland to determine whether the process of cleaning up toxic nuclear waste can be approached in a more environmentally sound manner. The method uses biosorption, a property of certain non-living biologic materials to naturally bind and concentrate metallic particles and to absorb common radioactive isotopes like Strontium-90. Once the radioactivity is absorbed into the materials, they can be gathered up and stored off-site.

Currently, removing radioactive isotopes from water requires artificially-made specialized ion exchange resins, but organizations are exploring the possibility of a more natural approach that works as well and is cost-effective. All of the considered materials are either naturally abundant in the area or waste products.

The project is a collaboration between the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) and Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd. (DSRL), the company responsible for cleanup and demolition of Scotland’s decommissioned Dounreay power plant.

Nuclear waste was disposed at Dounreay in a deep underground shaft – reaching over 65 metres below ground – from 1959 to 1977, at which point an explosion severely damaged the superstructure and waste operations were ended. A shallow concrete silo was then used until 1998.

 

Nuclear Contamination

The methods of waste disposal in the ‘60s caused significant ground contamination. Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments – some of which are considered potentially lethal if ingested – escaped the plant between 1963 and 1984 into local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Initially, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency aimed to return the seabed near the plant to “pristine condition,” but acknowledged in 2011 that for this to take place it would result in more harm than good. The cleanup process has been met with high levels of danger and difficulty, and it remains a work in progress to find the safest and most efficient approach.

Currently, the focus is on removing the radioactive particles present in liquid waste on the site.

DSRL approached the ERI, as they have had success using biosorption to remove toxic metals from liquids and copper from whiskey distillery effluents. The process has also been used elsewhere to extract tiny pieces of gold and silver from sewage and remove environmental contaminants like mercury and arsenic from wastewater.

While several biologic materials has been tested, crab shells come out on top. Superior mechanical-chemical stability and lower organic content means they don’t rot as much as the other materials. Along with coffee grinds and whiskey grains, they’re suitable for continuous flow column trials as they don’t restrict the water flow, allowing it to flow through the materials and the contaminants to be absorbed. Seaweed, on the other hand, absorbs too much liquid and expands, blocking the water flow.

 

Simulated Radioactive Liquid

Dounreay Nuclear Waste ShaftThe project remains at an early stage of the R&D process. At this point, they’ve conducted extensive research and completed bench scale laboratory trials using simulated radioactive liquid. The next phase involves small scale trials with actual shaft water to test the amount of time the materials will need to remain in the contaminated water.

In a statement from the two organizations, “on a per unit cost basis, we feel the cost of the bio-materials will be less than the specialised ion exchange resins.” However, they remain unsure as to how much of the material will be required and how this will affect the cost. An environmentally compliant waste disposal of the materials, for after they’ve treated the contaminated water, is also yet to be determined

However, the team is optimistic. Mike Gearhart, the leader of the Dounreay Shaft and Silo project team, said: “We are pleased to be working with ERI to identify a sustainable solution that can be sourced locally. We still have a number of issues to address but results to date have been very promising.”

It is a constructive second life for discarded sea shells or your morning cup of coffee.

Find out more about Dounreay by following them on Facebook and Twitter, and about the ERI here.

 

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Categories : Innovate Development
Tags : biosorption, coffee, Dounreay, electricity, environment, nuclear waste, radioactive, Scotland, whisky
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