Thanks for looking at the link. I just started working with Sustainable Harvest and think it's well worth it.

I was quite impressed, actually. They seem to be thinking and working on spreading cheap, efficient, local solutions. I'd love to see a more detailed breakdown of their results, especially in terms of land reclaimed, food production per acre, and costs of food production.

For instance, much has been made in some circles about making plastics out of ag products, corn in particular. This material, PLA I believe, is touted as being better because being made from corn in can more easily return to the earth. Sure, but it takes more energy to make the corn based plastic than to make it from crude (from extraxtion thru refining) and as you noted, bio-everything is not a solution (would probably take a few earths). Plus the 'return to earth' part is fuzzy but impractical. In addition I haven;t seen any work on making PLA recyclable so it will be a one pass material it all likelihood.

Correction: it takes more obvious energy. But yes, this is pretty much what I remembered about most current bio-plastic solutions. They're good, but they're not quite there yet.

I think the big potential here is in the design realm. Most modern things seem to be designed with the assumption that they'll be thrown away inside a decade. Often, the supposed cost savings from this are not passed on to the consumer (disposable gadget X costs the same as durable gadget Y did a couple generations ago), which makes me wonder if they exist at all. I know things can be designed to last longer. My family still has stereo equipment, for example, from the late 1960s and early 1970s that works perfectly. And this isn't the usual "chance of survival" phenomena. These things are built solidly and simply. And this doesn't have to be a barrier to new technology, either. I'm willing to bet that a lot there can be done with modular, generalized, or digital technology.

That is not to say there aren;t great advances being made, there are, it's just many of them are not sexed up green design stuff but efficient industrial mechanics and products that utilize their own waste to make more product.

I think this is just as important, even if it's not as sexy. I know it's one of the things I was thinking of when I wrote the diary. In this case, it seems to be more "designing it like an ecosystem", where pretty much all waste is eventually put to productive use, and actual "losses" are miniscule. Taking into account externalities (a vital part of cost accounting, which is almost always creatively overlooked), I'd expect such processes to be significantly cheaper, as there is less waste.

Altho i agree cars in an urban area are stupid and counter productive..even more so with pick-ups in NYC, cars will be with us but the next generation of cars will get interesting. I think hydrogen cars (hybrids are the transition vehicle) are coming and the infrastructure fuel problems will be solved. Not that far off cars will have a base shell...basically structure and engine. Then, online you'll add the configuration, shell, etc and voila, car will be delivered in a week-10 days. The engine and base will last 30 plus years but the components and shell can be re-configured however often you want (old materials recycled) so as kids come along you accessorize. Hope that adds to the discussion

Definitely. I'd much rather see cities designed so that cars simply aren't needed. Hydrogen is troublesome for a number of reasons, and I very much doubt that it will be able to completely replace gasoline. But in the short term, we're probably going to have to have something car-like to keep people happy and minimize disruptions.

The rest of your paragraph yields an interesting mentality, one that I'm sure generalizes well, but which I'm having trouble articulating. Most modern devices in general appear to be built for a small selection of roles, and are tough to repurpose. "Componentizing" appears to have a lot of pontential for reducing waste here and, on reflection, was what I was rambling about with the stereos above. Construct a common base for a device, and add additional modules that you can swap out as necessary. Build it all to last, and when you don't need a component any more, you can pass it on to someone else who does.

This could be great for metro and long-distance rail too - rather than employing complicated switching systems that occupy a lot of otherwise-productive land, swap out the cargo/passenger area mounted on the basic carriage.

Amusingly, from my perspective, the whole "componetization" fad appears to have taken root fastest in the software world... Where making changes is easy.