Tis The Season Of Mass Consumption. One Of My Friends Was Telling Me About How Her Grandmother Used To

After finding out recently that most gift wrap isn’t recyclable I decided to wrap my holiday gifts in the least amount of material possible. No tape, no waste. It’s the little things sometimes. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

[Image description: Two simply wrapped gifts in brown paper bags and red string.]⠀⠀⠀

⠀#zerowaste #giftwrap #diy #solarpunk #holidays #genretomovement

Lunarpunk Futures

All digital media is free to download and access by all even academic journals. But that doesn’t stop you from getting physical copies of your most cherished books on your shelves.

Study sessions and debates that bleed into the early morning hours at cafe’s with friends about philosophy, politics, and religious thought when your not engaged in actual study for one of your chose degree paths which are all free at your local university and online.

Late nights spent among strangers with telescopes pointing out the stars and learning their names.

Hacked fabric printers to print customized clothing in any size, shape, color, or pattern required. Need a skirt that looks good in a wheelchair? Check. Need a religious article of clothing? Check. Wanna change that to a bamboo silk instead of cotton? Check. Wanna put your own touches and designs on a pre-made base? Done.

Multilingualism is the norm and there are meetups to learn and share languages with each other.

Tablets that have great internal storage capabilities as well as settings for every language, blue light filtering, captions, font changes for dyslexia, dark mode, and more all built in by default.

Voting has taken on a whole new meaning with debates about the benefits or problems with bills, elections, etc. Voting is done regularly and with more public participation than ever before.

Every person has a guaranteed income that is above the poverty lines of the past, increases over time, and housing and healthcare are guaranteed.

Solar lanterns in tea gardens late at night listening to splash of koi fish while reading Basho.

Accessibility is built in by design in every building, walkway, path, etc. with bioluminescent lighting as needed.

Every home and apartment grows their own herbs, fruit trees hang over bioluminescent permeable sidewalks, and wild permaculture gardens are in every backyard.

Grocery stores contain zero advertising, offer delivery if needed, biodegradable and plastic free. Everything is designed to be recyclable or returned to nature is a beneficial way.

Rules on light and sound pollution preserve natural biological systems and keep wildlife stress to a minimum. Public transportation is the norm, there are still bicycles, electric mopeds, and wheelchair accessible self-driving taxis.

There is an online veggie trading system that allocates veggies to those who need them from those who have too many.

University is open to everyone and lifelong learning is emphasized. Emphasis is on learning and understanding topics not passing exams.

There are libraries, water bottling refilling stations, and green-spaces are the default.

*That’s all for now, I’ve currently got a cold and can’t think of anything else atm. I’ll try to keep posting things like this in the future though. :)

Solarpunk Activities for the Socially Anxious

 - Read up on the philosophical background(s) of solarpunk. I’ve got a bibliography page if you are looking for more. - Figure out which plants that are indigenous or endangered in your area. Read about their history (and if you can make seed bombs.) - Enjoy Alan Watts lecture on nature - Make a herb drying rack by using string and push pins. You can eat, burn or drink tea from the herbs. - Consider growing food from your scraps - Watch a Ted Talk on Conservation - Draw nature, real or imaginary. Take time to map out fantasy lands. (Think about it as an environmental vision board) - Consider if composting might be right for you - If you have houseplants, learn how to propagate them (or even just take the time to learn more about them…their history, and how best to care for them). If you do want to learn how to propagate, I suggest starting with succulents. They are hardy, fun, and fairly cheap. -Learn how to Talk to Trees with Charis Melina Brown - A National Geographic explainer on how trees talk to each other. - Listen to this amazing, free, nature meditation with Jessica Snow

Printed Solar Bio-Batteries

Led by biotechnologist Marin Sawa, a group of researchers at Imperial College London have devised a way to print solar cells onto paper. They use an inkjet printer to place a conductive layer of carbon nanotubes and a layer of living cyanobacteria to create devices which can capture and store solar energy.

In their proof-of-concept experiment, the cyanobacteria survived the printing process and were able to produce energy from photosynthesis. The trial panel was palm sized and gave enough energy to power a small LED light. Even better, being little more than paper, carbon, and bacteria, the bio-cells are fully biodegradable.

The work is part of an emerging field of science called microbial biophotovoltaics (presumably related to the biovoltaics I’ve mentioned here before) which uses algae and cyanobacteria to generate energy. The energy generated may be small, but it’s also cheap and easy to manufacture, and the microbes can continue generating electricity after dark, using compounds made during daylight.

The bio-batteries aren’t intended to replace standard photovoltaics for large scale energy production. Instead, they can provide an inexpensive and renewable source of energy for specific uses, such as air quality monitors and healthcare applications.

“Imagine a paper-based, disposable environmental sensor disguised as wallpaper, which could monitor air quality in the home. When it has done its job it could be removed and left to biodegrade in the garden without any impact on the environment.” – Marin Sawa

Sawa et al (2017) – open access

Volunteering at my local urban farm — they have baby goats!!!!

We See Seashores Shifting with Satellites

If you’re like us, as soon as the summer Sun is out, you start feeling – well, just beachy, sand you very much. 

Lots of our favorite beaches are inside protected marine areas, which are regulated by governments to keep their ecosystems or cultural heritage intact. If you beachcomb at Cape Cod, swim in the Florida Keys or learn about Hawaiian culture at Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, congrats! You’ve visited a protected marine area.

But time and tide haven’t been kind to some protected beaches.

Beaches are constantly changing, and science teams are using our 30-year record of Earth images from the NASA/USGS Landsat program to study what’s happening.

Overall, the sum total of sandy beaches has increased a bit over the last 30 years. But time and tide haven’t been as kind to our protected beaches – the team found that more than 1/3 of sandy beaches in protected marine areas have been eroding away.

Some of these areas were designated to protect vulnerable plant and animal species or connect delicate ecosystems. They are home to humpback whales and sea turtles, reefs and mangroves that protect the land from erosion and natural disasters, and species which are found in only one habitat in the world. Losing land area could upset the balance of these areas and endanger their future.

Next step: Looking for pearls of wisdom to save the beaches!

Right now, we aren’t sure which beaches are eroding due to natural processes, and which are due to humans – that’s the next step for science teams to investigate. Once we know the causes, we can start working on solutions to save the beaches.

Those 30 years of Landsat data will help scientists find answers to these questions much faster – instead of using airplanes or measuring the beaches by hand, they can use computer programs to rapidly investigate millions of satellite photos spanning many years of change.

By tracking beaches from space, scientists can help keep our summers sandy for years to come.

And that makes us as happy as clams.

Read the full story HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Day 1612 - We use Imperfect Produce for most of our fruits and veggies at the moment. I’ve always loved that most of their produce comes loose in the box and I appreciate that they recently started prominently labeling the items that would come in plastic.