hello welcome to eco india a sustainability magazine that gives you the solutions to future proof your life every week we train the spotlight on technologies that are taking us one step closer to a cleaner and a greener tomorrow. coming to you from mumbai in india over the next thirty minutes i would although my position in the western sudan is making buildings a disaster see by using traditional technology our team of german scientists is using concrete to produce clean energy and how uptight could help solve the energy problems of the future. now every time i speak to my grandmother she tells me about so many things sugar differently when she was younger starting drinking water in an urban port for instance because there were no temperature control devices when she was growing up and sometimes i'm amazed at how efficient and sustainable these

solutions were our first story is in the same group an organization in bristol in india is tapping into a joystick knology to make buildings disasters see they're also empowering local artisans to document their practices so that they don't get lost among your dick dollar chips. of those who you know you. mustn't be left school after the ninth grade it didn't bode well for his future prospects you know what to do he teaches students sustainable cup and you. know. now there were there with my previous shops i would walk or do but never have

a sense of for a chief and a feeling of pride in having i mean something there was no sense of purpose i was a daily better and i had constant sense of disappointment today i'm a carpenter and the boss times on skint after years training at. i can now make anything i must for. ruth anything it will be all over. the other three were. pretty good. but my sweetie now works as a trainer at. a skills odeon did residential school in in the best in state good shit out. from around the country up dreamed here and sustainable craftsmanship often bought from traditional indian wood work and construction.

and got a good shot at the artisans live eat and study together for one year the school attracts dropouts from the formal education system. who want to be low in carpentry and me simply alongside the skills needed to negotiate decent prices for their products. and if. this school also teaches them principle it's all for entrepreneurship.

was born out of the nonprofit foundation in the vehicle the devastating earthquake in that region in two thousand and one which claimed twenty thousand lives and left millions homeless. once the rubble was cleared and the reconstruction effort begun. opted to use sustainable materials such as storm. pallets and bamboo instead of. industrialized materials like cement and steve. i'm not going to go both some considerable good to us here. when i was formed to facilitate collaboration and empower sustainable building practices traditionally used by the local. the

local technologies and marketers that we use are inherently more eco friendly than processed material because there's no processing in water there's no. carbon dioxide being released by users. so they're not going soft eco friendly. indicators first is while producing that material how much resources are be using and how much i missions of carbon dioxide that does happen. the second is a volume technology or. the building itself. for the first part dischord embodied energy of the material the second part does all the building is consuming energy because of the technology. is it more climate friendly that means is that and what i meant inside more user friendly without using is going to all in france maybe.

the whole notion of foundation has helped build close two hundred fifty thousand homes and worked with many disaster affected communities in india including in gujarat jumbo and push me to hard and british helping rebuild homes that are environmentally friendly sustainable and disaster prone. in good outscored she region for example these sandbags stone foundation are earthquake resistant. sustainable bamboo and brick

masonry but that rattrap borne proved popular in bihar. buildings are also cost effective especially given that many of them are funded with government grants. to see very few or very less user joffrey or seen main source tree and we try to rely on the things that are available whether it's stalling or sawyer and well if there are available there then automatically the transportation cost was down the processing of the material is not there because. you don't need a second reprint processing of that material so the cost was down and that's what and if the artisans are also locally available or not getting artisans from outside and just makes it really cost effective. no organization has expanded into

affordable housing projects to including slum jihad that illusion in a country with one point seven million homeless people sustainable cost is an urgent problem. foundation is part of the solution. although technologies are often the building blocks to developing new breakthroughs take for example on mix story a team of scientists in germany has developed a type of concrete that mimics the natural process of photosynthesis which is as old as the earth itself can generate energy imagine if every flat surface and every building in the world could help do this let's find out how you. are more than three billion years plants have been absorbing some life with the help of a green pigment called chlorophyll during photosynthesis the leaves transform the

light into energy allowing plants to grow. this energy is truly green. at the university of castle scientists are trying to use the same principle to generate energy a team of architects artists scientists undesigned others are working on a building material that will transform sunlight into electricity like a solar cell. what i'm on. there using ordinary concrete as their base the researchers mix it with graphite so it can conduct electricity. after it's hardened the special concrete can function as a positive or negative pole. i could close man is an artist boston close to an architect they came up with the idea of using conductive concrete to generate solar power. movement he admits it also becomes what you see here looks like ordinary concrete but what's special about it is that it's

sensitive to the touch as you can see and that's because we've made this concrete capable of conducting electricity and this conductive concrete is the basis for our solar concrete. to give the concrete the desired characteristics designed to spray on various layers of colored liquid the result is a dye sensitize solar cell that produces electricity through artificial photosynthesis the order in which the wafer thin layers of color are applied is all important. with them on you if you combine the layers correctly you end up with something that functions like a photovoltaic so one layer contains dye pigments when the sunlight strikes them electrons are released and current starts to flow. to improve their di sensitize solar cells the researchers conducted long term measurements in the lab a single solar cell initially delivered only millivolts but cannot supply over one

volt of electricity if you covered with your hands the charge fall sharply and rise again when light hits the solar cell. the cells of fission c is currently just more than two percent that's not much but it's a start. solar concrete are discrete is so interesting because it's really easy to produce it's environmentally friendly. and can be used on large surfaces and maybe one day in the future all the smooth flat surfaces in the city could be used to produce electricity. i munched. the more cells that are sprayed onto a building's wall the more electricity you can produce to do this the individual cells need to be interconnected under ideal conditions a surface area of one square meter would generate twenty watts of power. the researchers didn't only come up with the design for themselves they've also

developed a facade robot that can scale buildings and spray them with solar cells taking the concept to the next level. from one fascinating technology to one of the like when you're flying kites could help solve energy problems of the future a startup in germany specializes in flying wind turbines and a kites which harness wind power while in flight and there are many benefits to this technology let's take a look. this kite could help solve the energy problems of the future. it aims to generate electricity by harnessing high altitude winds. and busy its own. vision is that he developed the technology and scale it up to rival today's wind turbines. starting small and have

a long way to go i'm always starting over. for now the kite is attached by cable to a telescope a car mounted on a truck when fully deployed it should soar high in the sky trials are conducted at an airfield in the country saucily but the team is based in berlin. the big challenge right now. it's programming the computer to steer the kite with cables like these used. the generator that produces the electricity is in this truck. in off grid locations the dirty diesel generators are often used in are quite technology could replace them. today's wind turbines are mounted on towers the kites tethered to lines would rise to a height of two or three hundred metres where the wind is stronger and more persistent than closer to the ground. the intercut

laboratory is on the campus of the technical university of berlin. the engineers started experimenting seven years ago with fabric kites. when the kite goes up the lines on furrow and turn a turbine which generates electricity. then the kite is pulled in again which consumes a very little power. it's like a yo yo going up and down. the team has moved on from fabric kites to ones made of carbon fiber. they build them and all the technology themselves and they're always having to redesign and optimize. as our motto is also has to make as many mistakes as possible in this short a time as possible but only once it is why we have to lead out on the mistakes make

us smarter and then make sure the product safety. as it is causing this is a lost details for the wingtips right to do. the wingtips are also made of carbon fiber. the material is very light and stable but it can't withstand everything. like. structures can survive a hard landing. they've been working on carbon fiber kites for two years now and already over a million euros on prototypes. the developers drive out to the airfield they haven't made much progress with flying yet. they often start at midnight when there's more of a steady wind. we get more flying time and it gets less stressful so we can enjoy the fruits of labor.

they need to fully automate the steering of the kite but getting there is a slow and complex process. trim a bit. after a year of testing the kite takes off steered by the cables and stabilized by the computer. now they have to program the computer to carry out all flight maneuvers autonomous. phases when the kite is still really close to its base the software has to be very precise little mistakes get punished in a big way but we've been practicing for so long that it's become routine. is still flying just a few metres away from the telescope. but once the computer learns to properly it

should start to fly higher and generate electricity. earthbound wind farms. by single crops leading to a loss of biodiversity a group of hobby gardeners in austria is trying to save and grew from the crops from the very best seeds and helping bring back a variety of fruits and vegetables thought to be unavailable. michelle itself though grows twenty different varieties of beans in his garden every year he tries out new types. these varieties he says were eaten way back in the middle ages these days many of them are no longer readily available and. produce the seed for

righties in the quantities that i want for any border on average a beanstalk has three plants all be from one plant on so i can get enough seeds for myself and a further seven or eight people to. the australian initiative i should know our supply seemed to hold the garden and the group wants to preserve as much biodiversity as possible. many of the older varieties are more resilient than commercially grown fruits and vegetables the harvest tend to be longer to more than sixty kinds of tomato grow hair says. right now she's testing the so-called russian cucumber. this variety can be harvested until late autumn and what's more it's also resistant to a common fungal disease i thought the old varieties haven't been intensely farmed so

there's more genetic variability a greater range that's why they're more adaptable if your chin that it potential is too narrow you can only survive in certain environments but not in others. older varieties have this potential. because gentrified has long devoted himself to taking care of these treasures there are more than five thousand seed varieties hand collected over a period of three decades. and since they're so robust they could play an increasingly important role in the process of adapting to climate change. organic produce isn't garden is also interested in these older varieties they perform better in soil that hasn't been sprayed with chemical fertilizer. trying to grow these five thousand varieties in a five year rotation it doesn't always work that we're trying to do a thousand a year we always take stock and say what variety is this how adaptable is it what's

the produce like we've documented all. bill get that man is in charge of the god not weekends visitors come here to discover varieties they've never seen before in the supermarket. and they find out how to plant and cultivate them. touching smelling and tasting is encouraged here the aim is to awaken an interest in preserving biodiversity. of upfront things that are going to see every plant has its own story its own way of being cultivated by when you really know a plant you know these things that's the only f one doesn't this for one beam of any loss of knowledge is an impoverishment but when it goes beyond a critical point society loses out to. save itself. to prevent that from happening benyamin is doing his best to spread the word he's the

chef at the noise show god restaurant and cooks with produce from the garden over the last century there's been a seventy five percent reduction in older forms of crops. it's hoping to make more popular again. so i can write from what i always say i've managed to get around quite a bit angel i thought i knew most fruit and vegetables but then i encountered i should know and i noticed i knew only a tiny portion. he uses his newfound expertise to whip up tasty dishes. they've become known all over the region good food and good times this chefs recipe for preserving biodiversity. now to a story that will bring us to your. other type of aircraft ingenuity is giving underprivileged children in this community

a chance to fly high and providing an experience that would seem like an impossible dream to many like them take a look the other get on with it it's a day these children will remember all their lives for many it's their first time aboard an aircraft but this plane won't be taking off. on a flight to nowhere is an airline with a difference going up with all the other words it offers passengers an environmentally friendly taste of flying because this plane is never leaving the ground well i don't know the other passengers are treated to a full in-flight experience. they receive boarding cards. safety briefings even refreshments are served on board it's an eye opening experience. i've seen planes in the sky i used to think they were really small but now i know they're actually huge. i now want to fly to london. the beautiful

city. some lucky passengers even get to visit the cockpit. the man behind the project is behind her chant copter a retired aircraft engineer by les sold his land and bought the decommissioned airbus a three hundred back in two thousand and three for six hundred thousand rupees that's about seven thousand euros a real bargain he charges people according to what they can afford as little as a few euro cents or even nothing at all for the very poor. i belong to a very small village. and i never expected i'll be coming then you know and then i'll be in their lane and then people from i believe your party that they would not be able to see that so that was the basic idea and this if you look at motivation that i work for the sake of the poor people. not far away a busy main road that runs parallel to the runway of delhi's international airport

it's the perfect spot in the evening to watch planes land. even though air travel puts a lot of climate warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the age old dream of flying remains a desire for the poor migrant workers here. i let those of my own it's my dream to someday take a plane and fly to my village in bihar but that's only if i manage to scrape together enough money for a take out. further on at a railway crossing regulars here swear that this is the closest you can get as the turbojets takeoff. i've got it in my village the planes are really high up in the sky but from here you can see them up close it's an amazing feeling. i met him why did. we not have the money for a plane ticket but that doesn't stop us from dreaming about what it must feel like

to be up in the sky. back on the flight to nowhere person just simulate an evacuation to finish the experience. rarely has an emergency situation seemed like so much fun. i hope you'll enjoy it to the stories we've been to many more such stories each one giving us a new quilt for a sustainable future good bye and have a wonderful week. what

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