Ram Kamath

I will start by saying the bubble week in Texel was a lot of fun, surprisingly. To be honest, I was not really looking forward to spending a week biking in the rain and surviving on Dutch food. But I did it and loved it! Now onto what I learnt in Texel. First thing that comes to mind: coordination is everything when working in such large groups. I found that all three groups (STS, tourist and…

a forecast of the transition to a sustainable personal life on Texel in 2065 (have a look at the video/visuals) a general overview of the sustainable island in 2065, and possible transition pathways (report) an impression of  the development of island tourism 2015-2065 (view the documentary)

Re-generating Inorganic waste: Proposal for field research   On Tuesday afternoon 12 January 2016, 13:00-17:30 hrs, the group has to organise its own additional research on the sub-system. To draw your design in even more detail, you may want to visit a company to do some interviews with experts, inhabitants, entrepreneurs, civil servants or politicians. It is recommended to start timely with…

This is a description of the sustainable lifestyles of the texelaars in the year 2065. You wake up in the morning and attend natures call. The toilets don’t use water any more. Super-bacteria immediately break down and transform waste into biogas once you flush. You take a shower: showers don’t spray water…they atomise water and nanoparticles that clean you up. Time to dress up. You walk into a…

Christmas is my favourite holiday. Maybe it is the unreasonable amount of American movies and TV shows I have watched over my life but I love the imagery, songs and emotions attached to Christmas. The things that come to mind when you say Christmas are family, the Christmas tree, gifts and wonderful white snow! I was planning to spend Xmas in Italy until my cousin from Copenhagen sent me a…

Humanity is today threatened by the vagaries of climate change: droughts, storms, and floods and the resultant alterations in economies, economic development, and human migration. Every individual on the planet will be affected by these events. However, research has demonstrated that women, especially in the emerging nations, bear the brunt of acute weather events because of draconian cultural…

Ram Kamath Ely, Smith & Stirling, 2013 1.Hybrid Innovation pathways At the two ends of the spectrum of possible trajectories to sustainable systems ,are green industrialisation and grassroot innovations. Green industrialisation pathways are led by the government or large corporations. Such initiatives are top-down in nature and are driven by technology push. Grassroot movements are citizen driven…

One possible technological solution that can, to a large extent, solve Texel’s inorganic waste problem is biodegradable packaging. Solid waste predominantly consists of packaging waste (In developed countries, food packaging represents 60% (Northwood and Oakley-Hill, 1999) of all packaging.). Consumer goods without any kind of packaging is unfathomable nowadays. Even though theoretically, 93…

Northwood, T., Oakley-Hill, D., (1999),Wastebook,Luton Friends of the Earth, Environment Agency and the Building Research Establishment. Aarnio, T. , Hamalainen ,A., (2007), Challenges in packaging waste management in the fast food industry, Helsinki. 612-621. Hoornweg, D., Tata,P.B., (2012), WHAT A WASTE-A Global Review of Solid Waste Management,Urban Development Series-The World Bank

One of the easiest (easier said than done for some) means to bring down one’s carbon footprint is to cut down on one’s meat consumption. Meat production is one of the most profligate, land- and energy-intensive processes. It wreaks havoc on forests, pollutes oceans, rivers, seas and air, depends on oil and coal, and is significantly responsible for climate change. Humanity consumes around 230…

Ram Kamath Hargreaves 2013 1.Grassroot innovation Grassroot innovations are, as opposed to market-based innovations, innovations that arise from ground-up social movements that aim to effectuate a transition to more socially acceptable methods of fulfilling societal functions rather than for profit. Grassroot innovation activity may be driven by informal community groups or volunteers. Grassroot…

Around a fortnight ago, the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP 21 was held in Paris with the objective of achieving legally binding and universal agreement on climate change action from all the nations of the world. As I write, nations are grappling with each other to come to an agreement on limiting further global warming to two degrees by 2100. Personally, I have never been…

The context, place and time, is quite fixed for the tourists. So the design space is situated more in the action and relation part. The tourists need to be more ‘connected’ to the local citizens. They need to tune in and be engaged in the system of collecting and seperating the waste. When also their communion feeling is improved, their reputation will go up. What is important is that they will…

Electric vehicles (EVs) or electric drive vehicles use electric motors or traction motors for propulsion. EVs include road and rail vehicles, water vessels and even electric aircraft. Over the last decade, encouraged by global uproar at the rising negative environmental impacts of fossil-fuel based transportation infrastructure, EVs and related subsystems are being viewed with enormous interest…

We had our first session for Engineering for sustainable development (ESD) on Tuesday, the tenth of November. The objective of the course is contrive solutions to lead the island of Texel down the path of sustainable growth. Just before attending the ESD session, I was in another course where the lecturer stated that compared to the Danish island of Samso, Texel was in the sustainable stone-age.