Richard's blog

Tag: environmentalism

  • Stress Testing the Ocean Drive Street E-Scooter

    Stress Testing the Ocean Drive Street E-Scooter

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Yesterday I had to drive from Nyon to Founex to do a favour for someone. Normally I would have used the car but it was in for a tire change. I was switching from winter to summer tires at last.

    On the way to Founex I took farm roads as much as possible because they’re less likely to have cars, and I’m less likely to be in the way of those cars. The ride was easy. I used just one or two bars of power on the way out so I still had plenty of battery left. I then walked around, and then picked up a book about technical writing before riding home.

    For the route home I went down to the lakeside and used the cycle lanes between Founex and Nyon. There was no traffic, but the cycling lane is still out of commission because of the Caribana so I was forced onto the road for a few hundred meters before going back onto the cycling lane and then through the Parking de Colovray, by the swimming poopl where people were waiting for the swimming pool to open.

    In Nyon I stopped to film the waves breaking on the Jetée before heading up a very steep hill and that’s where the scooter battery really suffered. I went from three bars down to one, and the scooter that usually goes at 20km/h got down to 12 and I think even 8km/h before finally getting to the top of the hill. From here I saw that I was down to one bar and I got to the entrance to the village where I live before the battery finally died.

    I had to walk the last four or five hundred metres, which is nothing.

    ## The Workout

    Although people who ride e-scooters look like spring Asparagus as they ride from point A to Point B, despite the impression that they are being lazy, I found that the Apple watch counted that scooter ride as a workout. It wanted to count it as cycling but I refused. The increase in heart rate from that scooter ride still counted as being almost my day’s calorie burn requirement. If you use a scooter, rathre than a car, even an electric one, you will get a workout.

    ## Walk Up Steep Inclines

    The moral of the story is simple. If you’re playing with an e-scooter and you come to a steep hill, and you feel it struggling, get off, and walk the rest of the way up that hill. You will save the battery, and will avoid having to walk the scooter on flat bits.

    At the same time I now know how to discharge the battery with ease, if I want to power cycle it, for any reason. It’s rational that what takes a lot of energy for a cyclist to climb will take a lot of energy for an e-scooter to climb.

    ## Useful Bike Lanes

    I appreciate having bike lanes when I’m on the e-scooter because I know that when I am in the bike lane I am where I am expected to be. On the road, with no lines I feel at risk, from cars that drive too close and too fast, but also from objects on the road. Drains, rocks, stones, dirt and more. I am always as aware as possible of the surroundings, not to be surprised by a car or other vehicle.

    ## And Finally

    If not for the very steep climb from the Consérvatoire roundabout towards the Unia building the scooter would have comfortably covered the distance I wanted to cover. In fact, it did, even with the steep climb.

    Ideally I would have a scooter that I can sit on, rather than stand on, but the difference in price is 3000 CHF or more. I like that the e-scooter is light enough to lift, and versatile. If I go to Geneva or another town I can carry it with me into the shops or trains, and then deploy and ride it once I’m done.

  • Recycled Computers and RAM

    Recycled Computers and RAM

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    I don’t like to go recycling for two reasons. I usually end my daily walk just at the time when the recycling centre opens during week days so I don’t want to go back and spend time that I could invest in other chores in something as relaxed as recycling. The second reason is that because traffic is bad I usually prefer not to be one of the cars driving down a narrow path when it is not urgent to do so.

    Luckily this blog post is not about that. It’s about how people will throw away old desktops and always remove the ram. It makes sense to remove hard drives because it’s not that hard to retrieve data from a disk that has been wiped just once, as we have seen recently with iphones and deleted photos.

    I am confused. People throw away ancient machines with ancient ram but for some reason they either feel the need to hoard the ram, or that’s the most interesting thing to take from old machines. RAM is easy to remove from a computer and take home. A desktop less so.

    I look out of curiousity, not necessity.

    Since switching from Windows to Ubuntu on my HP laptop I have been playing with Immich, Photoprism and attempting to install NextCloud. The beauty of using a proper laptop, rather than a Pi is that it’s much faster, and backing up is easy.

    If I found a desktop that required just a hard drive or two then I would gain plenty of freedom to experiment, and that is why finding a desktop at the recycling centre would be interesting.

  • CoffeeB – No Plastic, No Aluminium

    CoffeeB – No Plastic, No Aluminium

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    I have played with Dolce Gusto machines and Nespresso machines and both of them have the same flaw. They’re quick and convenient when you’re preparing coffee but less convenient when you need to get rid of the capsules. With Nespresso getting rid of the aluminium capsules is easy, once you have a container for them. You amass them at home and when you go to the recycling centre you have two wheelie bins devoted to the task of recovering the aluminium capsules and their content.

    Dolce Gusto capsules are more annoying to recycle becausse there is nothing that is dedicated to recycling them. They’re plastic and coffee so recycling them is less straight forward. If you have hot chocolate made by the machine then getting rid of the milk capsules is quite urgent, due to the smell they eventually give off.

    CoffeeB is different. The coffee is wrapped within seaweed balls. I was tempted for years but thought that at 149 CHF it was too much for an experiment. There was a time when CoffeeB was available from Galaxus and I was deeply tempted but didn’t give in.

    Last week I got two migros letters and within I saw a bon for the CoffeeB machines for 110 CHF less. This enabled me to choose between getting a machine for 29 CHF or 39 CHF. The 29CHF machine doesn’t have automatic loading but that doesn’t matter. By automatic loading I mean that it has a carousel where you put the seaweed coffee balls, and rotate before preparing your coffee.

    Coffee preparation is simple. Get a coffee ball, drop it into the container, Pull the lever down and the balls will be pierced. Press the button for either a 45ml or 110ml coffee, depending on whether you want Espresso or Café Lungo. It will then press water into the coffee ball, let it sit, and then force it through until it falls into your espresso glass or [Sigg miracle mug](https://www.galaxus.ch/en/s3/product/sigg-miracle-030-l-water-bottles-thermos-flasks-12061371).I am this specific because that’s what I use for my Café Americano.

    The one drawback is that the hot water dispenser is quite slow so if you want to prepare a café Americano I usually boil some water from a kettle and add extra water that way.

    So far I have tried Café Royal Lungo and Café Royal Espresso Bio. I’m happy with the café Lungo and need to get used to the Café Espresso Bio.

    For months, or even a year or more I have been preparing my morning coffee by grinding fresh coffee, adding it to an aeropress device, boiling water, pouring the water onto the coffee, waiting 20-40 seconds, pressing the rest of the coffee through and then adding boiling water to the usual mark for my café Americano.

    With the CoffeeB machine I drop in a ball, pull the lever and a few seconds later the coffe is ready, after adding extra boiling water.It really speeds up the ritual of coffee preparation.

    Whilst I did not think the machines are worth paying 139 CHF or 149 CHF for, I do think that for 29 CHF or 39 CHF they are worth the cost. Not only is it quick and easy to use but additionally the coffee capsules return to nature within 90 days. With aluminium or plastic it would take centuries for the same result. Having said this I think old plastic coffee capsules are used for power generation in giant furnaces, and [aluminium capsules are recycled, maybe into a Swiss knife](https://www.nespresso.com/de/en/order/accessories/vertuo/victorinox-swiss-knife). I would have enjoyed having a swiss knife made of my own nespresso capsules.

    ## The 25 CHF promotion

    If you take advantage of the 110 CHF promotion then you spend 29 CHF on the machine, and if you register your machine with CoffeeB directly then you get 25 CHF of coffee, and two bars of chcolate for free. In effect the machine has cost you four swiss francs at this point. The chocolate is nice. I will get more when I go to Migros one of these days.

    ## Does it Smell of Seaweed?

    No, I can’t taste the sea or seaweed within the coffees I prepare with this system.There is no smell of seaweed when the capsules or wet, or after they have been in the capsule container. The capsules dry out and are ready to be composted.

    ## And Finally

    Without time pressure you can wait for such excellent promotions to come around. I saved 110 CHF automatically, but 135 francs by being patient and registering the coffee machine. After “spending” 4 CHF I do not feel buyer’s remorse. It’s around 4 CHF for 9 cups of coffee and you can save money if you buy them in bulk.

  • Life With an Electric Car

    Life With an Electric Car

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The more I play with the electric car and the more I feel that it affects how I spend my time. Today I would have written a blog post before going out, but I didn’t. I didn’t write before going out because I knew that the battery would be down to 30 percent by the time I got to my destination, and 30 percent of battery power on a car means 14 hours of charge time. I.e. the earlier I head to charge the car the sooner I can head home to have dinner at a reasonable time.

    I had planned to write my blog post this morning, whilst charging the car. I didn’t. Someone was painting in the apartment where I had planned to write. Instead I spent time with people, as the car charged. By the end of the day it was at eighty percent before I drove home and now it’s back to over sixty percent.

    Being environmentally conscious, by driving an electric car, rather than a petrol one comes at a cost. That cost is waiting for cars to charge when using normal power sockets. What bothers me is not the charge time. It’s that in 2017 or so buildings were built without power sockets to parking spaces. They should have put normal power plugs.

    An electric car doesn’t need much power to charge. With a normal power socket, if you charge overnight you can easily top your car up to one hundred percent every night. It can charge while you’re sleeping, ready for the next day.

    Before the pandemic there was a discussion about preparing a garage for electric cars and my experience is proving that we don’t need fast chargers, or even medium chargers. A normal power socket would be enough to charge a car to one hundred percent overnight. Of course it would be nice to have fast charging, but fast charging is an excuse to sell a 900 CHF plug and an excuse to pay thousands to upgrade the power throughput of a building.

    The simple reality is that a normal plug is more than enough to charge an electric car, if you admit that a car is parked twenty two hours per day, giving it twenty two hours per day to charge. Fast charging is a gimmick.

    I’m bringing this up again because I watched a video yesterday about the Silence 4 electric car. It’s a small electric car that is perfect for urban living. The killer feature is that it has two removable batteries, that can be removed and charged away from the car. This means that when you use the car you can wheel the batteries into your “cave”, apartment, or office, and charge the batteries, before commuting home, or to another location.

    The concept goes further. The batteries are leased so the car is fourty percent cheaper. this means that, in theory, and if the car is popular enough, you could go on a road trip and swap the batteries every hundred kilometres. The batteries still require time to charge but if you can swap batteries that are depleted for batteries that are full, the time you stop for is greatly reduced. The beauty of this system is that the batteries can also be used by their electric scooters.

    The problem with electric cars, for now, is that they’re not as easy to refuel as petrol cars. Once they are then the barrier to entry will disappear. When a car costs 100 per week, on petrol, it makes sense to switch to electric.

  • Cycling from Nyon To Geneva and Back

    Cycling from Nyon To Geneva and Back

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Catching the train to Geneva and back to Nyon costs about 14CHF per day, depending on whether you have paid 180 CHF for the half fare or not. In contrast two Continent GP 5000 tires cost about 110CHF and you can go to Geneva and back a few hundred times. 

    Place Des Nations with the broken chair, and the fountains
    Place Des Nations with the broken chair, and the fountains

    The loop from Nyon to Geneva is about 20-30 kilometres. This is a very easy distance to cycle once you get to the right level of fitness. I have cycled to Geneva and back multiple times recently because I want to habituate myself to the journey but also because I want to prove to myself that I don’t need trains and other forms of public transport. 

    I often caught the train to Geneva and back when I was working for three or more employers. I got used to the journey but eventually I learned that the journey took about two and a half hours a day. Around an hour one way, and one and a half hours the other. Cycling to Geneva takes 40-50 minutes but at least I’m working out while I’m commuting. If I catch the train then my workout is a 20 minute walk, and then I wait for a train, fiddle with the phone, and then feel frustrated that Swiss commuters walk so slowly. 

    In the reverse direction I hated waiting 15-20 minutes for a train to take me to where I wanted to go. That’s where the bike comes in. 

    If I have somewhere safe to store the bike, and if I can shower and change clothes, then commuting by bike would become a pleasure, rather than a chore. Cycling is enjoyable. Commuting by train, and by car is a chore. 

    We need more people to see cycling as an option, rather than buses and trains. Buses and trains are as much of a problem as cars, because they encourage people to be lazy. The other flaw of buses and trains is that they are inflexible. 

    If I was unlucky commuting home then I would miss the bus, have to wait an hour, and the bus journey would take 50 minutes. I’d waste two hours, for a one hour walk. It was as fast to walk, as to take a bus. That’s why I hate buses. Between the time you wait, and the time the bus takes it is very often just as fast to walk, especially for small hops. 

    We need cycling to become a serious and viable option. Cars, buses and trains are keeping us prisoner. If we move around by bike then we gain our freedom. Bikes are fast, have minimal carbon footprint, and open up the world. 

  • The Environmentally Unfriendly Farmer

    The Environmentally Unfriendly Farmer

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    For several months I was not bothered by the noise of an environmentally unfriendly farmer. This farmer loves to use a really old tractor. He loves to turn on the engine and let it run for minutes at a time, without moving. It is running now, as he fills the container with water and pesticide, or whatever he is concocting. A rational human being would cut the engine when a tractor is not moving, to save on fuel, and cost, and to protect the environment.

    Not this farmer. This farmer just turns on the engine and lets it run. There is just one case where I have seen an engine running when a vehicle is not moving. Deicing trucks. With a deicing truck you need to keep gallons of water and deicing fluid at a certain temperature so that they are ready for work, on shift.

    A tractor is not a deicing truck. A tractor should be like a car, equipped with start/stop technology, so that when the machine is stopped for refuelling and more, the engine does not run. This would save on fuel, air and noise pollution, and maintenance costs.

    I often think that it is a shame that we are seeing the emergence of electric trucks and cars, but no one is thinking of electric tractors. Electric tractors would make sense.

    Of all the professions that would benefit from environmentalism and environmental consciousness, farmers are it. If global warming leads to drought they lose their crop. If the air is polluted and precipitation is polluted they suffer. If the soil is emptied of nutrients, they suffer. A few seasons ago farmers asked for the right to keep using petrochemicals on their fields and this made no sense. They asked to have the right to destroy their own environment, and when the swiss voters said yes, they said “thank you”.

    Of course farmers have to earn their living, but their behaviour is unsustainable, so farming will become harder, rather than easier.

  • A Camera Bike

    A Camera Bike

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    In Spain I keep seeing the BKL Prolimp bikes and I like them. They’re tricycles rather than bikes but I think they could be useful. Instead of transporting a broadcast camera and tripod in a car or smart you could transport them on the back of this bike. Instead of a bin bag though I would have the tripod bag and find a way to fix the camera as well.

    I don’t like the price. These bikes are 3300 euros according to at least one site. I like these as a curiousity. It’s nice to have transport like this for cleaning, rather than a pickup truck or small car. You’re outdoors, riding a bike over small distances.

    I saw a helmet being used as a parking brake so I don’t know whether these bikes come with a parking brake or whether they have to be improvised.

    I know this post is random. I am lacking inspiration.

  • Walking from Village to Village, and Village to Town

    Walking from Village to Village, and Village to Town

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The conversation is too often about designing cities to be car-free, but I would argue that designing the countryside to require less frequently would be more advantageous. The reason for this is that walking from village to village, and from villages to towns eliminates the need for, and appeal of the car. If the need for a car is mooted by making the sides of roads pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists, we reduce the allure of the car.

    From March to June I walked around one million eight hundred and fifty thousand steps between villages according to the pedometer++ app. In that time I have walked through rain, wind, mud, and streams. In the process, I have come to the conclusion that the grass on the sides of roads needs to be cut more frequently.

    When the grass at the side of the road is not cut we are forced to walk through increasingly longer grass from week to week. On a dry day this doesn’t matter so much but on a rainy it does. On a rainy day if the grass is cut regularly you’d get wet from the rain over a period of time.

    When the grass is long you get soaked within a few steps. Rainwater goes from the grass, to your shoes, and onto your trousers, and other time it works its way down to the soles of your feet and up your trousers, through to your t-shirt and beyond. By the end of a walk you’re drenched through.

    If the grass had been cut you’d be wet, but it would take longer. If you’ve been drenched from walking through long grass frequently enough the idea of getting soaked yet again encourages you to walk on the side of the road, rather than the grass bank. This affects traffic fluidity because a pedestrian on the road has to be avoided. If they’re in the grass then the problem is resolved.

    When I drive along narrow roads and I see pedestrians or cyclists I slow down to the speed at which I would like to be passed, if I was the one walking. This is also true of cyclists. Drivers seldom understand the effect that their speed and proximity has on vulnerable road users.

    When you’re walking between villages you sometimes have to walk on the road because hedges and other vegetation make it impossible to walk off of the road. In some cases, when walking at the side of the road I have come across thorny plants. Walking into them, without knowing that they were thorny is a one time mistake. After that you walk on the road.

    We could walk along agricultural roads but there are two issues with agricultural roads. The first is that people drive cars down them at speed so it’s no better than walking by the side of the road, but the second is people with dogs.

    When you’re afraid of dogs it’s more interesting to walk in the grass by the side of the road than agricultural roads.

    I should add some context. I walk along the sides of roads, rather than agricultural paths because I like to walk for two to three hours at a time. To walk for two to three hours I need at least ten to fifteen kilometres of paths and routes to walk along. I could get in a car, drive for an hour or two and walk in the mountains, but over the last two years I have found that I can get the same workout without the use of the car.

    I have found that there are plenty of nice things to see, without burning fossil fuels.

    The reason for which people do not walk or cycle between villages, and from villages to towns, is that they see roads as dangerous. Drivers too often, see pedestrians and cyclists, as a nuisance. If the grass at the side of the road was kept short enough for pedestrian trails to form and be used, then the need for cars would be reduced. If the need for cars between towns and villages is reduced, so is the need within towns. Urban planners, before removing cars from towns, should think about getting people into the habit of walking between villages and towns. If you get people out of that habit, then it is easier to get them into the habit of catching the train.

  • Interdependence – An environmental film in eleven parts

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.

    When I watched one part it reminded me of Les Vacances de Mr Hulot, a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals. At one point everyone puts on a gas mask because of the pollution.

    The theme of polluted air is in two other short films. Olmo, is about a grandfather who told his son about a tree he planted as a child. At the end of this segment, we see him go up to it. The notion of planting a tree as a child and going to see it as an adult is a good one.

    Megha’s Divorce also explores the theme of air pollution but this time in Italy. A city is so polluted that a woman wants to divorce her husband, so that she may take her son to a city that is less polluted. In conclusion, the judge states that they have a six-month suspension of divorce, so that people may stop polluting as much, and see if things improve.

    I often hear that we should replace the car with buses and public transport but this is a flawed solution. A better solution is for people to walk if it is within walking distance, or take a bike if it is not. Too often the conversation focuses on one machine being replaced by another. The conversation does not see the opportunity presented by our own legs, for walking and cycling.

    Although it wasn’t the aim I liked The Hungry Seagull for the way shots were framed. I liked the shot where we are behind a seagull chick, looking out to sea. In Natural History documentaries by the BBC, the voice-over usually tells us this. For once we see it, feeling empathy for the seagull waiting to feed.

    Qurut explores the notion that if we are not careful we will find that ingredients are missing for specific recipes. When I listened to this podcast episode it spoke about replacing animal meat with lab-grown meat and two themes came to mind. The first one is related to jobs. How many jobs, traditions, and species of cattle would be lost if we stopped the raising of cattle. How would the production of milk for cheese, milk and ice cream change? Simultaneously how would the rural landscape of so many nations change if we stopped eating specific animals?

    When a species that was bred by man is no longer needed it dies out, as various breeds of cattle did, after either the First or Second World War as they shifted from using animals to do work to using machines.

    At the end of the screening someone when people were speaking after the film someone asked “How can we get more people to see this film?” and my first thought was that it would be easy to share this on YouTube but another way to share these films would be as video podcasts. Each podcast could include a panel discussion to discuss the themes explored by each individual film. School children, University students and people with an interest in the topics could watch each episode and develop their understanding of each theme.

    Imagine for example that Olmo is combined with a discussion about Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees, imagine that A Sunny day is used to discuss plastic pollution and extinction. Imagine that Qurut is used to discuss sustainability.

    The film has been out for about three months, screened at various film festivals and events. Interviews and television appearances are here.

  • Half a Million Steps in July

    Half a Million Steps in July

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    In July this year I took half a million steps as I was banned from driving. I’m using that phrase for comedic effect. As I had one arm in a sling driving was out of the question for a few weeks and then it was out of the question because my tendons and muscles were in need of physio therapy.

    Carbon Footprint

    By not using the car for around one and a half months alone I avoided using at least one tank of diesel for every month of injury and one scooter tank of petrol per week of petrol.

    By not using buses I saved on my carbon footprint too. Buses are large and heavy and they are not always full. This means that walking is still more environmentally friendly.

    In a normal month I walk from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand steps. The application estimates that I walked 47 hours. That’s almost a weekend of walking. This excludes all the time spent walking when cooking or doing other tasks.

    Waking everywhere is time consuming. Instead of taking half an hour to do a task you have to count at least an hour for the closest shop and an hour and a half to two hours for another shop I like to use.

    Walking everywhere requires you to think of time differently. Simple tasks become events and the world shrinks. For over a month my world was anything within two or three hours walking distance.

    Optimised for vehicles

    We often hear about how towns are not optimised for walking but neither is the countryside. If you walk along secondary roads you have to deal with tractors, pesticides, combine harvesters and other machines. On some rural paths you have to deal with dogs that are not kept on a leash and when you’re afraid of dogs this can be anxiety inducing.

    Too many roads connecting villages to shopping centres and too many roads connecting villages have no provision for walkers. This summer I had to choose between walking through thick grass and plants to stay on the side of the road or walk on the road with drivers not moderating their speed. This is paradoxical as, when you’re driving you always get stuck 20km/hr below the speed limit. When you’re walking, just as when you’re cycling, people feel the need to make the gap between oncoming traffic rather than slow down and wait a few seconds.

    I came to the conclusion that they should put bike lane markings on every single road if they are unwilling to prepare and maintain walking paths by the side of the road. As a pedestrian I used bike lanes as if they were pavements mainly because of bushes and long vegetation. I believe that as a general rule cars should only be allowed to drive into a cycle lane when overtaking is not possible otherwise. People need to be trained to see bike lanes like bus lanes and avoid them unless there is no alternative.

    The Wearing Down of Shoes

    One of the things I love to do is look at the soles of my shoes and see how much wear they have as well as whether it’s symmetrical. This time around the wear on my shoes was symmetrical. There is a downside to this wear. Those bits of shoe are left on the roads and in the grass waiting to be washed into the rivers and rivers before making their way to the lakes and seas.

    Final Thoughts

    Taking half a million footsteps in a month was a pleasant and enjoyable experience. It allowed me to slow down in a way that I have done before. It allowed me to explore even more than I did last year. It got me used to walking to some locations rather than take the car. I walk to physio therapy, to the shop nearby and to the swimming pool. It means that I am not subjected to modern traffic and that for some tasks at least, my carbon footprint is reduced. For the price of a single tank of fuel you can buy two pairs of shoes that will last half a million steps apiece.