Life With an Electric Car
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Life With an Electric Car

Byrichard

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
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Cycling from Nyon To Geneva and Back

Byrichard

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

Byrichard

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
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A Camera Bike

Byrichard

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
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Walking from Village to Village, and Village to Town

Byrichard

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

Byrichard

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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSKBBztInug


When I watched one part it reminded me of , 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
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Half a Million Steps in July

Byrichard

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.

A Plastic Ocean – Recycle more
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A Plastic Ocean – Recycle more

Byrichard

A Plastic Ocean is an excellent documentary detailing the problems and threats caused by plastics entering water systems and eventually reaching the seas and oceans. This documentary starts with a team trying to film whales. When they finally do find the whales off the coast of Sri Lanka they notice that there is a film of oil and plastic build up miles from the shore. They say that this bit of ocean should be clean as the beaches had been unused for years. They suspect that the plastic had been freed after heavy rains flushed them out to sea.

I went to the Graduate institute to watch this film last night and the crowd was already well informed. When one speaker asked, “Did you know that the Plastic Ocean problem was this serious” at least half of the room, if not more raised their hand. When people were asked about the zero waste movement at least a third of people raised their hand. The auditorium was filled to capacity.

Plastic and snorkeling

When I was snorkeling in Spain a few  weeks ago I was looking for fish and I saw a few small fish. In the past I had been scuba diving in these waters and surfaced to be surrounded by jellyfish. If you’re stung by a jelly fish you don’t need to use urine. Olive oil and seawater will calm the inflamation. I thought that I saw a jellyfish but as I swam closer I saw that it was a transparent plastic bag floating near the surface. I grabbed the bag and I placed it in my semi-drysuit sleeve and eventually swam back to come out of the water. As I walked back from the activity I picked up a second plastic bag and threw them away. If these bags were left in the Mediterranean then sea turtles and other animals might eat them.

Environmental impact

When plastics reach the ocean seventy percent sinks to the bottom of the sea and can remain there for centuries. What does not sink is degraded by the sun but it is broken up, rather than broken down. What this means is that you go from plastic sheets to plastic pellets and these plastic pellets outnumber krill and plankton by a ratio of two to one. This means that sea birds, fish and other animals higher up the food chain ingest plastic and it accumulates. Seabirds and whales ingest so much plastic that it fills their stomachs and they eventually die of starvation.

Everyday Recycling

It is at this moment that I am so happy to live in a canton where you can recycle PET in one container and all other plastics in another. This means that almost all of the plastic I use on a daily basis is recycled. It can be re-used for bags, car doors and more permanent uses.

 

Recycling is a simple and intuitive habit to have. My generation learned to recycle as children and we have kept up this habit for decades. It is so normal that we feel uneasy at festivals and events where we don’t have bins for PET, Aluminium and other products. In some cases I keep aluminium or PET bottles on me until I find a place where I can recycle them. I enjoy that at Swiss train stations you can now recycle paper, PET, Aluminium and other rubbish.

The advantage of recycling loops is that we use the primary material more than once. It means that we don’t need to waste energy and money on extracting oil and other primary materials. We simply recycle the materials. The concept of closed circuits was discussed.

An Environmentally Friendly Hike

If this post has inspired you to do more for the environment there is a wehike event organised by the Summit Foundation .

This is a hike inaugurating the partnership between WeHike and Summit Foundation, a Swiss ecological non-profit. The Foundation’s mission is to reduce the environmental impact of human activities -leisure activities in particular- in high-traffic locations like ski areas, by raising awareness and proposing concrete solutions. To this end, WeHike supports the Summit Foundation’s objectives by promoting and organising environmentally-aware hikes and waste collection & recycling operations in high mountains.

This is a two day hike near Les Diablerets.

A plastic Ocean is available to watch on Netflix and from other sources. It is worth watching as it will affect how you use plastic in future.

Ecosia – Planting trees with a search engine
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Ecosia – Planting trees with a search engine

Byrichard

Ecosia is an environmental search engine for those who want to do social good through their web browsing habits. The principle is simple. You go to the Ecosia main page and type in your search engine query. For every search engine query that you do ad revenue is generated. This ad revenue is then invested into tree growing projects in a number of countries.

Deforestation is a threat faced around the world because as trees are removed so the environment of certain species is destroyed and this can lead to the extinction of species. The other consequences of deforestation are that the soil runs off of the land and clogs rivers. It also means that the humidity that was kept around by the trees and plants is now gone.

When I worked as a video archivist I watched news items about refugees and how they were planting trees in their camps. They planted them as an investment in the future. Ecosia produced a video with a similar message which you can see above.

They currently have projects in Peru, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Indonesia. These projects cover a number of needs. They help to reforest areas where excessive logging has taken place such as in Peru. In Madagascar they are hiring villagers to replant the forests to help preserve biodiversity. In Burkina Faso they are planting trees to try to stop the desert from encroaching on the areas where people live. In Tanzania we find another conservation of biodiversity effort. In Indonesia they are planting ten tree species to stop the spread of Palm oil farming and to save the natural habitat of Orang Utangs.

Europe, North America and other parts of the world were once covered in forests that were thick and full of life. With population growth and development forests were cut down for firewood and to provide space for fields and more. It is nice to know that today there are projects like Ecosia that aim to reforest areas around the world so that future generations may still play and enjoy forested landscapes. Either install the Chrome plugin or bookmark the website.

 

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Dirty Gold War screening at the Graduate Institute.

Byrichard

I went to watch Dirty Gold War at the Graduate Institute at lunch time today. The film is interesting because it makes you think about the environmental impact of gold mining. We’re familiar with the stories of gold mines in South Africa. We’re familiar with the stories of the gold rush. We don’t often think of the environmental impact of Gold mining in rain forests in Latin America. This documentary introduces the topic well.

It brings our attention to the fact that when people buy luxury products like gold watches, bracelets and other objects they are buying objects that have no environmental or ethical credentials. It leads us to question when the luxury industries will be accountable to such considerations.

Mobile Phones, laptops, televisions and other devices all contain traces of gold. If that gold is sourced from environmentally unfriendly sources then we are contributing to the destruction of the rainforests and the poisoning of ecosystems. Fairphone and other companies with such goals benefit from such documentaries because we are shown why their goals are so important. It contextualises their mission and their reason for being. It also helps to put pressure on all electronics manufacturers to do more to reduce their impact on the environment.

Dirty Gold is a topic that does not get much attention. As I reach the conclusion of this blog post I find that Dirty gold points to a music album rather than gold mining. We need to raise awareness of this topic. People are wearing wedding wings, luxury products and using electronic devices that are in part for the degradation of the environment. As awareness of these issues grows so companies like Apple, Sony and others should work to ensure a clean product line, from raw material in the ground to the finished product.