A Billboard That Finally Has a Reason to Exist: Free Water

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In Lima, Peru, there is a new billboard that is selling an idea by providing free water to the local population. Water access is an issue in the area for a variety of reasons which impacts poverty and other water-related issues in the area. A local engineering school wanted to show potential new students what impact they can have on their country and chose to make a billboard a functional piece of infrastructure with simple engineering.

Usually when billboards are mentioned on this site it’s because they are being banned or taxed more to fund city beautification projects. It’s nice to be able to show a billboard that does something out of the ordinary to improve people’s lives.

“We wanted future students to see how engineers can also solve social needs in daily basis kinds of situations,” said Alejandro Aponte, creative director at Mayo DraftFCB.

The city’s residents could certainly use the help. According to a 2011 The Independent piece ominously titled “The desert city in serious danger of running dry,” about 1.2 million residents of Lima lack running water entirely, depending on unregulated private-company water trucks to deliver the goods — companies that charge up to 30 soles (US $10) per cubic meter of H2O, or as The Independent notes, 20 times what more well-off residents pay for their tapwater.

Read more here.

Thanks to Kathryn!

Inject More Serendipity Into Your Online Adventures

Not Recommended For You is a new website that is a reaction to all the other websites that recommend content based on what you do. Google tailors your search results so they are different than your friend’s and other websites track what you do on their sites to drive you to click more. Not Recommended For You is the opposite of that, it’s like walking through the library and discovering random books.

We’re big fans of the Internet, but not always the biggest fans of its recommendations. Our browsing history – what we’ve clicked, liked, watched or listened to – is turned into “Recommended For You’s” by smart algorithms. “Not Recommended For You” is a collection of video recommendations by people across the globe answering the question “What would you recommend, if you could recommend anything at all, to someone you don’t know?”.

The answers aren’t “algorithm smart” or even recommended specifically for you. But, they feel personal and turned out more unpredictable than we could imagine, ranging from practical recommendations like “try to live like a siamese twin for a week” or “choose small bad looking apples for the perfect apple pie” to motivational recommendations like “look up (…) if you can see the sky there’s always something to strive for”. Now, we’re turning it into a collaborative project by inviting people online to share their recommendations on our site.

Check out Not Recommended For You.

Food Tank is a Think Tank for Food

Food Tank is a new initiative to bring attention to the complexity of food systems. They aim to educate people about how foods gets from the ground to your table – and how that process relates to the world at large. Here’s a recent release of their’s looking at the positive impact of family farmers:

Family farmers—small and large enhance biodiversity, protect natural resources, and improve local economies. The video highlights how family farmers, small and large, are using innovative agroecological practices to increase yields, improve incomes, and foster environmental sustainability. And Food Tank emphasizes how family farmers are a critical line of defense against economic disparity, water scarcity, deforestation, and extreme weather events.

Read more.

Portland Continues Support For Sustainable Transportation

Portland, Oregon is already known for its amazing support of bicycle riders and pedestrians. Now they have taken their commitment to making their city even better by building the largest bicycle parking in North America. Similar parking for bikes is available in other places like in Amsterdam and Tokyo so seeing this come to North America is a good sign for cyclists.

As reported on the Bike Portland blog, a 657-apartment project planned for Portland's Inner East neighborhood will have a whopping 1,200 bike parking spaces, an acknowledgment of the city's cyclo-centric culture.

One of the architects of the project, which is being developed in a part of town where "mid-century planning principles called for surface parking lots in lieu of dense, walkable communities," explained:

"The demographic that we expect to show up here is going to be young urban professionals and it's going to be, we think, young families as well," said Kyle Andersen of Portland-based GBD Architects. "They all have bikes. When I think about my own neighborhood, the families I see riding there, if you move those people into a building they're still going to have a bike. I think you have to be ready for that demographic to be there, otherwise you're restricting yourself."

Read more here.

Thanks to Mike!

The Amazing Impact Of Painting A Roof White

During summer heat air conditioners are used extensively and this can increased energy consumption can be crippling. Black outs occur in the summer thanks to people cooling their homes and workplaces – but these power issues can be avoided. By simply painting roofs white it can help cool buildings and lower energy bills. Painting multiple roofs white can a really positive effect on a large area.

They found that urban expansion alone could increase summer temperatures by up to 6°F in some areas in addition to greenhouse gas-induced warming by 2100. The Mid-Atlantic and Midwest seeing the biggest overall summer temperature increases.

In all areas, white roofs could completely offset the combined increase in temperatures, and if deployed across the entire megapolitan area, could actually reduce summer temperatures compared to the 1990-2010 average.

The benefits of cool roofs were particularly prominent for the urban areas stretching from Washington, D.C. to New York, Chicago and Detroit, and California’s Central Valley.

Cooler summertime temperatures could reduce demand for air conditioning, which could both save money and reduce the chances of electricity grid blackouts.

Read more at Bloomberg.