Category: Sustainability - Page 4

Energy Audits; What is it, why it’s necessary and how can it save you money

Introduction: All around the globe, Energy costs are rising. In South Africa, we also have to deal with an unstable energy grid and increasing blackouts impacting how we live and work. With added environmental concerns, understanding your energy usage and finding ways to reduce it has become more crucial than ever. One powerful tool in

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Building a Cob and Lime Pizza Oven and what we learned in the Process

Architecture, Bio-Construction, Construction, Design, Sustainability

What is Cob? Cob is an ancient building material that has been used for centuries worldwide. It is a natural and sustainable material made by mixing earth, sand, straw, and water. Cob has many advantages over other building materials; It is cheaper, more eco-friendly, and has excellent insulation properties. This blog post will discuss how

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Some of the best and most successful rewinding projects from across the globe

Sustainability

What is rewilding? Rewilding is a form of environmental restoration that include multiple disciplines and can include reforestation, ecological rehabilitation, and re-establishing keystone species into degraded ecosystems. All across the globe, environmental scientists are testing strategies for rehabilitating and restoring ecologically degraded environments to their former glory. This benefits the ecosystem’s biodiversity and can even

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5 Sustainability trends to look out for in 2023

Sustainability

The world is waking up to the devastating effects and long-term damage that rising CO2 levels can cause in the earth’s atmosphere and increasing global temperatures. In the past couple of years, we have seen record-breaking temperatures all across the globe and extreme weather wreaking havoc and causing large-scale destruction from wildfires to flooding to

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An introduction to foraging – Sustenance from the wild

Farming, Gardening, Sustainability

Our ancestors, as far back as the hunter-gathers, foraged in nature for part of their food. A recent archaeological find in Iraq by the Liverpool John Moores University revealed that Neanderthals survived on various berries, wild nuts and grasses, and dried meat. From then to now, we have domesticated a vast array of food crops

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Why you should get rid of your lawn

Gardening, Sustainability

Modern-day suburbia is dominated by one garden feature: the well-manicured lawn. It has become so synonymous with suburban living that those of us, who dare to let our properties grow wild, are sometimes judged severely by our neighbours. It is rare to find a garden without some kind of lawn. I understand why it is

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Architecture and memory

Architecture, Construction, Design, Sustainability

Have you ever arrived or entered a building you had never visited, and it somehow felt familiar? Or revisited a childhood holiday destination and were somehow taken back to your youth? Almost like a memory triggered by a smell or Deja Vu, this undefined phenomenon could profoundly impact how we experience and live in our

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Natural heating and cooling strategies for (almost) every climate

Construction, Design, Sustainability

Introduction For thousands of years before the invention of electricity, civilizations like the Persians in the Arabian desert or Celtic people in the British Isles designed their homes and cities around ancient practices to help regulate the temperature in their homes. Passive heating and cooling have been developed over decades, each generation refining and developing

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Can Urban Farming help solve global food security?

Farming, Gardening, Sustainability

Since the pandemic started in 2020, we have noticed food shortages once distribution networks became interrupted. We saw food spoiling on docks while people in large cities across the globe struggled to find necessities. The UN still predicts that by 2050 almost 68% of the world population will live in high density urban and suburban areas. Decentralising food production with the

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Introduction to Water management and tips for your garden and home

Sustainability

Water is one of our most valuable resources on the planet. No plant or animal species can survive without water. With rising ocean temperatures, the water cycle on our planet is changing, and the distribution of water is sure to have a significant impact on society in the future. Even though our planet is 71%

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