Do you know where to dispose of frying cooking oil after making a delicious omelette?
Well, although not many people fry in their house anymore, whenever we do we throw the burnt oil down the sink drain or the toilet in some cases. This is one of the worst mistakes that we can prevent. Why do we do it? Simply because no one out there has ever told us how to do it adequately.
So here’s a simple solution: one should wait for the cooking oil to cool down and dispose of it in plastic or glass bottles and place them in garbage cans. A liter of oil, aka 34 fluid ounces, is enough to cause about one million liters of water (26,000 gallons) to become non-potable (unsafe for drinking), which is a sufficient amount for a person to use over a 14-year period.
If you can dispose of your oil at a recycling center, even better! It could be turned into bio-diesel or fuel. Care for the environment if you want it to care for you.
Here's an article on reducing soot when cooking in an open-air cookstove while burning dung or wood. Low-soot stoves will also help reduce global-warming by reducing the amount of black carbon that's released in traditional cooking practices.
During an energy crisis in Brazil an engineer found he could illuminate dark buildings by diffusing sunlight through bleach and water. Obviously the setup will only work during the day, but in communities where energy is expensive or unreliable, the sun provides a solution for dark places during the day.
"The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) at Colorado State University provides innovative training in community-based development (online and face-to-face), consultation, evaluation, and project support services for individuals and governmental, international non-governmental, and community-based organizations around the world."
Dr. Ozcan of UCLA has developed software that turns an ordinary cell phone camera into a mobile lab. The blood to be analyzed is photographed through a special filter placed over the camera lens, and then the image can be analyzed to see if the patient has HIV, malaria, or leukemia.
[Posted for Luis Chávez Rodríguez, EWB-BU's primary contact for Chirimoto and the founder of The-Chirimoto-Amazon project: The Hummingbird House]
This project develops the idea of a "Library-dining room," aimed at joining bibliographical information—a form of intellectual nourishment—and food—a form of corporal nourishment—in the context of rural communities where these two elements are generally dissociated.
This pilot program is possible thanks to the development of the first operational rural library in Chirimoto within the Department of Amazonas, housed in the community's Cultural Center: “The Hummingbird House.” In this area, and in the greater part of Northeastern Peru, where illiteracy rates border on 37% of the population, agricultural development tends to favor the monoculture farming of coffee, which results in caloric deficiency, particularly among infants in the region, with the consequent undernourishment of the area's children, despite its rich, arable land and its biodiversity.
The idea for the Library-Dining Room, a place as much for reading as for physical nourishment, is a concept that from its onset has aimed to satisfy two vital needs of human beings: physical and intellectual sustenance. The Library-Dining Room's activities are meant to be developed, especially in contexts where there is a "nutritional" deficiency of one or other, if not of both at the same time, places where poverty translates into illiteracy and undernourishment. In the Library-Dining Room of Chirimoto, the activities that are carried out depend upon the needs of its users; they may start off with developmental stages of learning, focusing on reading and writing and adult literacy, along with activities to reinforce the elementary education that takes place in the community's public school. All activities place an emphasis upon knowledge related to agriculture and corporal nourishment in order to promote healthy living. Learning will meet practice in the library-dining room, with the preparation of nutritious food that the readers will consume before or after their intellectual practices, depending upon the specific circumstances. Some of basic foods are obtained from the Cultural Center's student garden, the plot of land where the schoolchildren integrate what they have learned from their books or from the farmers in their community, who in this way contribute to the development of the program.
This program is complemented with the conception of an "Oral library", where male and female farmers transmit their knowledge to the younger generations, giving continuity to their oral tradition, which unfortunately is being lost in these regions. In much the same way, we are implementing a mobile library program based on the same pedagogical premises of the Library-dining room, in order to bring together books and the culture of efficient agricultural and nutritional practices in other local communities like Milpuc, Limabamba and Totora in Rodriguez de Mendoza province.
Luis Chávez Rodríguez
Founder of “Centro Cultural La casa del colibrí, Proyecto Chirimoto-Amazonas.”
(The-Chirimoto-Amazon project: The Hummingbird House.)
