Jeeze, Julia!

Where I work I watch a lot of TV. This sounds depressing, but usually I enjoy it because Ryan & I have chosen not to have cable at home so it’s nice occasionally to tune into the electric buzz that we have all grown up on. I find so comforting. I hardly ever watch what is on TV, but I’m there, while it’s on, while one of my clients flips through the channel or falls asleep to it in the lazy afternoon. I never get to choose the channel, but it’s also very interesting just to be a fly on someone’s wall & see what they choose for their own entertainment. Thus, most of the time the shows they choose are not anything that I would watch myself; Judge Judy, Sid the Science Kid, or Sesame Street are some of the favs. However, today one of my clients fell asleep to one show, & a half hour block later something really interesting came on!

I missed what the show was called — I was sweeping, or taking out the trash, or balling up my yarn, but my ears perked when I heard “the best part is that this refrigerator is completely biodegradable!” I swear my reaction to this line nearly caused my body whiplash! The television show went on to explain something called the Mitti Cool, a fridge invented in India by a man who just wanted to make modern technology more available for the poor. The turning point for Mr. Manshuk Lal Raghavji Bhai Prajapati, the founder of Mitti Cool, was when his wife asked him to go to the market to buy her a non-stick frying pan. At the market, this simple technological additive cost him $500 rupees (about $10), which was way out of the price range for families suffering in poverty. So he decided that he would take it upon himself to develop a frying pan with a natural non-stick surface that was affordable for the poor.

He had experience working with clay, & eventually invented not only a clay frying pan, but also a refrigerator  made from clay that is thus 100% biodegradable & keeps food fresher since the material it is made from is breathable. It makes me wonder about the huge amount of waste that we’re creating from all of our devices. How many electronic devices do you have in your household? How many computers, TVs, cellphones, kitchen appliances, ipods, etc.? How many have you had in the past & discarded when they either broke, or became obsolete when newer models were released? These items don’t just disappear when we are done with them. They’re all still out there in the world somewhere taking up space & expelling serious contaminants like lead, cadmium, beryllium and brominated flame retardants.

Imagine if we could get our electronic devices to work without all of that? Then when we discard them, they will just sink right back into the soil the same way that it came alive.

We have the knowledge. Now, how can we use it?

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