I lost my hat

I lost my adventure hat. This might not seem like a big deal, but I have worn this hat on every big adventure I have had for more than 10 years. I know there will be other hats and other adventures, but I miss it all the same. As part of my mourning, here are some highlights that I actually have pics of:

North Face 50m

Wasatch 100m

John Muir Trail 2014 

Zion 100m 2014

Zion 100m

Bighorn 100m 2014

Bighorn

Big Sur 2014

John Muir Trail 2013

JMT

Rae Lakes 2013

North Face 50m 2013

Run Rabbit Run 100m 2013

RRR 100

Desolation 7 summits 2013

4 pass loop - Maroon Bells 2013

White River 50m 2013

Bishop High Sierra 50m 2013

Moab 2013

Holy Cross Wilderness 2008

Jordan 2005

In these days it was called my "I'm not from around here" hat

Alright, enough of that. Bye bye hat.

Civil Religion in Jordan - a Wordle of my Senior Paper

I found a copy of my Senior Paper, so I wordled it. I applied Robert Bellah's concept of Civil Religion to Habitat for Humanity Jordan, and their work building bridges (and homes) between Muslim and Christian communities there.

Philip, who was the executive director of Habitat then, was also the person I worked with at EGT on the R3 Recycling program.

EGT is Famous, Goodbye to Jordan, and the Next Step

It has been some time since my last post, and a lot has happened! EGT and the recycling program have grown, and have grown famous!

First Treehugger profiled us and highlighted the work of Andreas Petsas and Glen Walker. I mentioned Glen and Andreas in the last post, they are Manufacturing Engineers and recent graduates of Cambridge University. They did a tremendous job of following leads and analyzing the networks of recycling in Jordan. We joked that at the end of their weeks in Jordan they knew more about the big picture of recycling in Jordan than anyone in the country and it was probably true!

More recently, Jordan Business wrote a feature article on the accomplishments of EGT. It is a great article and gives a picture of the whole company, including the recycling business.

I left Jordan in June. I never posted an official goodbye, but I just want to say how grateful I am to everyone I lived and worked with. It was an amazing time and I learned so much. Thank you all!

I will start writing about my new enterprise from now on. The hiatus in the blog has been due to demands of the entrepreneurial venture I am currently involved with, Colorado Forest and Energy. From now on you can expect posts to be relevant to that business, distributed clean electricity generation and the clean tech world in general.

Onward!

EAB update

It is just over 1 week until I head back home, I thought I would update with some of the improvements Magid has made to the site.

Here he is with the PET in its new, hopefully temporary home. Those bunkers behind are also full. This is about 5 tons of PET, but we have some ideas about buyers so it will hopefully be more than an eyesore soon.

All materials will be sorted and put directly into tire bays now, this will decrease the number of bags we have to use. Magid is showing us plastic. The bays are sized so that he knows about how much they should weigh when they are full, a full one should be about a truckload. When they are full he weighs them for the exact number and sends them to sale.

Tire garden looks great. Eggplant, grapes, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, cauliflower, excellente.

This is for you know who.

Petra

Well, after 3 visits to Jordan and 3 months on this one I finally made it to Petra.

It was really beautiful and I am glad I waited to do it with the Julemeister.

The Treasury.

Andreas in front of the treasury. Andreas and Glen came from Cambridge to do an anlysis of our systems, especially making suggestions on what to do with all of that PET. They did a really excellent job, and after talking to all of the different organizations working on recycling, most of whom didn't know about each other, we decided they know more about recycling in Jordan than any other 2 people. They studied the informal sector, the Municipality, NGOs, the private sector, and EGT. Now we have dreams about conveyors and 40 ft shipping containers.

This is Glen. I should really post his pics, they are really amazing.

Plastic Remanufacturing

These pics are from a while back, I forgot to post them, some shots of a factory that buys plastic from scavengers and makes office chairs.

Injection molder

Grinder and a pile of nylon.

A different grinder.

Not the most organized factory.

Ghabawi Landfill

I got to go out and visit the big landfill that is receiving waste from several big cities including Amman. For someone working on a recycling project it was a pretty motivating experience.

This column of smoke was coming up from a power plant on the way to the dump. We asked the guys around it what was going on, they said they gathered all the trash from around there and burned it. We ask why, given that they were literally neighbors of the dump, they didn't take it there. They didn't really have an answer for that.

The weight bridge, you get weighed in, and then again empty on the way out.

The expanding edge. The dump is done in layers, which is covered each day with soil.

Everything that isn't soil is from today so far, it was about 11am.

A municipal truck with a compactor bulldozer behind it.

This bulldozer is not a compactor, you can tell by the caterpillars.

This is methane bubbling up through the leachate, 2 pretty horrible things. The leachate is literally trash juice, and this is coming from the completed cell 1. Cell 1 is 3.5 million tons of garbage. The methane coming out is 21x more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

This is a leachate treatment pool. Right now they are not actually treating the leachate. This, combined with the fact that cell 1 was overfilled, means that this toxic juice is getting into the soil and then the groundwater. It is the most foul substance I have ever seen. Yummers.

Garden Update

About time I update the garden, it is taking off!

Here you can see the three main beds, bottom to top you see lettuce, tomatoes, and eggplant. The buckets have lettuce, it is growing too big for the plot so we are expanding! The raised beds have sage, the a grape.

This is looking through the plum tree at other beds. Fruit on the Plum oh my! The buckets have Rocket, Arugula, Jar Jeer, whatever you want to call it. So does the first bed. Behind that are 5 new strawberry plants. The long beds, from right to left, are broccoli, rocket, and cauliflower. In the seed starters there are pumpkins, lettuce, lavender, brussel sprouts, carrots, celery, and parsley. In the way back you can see our mutant 2 foot tall green onions, they are amazingly tasty.

Looking through one of the apple trees (there are 4) at the olive tree.

These are the massive broccoli next to the massive onions, we need to figure what compost we put on those beds!

We have an almond on our almond tree! Several of the brand new trees made an effort at fruit, very proud of them.

I think this is a peach tree, it is covered with baby fruit. Whatever fruit it is we will feast.