As we know, solar panels doesnt emmitt any CO2. If put correctly on the roof, it can make full use of the sun shining on it. We have some own solar panels on our roof.
While the specifics behind solar power are perhaps a bit on the technical side for some homeowners, the basic principles are straightforward and easy to understand. Standard solar panels - or photovoltaics (PV) as they are technically called - generate an electric current by catching light particles from the sun. This current is transferred to wires that lead to an inverter. The inverter converts this energy into AC power for your home and can be used throughout the home in a variety of ways. As we produce more current than we need, we sell the part we doesnt need.
*Due to server mistakes I couldnt load up any picture.
Our apartment is heated with heating oil. Statistics show that 40% of swiss households are heated with heating oil. But the tendency is decreasing. Many new buildings rely on renewable energy.
We live on a farm and that's why we have such an old heating system with wood.
As you can see on the picture, we heat with wood sticks.
We burn the wood sticks and this creates heat / energy. The heat is then distributed through the pipes to the various radiators in the whole house.
With a wood heater system you can use the raw material (wood) and the wood is usually also available regionally.
So my house is being heated by wood chips. This may sound strange at first, but its efficiency is really interesting.
What is the point of heating with wood chips?
We heat our house with resources from the region and the value creation process is being held in Switzerland. Wood is a price worthy resource and very stable with its price. The new modern heating systems cause a bit of particulate matter which stays way below the given limit. The electricity needed is below 1 % of the energy output. You will be heating CO2-neutral with this system.
Most systems are fully automatic and the cleaning is not very time-consuming. One big negative is the logistic behind it. You will need a storage room and a direct driveway towards it.
How does it work?
Our property is part of a commonhold ownership (Stockwerkeigentümergemeinschaft). Therefore the heating is organized for the whole community. The wood chips heating is not on commonhold ground (gemeinschaftlicher Grund) but the heat comes from a local entrepreneur. He has a giant construction that burns wood chips and leads the energy to households through the whole community. When we changed the heating system a few years ago, we had to connect to his separate pipe system. Unfortunately, I cannot show you the heating system with a picture because it is locked away.
Do you have a piece of clothing that you haven't worn for ages but you can't get rid of it? Wouldn't it be nice to make other people happy with it and help to reduce todays useless consumption? Look no further! Read the following article for more information.
Our idea
We want to revolutionize the process of clothes sharing. We thought that instead of giving your clothes to a secondhand store, you could put them online on a special website. On this website people can post their clothes and others can borrow them for a special occasion. So for example if you want a dress for a party, but you don't have the means to buy a new one, maybe on the website you spot a dress you really like. The website would have filters where you can filter the color, size, material, brand and lenghts of the clothes. After the event you can easily return the clothes to the owner. This way the clothes can be shared multiple times, won't rot in the closet and can bring joy to new people. More...
Introduction
Every year, many young students have to pay around 1000 Swiss francs for their new school books in order to start the BMS. Therefore many trees are getting felled which is not good for our environment. Additionally the old books would just get burned which creates a lot of co2 emissions and wastes a large amount of energy. So wouldn't it be better if the students who finished the BMS could just give their books to the new students? This way we could safe a lot of trees and money at the same time.
My idea
This is the idea I have and which I believe could help a lot of students and the environment at the same time. More...
Our planet has not enough ressources to use them forever. We need to share now ! Everyone of us should think for himself, how to share things in his privacy to protect our environment and the planet. We made some discussions and deep thoughts and we came up with the idea to share buildings.
The humanity has built a lot of building in the century. Is it really necessary to build so much more of them or can’t we just share those who are already built? An important reason is the space. We could use it better for plant trees for example.
Of course is our population growing, but we need to think about our nature, because if we act like now in the future, it will disappear. We can't raise up our children like our parents did with us. Stop wasting to much resources, SHARE!
Picture: Future City
Group: Giorgio Zanatta, Silvan Vlaj
Team: Matteo und Alex
Goal: The Goal is to share the clothes with each other to reduce the embodied energy and the resources needed to produce new clothes.
Reason: Nowadays people buy or order too many clothes. This is bad for our environment as we use many resources and emit a lot of Co2 during transportation. With our idea we want to reduce this sort of consumption.
Saved resources: Let us imagine a cotton shirt that weighs around 200g. To get the cotton for this one shirt, about half a kilo of raw cotton is needed. To grow this amount of cotton, an average of about 7m² of land is needed. Seven square meters of land are therefore needed to produce the raw material for a normal cotton shirt alone. To get to the finished product, however, several steps are still missing, such as sewing the fabrics and transport from the country of production to the shops. All these steps consume different amounts of energy and so, in total, almost 11 kilograms of CO2 are emitted in the life of a cotton shirt. With our idea you could save all the energy and resources!
Our idea: Our idea is to use an application developed by us to give the clothes of the population to other people for free or for little money. You are probably wondering how this works? You register in the app and then you can chat with others about costs and how or where the clothes are handed out.
The whole project has many advantages. Some of them can sell their old clothes for free or even for a small profit and poorer people can also get wearable clothes. But the most important thing is that our environment is protected.
Now it's your turn. The development of the app is currently in the final phase. You can help us by promoting the app for example via social media etc. Let's save our environment for a better future for all of us.
- blood
- clothes
- stadium
- buildings
ideas by Nicole, Giorgio, Diego and Silvan
Team: Sangeetha & Yllza
We had the idea about sharing books. We came up with this idea because we know a lot of people buy books and never read or use them again and we know that libraries already exist but we want to motivate people to use this kind of ressource that is already offered more.
Our thought was inventing an app where they can lent the book as an e-book with their member Card and that gives you access to the libraries. To receive the member Card you pay a monthly amount of money.
For those who want the e-book as a "book in paper" they can delivered home but they have to pay the charges for the transport.
With this system we might motivate People to share and read more books, because we know many people are to lazy to go to the library.