Necessity Engineering

I am a big fan of taking something that may be past its prime and revitalizing it with a little elbow grease. There are times that i fix whatever it is and there are times when I change its purpose all together. The trouble  I see is that I am one of very few people who actually do this.

It is convenient in our society to throw something out rather than fix it, after all, stuff is relatively cheap so why bother putting the time in to fix a broken whatever-it-is? This attitude is fine and dandy for the affluent like myself, but what of the less fortunate? What about the people who barely scrape by? They don't have the luxury of wasting anything.

Growing up in a lower middle class home taught me many things the most pertinent is waste not, want not. I learned from an early age that with a little imagination, some work, some base knowledge and patience there is no limit to what can be re-purposed. These days the term most thrown around Pintrest is 'Up-Cycled,' but whatever you call it doesn't matter.

It was, however, refreshing to learn that RPI's chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World had done a little up-cycling of their own. While Mr. Warmann's discussion petered off into nonsense, he did have a few attention grabbing points. Well, really just one... RPI's ESW has up-cycled several shipping containers into buildings of sorts for communities in Haiti. I'm not sure who pointed it out or if I read it on line, but these shipping container structures  can be used as mobile orphanages, medical centers, houses, pizzerias, and anything else requiring a rigid frame to house some facility.

While this isn't necessarily turning old tires into crocodile lawn ornaments, it is infinitely better than letting these containers rust some where.

I couldn't help but think of the Terre Cafe as I walked to my car today. Mainly because there is a little pond behind Sage that would be perfect for some Koi, Talapia or even some hardy goldfish, and with a little imagination, some pipes, a pump or two, and some worms a nice little aquaponics system could be built to feed the green house. A small solar array could provide power to the pumps and a natural convection solar heater could increase the heat inside the green house. 

All it takes is imagination, some work and the Bear Necessities and nothing is impossible.