It’s been awhile since I last undertook a significant construction project (years actually). Building this superstructure for a 2.9Kw solar photovoltaic array out of simple materials for my off-grid house was a personal challenge. The design is a replica of one my neighbor up the road devised. Except for a little help from my son in the beginning (digging the shelf into the hillside and placing 4 of the 6 steel pipe columns), I did the entire project myself. With this array charging a 595 amp hour battery in sunny California weather, I expect to rarely, if ever, need to use the back up generator!
Cutting an ancestral tree like this should be a crime, not only in British Columbia, but worldwide. We know that old growth forests sequester more carbon than young forests. These ancient giants dwarf our cleverness and can be relied upon to maintain the Earth’s carbon cycle, if only we would let them.
It is high time that benign substitutes for petroleum-based plastics be researched and developed. We’re poisoning the living earth, especially the oceans, and ourselves, with plastics pollution. Green chemistry and biomimicry hold great promise for homo sapiens most vexing challenges. Now if we can shift the funding from nuclear weapons modernization to life giving R&D producing products like this, we can leave our descendants a livable Earth. #materials #plastics #biomimicry #spiders #silk #petroleum #pollution prevention #innovation #ecology #green chemistry