In the Toaster Project, Thomas Thwaites took a toaster, bought for less than £5, and tried to remake it from basic raw materials. By trying to refine iron to make the element and mould recycled plastic to make the case, he demonstrated how fantastic our materials science and manufacturing expertise has become that we now take these products entirely for granted. He showed how totally disassociated we have become from the supply chain and impacts of our consumption. When you see him spending nearly a day burning LPG to try and reduce iron ore to iron with little success, the reality of embodied energy and the successful efforts of industry to increase energy efficiency become very much more real.
I am sure that the complete change of mindset required to “become a goat” will generate ideas which will stimulate innovative thinkers and designers like Thomas for many years to come. I look forward to reading his book, ‘Goatman: How I took a holiday from being human’.
Thinking outside the box in this way is a skill which should be nurtured.
Author: Jane Anderson
An expert in Life Cycle Assessment for the Construction industry
my recent tweets
- RT @J_Magoo: After the last 6 weeks building, I'm happy to finally launch dog-house.ie. This is a tool to record and find dereli…xxx 4 days ago
- 2nd reading of Whole Life Carbon Reporting Bill to regulate Embodied Carbon set for 25th November led by… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…xxx 1 week ago
- RT @ninodavidjordan: Applications now open for a new 4-year funded PhD studentship at UCL ISR, examining the implementation of embodied emi…xxx 1 week ago
- Well done @Simonsturgis twitter.com/RHarrabin/stat…xxx 2 weeks ago
- RT @OwenWintersgill: PhD scholarships for black (and black mixed 'race') students in Environmental and Life Sciences southampton.ac.uk/blog/sussed-ne…xxx 2 weeks ago
my tags
- #ECW2014
- #ECW2014 embodiedcarbon
- #EmbCarbonAction
- 2 degrees
- A Level
- Architect
- Arctic cloudwhitening sea-ice resources
- benchmarking
- benchmarks
- BRE
- BREEAM
- capital
- capital carbon
- carbon
- CEPMC
- climate change
- CO2
- construction
- constructionproductsassociation
- consultant
- contractor
- COP21
- CPA
- CPR
- Denmark
- developer
- Digitisation
- ecobuild
- Ecolabel
- ECO Platform
- Education
- embodied
- Embodied Carbon
- EN15804
- Environmental Externalities
- EPD
- events
- France
- GCB
- GCSE
- Germany
- GHG
- GPP
- greenhouse gases
- GWP
- IGT
- infographic
- infrastructure
- ireland
- LCA
- LCC
- LEED
- Life cycle costing
- manufacturer
- NASA
- NOAA
- Norway
- oregon
- PAS2080
- procurement
- recycling
- regulation
- RICS
- Ska
- Spain
- standards
- steel
- Sweden
- syllabus
- TC350
- transport
- UK
- USA
- video
- Xmas
-
Recent Posts
- My 2022 EPD Numbers Infographic now available
- UK EPD listing
- When is an EPD not an EPD #2
- ASBP publish a comprehensive list of EPD for UK produced construction products in our new Briefing Paper
- UK Government has required Whole Life Carbon assessments, which means embodied carbon assessments, for all new public works projects and programmes since December 2020
No Instagram images were found.