Friday, July 29, 2011

Mongolia! Prologue

Greetings!

The motivation for beginning this blog comes from a recent odyssey I had in Mongolia.  Yes, Mongolia!  And it even relates to recycled glass, something I have been working with for several years to create both art and functional designs.  A quick overview of the project can be found here:
http://www.globalinnovationcommons.org/blog/mongolian-greenhouse

With this and subsequent postings, I'll share thoughts, photos, cultural facts and technical info.

This blog will also serve as a log of my latest inspirations, thoughts, and ideas.  I look forward to feedback and just sharing in general.

Back to Mongolia...

The odyssey began in August of 2010 when I received an e-mail from Ken Dabkowski at M-CAM (http://www.m-cam.com/ and http://www.globalinnovationcommons.org/ ).  He wanted to come visit my studio as he learned about my work with recycled container glass.  And the next thing I heard related to working with Mongolian bottle glass! What?! Say that again?!  Mongolia is a country that I (and most people) think of as so far away and so off the beaten track.  I never thought in my lifetime that I would be associated with a project in Mongolia.  Ken and his colleague David Pratt (M-CAM managing director) came for a visit to my studio in Afton, Virginia at which time I learned more about the project.  They mentioned that there is a large of amount of waste container glass littering the villages and countryside in Mongolia, so much so, that it may be possible to see from space.  I was amazed and not completely surprised.  Waste glass is problem all over the world, the USA included.  Most of the waste container glass (from beer bottles, mayonaise jars, etc.) ends up either in the landfill or recycled for construction fill.  About 10% ends up getting formed back into containers again. In the case of Mongolia, there's no recycling, and all of it usually ends up in a pile behind someone's ger (yurt) or laying in fragments by the road (like here in the states).

Anyway, back to Ken and David in my studio.... so they started explaining that they would like to explore the possibility of taking the plethora of Mongolian container glass and melt some of it into window panels to build greenhouses in Mongolia.  The reasoning is multifold.  The Mongolia people are interested in extending their growing season, and they would like to explore ways to use their available resources to develop new businesses.  Building greenhouses using readily available discarded materials fit that criteria.  Wow! That sounded cool to me.  I had previously created some artistic window panels, so this seemed possible.  The only issue outstanding was that we did not have any Mongolian glass to even begin testing.  Folks from M-CAM had visited Mongolia as part of some other work they were doing, so it was likely they would be heading back there.

A few weeks later, I hear that M-CAM folks have managed to bring back some samples of Mongolian container glass.  Wow!  This is becoming even more real.

Below are a couple pictures from our initial testing of Mongolian vodka bottle shards (being so close to Russia -and formerly a Russian occupied territory- they inherited a penchant for vodka).




The testing determined whether the glass melted in way similar to container glass found here in the states, and the results were positive.  Wait, the results were positive!!  That means that the project would be moving forward.... forward toward.... doing this in Mongolia??!  Yes!  But we needed some funding.... yes, that important thing called funding.  So to get folks interested, Ken and I designed and built a model of the greenhouse using container glass from around here.  Since the Mongolians are quite fond of their gers (the original yurt shaped structures with which we are familiar), the model would be appropriately constructed in the shape of a ger.  See photos below of the Google sketch-up model along with construction photos and the completed model in glass (we used Corona beer bottles) with a steel infrastructure.






 


As part of the model construction, we did some testing of the glass melt parameters to look at how different ways of processing the glass could yield potential benefits in the greenhouse design.  You'll notice clearer panels on the one side with opaque glass on most of the structure.  The clear panels would face south where the sun is angled throughout its arc.  Sunlight enters here and then would bounce around the inside of the greenhouse due to the white opaque panels. 

The model proved to be quite helpful in gathering interest in the project.  Ken and David Martin (the CEO of M-CAM) presented this project as part of a larger lecture to a class taught by Professor Bob Swap at the University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences.  Bob and some of his undergrads became especially interested in the Mongolian Greenhouse project and applied for a significant grant through the Thomas Jeffereson Public Citizens Foundation.  Wow!! Mongolia!

In March, the group found out that they received funding to the tune of $30,000 from this foundation!  Wow!! Mongolia!  I learned in April that the grant would fund my travel and expenses to implement this grand experiment: constructing a greenhouse using locally sourced materials including melted bottle glass!

The next steps of planning, preparation, and additional testing began..... go to the next posting for more.