Welcome to Appropedia   

From Appropedia
Jump to: navigation, search
edit  watch  

Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

Appropedia is for collaborative solutions
in sustainability, appropriate technology and poverty reduction.

You are welcome to add to and edit Appropedia -
your site to find, co-create and improve the solutions we need. Our vision and mission.

Contributors have made 240,378 edits and uploaded 17,836 files.
Browse our categories or all 5,397 articles.

edit  watch  

Announcements — more

MOST-reprap-sliced.jpg Win a free 3-D printer for sharing your designs for 3-D printable open source appropriate technologies in the 3-D Printers for Peace Design Contest Deadline 1 Sept, 2013
Sludgecontest.jpg As part of the Emergency Sanitation Project, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announce a student emergency sanitation design project. Deadline 3 March 2014
Horsetail
The chief medicinal property of horsetail is its high silica content. The best dietary source of silica is whole grains-meaning much of our dietary silica is lost in the refining process. In addition to silica, horsetail contains large amounts of potassium as well as aconitic acid, equiaitinee, starch and many fatty acids. Horsetail is often used for mending broken bones. Our hair, skin, nails, and bones all need silica. Silica gives our cells strength, durability, and flexibility.

Think about walking outdoors on the grass. You put a lot of weight on the little blades of grass, but they spring right back up again. This is because of the high silica content in the grass. Silica enables the blades of grass to be resilient and bend, yet not be broken. Without silica, our bones would be very brittle and break easily. The same is true of hair, skin, and nails. Without enough silica in our diet, our hair can be brittle and break easily, causing split ends.

Without enough silica, our skin loses its elasticity. Without enough silica, our nails become very brittle and split. As horsetail is very, very high in silica, it feeds our hair, skin, and nails along with our bones and keep the cells in these systems strong and resilient.

Ecological dry toilets at Pedregal

Ecological dry toilets at Pedregal, a Permaculture Demonstration Center in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Fukuoka throwing a seedball at a 2002 workshop at Navdanya
Observe Nature thoroughly rather than labor thoughtlessly.

— Masanobu FukuokaW, The One-Straw Revolution
A windmill is used to power a water pump which fills a swimming pool.
Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed with special consideration to the context of its use - including environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economical aspects of the community it is intended for. With these goals in mind, AT proponents claim their methods require fewer resources, are easier to maintain, and have less of an impact on the environment compared to techniques from mainstream technology, which they contend is wasteful and environmentally polluting.

The term is usually used to describe simple technologies proponents consider suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations. This form of "appropriate technology" usually prefers labor-intensive solutions over capital-intensive ones, although labor-saving devices are also used where this does not mean high capital or maintenance cost. In practice, appropriate technology is often something described as using the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve the intended purpose in a particular location. In industrialized nations, the term appropriate technology takes a different meaning, often referring to engineering that takes special consideration of its social and environmental ramifications.

edit  watch  Selected service learning Projects gallery (refresh)

ENGR 215 Introduction to Design projects – Spring 2010: RCEA: Two labs of the Spring 2010 semester of Engineering 215 worked with the Redwood Coast Energy Authority to build energy education boxes for classrooms in Humboldt County. These boxes are designed for different K-12 grade ranges and cover one of three topics: energy conservation, renewable energy or climate change.

Spring 2010 ENGR 215 Intro to Design Projects - RCEA
The Power of Wind
Educates students on the basics of wind power  
The Rad Triad
A Chutes and Ladders-like board game, a popup book and a sing-a-long song  
Weather Warnings
Teaches climate change through a movie, three stations, and a worksheet  
Modeling Renewable Energy
Educates students on many types of renewable energy  
Bust-A-Watt
Teaches energy conservation through activities, home assessments, and an art assignment  
Seas of Change
Educates students about the polar ice caps melting effects of climate change through a hands-on model  
Energy in a Cinch
Teaches about renewable energy through the use of a Windbelt  
CAN YOU WorKIT
Students assemble and operate a hand crank electrical generators  
Climate Crusaders
A Cap-and-Trade game and a model greenhouse gas experiment  

edit  watch  

Hot topics / In the news

edit  watch  

Selected categories

edit  watch  

Construction zone — correct mistakes & flag spam as needed

Newest articles more Wanted pages - click to add info more
Under construction

New pages being developed:

  1. Wafer cleaning protocol
  2. MOST HS RepRap build 2
  3. MOST HS RepRap build
  4. MOST HS RepRap parallel build overview
  5. Geographic Information Systems
  6. Urban informatics
  7. Sustainable Transportation
  8. Sustainable transportation
  9. Self-erectable wind turbine
  10. Focussed Ion beam (FIB) protocol: MOST

Note: Appropedia's newest pages may not yet comply with our policies. Page titles in italics are "redirects," often created when moving a page.

Under construction

Create a new page:

  1. Animals
  2. Organic waste
  3. Nutrition
  4. Ecosystem
  5. Human development
  6. Clay
  7. Environmental science
  8. Appropriate energy overview
  9. Building management systems
  10. Open sustainability

These red links are invitations for you to contribute your knowledge.

Or create a page on the topic of your choice.

Newest files - images and documents that can be added to pages more

Note: Appropedia's newest files may not yet comply with our policies.

edit  watch  

Please help Appropedia grow!

We want your projects, current works, observations and wisdom! See Contributing content. Improve articles by clicking "edit" at top of the page or section. Our philosophy is: Be Bold and contribute!

Questions? Comments? Visit the Village Pump. Also discuss Appropedia and related topics over on the Permies permaculture forums.

Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Identica,FriendFeed, StumbleUpon and Delicious. Check our Flickr images and YouTube videos.

Retrieved from "http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia"
Personal tools
Collaborators