Nový Mlýn - green tech south bohemia

Be Eco Clever - from eco worrier to eco warrior in a few simple steps.

Climate change in one paragraph: In short, if we carry on putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere, and if China & India increase their output to the same levels as the west, we will cook the planet – I admit this may not be the scientific term, but the scientific debates are well covered elsewhere* . If we carry on at the rate we’re going, there will certainly be life on planet Earth in 500 years time – insect life. Cockroaches are very robust. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a free service that can give you masses of info about your web sites.

From Google Analytics I can figure out how many people read this article, where abouts in the world they are, how many other pages on my site they read, and where the entrance & exit points are.

So, every morning I have a look to see what happened the day before.  www.datemymate.net  - is consistently the most popular, and the most sticky, however quite a lot of people read www.bogblog.org, or at least part of it, with about a third of visitors being ‘returners’. The hat site has few visitors, so it’s even more surprising that there’s a steady stream of sales of the hat pattern for which it was set up.  I think I need to ask M for a nice bit of software to display pics of finished hats submitted by knitters. Finally, visitors to www.500yearvision.com are building steadily.

Today, I phoned the English teacher in Tábor & have arranged a meeting with him about his English business seminars idea.  I plan on working out the content about bog for the www.500yearvision.com web site as well as writing an article about low carbon living for Article Alley - as suggested by a really helpful contributor to the angelstartups.com forum.

I’m not yet totally familiar with the use of forums, so I need to figure out how to track replies after you’ve posted to a thread.  I’m sure it’s not hard, I just get distracted about what people are saying.  Maybe another task for today.

So today - article, web content & figuring out forums.

This morning I re edited a brochure for bog - including some visuals from the Blender Artist competition. The text is taken from the post below.

(Double sided leaflet, folded twice).brochuremarch.pdf

 I’ve been considering two things this morning, firstly, would offering shares be a useful way of raising capital, and secondly, how could I organise some market research about bog.

The brochure now looks much better with some new images, and the revamped logo, however I’m still not sure how well it communicates the (admittedly) complex idea of the product. I think images are all important in this context, so I’m looking forward to having more available from the Blender Artists involved in the project.

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Spending the weekend in Birmingham has given me a good chance to think. I’ve met up with family and friends who are getting on well, whereas I am on almost zero income while 500 Year Vision is in set-up stage. I’m making a few sales of the hat pattern & eco clever products on Ebay, however not nearly enough for this to be more than a diversion of my time.

Though my time so far has been productive, what I need to do is gather together the component parts of bog and prove that they work together.

The upshot is, I need investment, and a team of people committed to taking this product to market. Specifically, I need people with engineering & accounting backgrounds & a proven record of taking a new product to market. Read the rest of this entry »

My first day back working in Birmingham. I am sharing my office with a parrot. He is called Sid and is 25 years old. We’re not sure about each other yet.

Yesterday I caught the train to London for a meeting with the Water Works UK, based in Wood Green. I left my laptop at home as it doesn’t travel well & spent the journey reading the New Scientist. There was a thorough article on carbon offsetting called ‘Look, no footprint’ – raising concerns about the efficacy of tree planting as a method of carbon offsetting.

One strong concern was that it may only postpone the problem – when the natural life of the tree is over , carbon will be released back into the atmosphere. I think this will only be a problem if we have not a) developed cleaner energy or b)developed better CO2 capture in the mean time. Therefore, I think that planting trees is fine, and as long as they are not then chopped down to use as firewood, will give humanity time to develop other solutions.

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So, I have a meeting with the guys from Water Works UK ltd this afternoon. They produce a brilliant grey water filtration system which will also act as a green roof for bog. I want to see if they would like to develop a version of their product which is suitable for the more extreme temperatures of Central Europe. There is a great market there because currently many people do not have mains connected water in their more remote homes. The cost of putting in a contemporary sewage system is vast & such things also need to be pumped out every six months. Allowing things to simply leach into the ground, which has been the more traditional way, is now illegal. If we can find a suitable flushing composting toilet manufacturer to co-operate on the project - perhaps Sun Mar, then we can build a safe and (importantly) EU approved solution for many different environments.

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So, ever since my birthday lunch, the Internet connection has been down. I
did not simply go out for lunch and then stay out in Tabor since then.

Despite this, we’ve made good progress this week. The 500 year vision site
has had a revamp - www.500yearvision.com - , with a much much nicer version of the logo - courtesy of M, a shopping cart - courtesy of M, and space for information about bog.  I’m really pleased with it, but have yet to be able to look at the analytics to see how it is being found, and where people are coming from. At least the site looked reasonable for anyone who looked it up after meeting me at the conference I attended yesterday (though
I need a business card revamp with the Czech contact details added).  Read the rest of this entry »

Bog is an accessible eco bathroom within a free standing structure which can be put anywhere. Bog means that an accessible bathroom can be placed in a garden, on a car park, on the premises of buildings with preservation orders, or adjoining the offices of a small business, without needing to connect to mains electricity, water or waste treatment.

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