Blogs & Ecology

Photo credit: Buenos Aires government.

While the proposed new garbage management plan for Buenos Aires is discussed, the city government has launched a campaign to encourage clean habits in its people.

Under the theme 'Clean play' (Jugá Limpio in Spanish), the set of ads try to put some coolness into throwing things in trash cans, plus two websites targeted to kids and adults offer information about activities and interactive tools.

Last week it was time for the national annual innovation contest in Argentina, Innovar, and we were happy to know that the environment was one of the main interests behind the products presented this year.

In this occasion we highlight this cool looking lamp, which was designed exclusively for CFLs. The lamp is made with very few parts and is very easy to disassemble for recycling: a set of layers with a cut in the middle for the lamp, hold by two metal sticks. The lamp is surrounded by a thin plastic square that can be changed for color customization (a picture of this in the extended)....

From our great archive of ideas that show less is more you get it: we love small spaces. Especially important in times of economic stress, they make us think about what we really need, give maximum usage to what we have, and they take a lot less energy to keep running. And of course, we love clever furniture that helps us live better in those places.

Argentinean architects Gustavo Dieguez and Lucas Gilardi took 18 wood boxes that were waste from the Brazilian automobile industry and transformed them into the Plug and Live System: a collection of modules to build transitory habitats and experiment with different ideas of housing.

As the project moves on to team up with companies and NGOs to recover more waste and build cultural spaces, the original 18 boxes arrive in Brazil for the second exhibit that shows them turned into art, Moradias Transitorias.

Read on to follow the story of the boxes and see more pictures....

(Photo: Metrobus in Mexico city. By World Resources Institute.) With the goal of improving public transit in the city, Buenos Aires could have its first bus rapid transit system, also referred to as 'Metrobus', in May 2009.

(Photo: s2art.) The government of Buenos Aires province (a territory separate from Buenos Aires city but accounting for about 37% of the country population) has approved a law to ban shops and supermarkets to give polyethylene plastic bags in its territory.

(Photo: sonofgroucho.) At the beginning of August, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his colleagues from Argentina and Brazil spoke about Latin American integration and Chavez threw an ambitious idea out: a train that would connect Venezuela's capital (Caracas) with Argentina's (Buenos Aires), and cities in between.

(Picture: the Argentine Labor Minister, Carlos Tomada, pushes a new law to fight sweatshop labor. Credit: La Nacion.) The Argentine government is pushing a new law that, they say, will help regularize the situation of workers from the textile industry.

Picture: the Argentine Labor Minister, Carlos Tomada, pushes a new law to fight sweatshop labor. Credit: La Nacion.

The Argentine government is pushing a new law that, they say, will help regularize the situation of workers from the textile industry.

(Picture: Juana de Arco's show at the Buenos Aires fashion week. Via event's website.) The latest edition of the Buenos Aires Fashion Week (which took place from August 20 to 21) showed more environmental awareness than its predecessor, the winter edition (which we covered in the post Buenos Aires Fashion Week Winter 2008).

(Photo: alex-s.) The Buenos Aires government and a group of advertising associations have agreed to remove 40 thousand billboards that are infracting the city's code, Clarin newspaper informed. This represents about 60% of the total amount of billboards.

This agreement is part of a government plan to put in order outdoor advertising in Buenos Aires, which includes modifications to the advertising code to establish areas in the city and authorize different types of signs according to the neighborhoods' characteristics. The gover...

(Picture: Cartoneros in Buenos Aires. Credit: dandeluca.) After trying two different garbage separation and recycling plans that didn't work, the Buenos Aires government is finally launching a new plan that involves cartoneros: a group of people that have learnt to live out of waste collection during the crisis years in Argentina.

Our previously featured Argentine architect Carlos Levinton has just finished his latest project: a construction and home improvements project to reduce energy consume and improve the life quality of a number of families in a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires.