20/05/18
Lecture by Prof. Shashank Mehta
We had decided to work on Utilization of Banana Waste. As per the lecture provided by Shashank Sir on Mind Map. In Mind Map we understand to connect the dots as per the available resources. The mind map consist stake holder analysis, value chain analysis, backward and forward linkages, resources mapping and resource utilization. The present technologies uses to process the waste of banana. We also work on the SWOT analysis of the existing solutions.
Lecture by Gavin
In this lecture we get to know about the “need, sustainability, relative affordability, advancement, local control, usability, empowerment, dependency,” of the existing solution and solution identify by us.
We work on the assignment on the Jamnya village video
What is the situation of village?
Jamnya is a tribal village and it’s not very good situation in comparison of other villages. The village is lacking with basic facilities and amenties.
What are the social problems and issues?
The social problem of the villages were infrastructure, education, electricity, man centred society, early age marriage of the girls, unawareness, migration.
What are the Intervention or Possibilities?
The intervention took place for the teacher of the villages by manufacturing the affordable and climate friendly houses, so that it will be easy for them to interact and provide education to the children. The intervention was done by the Australian and local NGO by making the bricks from the village Mud.
20/05/18
Project Progress:
We continued with researching on google about the different possibilities of banana fibre usage. Further we got the contacts of Mehak Singh and Dr T. Ghosh who are experts in the field of textiles. We sent them an email with the following list of questions:
Q1) What is the process of making banana fibre from the pseudostem. What are the problems faced in this process. What are the further wastes generated during this process.
Q2) What are the uses of these fibres (different industries in which it can be used, different products that are made from it)
Is the liquid that is removed from the banana stem also used in any industry? (Medicinal, salt etc)
Q3) What are the properties/benefits of banana fibre.
Q4) What is the cost of the raw materials? (Banana stems cost, fibres cost) And the selling cost of the different final products?
Q5) What are the sources that the raw materials are procured from. What are the markets for the products?
Q6) Why is banana fibre not as commercially used as other textile fibres?
Q7) Do you have any suggestions for us, something that we can work on to make the utilisation of banana waste better?
Later we created a questionnaire to ask the farmers. We also interacted with another participant of the summer school who was doing his masters in the field of energy. He told us about the concept of waste to energy.
Anil Gupta Sir’s Lecture: “Seeing Beyond the Visible”
Sir told us the topic for today’s lecture was to think beyond what we see, in order to prepare us for our field visits. He told us that when people get used to tolerating bad habits. He told us that everybody is guilty of that, not just the under-privileged. He told us it was better to work individually when doing field work so that we don not lose the flavour of each person’s perspective. He also said that the best thing we could do was to pay full attention to someone when they are talking. This encourages them to speak more. We should also catch non-verbal cues. Further, not everything should be asked, some should be observed. He also said that when we are trying to figure out what is the problem, we should get to the critical root of the problem. Decisions are always to be taken after evaluating everything, because there is a trade-off involved in everything. Everything should be taken emotionally. Most importantly, we should not create new problems while trying to solve certain problems. Later, he strongly advised us to not have any attachments to our first ideas, because they will be most likely to not work out, and this may narrow our field of vision.
Ramesh Bhai Patel Sir:
Sir told us about the general rules and guidelines for the summer school. He also urged us to work diligently towards solving the problems and projects that we had chosen. He told us that usually, people get used to their problems, and that it ends up being part of their behaviour. This is the reason why they are generally not solved, even if they are very easy to solve.
Ted Moallem:
We had a skype interaction session with Ted Moallem. Sir had emphasised that when trying to frame our design challenge, we should never directly jump to thinking about the solutions. It is important that we first understand where exactly the problem/challenge lies. During our interaction, he suggested that we look at how the bio-waste of other crops are used. He gave several suggestions such as bio-fuel, fertiliser, fibres etc. He suggested that we split the team to focus on different areas for research. Then he told us that when we talk to the farmers, we should always listen to them and try to find out what all technologies/ideas that they had already worked on, that we could modify to make more viable. He emphasised that we should try to build solutions that will fit in with the lives of the farmers.