October 25, 2013, by Helen Whitehead
Mike the Engineer
In which Mike Clifford introduces Sarah Speight to the concept of upcycling and she gains a chair.
One of the academics who has made a major contribution to the Sustainability course is Mike Clifford, an Associate Professor of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering. Mike never says no. He was co-author of the book Sustainability and Engineering, which forms one of the key texts for this course, and he ran an online seminar for our pilot version in 2013. He is just full of ideas. We got him involved in our tour of Cripps House examining what was good and bad about the kitchen, but he was more interested in turning our end of filming BBQ into a sustainable event. Here was the perfect opportunity for Mike to try out 3 of the eco-friendly and energy-efficient stoves he had developed. You can find out how effective these were in week 8 of the course.
Mike also introduced me to ‘Upcycling’, not a term I had consciously heard before although I ‘upcycle’ on a regular basis (usually in the garden – recycling various objects as plant pots). Upcycling means to turn something thrown out as ‘rubbish’ into something useful. While we were filming, Mike retrieved a discarded chair from a waste skip (this was NOT destined for landfill – it would have been pulped for reuse). He found an old shirt and promptly reupholstered the chair. I am now its proud owner!
For another example of Mike’s creativity, see what he does with ‘Yak wool and other strange materials’ in this YouTube video.
You can join the conversation by using hashtags #nooc13, #flsustain and #futurelearn
Sarah Speight
Lead academic for the Nottingham Open Online Course (NOOC), Perspectives on Sustainability, that is available to all staff and students at Nottingham and also on our Sustainability, Society and You course that will run on FutureLearn from the 6th January 2014 and is available to anyone in the world.
This post was originally published on the Learning Technology Team Blog
I am desperate to learn more skills to upcyle items. I guess loads of people are trying to do the same as a way of making money. For me it covers recycling and an art element. Skips are GREAT!!!! my daughter sifts through them in daylight then sends her boyfriend back undercover of darkness….
I have been told in the past that recycling does not stimulate the economy…I do not agree with this. Recycling can reduce the need to use credit cards and borrowing unnecessarily which is unsustainable as we know. We can use money saved for other items that we can’t recycle or obtain in other ways. It frees up money that can be used in the economy differently.