Jeffe Van Holle
Positive Pressure
Conscious Innovation Projects
POSITIVE PRESSURE
Farmer markets in developing countries are one of my favourite places. They are colourful, bustling, filled with energy and food. But unfortunately, a large quantity of waste is also a reality on these markets. Every day, one third of all the food on farmer markets goes to waste.
With Positive Pressure, I found potential in the characteristics within these farmer markets.
Positive Pressure is an interactive prologue to help introduce the African Biogas Partnership Program initiated by Hivos and SNV. Together, they aim to provide half a million people access to a sustainable source of energy. Biogas energy derives from a rotting process of organic waste. This smelly, yet clean energy measures to be healthier for its users and the environment when compared to ordinary energy resources like firewood and charcoal.
My passion is to create qualitative interactions that express a deeper or alternative understanding about a subject. As a designer, I aim to bring my message across by provoking meaningful dynamics between all players of a particular subject. With my project Positive Pressure, this method proves no different. Let me explain what I mean: the prologue is performed in two phases. The objectives in phase one are to develop familiarity and awareness on waste streams. Then the objectives in phase two are to educate and promote the potential of those waste streams.
During the first stadium, a team collects organic waste with multiple farmers, which is the source for our clean energy. A mobile biodigester from ABPP is a very low-tech installation to process the waste to a gas. This digesting process requires some time; therefore accumulating the energy resources around the market will offer plenty of moments to provoke opportunities for getting familiar with the farmers and their waste perceptions.
When there is enough biogas produced to activate the pressure tools; one or more curious farmers will be selected to become pilot users and promoters of biogas energy. Education on this subject brings the relationship with the target group to a next level.
The pressure tools demonstrate the potential that the farmers now know to explain further to others.
