setag general meeting 17 September 2008 Ing David Botha Pr Ing executive director SA Institution of civil engineering

1. setaggeneral meeting17 September 2008 Ing David Botha Pr Ingexecutive director SA Institution of civil engineering

2. Greening engineering

3. Greening is NOT necessarily about GREENit is more about sustainability

5. The greening of engineering What are civil engineers doing about the GREENING of ENGINEERING? Planet earth is celebrated in 2008 BUT planet earth does not supply the infrastructure like roads and sewers and electricity and storm water pipes and telecom and potable water that PEOPLE need to live and work and produce for modern society

6. The greening of engineering So all along, the engineer and in my case and hopefully in your case, and in particular civil engineers, have to play a meaningful role alongside the other, built environment professionals

7. The greening of engineering

8. The greening of engineering In this presentation I intend to be controversial and I even have to warn sensitive individuals that they may be offended at some stage or other The time for talking with forked tongue and using tired language must pass together with buzz words and clichés it is time to go green

9. The greening of engineering What I want to present to you and what I want to share is very much a personal view, a journey of one person and you will hear lots of I and we, but I would suggest that you insert your own name and tell your own story because together we are shaping the future…..NOW

10. The greening of engineering But certainly the greening of engineering or green buildings should not stay I and we or remain esoteric or convey an idealized view of the world PRACTICAL should be a KEY word and SUSTAINABLE a HOUSEHOLD word

11. The greening of engineering In the good old Karoo I grew up with a strong ethic about waste not want not care for people and for my environment I was aware of the need to make best use of scarce resources since my childhood days when we usually had rain water tanks and used bath water to water our garden in the dry-dry periods of De Aar

12. The greening of engineering We certainly saved lots of little things in case we would need it later Socks were darned and shoes were re-soled several times And by the way we made use of a bucket toilet and by the way we did not even think it was de-humanizing

13. The greening of engineering We made compost We used vegetable and fruit peels and what little there was in the way of left-overs that were unfit for humans to feed our chickens So fast forward to engineering

14. The greening of engineering In spite of our poor environmental image as engineers, I DO HOWEVER believe that a fair sprinkling of our civil engineering professionals have been green for ages Maybe we did not like to be categorized with the greenies who are often too much on the fringe for our so-called conservative liking?

15. The greening of engineering During 1977, one of my first major projects as Assistant Town Engineer planning and design was a mechanical workshop in Potchefstroom That building would possibly today be called a “green building” of some sorts

16. The greening of engineering It was all about non-airconditioned fresh air, natural light, long life armoured floors and under floor heating for the very cold winters AND many of the ideas that went into the building would today be called sustainable, ergonometric, environmentally friendly and so on

17. The greening of engineering After arriving in Richards Bay as the new Deputy Town Engineer Planning and Design in 1982, my boss Frik Bosman said that the first thing I had to do, was to get myself on a coastal ecology course at Stellenbosch Prof Retief and others changed my professional life – for the better - forever

18. The greening of engineering But to put theory into practice, often comes with a price. I was sometimes very unpopular due to my new and trendy ideas….this was 1982 after all Boardwalks and Timber for staircases down the dunes to the beach?

19. The greening of engineering And going around a tree with a footpath? Well all of that will cost extra…..

20. The greening of engineering I also designed what one of my colleagues called a “pofadder” pad which would be constructed to go around and over the dune and coastal forest landscape The result….. “Why can’t we just bulldoze it straight and level?” It is nogal difficult to make a stand if one is a small guy like I am and one colleague is 2m tall and the other 2m wide……

21. The greening of engineering But luckily there were also some sympathetic compatriots and ultimately some of my opponents gave up Unfortunately………………….some of them then thought that I was a lost case and lost to good solid technical main stream engineering

22. The greening of engineering And more often than not, my efforts went unnoticed like the houses in a scheme for lower income families, that I dutifully orientated to optimize the sun in winter and to prevent heating up the houses too much in summer

23. The greening of engineering But for a moment let me return to Potchefstroom The hot water in the caravan park ablution block in 1978 that came from solar panels also went unnoticed But I persevered and I even designed a couple of our family houses to emulate some of Prof Dieter Holm’s ideas as far back as 1988

24. The greening of engineering This is possibly unheard of………..a civil engineer listening to an ARCHITECT!!! In mitigation I can mention that my brother is an architect and the cartoon about the built environment is what he came up with when I asked him to help me paint a picture to show to the uninformed and the young people to help them choose a career

25. The greening of engineering But of course our engineering professional is not supposed to be generally architecturally conscious and so often the engineer and architects were and still are at loggerheads & even worse are we listening to the Social Scientists and the Botanists and the Microbiologists How can we enhance and grow mutual understanding and facilitate co-operation and integration of effort

26. The greening of engineering Are we actually listening to Nature and to people we are supposed to serve ??????????????????????????? How can we enhance and grow mutual understanding and facilitate co-operation and integration of effort

27. The greening of engineering A talk like this one can be one such vehicle to bring all of us together but that is NOT enough There is a real danger that we all go away feeling warm and friendly AND stay as we are

28. The greening of engineering The time has come to green engineering and to bring to the drawing table a wealth of engineering knowledge and experience about sustainability, energy efficient materials and designs, great ideas about recycling and so on & of course to get to know our environment

29. The greening of engineering By the way the media has done something good…………… They and of course Hollywood have scared us sufficiently with their block busters and doomsday scenarios SO…at least some of the human race has now been sensitized

30. The greening of engineering The climatic events that we are witnessing recently have certainly raised awareness and eyebrows about the environment and where our planet is going with or without us The GOOD news: there are OPPPORTUNITIES for smart thinkers

31. The greening of engineering We need a rational approach to green buildings, not just a fashion statement or a fashionable statement. We need to invest in sustainability We need to assess total cost not only to the pocket but also to the environment Life cycle costing is one way to look at it

32. The greening of engineering It is NO use to have a house that runs on computers and fancy climate controls, made in Singapore or Taiwan if these computers are costing us more in terms of environmental impact than the use of simpler methods like opening and closing a window by hand Plastics are cool but …..they are made of coal…. building with steel may be cool but iron ore uses a lot of coal to become steel

33. The greening of engineering Let us remember….. not to forget we serve a society, human beings Unless we get the green message right and understandable and trustworthy and believable – and turn it into feasible and sustainable reality, the newspapers will be the only beneficiaries of news about global warming and scare tactics will prevail

34. The greening of engineering To change we need behavioural change….. We need a change of attitude, considered as one of the most crucial attributes needed by the Engineer of 2025 as described in the publication Vision 2025 and in there new BOK as developed by ASCE

35. The greening of engineering So let us explore this ATTITUDE issue Do we as professionals too many times operate from a dizzy ALTITUDE that stand in the way of understanding?

36. The greening of engineering We should bend down a little bit and come down to earth from our lofty ivory towers and professional “holier than thou” pedestals Can we make ourselves more understandable?

37. The greening of engineering Can civil engineers make a difference? Let me tell you a true story ……a story that children and adults and politicians and business people and bankers and decision makers can ALL understand

38. The greening of engineering A beautiful drop of water rains from a beautiful cloud onto a beautiful landscape somewhere in the Drakensberg Many drops unite and a beautiful stream picks up speed and takes with it precious soil from neglected or badly tended fields, flows to a man made dam…..

39. The greening of engineering The water gets pumped up over the escarpment and after the mud has settled, the pristine blue artificial lake called Sterkfontein, delights the eye and preserves the water or do we now start calling it a commodity…. in stead of calling it a limited resource that defies human intervention to easily renew it Commodity is an unfortunate term

40. The greening of engineering When we get thirsty in Gauteng and end up in dire straits because of droughts, the water is released and again the stream picks up silt and mud and gemors and gets polluted along the way with fertilizer run offs and ends up as VAAL WATER in the VAAL DAM Then the water is pumped and purified and chlorified and pump-elevated 300m to the city of gold, stored and ultimately gets to YOUR HOUSE!!!!

41. The greening of engineering And here comes a truly rude part, so please cover up your ears or bear with me…… You and I put our human wastes into that clear and sparkling and healthy and precious commodity and then nonchalantly we flush and it is gone or is it? Of course not

42. The greening of engineering Or we have a shower or a bath and to make things worse, we add some wonderful soap and detergents and hair conditioner in another bowl and pull the plug and away it goes

43. The greening of engineering And then the civil engineer have to purify and make it bright and healthy BUT nowadays we cannot get the phosphates out any more, it is FAR TOO EXPENSIVE then we put the water back into the Jukskei & the Crocodile and then along the way we keep adding paper and plastic and much much more

44. The greening of engineering But wait, our venerable lady HARTIES is up ahead Did you know that the Hartbeespoort dam was built circa 1932 as a labour intensive project to help poor whites and so called non whites earn some money , By now the rubbish from stormwater systems decorates and garnishes the pea soup and all of this now sit in the dam – the up market out of town waterfront of Pretoria

45. The greening of engineering But wait there is more and civil engineers are called to rescue the dam and make sure that the grand villas on the shores of the dam does not get a bad name or is it perhaps a bad odour Our solution is to try to reduce the phosphate loads in the dam by introducing floating islands of plants……not a bad idea after all!!!

46. The greening of engineering If your audience is still awake after all of this you can tell them more of what happens along the river banks via Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, But if they are getting bored, fast forward to our tired and filthy drop of water eventually landing up in Mozambique fatigued and dirty as it exits the Limpopo …..after all we can now leave it to the sea to clean up….

47. The greening of engineering FLUIT FLUIT my storie is uit, Of is dit REGTIG??????? Is it acceptable to use a scarce resource like our precious life giving water to transport human wastes?

48. The greening of engineering of course not, not if you are civil engineers of the third millennium Solutions? Suggestions? In Sweden we hear about closed loop system toilets using oil to time and again flush since of course water based wastes do not mix with oil, separates in the holding tank and we get to flush again - I hope they use sunflower so that the source is at least renewable In Finland there is even a dry toilet society keeping themselves busy with “dry ideas”

49. The greening of engineering In South Africa, maybe we should write out a competition with a million rand prize to design a modern non-offensivesocially-acceptable human-dignity-preserved bucket toilet system for South Africa

50. The greening of engineering Another short story…. I once tried to persuade the PARKS department of Potchefstroom to LEAVE the natural grasses in the veld that adjoins the Wasgoedspruit in Potchefstroom However it separated two parts of the town and I was told that it COULD be a safety hazard