Field Notes: Sustainability in Tech and Textiles

The Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge is a program to support innovations in off-grid solar e-waste management in sub-Saharan Africa. For more information on the Challenge, see Background below. Halfway through the inaugural Solar E-Waste Challenge, key themes emerged from the eight projects implemented across sub-Saharan Africa.

Nature has a way of keeping balance and timber is one of its finest balancing tools. Growing trees absorb CO2. One cubic metre of living wood absorbs almost one tonne of CO2! The trees then break it down through photosynthesis and release oxygen into the atmosphere while storing the carbon in their wood for the life of tree.
If the wood is put to use after the tree has long died, the carbon remains stored in the timber, preventing it from being released into our atmosphere. It is only when timber begins to rot that the carbon is finally released. It is in this way that we can slow down the carbon release through prolonging the life of the timber as building materials, flooring and other wooded products.