Kicking Back with Padyak

What is a creative solution to society’s problems? VirtualSalt’s Robert Harris lists the elegant evaluation criteria, summarized as SENC. It should be SUCCESSFUL in solving the problem, overcomes constraints and is acceptable to users or beneficiaries. It is EFFECTIVE in that it is practical, economical, and reliable. It is NEW in that it is original, surprising, and seminal for its further possibilities. It is COHERENT because it is organic, holistic, of high-quality, well-designed and executed, refined, tested, improved, and aesthetic/beautiful.

I would add IBLE to the acronym. The IMPACT is significant in the societal sense. It BUILDS CARING COMMUNITIES. It presents opportunities for individual LEARNING and LEADERSHIP development. Lastly, it creates an ENABLING ENVIRONMENT for all of the above. Thus, a creative solution is Successful, Effective, New, Coherent, produces significant positive Impact, Builds Caring Communities that Learn, as well as Leaders, for an Enabling Environment (SENCIBLE).

Colorful Padyak bikes and artistic discs

The Philippines, being a center of innovation vis-à-vis civil society, has many examples. The Gawad Kalinga GK777 movement easily comes to mind. GK is not alone. In my recent visit to Manila, the Padyak initiative of the University of the Philippines Mountaineers (UPM) is one such SENCIBLE solution to the difficulties of seemingly permanent high fuel prices and a degraded urban environment. The UP Padyak Project was started by UP Mountaineers members and alumni to give back to the University of the Philippines during its centennial celebration. The project is an environmental advocacy that promotes biking as a means of transportation, which helps reduce air pollution, lessens dependence on fossil fuels, and promotes a healthy lifestyle in the UP Diliman campus. As the Padyak-ers advocate, “BIKE FOR U.P. BIKE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.”

Since the summer of 2008, through funding support of several UP Mountaineers and using the principle of padugo, bikes were purchased and provided to students for a minimal donation of P500 per semester. These bikes are reconditioned, one-speed, have a step-through frame, and are designed for utility and safety and not for speed. About 43 bikes have been purchased, spruced up with lively colors, Padyak bike discs, bike baskets for books, and bike horns. Bike users must have helmets, a bike lock, and participate in a Padyak-sponsored bike clinic. Bike pumps are strategically located within the campus. UPM members and friends have spent at least P200,000 on the bikes, racks, and incidentals.

Padyak bike clinic for bike users

The creativity abounds. UPMers from the College of Fine Arts helped in designing creative bike disks and sculptural bike racks that allow all bike commuters to park their bikes and enliven the campus through public art. Talented artist and UPMer Eng Chan designed and constructed the Pencil, Kalabaw, and Tuyo bike racks which were strategically placed within the campus. Each rack can hold 12 bikes, and occupies the equivalent of one car parking slot. Other members connected with RAADesign, and StrayInteractive designed the colorful bike discs.

Eng Chan's Kalabaw rack

A core group led by Eng Chan and UPMer architect Gerry Ramos is spearheading the creation of a bamboo bike in partnership with Carolina’s Bamboo Garden. The bikes will be tagged and named after birds, starting with birds found within the UP campus, per the suggestion of UPMer and philosophy professor, Gerry de Villa.

UPMers Gerry Ramos and Eng Chan with ANOS bamboo at Carolina's Bamboo Garden

Padyak has resonated with many sectors of UP and beyond. Media has covered Padyak with nearly all the major TV stations and newspapers featuring it. The UP administration has fully supported Padyak. In fact, over the summer, it made the academic oval road, not only one way, but one half reserved permanently for bikers, joggers, and walkers only. Padyak has been able to help the security brigade in UP with a commitment to help them fix their broken down bikes. Padyak has opened up opportunities. The bike racks are such a hit that one vendor said that the racks attract more customers to his cart. Bike enthusiasts have volunteered to help repair Padyak bikes that break down.

Several companies are interested in an advocacy and social marketing partnership. The partnership comes with a commitment on their part to donate bikes, while UPM counterparts the bike donation with tree planting activities. The running activist priest and my fellow anthropologist, Fr. Robert Reyes, has bought into the program, donated bikes, and is recruiting fellow UP alumni in Hongkong, where he is stationed now, to support the project.

Padyak is fast evolving. It has grown beyond a UPM Batch 88 anniversary project, with batch members graciously allowing it to become a UP Mountaineers project. Its initial success has generated high demand for Padyak bikes. Padyak organizer, UPMer, and architect Jojo Gutierrez reported that there is now a waitlist of at least 85 students, with more requesting. UP has a student population of around 20,000. Fellow UPMer and sociology professor, Dr. Ging Candaliza-Gutierrez said that even non-teaching staff have been asking her if they can avail of the Padyak bikes.

"Pencil" bike rack

The request is understandable. I never realized how much an IKOT jeepney ride (used to get from one school building to another within the UP campus) costs these days. From a low of 50 centavos in the 1980s, a ride now costs seven pesos. A UP student, on a typical school day, will take 2-4 rides to get to classes in different buildings. Because of its fixed route, an IKOT ride will also take 15-30 minutes each way. Imagine the costs and time wasted by the Iskolar ng Bayan. Padyak doesn’t want to put IKOT jeepneys out of business, but Padyak complements IKOT and will hopefully encourage IKOT jeepney drivers to evolve.

Mt. Everest summiteer and UPMer, Romy Garduce, posing for Padyak

Padyak hopes to encourage other groups, especially corporations and schools/universities to start their own Padyak programs. Padyak afterall promotes the use of the most efficient self-powered alternative means of transportation man has ever invented. This is because moderate biking uses the same energy as walking. It encourages more civic interaction in a campus or office setting. It promotes a healthy lifestyle. It saves on fuel costs. It encourages partnerships across a wide swath of sectors. Lastly, it creates possibilities for expansion and further iteration in creative solutions.

Kicking back with Padyak is indeed SENCIBL

Breakthrough Bamboo

In recent times, designers, engineers, and social entrepreneurs have shown the versatility of bamboo in a diverse range of uses and items. It is now used as a component material in car parts, computer equipment, musical instruments, as a building and even bridge construction material, ecosystem rehabilitation, tourist site, pulp and paper production, furniture, handicrafts, food, medicinal purposes, and for tools, among others. As Michael Block of Green Living Tips wrote, you can eat, wear, and build with bamboo. The Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) notes that Thomas Edison supposedly used a carbonized bamboo filament in his experiments in developing the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell also used bamboo for his first phonograph needle. Patricia Mayville-Cox calls it the new cotton.

Interest is high because of bamboo’s characteristics. It is a grass of the family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, and tribe Bambuseae. Bamboo has around 92 genera and at least 1,000 species. It is present practically all over the world. In the Philippines, where it is generally called “kawayan,” there are 62 bamboo species grown, 21 species of which are endemic to the country. Ten are commercially-important species. Bamboo is present and/or grown in an area covering an estimated 39,200 to 52,700 ha. (Rojo 1999). Thus, bamboo is a renewable resource, grows fast, is durable, has natural beauty, is easy to maintain, and has many commercial applications including as a replacement of wood. It captures carbon dioxide. It is a green material. It promotes green technology and innovation.

Bamboo computers

Dell recently came out with an eco-computer in bamboo casing. To be released later this year, Dell says it will be 81% smaller than current desktops and will use 70% less power. ASUS also debuted its bamboo line of laptops and computer peripherals at CeBIT in Germany. Apparently, according to EcoGeek, there is a market for bamboo and wood framed computer and electronic equipment.

Bamboo bridges

Bamboo has a long history in construction. It is used as scaffolding and panels for concrete casting. China recently opened its fist bridge that could be used by trucks. A 10 meter, eight-ton capacity bridge opened to traffic last December 12, 2007 in Leiyang, Hunan Province. Designed by Professor Yan Xiao at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, the Leiyang bridge has significant implications on structural bamboo and pedestrian crossings and bridges in bamboo-rich developing countries.

It is also complements earthquake architecture. Bamboo structures of the National Bamboo Project in Limon, Costa Rica survived the devastating earthquake of 1992. Architect Michael McDonough is building a demonstration 33-meter bamboo bridge in a temperate redwood rainforest near Mendocino, California. The objective is to build on the experimental models developed in the 1960s in the United States by Buckminster Fuller and Robert LeRicolais. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate bamboo’s structural and aesthetic capabilities.

Bamboo vehicles

Bamboo is a viable material for transportation. In Cambodia, people exasperated with the woeful rail service, built their own bamboo train that reaches speeds of 40km/h (25mph). In Africa, the Design for Development Society is spearheading the design and development of emergency medical transportation devices (EMTD). Using the criteria of site specific materials, designs, and systems; the organization has identified bamboo has a key material. Hence, they are looking at designing, producing, and piloting five bamboo ambulances.

Bamboo bikes

For me personally, there are exciting developments vis-à-vis bamboo and biking. In this era of permanent sky-high oil prices, biking is getting a second look as a healthy and cheap alternative vehicle. In recent years, innovative designers have taken to bamboo as the material for bike frames. Craig Calfee of Calfee Design has designed and tested a bamboo bike and concludes that they are just as good, if not better than the usual high-tech materials used. His high-performance bamboo bike frames sell in the$2500 range.

Calfee is not only a bike businessman, but someone who believes in the potential of the bike to help societies. He partnered up with the Earth Institute at Columbia University to develop a bamboo bike program in Ghana. The potential to scale up and replicate is significant.

Inspired by Calfee, Bruno Meres, an engineer and industrial designer based in Bratislava, Slovakia, designed his own bamboo bike. His innovation is a woven bamboo bike frame. After one year of intense use, the bike is in good shape. He also noted that bamboo makes the bike ride less jarring.

Bamboo bikes have a long history. The Veteran Cycle Club notes that in England, Patent No.8274 filed on April 26, 1894, was on a bamboo bike. In the London Stanley Show of 1894, bamboo bikes were a show sensation. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a company named London Stanley sold a bamboo bike model in 1898. Today, a complete do-it-yourself bamboo bike construction manual can be found at Instructables.com.

Bamboo should be a leading material in the Philippines and Filipinos should be experts in bamboo application. Afterall, it is part and parcel of our culture, history, and environment. We’ve used it for housing, furniture, ritual, games, food, medicine, tools, etc. Heck, we even have one of the most spectacular bamboo organs in the world, the Las Piñas Bamboo organ.

Gerry Brioso referred us to the bamboo jeep in Bangued, Abra, where government worker Chris Adriatico built a bamboo jeep as early as 1992. Local officials also use a bamboo vehicle, seen below, in official activities to promote bamboo use in the province. Kitschy, but an attention getter.

Bamboo is high tech and green tech.

Bamboo is a sustainable business for Filipinos.

Additional information:

Master Plan for the Development of Bamboo as a Renewable and Sustainable Resource. 1997.

Rivera, Merlyn N. (N.D.) Philippine National Report on Bamboo and Rattan. Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), College, Laguna, Philippines.

Rojo, J. 1999. ‘Bamboo Resources of the Philippines’, In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Bamboo, Iloilo City, Philippines, 65-70.

Padyak

From Padyak.org

The UP Padyak Project

- a bicycling project for the University of the Philippines Diliman Campus, which aims to make a concrete contribution to the University on its Centennial celebration. Initiated by members and alumni of the UP Mountaineers in response to the imminent threat of global warming among many variants of the environmental crisis. This project aims to promote bicycling as means of transportation and lessen dependence on fossil fuel vehicles. It also aims to promote health and fitness in the campus community.

Students will be renting the bicycles at very affordable rates, which will cover rent of an easy-rider bicycle, training, access to bicycle racks and cable locks per semester.

The dry run of the project will start on April 11, 2008 (Summer 2008) through the help of volunteer bikers. Full implementation of the project is planned for June SY 2008-2009.

These brightly-painted bicycles with step-through frames are designed not for speed but for comfort, safety, visibility and function. Utility baskets will be mounted on the handlebars where students can place their belongings.

The UP Padyak Project is privately funded by the members, alumni and friends of the UP Mountaineers.