FLAT PACK
Mar 4th 2010, The Economist


Transport: A collapsible shipping container could help reduce the
environmental impact of transporting goods

OVERHAULING an industry of which you know little is not easy, but
neither is it impossible. In 1956 Malcolm McLean, a trucker from North
Carolina, launched the first "intermodal" shipping container, which
could be transferred easily between lorries, trains and ships. It
revolutionised the transport of goods by abolishing the traditional
(and back-breaking) system of "break bulk" loading, and thus helped oil
the wheels of globalisation. Now another outsider to the shipping
industry is trying to get a similar change under way.

Rene Giesbers, a heating-systems engineer from the Netherlands, has
invented a collapsible plastic shipping container which, he hopes, will
replace McLean's steel design. Because it is made of a fibreglass
composite, it weighs only three-quarters as much as a standard
container but--more importantly-- when empty, it can be folded down to
a quarter of its size. The composite is more resistant to corrosion
than the steel it replaces, is easier to clean and floats. It is also
greener to manufacture. Making one of the new containers produces 25%
of the carbon dioxide that would be generated by the manufacture of its
steel counterpart.

A collapsible shipping container would be useful for several reasons.
Patterns of trade mean that more goods travel from China to America,
for example, than the other way around, so ships, trains and lorries
inevitably carry some empty containers. If these were folded, there
would be more room for full containers and some vessels would be
liberated to ply different routes. If collapsed containers were bundled
together in groups of four, ships could be loaded more quickly, cutting
the time spent in ports. They would also take up less space on land,
allowing depots to operate more efficiently.

Mr Giesbers is not the first to invent a collapsible container. Several
models were experimented with in the early 1990s but failed to catch
on, mainly because of the extra work involved in folding and unfolding
them. There were also concerns about their strength. Mr Giesbers says
the Cargoshell, as he has dubbed his version, can be collapsed or
opened in 30 seconds by a single person using a forklift truck. It is
now undergoing tests to see if it is strong enough to meet
international standards.

There are currently about 26m containers in the world, and the volume
of goods they carry has risen from 13.5m "twenty-foot equivalent units"
in 1980 to almost 140m today. It is expected to reach 180m by 2015. Mr
Giesbers aims to have 1m Cargoshells plying the seas, rails and roads
by 2020, equivalent to 4% of the market.

Bart Kuipers, a harbour economist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam,
thinks that is a little ambitious, but he reckons the crate could win
2-3% of the market. He thinks it is the container's lower weight,
rather than its collapsibility, that makes it attractive. It will
appeal to firms worried about their carbon footprints--and if oil
prices rise, that appeal will widen.

Ultimately, the main obstacle to the introduction of the Cargoshell may
be institutional rather than technical. As Edgar Blanco, a logistics
expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out,
"Everyone is vested in the current system. Introducing a disruptive
technology requires a major player to take a huge risk in adopting it.
So the question will always boil down to: who pays for the extra cost,
and takes the initial risk?"

etoy is very proud to host this inspiring firing of ideas streamed from california: TED2010
thanks to etoy.INVESTOR Hannes Gassert from liip who connected us to Hugo Schotman - the man with the TED conference streaming license.

our saturday night partys:
THANKS TO HARALD BINDL and MAKI and MONOROM, SILVAN, and ZAI, what a team.
and I guess it helped a lot we warmed up the whole containers with a faboulous breakfast lunch with xenia, hektor, tobias, sam und alicia, visiting from San Francisco, Berkeley.
Sam, what a data storage on your webpage - etoy.AGENTS, check that for our storage ideas!!!

Alexander Klose's new book looks suuuper interesting and i wonder when i get a few days off to study the 320 pages in detail!

Dieses Buch ist überfällig und notwendig. Es entziffert unsere Kultur des 21. Jahrhunderts, eine Container- Kultur , deren Prinzipien unser alltägliches Schicksal bestimmen. (Joseph Vogl)

the book is based on Klose's dissertation. in 2005 fabio gramazio represented etoy in a conference organized by klose and volksbuehne berlin because i could not attend (still regret that so much).

get the book here for 20 euro

an english translation hopefully follows

hebeschiebetuer and big window for tank17 arrived from hungary today. etoy.TANK-PLANT BINZ is 0.75t more heavy. management wellnes level is expected to increase by 17.667%. etoy.STOCK went up 0.1% today. market is still open: place your bids!

MOST IMPORTANT: after another construction session next week (after the opening of the show IM ANFANG WAR DAS WORT / this sunday) we will be fully compatible with zurich's fire and rescue regulations.

Posted some digital shots of the binz construction site into the gallery.

More photos to come as soon as the films are processed and scanned...

Tired of error-prone and badly translated instruction sheets or plans, Arke stairs is shipping an instruction dvd with movies on how to setup their products. In the video, a solid craftsman proves step by step, that the thousand pieces in front of you really can become the staircase you ordered. What an opportunity to load this video-manual to the ipod and carry it along to the construction site in order to directly conduct the advised steps! Even identifying the single elements is a snap, thanks to the carefully shot and labeled elements-sequences for every working stage.