Archive for September, 2010

The Green Building Seminar!

Geoff McCabe
Sep 23 |19:51

This year, the Green Building Seminar and Round-table took place at the University for Peace in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica.  A good portion of the Conference tackled Climate Change, which included a variety of lectures, panel discussions and workshops.  Among the assistants were students, policymakers, academics and members of business and NGO community.

Dr. Karl-Werner Schulte, HonRICS CRE, International Real Estate Business Schoo began the conference as well as set the pace of the event. The Round-table was hosted by Mr Sven Schulte, a UPeace graduate student himself.With the aid of many university, NGO and business experts, the whole event moved at a smooth pace. Tropisphere’s very own Geoff McCabe was a key note speaker there!

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Festival Nacional de Yoga – Costa Rica 2010

Geoff McCabe
Sep 14 |18:52

This weekend in San Jose, the third annual National Yoga Festival for Costa Rica took place, with dozens of yoga centers around the country participating by offering free yoga classes at their studios on Friday and Saturdays. The festival is put on every year by ASOYOGACR, headed by local yoga instructor Edgar Ortiz Salgado, who also taught one of the classes.

The festival culminated with a full day of events held at CENAC (The National Arts and Culture Center) in downtown San Jose, just north of Parque Morazon. Teachers from the central valley offered free classes, as well as teachers from various yoga retreat centers such as Nancy Goodfellow from Pranamar in Malpais/Santa Teresa, and Jill Ruttenberg of Ama Tierra in the mountains of the central pacific coast.

A variety of special yoga classes were presented, including yoga for kids, yoga for pregnant mothers, and aroma yoga.

Along with yoga classes, other programs were offered as well, such as meditation, qi gong, and tai chi.

A variety of food vendors, such as Organico from Montezuma, were set up all day to provide organic and nutritious meals for the hungry masses.

Many other vendors set up shop as well, selling yoga clothing, hand-made jewelry, bath and beauty products, imports from India, yoga mats and props, and many other great things. The vendors were so crowded it was difficult to see what they had to offer.

In addition to all the classes, CENAC’s main stage had several hours of music and dance, acrobatics and circus shows, aerial silk, and amazing yoga demonstrations, such as Ashtanga teacher Matteo’s incredible show of power, balance and flexibility that had the entire audience spellbound.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the festival immensely, and many commented that they wish it was held more often, or for longer. With yoga’s appeal growing at a rapid rate, both in Costa Rica and internationally, we hope that will happen.

 

Eco Bloque Construction for Costa Rica

Geoff McCabe
Sep 12 |01:44

Eco Bloques in Costa Rica for green building construction

Wayne E Bird took the time to answer a few questions for Pura-Verde.com about his amazing eco-bloques, which are a long-awaited addition to the green building materials in Costa Rica. With this technology, builders nationwide will be able to build concrete-block style construction for cheaper as well as much more ecologically. The eco-bloques are made mostly from the dirt found onsite, using a machine imported by Mr Bird that uses high pressure to create them.

How did you get started with the Eco Bloques project and what was your motivation?

I was actually introduced to these products by a con man from the US. Long story but he professed to have exclusive rights to Costa Rica for Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB’s). He did not.

I knew this was a perfect product for Costa Rica and all of Latin America. Since then I have been on a mission to get these products approved for use in Costa Rica.

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