Scientific American has run a two-week series of interviews with executives of alternative energy companies to explore the technical, infrastructural, and economic obstacles of developing and implementing non-fossil fuel energy technologies. 17 interviews altogether,  including responses from Robert Gates, Senior Vice president for Commercial Operations of Clipper Windpower; David Mills, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Ausra (solar thermal energy); and Lucien Bronicki, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Ormat Technologies (geothermal and recovered energy).

Especially in hard economic times like this, it’s difficult for smaller non-profits and volunteer groups to compete for grant funding.  Online microphilantropy organization ioby helps groups with small-scale environmental projects in New York City connect with potential donors and volunteers.  (ioby stands for “in our backyards” in a riff on the common NIMBY “not in my backyard” sentiment.) 

Cattails, those wetland mainstays, are a becoming a popular tool for use in phytoremediation, the use of plants to remove and control environmental pollutants.  Arsenic, pharmaceuticals, even chemicals from explosives–cattails have been used in absorbing all of them.  This sounds promising to us. 

The Forum for Urban Design’s 21^stCentury Park & the Contemporary City conference ended yesterday.  Wednesday’s panel of brand-name landscape architects included James Corner, George Hargreaves, and Michael Van Valkenburgh and focused on the need to renew post-industrial landscapes and brownfields as opportunities for creating new parks.

Good Magazine has created a simple, comprehensible primer on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the heinously enormous constellation of trash that covers about 10 percent of the Pacific Ocean.

(via unconsumption)

The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this month with Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations.  They’ll be discussing the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and the process of transforming a landfill into a 21st century park, including their work on projects scheduled for construction over the next two years.

Representatives from some of the country’s largest waste management companies have been lamenting the lost potential of President Obama’s green stimulus bill to directly support the growth of waste-to-energy operations.  The US is currently dishing out $60 billion in energy grants and tax breaks meant to reduce dependence on coal plants blamed for global warming–but unlike wind or solar, none of that money is directly designated for waste-to-energy. 

We’re often asked whether there are other landfills in the world that have been turned into parks and natural areas.  There are, in fact, a lot of them, including many hundreds to thousands of unofficial dump sites and historic landfills whose operation preceded any type of government regulation (Flushing Meadows, we’re looking at you). 

On Saturday, we woke up REALLY early to take a group of professional photographers out on a tour of the Freshkills Park site and catch some prime morning light.  What we got was morning fog, at least for half the morning, but our pros still shot some interesting stuff. 

Corporate masticating mowers: now officially a phenomenon!  Last week we mentioned Bayer Healthcare inviting sheep to chow down on their overgrown Richmond, CA lawn.  This week, Google has hired 200 goats to graze on dry brush at its Mountain View headquarters. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8&w=507&h=370]

Some required viewing for anyone concerned with consumption habits: The Story of Stuff.  The 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled story takes you on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture.  From resource extraction through sale, use and disposal, the video looks at all the stuff in our lives and how it affects communities at home and abroad.

We had a great turnout for last Saturday’s reading atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site, presented by grass-roots dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD.  Attendees read aloud and listened to a passage from ‘Days Afield on Staten Island’, a lyrical exploration of Staten Island’s landscape by 19th century naturalist William T.

One of the environmental concerns surrounding the recent boom in wind farm development is the potential threat of large-scale bird mortality.  There’s nuance to the degree of potential threat related to factors like scale and siting (i.e., more threat when turbines are sited near migratory pathways, nesting areas and mountain passes, for example), but the risk remains. 

Harvard’s Graduate School of Design hosted a conference in March called Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future.  Podcasts of talks included in the conference are available for streaming.  Sessions focused on sustainable urbanism, what that means or might look like, and how on earth might we accomplish such a daunting task. 

Our judges have voted, and the winners of the Freshkills Park haiku contest are:

Adult winners:

Seen from outer space
Freshkills undergoing change
Refresh Google Earth

-L

a park in my mind
landfill scarred islanders’ hearts
reclaimed, restored land

-Lindsay Campbell

From trash to treasure
As from rubble to ramble
We grow; we evolve

-Jessica Kratz

Youth winner:

30 Years

The fresh air, boat rides
On the swings, flying your kite
30 years be there

-Shade, Esmeralda, Alexus

Congratulations!  

Today marks the end of the Freshkills Park Haiku contest. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and inspirations of the Park by crafting a haiku. Reading the entries–over 100 of them!–was a blast, and we are looking forward to announcing the winners on Monday. 

Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific.  Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project. 

This Saturday, Staten Island OutLOUD, a community dialogue and performance project, will be reading from the naturalist memoir Days Afield atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site.  Days Afield, written in 1892, is a poetic exploration of Staten Island’s natural resources by naturalist, historian and Staten Island native William T.

Columbia University will be hosting The 350 Conference on climate change this Saturday. The one-day conference will focus on the need to lower carbon dioxide emissions (from the current 385 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm, hence the name of the conference). 

From new-fashioned eco-technologies to old-fashioned ones: Bayer Healthcare recently brought 1,450 sheep to its Richmond, California campus to graze on 17 acres of grass.  The sheep, managed by Living Systems Land Management, will live on site for two weeks and will eat close to 115,000 pounds of overgrown grass and weeds, including invasive species.