In an attempt to draw attention to the dearth of greenspace and poor air quality in the region, the nonprofit VerdMX has constructed three ecostructures throughout Mexico City. One such structure is a vertical garden of over 50,000 plants.

Formerly notorious for its poor air quality, Mexico City is now an example of successful campaigns by policy makers, environmentalists, and various other groups to improve the city’s air.

The five-alarm fire at the Fresh Kills Compost Site on Monday morning originated in a pile of mulch that combusted spontaneously, according to the city Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty. The fire was contained by early Tuesday morning, thanks to the efforts of 200 firefighters.

The future of green infrastructure within the New York metropolitan region just got brighter: NY State and City officials announced this week that over $2 billion in public and private investments would be committed to ecologically-sound techniques for the management of stormwater runoff and sewage overflow.

In June of last year we made note of a promising new partnership between the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and Housing Works focused on collecting, reusing and recycling unwanted clothing, linens, shoes and clean rags. Less than a year after introducing the program, supporters have pronounced it a grand success.

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 have announced NYC-based design firm HWKN as the winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP). The eye-popping project, titled Wendy, is composed of nylon fabric treated with a nano-particle spray that will neutralize airborne pollutants.

This Monday Gelf Magazine, an NYC-based independent webzine “looking over the overlooked”, will host Geeky Garbage, a discussion about one of the most overlooked aspect of our daily lives — waste. On hand will be former Freshkills Park Talks lecturers Robin Nagle (DSNY anthropologist-in-residence) and Howard Warren (expert on the Barren Island/Dead Horse Bay), with Max Liboiron, a trash artist and pollution activist.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) team recently announced the release of their Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies, a free resource they hope will prove useful to “all designers, homeowners, urban planners, students, artists, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and anyone else interested in a clean energy future”.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved a 1 megawatt tidal power project on the East River, granting Verdant Power a license to generate and sell electricity from underwater turbines. It is the first commercial license for tidal power ever to be issued in the United States.

Our friends at Discard Studies highly recommend this Thursday’s book launch for Samantha MacBride, author of the recently released Recycling Reconsidered: the Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action (MIT 2012). The listing notes that Samantha’s book “offers a critical yet supportive appraisal of the historical development of recycling in the United States, looking at both materials flows and social significance of this meaningful ecological activity”.

Focus Forward, a new series of short films about forward-thinking innovators, brings us The Landfill, directed by Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit.

The film is a brief profile of the small but highly efficient Delaware County Landfill in Upstate New York, which is using a system of composting, recycling, and landfill gas (LFG) capture not unlike the one used at Fresh Kills two decades ago.

A recent analysis of wetland restoration efforts sheds new light on the success of a 100-year history of such work to reclaim these highly important ecosystems. Restoration has been a major undertaking in recent decades as development has damaged and otherwise claimed over half of the wetlands in areas like North America, Europe, Australia, and China.

Progress continues at Staten Island’s Brookfield Avenue Landfill, a 132-acre site in the Great Kills neighborhood, just east of the Freshkills Park site. The second phase of construction is under way and should be complete by 2013. As with other landfill remediation projects in New York City, the city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will oversee completion of the cap, barrier walls and leachate collection system.

Are you part of an organization looking to revitalize an outdoor space in a New York City neighborhood? The New York Restoration Project (NYRP) is looking to help transform existing open areas into gardens or green spaces with their Gardens for the City grant.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/32527263 w=507&h=284]

A recent video on Urban Omnibus, featuring Garbage Land and Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte, offers a glimpse behind the complex process of everyday garbage collection in New York City. Combining interview, animated graphics, and often poetic archival and present-day footage, the video tells a succinct story of one citizen’s look into the past, present, and possible future of municipal solid waste management.

The Trust for Public Land recently published its annual report on urban parkland in the United States. The 2011 City Park Facts lists information for the 100 largest U.S. cities, serving as the nation’s most complete database of park facts.

The report includes data on urban park acreage, spending, staffing, and facilities.

Earlier this month, the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) ideas competition, in partnership with New York City’s Department of Parks & Recreation, opened with a call for large-scale artwork proposals with the ability to generate renewable energy for New York City.

Two new green networks have recently launched that are making participation in sustainability in New York City easier and more accessible.

Change by Us, a website run the Office of the Mayor, allows New Yorkers to post a sticky with an idea for how to make the city “a greener, greater place to live” and has space for people to post information about their projects on the site. 

Join us for our first tour of 2012 as we search for the birds of Freshkills Park along the site’s wetlands, creeks and meadows. This tour, like all of our bi-monthly birding tours, will be held jointly by naturalists from the Staten Island Museum and a member of the Freshkills Park development team.

This Saturday evening a demonstration of PARK, the ever-evolving performance language developed through fieldwork conducted at Freshkills Park by choreographer Kathy Westwater, will take place as part the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference at the Gibney Dance Center in Manhattan.

Applications for the 2012 Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award—an annual award granted by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to one emerging artist for an outdoor sculpture in a City park—are due this Friday, January 6.  The selected artist will receive a grant of $7,000 to exhibit his or her artwork in Joyce Kilmer Park, in the Bronx, for a maximum of one year.