Vulgare recently highlighted artist Mel Chin’s Revival Field: Projection & Procedure (1990-1993), a 60 square foot phytoremedation test plot at the Pig’s Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota. While in residence at the Walker Art Center, Chin worked with scientists at the USDA to design gardens of hyperaccumulators—plants that can uptake heavy metals from contaminated soil (at Pig’s Eye, the soil was contaminated with cadmium, zinc and lead).

Next year, Princeton University will begin construction of a 27-acre solar field, hosting16,500 photovoltaic panels, to partially power its New Jersey campus.  The array will be built on off-campus university-owned land and is projected to generate 8 million kilowatts of energy per year, or 5.5% of Princeton’s total electricity usage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8&w=507&h=370]

Japanese inventor Akinori Ito has devised a way to revert post-consumer plastics, including the ubiquitous plastic bag, into petroleum-based fuel.  By heating up material in a small machine, capturing and cooling the vapors, and collecting the resulting liquid, Ito is able to turn two pounds of plastic into about a quart of oil, using a single kilowatt of power. 

The U.S. Army plans to install a new landfill gas-to-electricity facility at its base in Fort Benning, Georgia.  Capturing landfill gas to generate electrical power is a fairly well-established practice at this point, but what will distinguish the Flex Powerstation is its ability to oxidize gases with levels of methane as low as 1.5%. 

An exhibition called Nurturing Nature: Artists Engage the Environment, at Concordia College’s OSilas Gallery in Bronxville, NY, features contemporary art projects focused on “healing our relationship with the living eco-system.”

This exhibition will focus on various spiritual or ethical traditions in relationship to our care of the planet, what Christianity terms ‘stewardship’, Tikkun Olam or ‘repair the world’ in Judaism, and in Buddhism ‘compassion for all sentient beings.’

Inhabitat reports that construction has begun on the nation’s first commercial biofuel plant, in Vero Beach, Florida.  Formerly the site of a citrus processing factory, the Indian River BioEnergy Center, a $130 million joint venture of Ineos Bio and New Plant Energy, is expected to annually produce 8 million gallons of bio-ethanol and six megawatts of renewable power, two of which will be allocated to the local community.

California Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D) has proposed a bill that would create two pilot sites to test technology harnessesing vibrational energy from cars driving on roadways.  The project would place vibration sensors under the asphalt surface along a stretch of road; intermittent strain applied from vibration to the sensors builds up electric charge, which would flow to a battery on the side of the road for storage and use in electrical applications like lighting or feeding the grid. 

A problem faced by many industrial ports is what to do with contaminated marine sediment that is regularly dredged from the sea floor—sediment that often contains high levels of carcinogenic PCBs, cadmium, lead and mercury.  In the past, these polluted soils were dumped further out to sea or transported to inland landfills, both fiscally and environmentally costly options.

Since 1996’s Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act, Germany has reduced its total net waste by more than 37.7 million tons by diverting garbage from landfills through recycling and recovery.  Its policy and programs hinge on a “polluter pays” model that starts with the manufacturer. 

A new exhibition on the human relationship with hygiene opened last week at the Wellcome Collection in London—a “a free visitor destination for the incurably curious” which “explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future.” 

Yesterday, March 22nd, 2011, marked the ten year anniversary of the last barge of garbage delivered to the Fresh Kills Landfill.  To mark the occasion and to celebrate ten years of reclamation and preparation for park development, the NYC Department of Sanitation and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation jointly hosted a small celebration at the Freshkills Park site.

On Monday, the City of New York released Vision 2020: The New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. The document will guide waterfront planning  in the City over the next decade.  It has eight overarching goals:

1. Expand public access
2.

The Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance will be holding its third annual symposium next weekend, to survey and discuss interdisciplinary work at the intersection of dance and ecology.  “Slow Networks: Discovering the Urban Environment Through Collaborations in Dance and Ecology” will include presentations from past participants in iLAND’s residencies, general discussion panels and hands-on workshops in the field. 

Slate offers a brief history of American trash, its handling, delivery and final destinations.   Before 1931,  New York City’s trash was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean.  Later, it was hauled to a series of local dumps, and today, it is shipped over state lines to landfills down the Atlantic coast and into the midwest. 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/18507807 w=500&h=300]

Another animated video in the American Society for Landscape Architects (ASLA)’s sustainable design series demonstrates how to sustainably reclaim building materials for use in new park construction.  The clip highlights ways to convert a former building site into a new open space while minimizing waste and maximizing use of recycled materials.

Design Observer runs an interview with Adriaan Geuze, principal of landscape architecture firm West 8, on its approach to designing Governors Island Park.  He discusses the master plan for the park and how it accentuates the island’s natural attributes, location, and views, and how topography plays a pivotal role in the vision. 

Kerb, a progressive landscape architecture publication produced by the RMIT University School of Architecture and Design in Melbourne, Australia, is looking for submissions for its next issue, Paradigms of Nature: Post Natural Futures.

Are we steering in an ‘un-natural’ direction, or taking the evolutionary leap necessary to establish a more integrated mode of co-existence?

Waste Management, Inc. (WM) recently reached a company goal of supporting at least 25,000 acres of wildlife habitat across 100 of its properties, most of which are landfill sites.  Environmental projects on WM land vary  from pollinator gardens and birdhouses to wetland creation and native habitat enhancement, with many projects involving community involvement and environmental education components. 

At NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, fall term students explored ideas relating to urban farming, phytoremediation systems and environmental data monitoring through a course entitled “Designing Living Systems.” Some of the student projects included a stepped indoor hydroponic farm, a bathroom phytoremediation device and a moss-covered structure with air monitoring capabilities.

Our thanks to Michael Marrella and the crowd who attended his lecture last week at the Metropolitan Exchange as part of our  Freshkills Park Talks series.  After starting with a brief history of the New York City’s harbors and waterways, Michael walked the audience through the process of preparing Vision 2020, the update to New York City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan.