Tags: audio/video

Information and reflection on plastic marine pollution continues to increase: as if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch weren’t cause for enough distress,the Sea Education Association (SEA) recently completed a two-decade study on the Atlantic Ocean and  reports that a large volume of discarded plastic also floats in the North Atlantic Gyre, trapped together by ocean currents and causing harm to fish and bird species inhabiting the area.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VObNlRHgQZ8&w=507&h=370]

An informative early-1980s video primer on the development of the contemporary sanitary landfill, with Fresh Kills as the prime example.  Some interesting footage of the landfill in operation.

Important note regarding the narrator’s concerns about the quality of drinking water in the vicinity of landfills: Staten Island’s water supply, like that of the rest of New York City, comes from upstate New York and not from the immediate environment. 

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULP2f9DxeQw&w=507&h=370]

The No Impact Project was started by Colin Beavan, also known as No Impact Man, to see if his family could live a zero-waste lifestyle for one year in New York City.  Through environmental education, the No Impact Project aims to empower others to reduce their impact on the environment (the No Impact Experiment, a “one-week carbon cleanse,” is featured in the video). 

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

A new documentary called Garbage Dreams will be screening at Manhattan’s IFC Center for one week starting today, January 6th.  The film follows three teenage boys who grow up in a “garbage village” on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, where residents are referred to as Zaballeen, Arabic for “garbage people.” 

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09lQ8Q1iKE&w=507&h=370]

Photographer Chris Jordan makes staggering representations of human waste, consumerism and cultural practices, focusing on the immense environmental impact of collective consumption.  Jordan illustrates daunting statistics–4 million plastic cups used each day on airline flights alone, 166,000 overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S.

Eli Cohen gave a terrific talk Monday night on his work, as director of Ayala Water and Ecology, using plants to remove pollutants and contaminants from water, soil and air.  We’re grateful to the huge crowd that poured into the Arsenal gallery for the event, to Laura Starr and Yamit Perez for putting us in touch with Eli and, of course, to Eli himself for sharing his work and his thoughts.

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6686323]

LentSpace is a 37,000 square foot temporary park and cultural space at Canal and Sullivan Streets in lower Manhattan.  The site opened to the public on September 18th–Park(ing) Day–and is on loan to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for three years from Trinity Real Estate, which hopes to build on it when the City’s real estate market improves. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYhvR1CO99I&w=507&h=370]

Norway-based company Statkraft has just opened the world’s first osmotic power plant, tapping into the emissions-free energy produced when fresh water and salt water mix.  Osmotic power harnesses osmosis, the natural process by which a solute in solution travels from an area of lower to higher concentration across a semi-permeable membrane (permeable to the solvent but not the solute). 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjCjWVY3MOw&w=507]

Partners Waste Management and Linde Group have begun processing fuel at the world’s largest Landfill Gas (LFG) to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant, located at Altamont Landfill near Livermore, CA.  Waste Management–the leading US waste services company and largest national operator of refuse and recycling trucks–collects the garbage, and Linde, an engineering company, purifies and liquifies the LFG produced by the waste. 

The Open Source Live Solar Mapping Project, recently released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, tracks private installations of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels  by location in the US and maps them in time.  The map-video, spanning from 1998 to the present day, highlights the spatial concentration of solar energy harvest with changing colors that indicate the number of PV installations in each state. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-HuSOeDUH4&w=507&h=370]

According to the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), biking in New York City has increased by 26% in 2009.  This is following a 35% increase in 2008 and corresponds with 200 miles of new striped or separated bike routes developed over the past three years. 

The Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), on Victory Boulevard on Staten Island, sits on the site of what was once the Mollenhoff Family Farm.  From 1911 to 1992, the Molenhoffs operated a 32-acre vegetable farm that was well-renowned among small growers for its innovations in farming methods, including a mechanical watering system and steam-heated greenhouses.

UbuWeb, the large online archive of avant-garde art, has posted a streaming video of Gordon Matta-Clark‘s 1972 “Freshkill,” filmed at the Fresh Kills Landfill.  The short film depicts the destruction of the artist’s truck by a bulldozer.  The video is also available for download as an MP4.

Greenmuseum interviews Terry Hazen, Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology and the Head of Ecology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about bioremediation, its benefits and its hazards.  Hazen is a well-spoken expert on the subject of remediating contaminated sites and the microorganisms that can be used to do so. 

Landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson talks at TED about the Manahatta Project:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z1cCT2NP4k&w=507&h=370]

Time.com has posted a short video piece on the history and transformation of the Freshkills Park site, featuring Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh and Department of Sanitation Anthropologist-in-Residence, Robin Nagle.

[vimeo vimeo.com/2802531]

Before PBS Thirteen’s online series The City Concealed featured Freshkills Park, it featured another unusual Staten Island park happening, at Mt. Loretto Unique Area, a state preserve on the island’s southern tip.  Artist Doug  Schwartz has been building pyramids of thousands of rocks, spanning nearly half a mile of beach at Mt.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF44p7FG2AQ&feature=channel&w=507&h=370]

The Science Barge is a touring greenhouse that showcases techniques in sustainable agriculture.  All the energy used by the barge is produced by solar panels, wind turbines and biofuels, and the water used for irrigation comes from stormwater or purified river water.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV–sIEM7bU&w=507&h=370]

Ken Burns’ most recent documentary series, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, will air on PBS in September.  Burns on National Parks:

You’d be hard pressed to find something that was a purer expression of the democratic impulse, in setting aside land, not for the privileged, not for the kings and nobility, but for everybody.

[youtube youtube.com/watch?v=1fITT6rVPds&w=507&h=370]

We’ve been linking to Colin Beaven’s No Impact Man blog for a while now.  The No Impact project, and others like it, are appealing to us because they’re at least partly about assuaging the massive environmental guilt (or owning up to the responsibility, if you slice it that way) that comes with fuller understanding of our effect on the world around us.