Tags: education

Prospect Park is building a composting toilet and putting to use an obsolete building. The Pump House, an unused building tucked away in the center of the park, is not connected to the New York City sewer system so traditional restrooms are not possible but with park use on the rise more restroom facilities are needed, especially in this more remote area of the park.

The 2012 International Urban Parks Conference is around the corner! From July 14th-17th, park professionals, politicians and urban park advocates from around the world will attend “Greater & Greener: Reimagining Parks for 21st Century Cities,” held in New York City. The conference is presented by City Parks Alliance.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/18542856 w=500&h=281]

GrowNYC, in partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation and NYC Department of Education, is currently accepting applications New York City public schools for their 2012-2013 Recycling Champions Program. The program “aims to empower schools to comply with, and exceed, NYC’s recycling laws, and in the process students create school wide projects and campaigns, and learn environmental leadership skills.”

Starting this weekend, NYC Wildflower Week presents a terrific series of events focused on New York’s open space and rich native plant communities. To celebrate, our partners at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center on Staten Island are welcoming the public next Monday, May 14, on a tour of their facilities.

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.

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues next Tuesday with a presentation by elementary school science teacher Howard Warren.  Out of sheer interest and commitment, Howard has become one of the City’s leading experts on the history and present condition of Barren Island and Dead Horse Bay, at the southeastern corner of Brooklyn. 

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.

Waste services provider Waste Management‘s Think Green site is loaded with educational resources covering all kinds of garbage-related topics, from recycling basics to lesser-known protocols like mail-in recycling programs for batteries and light bulbs and proper disposal of e-waste. 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/15225376 w=500&h=300]

A follow-up (or preface) to Dana Gumb’s lecture: as part of its series of sustainable design videos (including the brownfield remediation piece we featured recently), the American Society of Landscape Architects has produced an animated video on designing landscapes to assist in stormwater management. 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/17292335 w=500&h=400]

A simple video called From Industrial Wasteland to Community Park, produced by the American Society of Landscape Architects, demonstrates how contaminated brownfield sites can be returned to productive and public use through site clearance and phytoremediation of contaminated soils. 

Sneak Peak was a huge success!  About 1800 people joined us at the Freshkills Park site on Sunday to make and fly kites, canoe in the creeks, walk the site with an expert, ride a pony, pet a goat, make a bag or a birdhouse, learn about composting and recycling and energy efficiency, receive a free bike helmet or fitting, enjoy the fun music, cool crafts and awesome food and generally celebrate the potential of this fascinating and amazing site. 

Landscapes with the Fall of Icarus is a two-week performance installation by artist Paul Lloyd Sargent for the the Mobile Literacy + Art Bus (MLAB), a collaborative project of art and architecture students at Syracuse University. From 2007 to 2008, the team converted a 1984 Recreational Vehicle into a mobile classroom, digital photo lab, gallery space, and community center for use by the Syracuse City School District and the greater Syracuse Community. 

PBS Thirteen’s Sunday Arts program profiles Materials for the Arts (MFTA), the amazing and popular New York City materials reuse program. Founded in 1978 and still growing under the aegis of the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, MFTA negotiates the transfer of hundreds of tons of materials annually from companies and individuals who no longer need them into the custody of artists and educators citywide who can make use of them. 

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection‘s Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is already home of some of the most distinctive architecture in the City, the onion-dome digesters designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, as well as a lovely and serene Nature Walk designed by artist George Trakas. 

Garbage on Roosevelt Island—the 147-acre strip of land lying in the East River between Manhattan and Queens—is disposed of through a remarkable system of underground pneumatic tubes that was constructed in 1975.  The Island’s 14,000 residents empty their trash into a series of garbage chutes which are emptied into the pneumatic pipes several times daily, carrying it at 30 miles per hour to a transfer station at the end of the island.

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 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). 

The New York Times documents a rise in university programs focused on sustainability, especially regarding the urban environment.  The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education lists nine universities with master’s and doctoral programs in urban sustainability studies.  Most of these programs are interdisciplinary in nature, like the new graduate program at the City College of New York that will focus on sustainability in the urban environment, incorporating the approaches of architecture, engineering and science. 

The post-holiday season can result in a lot of waste.  Groups around New York City are offering a host of upcoming recycling and composting events to ensure that not everything simply ends up in a landfill.

• Parks all over the five boroughs will be participating in MulchFest this weekend, allowing you to bring your Christmas tree to a designated location to be chipped into mulch. 

Plans have been announced by Bio Energy Investments Ltd (BEI) for the construction of BEI-Teesside, a biomass power station to be built on a brownfield site on the banks of the River Tees in the UK.  The striking design is by British firm Heatherwick studio.