Tags: garbage

More on the mind-boggling Great Pacific Garbage Patch: it’s now the object of a grail quest across the ocean.  Scientists from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and videographer Drew Wheeler have set sail on a two month voyage to study and sample the Patch and document its impact on marine wildlife. 

Steve Cohen’s Consilience editorial on New York City waste management offers some good examples of how other cities deal with their garbage and offers some alternative proposals for our current system, with a focus on composting.  He calls out the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which we’ve mentioned before, for its efforts to reduce the 47% of landfill waste that could otherwise be composted in New York City.

With the opening of the West Harlem Piers Park at the end of May, the Hudson-flanking edge of Manhattan became an unbroken strip of public park space.  Designed by W and Archipelago (with initial support, like Freshkills Park, from the New York Department of State Office of Coastal, Local Government & Community Sustainability under Title 11 of the Environmental Protection Fund) the completed West Harlem Piers Park represents a decade of engagement among various community groups and individuals. 

The upcoming week is a busy one for us.  Three terrific public events focused on different aspects of the Freshkills Park site: waste, art and ecology.  They’re all free, and we hope to see you at one or more of them. 

Andy Lubershane’s weekly series Earthly Comics works to unpack environmental topics that can be difficult to understand: walkability; pervious concrete; cellulosic ethanol.  Not the stuff of Marmaduke, but it does break some complicated ideas down into digestible chunks, and it’s pretty lighthearted.

We get a lot of raised eyebrows when we first talk about the Freshkills Park Project with the uninitiated.  Some folks are put off by the idea of landfills in general, and some are familiar with the stigma the site has given Staten Island over the past half century.

Yesterday we were treated to a tour of the Staten Island Transfer Station (SITS) by Tom Killeen, the Department of Sanitation’s Director of Fresh Kills.  SITS is a 79,000 sq ft complex opened in 2006 and is responsible for the processing ALL of Staten Island’s residential waste. 

New York City throws over 3,000 tons of organic matter into landfills every day.  Time to start composting!  Craft-zine’s blog offers a guide to setting yourself up for indoor, home vermicomposting; the Lower East Side Ecology Center offers supplies and more information on composting in general. 

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)

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. 

[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.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1DxwUHNd08&w=507&h=370]

Waste? is a new web documentary series featuring people whose livelihoods capitalize on what gets thrown away: canners scouring the streets for redeemables; engineers powering their breweries with waste water; architects constructing homes out of tires.  The series explores what motivates this type of reuse: worldviews, necessity, bottom lines. 

The construction industry produces an estimated 164 million tons of building-related waste per year, making it the single largest contributor to landfills in the US–about 20% of stateside landfill waste is construction debris.  Worldchanging reports that do-it-yourself enthusiasts in England are testing a new business model that would reclaim almost 12% of England’s construction waste by reselling materials at ”ReIY’ (Reuse It Yourself) centers. 

New Yorkers are throwing less stuff away now than they were three years ago. That’s according to Steve Cohen on his blog at The Observer.  Apparently, we’re down to 51,250 tons per week, from 54,205 tons per week in 2005. 

When Fresh Kills Landfill closed, the Department of Sanitation began exporting the city’s garbage to private landfills. The long-haul trucking required for that export has been costly: waste disposal rose from 40 to 100 dollars per ton and has contributed to congestion and air pollution.