Tags: sustainability

As work on Manhattan’s Second Avenue subway line progresses, those viewing the massively scaled operation may wonder, “where does all the excavated dirt and rock go?” In the past, the ‘muck’ from expanding subway lines and other construction projects has contributed to the building of Ellis Island, Governors Island and Battery Park City, among other city landmarks – including the expansion of the Manhattan shoreline.

Methane gas produced from decomposing waste at Fresh Kills landfill is generating revenue for the City of New York of up to $12 million each year as the site is developed into a 2,200-acre park.

With the help of advanced landfill gas collection infrastructure throughout the landfill, the New York City Department of Sanitation is actively harvesting methane, through rigorous state and federal public health and safety guidelines, from the decomposing waste buried at Fresh Kills landfill.

The NY Times highlights an effort by 596 Acres, a Brooklyn-based “public education project,” to galvanize community support in order to transform vacant city-owned land into gardens. Claiming that the city owns a collection of vacant land parcels totaling over 1,000 acres, the group, led by Paula Z.

The recent closure of a town landfill in Tennessee has spurred an innovation in the afterlife of one common discard: beer bottles. Faced with the prospect of high tipping fees associated with hauling its waste elsewhere, the Cumberland County Recycling Center purchased a glass grinder which pulverizes heavy bottles and jars – a heavy component of the town’s waste – into fine gravel, dust, and mulch-like products.

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.

Continuing with the increasingly popular efforts to become a more sustainable metropolis, Mexico City has initiated a new barter-style market in which residents can trade recyclable materials for locally grown foodstuffs.

The opening of the new government sponsored (website in Spanish) market follows similar events lauded by environmentalists such as the closure of the Bordo Peniente Landfill, and green vertical gardens which we’ve previously blogged about.

Brooklyn is becoming a national model for urban agriculture. This month, a major new rooftop farming project in Sunset Park, Brooklyn was announced  by New York City-based Bright Farms, whose mission is centered on constructing hydroponic farms at, or near, supermarkets.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvYsnJuoYZ8&w=507&h=370]

A clear and compelling promotional video by the Dan Region of Towns in Tel-Aviv for their transformation of the Hiriya Landfill into a 2000-acre park focused on environmental sustainability.  Sound like a familiar type of project? The many folks involved in planning, building and educating about the site and the lessons it can teach have been great supporters of the Freshkills Park project. 

Amid all the talk about green roofs, it’s easy to forget about white roofs, also called cool roofs.  Cities are full of heat-trapping black surfaces, including roofs as well as roads, that intensify the urban heat island effect, raising temperatures up to 22°F warmer than in neighboring suburbs. 

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation‘s Daily Plant runs an interview with Richie Cabo, Director of the Citywide Nursery and designer of the O2 Composter, a new compost bin that could increase efficiency of leaf management operations in parks throughout the city. 

The Dirt runs a great interview with Joyce Lee, Director of the Active Design Program at the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC).  DDC’s Active Design Guidelines, released last year, is a manual produced for architects and urban designers with the aim of designing buildings, streets and urban spaces that best promote health and activity. 

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.