Chris Jordan’s images of excess
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. every hour–that transform abstract data into palpable visual language. From a distance, his large-scale images resemble pointillism, but zoomed in, they are composed of individual cups, bottles or prison uniforms. This is pretty powerful stuff–it can be hard to get a grip on the scale of these numbers in abstraction, as we’ve learned talking about the 150 million tons of waste buried at Fresh Kills. Visualization helps.
Jordan has published a book of his photos, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait and recently completed Midway: Message from the Gyre, a series of stills taken of albatross carcasses in the North Pacific, where colorful bits of plastic have been mistaken for food by the birds.
Revisiting the disposable coffee cup
58 billion non-recyclable coffee cups are used and thrown away each year. BetaCup aims to fund a design contest geared toward reducing or eliminating that waste. Ideas and donations for sustainable alternatives are accepted.
NYC tests hybrid garbage trucks
The New York City Department of Sanitation is testing out four models of hybrid diesel-electric garbage trucks as it considers how to upgrade its fleet. The trucks have been designed to look and operate like typical, all-diesel powered trucks but use 30% less fuel and produce 30% less emissions. They accomplish these reductions by generating energy in an electric motor when the trucks slow down and storing it in a battery to be used in tandem with the diesel engine. Garbage trucks are ideal for this technology because they make frequent stops, regenerating energy several times on each block. The city plans to assess the four models over the next year before beginning to purchase up to 300 new vehicles per year.
(via The New York Times)
Pulau Semakau
About 5 miles off the coast of mainland Singapore, adjacent to two mangrove habitats, a small island is being created out of the country's waste, section by section, at a rate of just under 2000 tons per day.
Semakau Landfill, the world’s first offshore landfill and Singapore’s only waste destination, has been described by Singapore’s government as “Scenic Waste Disposal.” The site has been open to the public for recreational activities since 2005 and has been envisioned as an eco-park featuring renewable energy generation and educational facilities. Commissioned in 1999, the landfill was designed to work in harmony with the bio-diverse surrounding areas; it physically connects the islands of Pulau Sakeng and Pulau Semakau. A perimeter bund includes an impermeable membrane, marine clay and rock layers, which prevent waste and its byproducts from leaching into the surrounding water.
Initially expected to reach full capacity in 2040, the landfill’s lifespan has been extended due to the country’s efforts at waste reduction. Singapore now has a goal of recycling 60% of its waste by 2012.
Trash begets fuel on a large scale
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. LFG goes through a purification process and is then fed into a natural gas liquifier, where it is cooled below the natural gas boiling point of -260 degrees Fahrenheit, yielding LNG. Unlike the energy harvested from LFG at the Freshkills Park site, which is used for residential energy needs, the Altamont facility’s Liquified Natural Gas can be used as a gasoline or diesel fuel substitute in heavy duty vehicles.
(via Treehugger)
Gotham and its Garbage, tomorrow
NYU’s Robin Nagle, Anthropologist-in-Residence of the NYC Department of Sanitation, will be giving a talk tomorrow evening called Gotham and its Garbage: What it Was, What it Is and What It Might Become, at the Bloomingdale Library on the Upper West Side and sponsored by the Park West Neighborhood History Group. Robin is a terrific speaker and knows an enormous amount about New York City’s waste management system. Should be a great talk.
Tuesday, November 17, 6:00pm
Bloomingdale Library
150 West 100th St, bet Columbus & Amsterdam, 2nd floor
This Sunday is America Recycles Day
In honor of America Recycles Day this Sunday, Brokelyn offers a Brooklynite’s guide to responsibly ridding yourself of stuff–through swaps, donations and recycling. Lots of New York City-wide non-landfill options in the other boroughs here, too; this is a rich, comprehensive resource. Some highlights and additions:
- The NYC Stuff Exchange, run by the NYC Department of Sanitation, offers a borough-by-borough directory of places where you can buy and sell used or second-hand items, large and small; they also have a list of other sites you can use to sell or exchange specific types of items.
- Materials for the Arts collects surplus or used material from a variety of commercial and non-profit organizations for free distribution to non-profit arts groups and schools.
- The Department of Sanitation offers a list of electronic recyclers and dismantlers that do business in New York State. The Lower East Side Ecology Center also e-cycling drop-off days with some frequency.
- You can drop off up to four car tires at any nearby NYC Department of Sanitation garage between 8 am and 4 pm, Monday through Saturday.
- Clothes and textiles can be donated, to Goodwill or Salvation Army, for example, but they can also be recycled. The Council on the Environment of New York City, for one, hosts clothing and textile recycling events, including this Saturday, the 14th, from 8am-4pm at the Staten Island Mall.
One endpoint of the NYC waste stream
A landfill in Tullytown, PA ranks third by volume among destinations for NYC's residential waste.
Since the closure of Fresh Kills Landfill in 2001, districts outside of New York City, and as far as Virginia and Ohio, have become destinations for the city’s garbage. Just north of Philadelphia, a 6,000-acre complex of Bucks County landfills–in Tullytown, Falls Township and Morrisville, PA–receive about 2,500 tons of New York City’s trash each day. Along with the waste, these three municipalities have also received millions of dollars from Waste Management, the company that runs the landfill complex and imports waste from New York through a contract with the Department of Sanitation. Tullytown property owners receive an annual check of $5,000 from Waste Management, and the municipality has a $50 billion surplus. Waste Management offers free trash pick-up for Falls Township residents and has donated 4-wheel-drive vehicles to the Police Department of Morrisville.
At 283,902 tons of garbage received annually, GROWS North Landfill in Tullytown ranks third by volume as a destination for New York City’s garbage. Number one is a landfill in Waverly, VA, which received 932,536 tons of trash in fiscal year 2009, almost a third of the 3.3 million tons of residential waste produced by New York City each year.
(via The New York Times)
Zero waste strategies are catching on
Waste sorting in Nantucket, a model for zero waste, has reduced the amount of waste sent to landfill to 8%, compared with 66% in Massachusetts as a whole. The island has accomplished this through diligent sorting, an expansion of mandated recycling, industrial composting and a community swap shop.
The New York Times surveys the growth of “zero waste” strategies in the US among private companies, institutions and entire municipalities. “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” are really coming of age: biodegradable utensils, large-scale composting and citywide, warehouse-like free swap shops. And it’s not just hippies and treehuggers participating anymore.
Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere.
The municipal programs are the most inspiring. The story notes that Nantucket only sends 8% of its waste to landfills now–its landfill is actually shrinking, thanks to an entity that searches the landfill for materials it can resell like sand and aluminum. (The slide show about Nantucket is really worth checking out).
While not as comprehensive, it’s still impressive that San Francisco has successfully outlawed landfill-bound disposal of food waste. Ottawa has also recently joined that cause.
Recycling, composting and worms, this Saturday
The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Staten Island Compost Project will be co-hosting a recycling and home composting workshop this Saturday afternoon at the St. George Library on Staten Island. Tin can tricks and live worm bins, fun for all ages. October 24th, 1-3pm, 5 Central Avenue, Staten Island, just a block from the ferry terminal.
