Agnes Denes retrospective
The artist, standing within "Wheatfield--A Confrontation," at the Battery Park Landfill, 1982.
Philosophy in the Land II, an exhibition featuring photography, drawings and prints by artist Agnes Denes spanning the last 50 years, is on view at the Leslie Tonkonow Gallery in Manhattan until January 16th. Denes is a pioneer of the environmental art movment whose ecological and philosophical interests surfaced in her 1968 piece Rice/Tree/Burial, which has been described as “the first site-specific piece anywhere with ecological concerns.” Also included in the exhibition are photos of her iconic Wheatfield–A Confrontation, a field of wheat planted and harvested by the artist in 1982 on the site of the Battery Park Landfill, now Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. Commissioned by Public Art Fund, Denes created Wheatfield over a period of four months and described the piece as “a work that addresses human values and misplaced priorities.” The exhibition also includes many of the artist’s drawings and prints exploring visual ideas across a range of disciplines, including mathematics, philosophy and science.
Canadian landfill to be world’s largest pollinator park
Honeybee (Apis mellifera), photo by macropoulos via flickr
City planners in Guelph, Ontario have approved a master plan to transform a 200-acre decommissioned landfill into the world’s largest pollinator park. The former Eastview Road Landfill, which operated as a municipal dump from 1961 to 2003, has been capped and outfitted with a methane capturing system that converts landfill gas into usable energy. Filled land, which constitutes about half the site, will host some recreational amenities but primarily shrub and meadow plantings that provide habitat for pollinator species such as bees, butterflies, bats and birds. These species are surprisingly vital to food production: pollination research suggests that three out of four flowering plants require animal pollinators in order to produce seed and fruit.
Pollinator populations have been in decline in recent years. Honeybees, in particular, have experienced what beekeepers call “colony collapse disorder“; other causes for decline include pesticide misuse, light and air pollution, hive destruction and farming practices that destroy habitat.
In conjunction with non-profit group Pollination Guelph, the city is developing a plant palette with a wide enough range of blooming seasons to accommodate both early and late pollinators. Other park amenities include toboggan runs, a trail network, demonstration gardens, basketball and volleyball courts, soccer and football fields, a natural ice rink and a playground.
Eli Cohen on sustainability and phytoremediation
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.
One of his bigger themes, telegraphed by the title of the talk, “Sustainability in Practice,” was his strong belief that “Natural Biological Systems”– systems constructed of plants, soil, rocks and other natural materials and supported by forces like gravity and sunlight–are not only just as effective as more expensive, technological solutions to environmental remediation, but also, literally, much more sustainable. He walked through a number of Ayala’s Natural Biological Systems, which filtered and cleaned runoff and sewage from a variety of sites including private residences, a dairy farm, a landfill, a cosmetics plant and an entire city (Hyderabad, India). His full slideshow is available as a PDF (6MB).
You can stream the entire audio of the talk, below, as you page through the slides. You can also download that audio directly as an MP3 (71 minutes, 66MB).
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)
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.
Renewable potential of old industrial sites
The Renewable Energy Interactive Mapping Tool on Google Earth allows users to pinpoint EPA renewable energy siting locations and to search for detailed site information via contaminated land type or renewable energy type.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites nationally, including abandoned mines, disused factories and some landfills, that could be suitable for renewable energy projects–primarily solar and wind power, and some biomass harvesting. Contaminated sites are considered particularly appealing for renewable energy projects because they are less likely than other sites to be prized for their habitat value.
The EPA survey found about 5 million acres of land appropriate for solar power development and 500,000 acres for wind power (this inventory is available for perusal using the EPA’s new Renewable Energy Interactive Mapping Tool on Google Earth). The EPA estimates that if projects were fully implemented on all of these sites, a potential 950,000 megawatts could be generated, totaling more energy than was expended in the U.S. in 2007. In November, they plan to host a series of workshops to help governments and local leaders step in this direction.
(via Scientific American)
New soil remediation technologies
An illustration of success in one of Veru-Tek's on-site soil remediation projects.
Veru-Tek Technologies has developed a spin on phytoremediation to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater on brownfield sites. Where traditional phytoremediation uses in situ plants, Veru-Tek uses extracts derived from plants, nanometals produced from plant extracts, and other natural substances to dissolve and oxidize contaminants (like coal tar, chemical solvents and petroleum byproducts) in place, turning them into non-toxic compounds. One method developed by Veru-Tek involves injecting a biodegradable substance similar to corn oil or coconut oil into the soil, where it breaks down pollutants into smaller molecules and reconfigures them into harmless byproducts. The company’s remediation methods have been demonstrated in a number of brownfield sites and provide an alternative to hauling contaminated material to landfills.
(Via CleanTechnica)
Landfill methane used for hydrogen fuel
Catalyx Nanotech is the first company to use methane for nanofiber production. Through a demonstration project at a California landfill, the company was able to split methane into pure hydrogen and carbon to produce nanofibers. Carbon-based nanofibers can be applied to a number of uses: medical, energy, protection, textile; in this case, they’ll be used for hydrogren fuel supply. The company says that by making hydrogen at a local landfill they will avoid a hugely expensive and energy inefficient process of fabricating and transporting the hydrogen.
(via Clean Technia)
