It’s not only rice that gets thrown out. Perfectly good looking peaches may get thrown out too. I think it shows the flawed way of the American lifestyle. When I looked at this I remembered reading an excerpt from Manahatta that made me think:

“It has been estimated that if the entire world lived the way Americans do today, it would take four planet Earths to supply the global population’s resource requirements.“

I think a huge chunk of this lifestyle is our excessive need for abundance. We get a lot of food, intake a part of it and disregard the rest while there are people on some other edge of the world starving.

Aside from that, this waste just takes up public space.

We’ve finally made it to Spring (the weather seems to still be catching up). We’ve also been having lots of rain (April showers bring May flowers and all that). Yet I noticed something interesting on my walk home from school. As I pass Park Avenue and 23rd st., there is a little park/mall thing with beautiful greenery and flowers. I also noticed something exceedingly stupid: the beautiful flowers are tulips. Don’t get me wrong, tulips are absolutely beautiful and bloom in an array of shades. But something interesting about tulips: they last about a week (2 weeks at most if you’re lucky). I do understand, because my mom worries about the colors in November, that they can be planted early in the season  and that the city won’t have to worry about what’s going to be in April. But if the aim is to create something beautiful, why put in a plant that will disappear after a week and leave bare stems? Perhaps I should just be grateful for the tulips on 23rd, at least they’re planting something.

Most of us recognize Starbucks as one of the most eco-friendly coffee shops in NYC. They have planned initiatives like planting 1 tree per cup of coffee, using recycled material for their cups, and partnering with environmentally friendly farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change. I mean like, even their logo is green.

While Starbucks has become a champion of sustainability, I think they are neglecting the the biggest issue yet – food waste. Today, as I waited 45 minutes for my 4 coffee travelers, I couldn’t help but notice the poorly trained staff who would overfill the shaker and end up pouring the excess milk down the drain. What shocked me more was that other staff did the same exact thing. I began wondering, is this just bad practice at this specific Starbucks shop? Or has it become an institutionalized practice?

I suddenly recall my recent visit to Coco’s, a bubble tea shop right across from Baruch, and remembered how the barista poured out an entire cup of mango slush down the drain because it was the wrong order. Hell, I would’ve taken that drink for free in a heartbeat. But now I realize this isn’t a problem specific to that local Starbucks, or even coffee shops in general. Food waste has become so common that we forget about the hundreds of thousands of children starving in the streets. As a global leader, NYC should set an example to not only protect the environment that we have, but also to sustain it. Food is a finite resource that has a much better destination than the sewers.

I was on my way to an indoor rock climbing gym in between Hell’s Kitchen and Upper West Side. To my surprise, I came across lots of weird looking, yet aesthetic enough skyscrapers. Growing up, I am mostly used to seeing ordinary vertical skyscrapers, but developers are getting creative with the designs nowadays. We’ve seen one near Baruch as well, across the 17th Lex Building. I wonder besides the aesthetic part and trying to come off as futuristic, are there any environment benefits coming from these developments?

Whenever we go anywhere in NYC, we always see construction at train stations outside and within. These improvements directly impact our daily commutes. Our subway fares just increased as well. One of the groups in our class analyzed the effects as well as new solutions to an existing problem. While on the train, there’s always questions I wonder, does anyone clean the trains? What if there’s a big spill or garbage, is there a department or team for that? Can people actually hear the announcements that the conductor makes at every station on the R/W? How do trains operate during rush hour when there is a train ever 2 minutes? Why don’t we have safety measures in place such as how Asia has screen doors in front of the tracks so people can’t fall in? Why doesn’t the U.S. take initiatives to adapt and utilize technology for one of the biggest industries going forward? How do these “improvements” affect our environment? Is it more harmful than helpful? I leave these up to y’all I guess.

For about the train stop closest to my home was under construction and I had to get off at the train stop that preceded it.  This picture is taken two months after the work was finished. This is the ‘renovated’ ceiling. It just speaks a lot about the quality of the MTA construction. This is definitely the antithesis of durability and sustainability. I don’t know whether it is the fault of construction workers or the people responsible for planning. In any case the people in charge need to pay more attention to where their funds are going and oversee the construction more attentively.

Here’s a photo of a stray cat that loves to walk around my neighborhood and also stare at people until they are so uncomfortable, they just walk across the street. I don’t know his name and I don’t know his age but what I do know is that he’s one of many cats in that he doesn’t have a home and chances are, he won’t be rescued. Cats are home pets that cannot undergo our unsustainable environment, so when I saw this caught I thought of all the reasons it could be stray and how it cannot survive in this city that we live in. All the industrial work that we have going on, on top of all the traffic. We have turned earth, a place where people and animals can move freely, into a highway.

On Thursday morning, my family and I were catching a flight to Miami to spend the holiday with our relatives. On the security line, I noticed the both the construction for the new airport and the traffic on the ground as planes were lining up to take off. Considering the new airports grand nature, I thought about how much new construction material would need to be consumed. Additionally, I considered all of the material that would go to waste once the new airport is ready for use. Referencing our idea for the Futures of NYC conference, I considered how 3D printing with sustainable materials could be incorporated into the new structure. Although it might be unrealistic for the entire facade to be made of sustainable materials, I think sustainable materials could be incorporated the furniture design and other small portions of the new building. Aside from the construction, I also noticed how many vehicles are on the ground directing traffic and luggage to each plane. All of these vehicles are not only contributing carbon emissions into the atmosphere but also create lots of traffic on the ground. Although I was grateful to be traveling with my family, I couldn’t help but worry over the pains that it inflicts on our environment and NYC’s future.

This isn’t an unfamiliar sight to any of us. The reconstruction of this plaza has been going on for what seems to be forever (literally probably when we arrived at Baruch). I remember sometime last year, the plaza was actually open, only to be fenced off yet again. I’m not sure what the end result of this plaza is going to be, but my main question is: why have they dug up this area, only to fill it up with those black things, only to dig it all up again? I vividly remember most of this area getting dug up last year, and here we are again, 12 months later with absolutely zero process.

This brings up my bigger pet peeve of why construction (never mind large infrastructural projects, I’m just talking about relatively small construction projects) takes so long in the US. I mentioned on someone else’s post before that there was a small bridge (think tiny highway) in another country that was literally taken down and rebuilt in about a day. Meanwhile, minuscule projects in the US seem to take months, if not years, to complete. The high school that I live across had a construction project that went on for literally four years, and there seemed to be no improvement even by the end of those four years.

I’m no engineers or construction worker, and I get that things take time, but it just seems like any sort of repair/reconstruction here takes so much time (cough cough: the elevators in 17Lex).

This picture was taken during my visit to the New York Public Library. While it’s not a walking distance from Baruch College, this Library is aesthetically pleasing and has variety of study places. I was glad to visit the place because it made me think of all the free resources New York City offers us that we tend to take for granted or not utilize them at all.