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A New Way to Dispose of Trash: Vacuums
Growing up in Chicago, I never noticed garbage disposal as a prominent issue in my neighborhood because of the city’s alleyways. The side streets offered a dangerous yet aesthetically pleasing way for building residents to discard their waste without having to gaze at it on the sidewalk. Once my family moved to New York, I began to recognize the issue more urgently. New York’s summers offer outdoor dining, leisurely activities, and foul odors that tend to disrupt the City’s best attributes. Even without the odor, the trash piled up at each street corner ruins the city’s aesthetic appeal.
Although creating alleyways seem indisputable in hindsight, New York City’s competitive real estate market simply cannot afford to waste lucrative space on garbage. The City’s housing prices are constantly on the rise; the idea of devoting space to waste seems both fiscally irresponsible and menacing to city residents.
To handle the city’s trash disposal in an aesthetically pleasing manner, I initially thought of city block-centered trash shoots that people can drop their trash into. The shoots would travel in a similar manner as the city’s sewage system except with a well-organized map and system to follow the trash routes. Although the idea seemed fool-proof in theory, I could not actually think of the mechanics behind the system. After searching similar ideas online, I noticed Roosevelt island has already installed shoots like this since 1975 in an effort to make the area look more utopian. The island has several apartment buildings in which residents throw their garbage down the building’s trash shoot. The trash then travels underground in pneumatic tubes that vacuum the waste to a centralized collection facility. The vacuums are motor powered, and they produce far less pollution than the city’s garbage disposal trucks.
Some concerns regarding the tubes include its relatively small diameter and the system’s ability to be scaled for Manhattan’s garbage disposal. Roosevelt Island residents were unintentionally clogging the tubes with waste not meant for the tubes. In addition, the tubes were designed for a much smaller, simpler system. In order for the same to be applied in Manhattan, the tubes would need to be larger, sturdier, and designed in a more complex manner to handle the city’s grander scale.
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roosevelt-island-sucks-away-summer-trash-stink
Haute Couture, Hot Planets, and The Downside of Our “Decluttering” Obsession
So, I know we’re two months into 2019 already, but maybe having to turn your calendar to “March” has made you think a little bit about putting some more work towards (or, honestly, getting a start on) some of our New Year’s resolutions. Maybe I can even predict a few of them – something about minimizing, maybe? Decluttering? Clarifying. Cutting the crap out of our lives. Simplicity. Rediscovering our style. New Year, New You – right? Granted, I’m just rattling off a list of Winter 2019 marketing Buzzwords, but I’m sure some of them hit the spot. There’s a reason our mailboxes are full of post-holiday sales promos from Forever 21, and there’s also a reason for Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up” becoming a hit show on Netflix. Be it shopping for new clothes or throwing out old clothes, let’s go with I’ll bet I know how some of you spent part of the weekend.
And, why not? We’re pretty great at both! The annual US consumption for 2016 works out to every American on average buying more than five garments a month. And, since the “What goes in must come out” principle applies to our closets as much as it applies to our digestive systems (although maybe don’t mention that as a real estate agent,) it also means that Americans discard about 75 pounds of textiles per person per year – most of which ends up in landfills. Essentially, we’re great at turning Gucci into greenhouse gases.
Fast fashion is a largely a 21st century phenomenon, originally driven by international chains like H&M, Zara and Topshop, which usually takes the latest design trends and creates cheap pieces in those designs for quick mass consumption – a short production cycle that can take as little as a week. This lower-cost clothing is made to last only around one season, and the high turnover means customers are enticed to come back frequently to those stores to buy new clothes. Research collated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggests that global clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years, with garments on average being worn much less and discarded quicker than ever before; the average lifespan of a garment of clothing is now estimated to only be around 1.5 years.
A 2016 study found that the 15 million tons of textiles thrown away per year by the US alone accounts for over 9 percent of our country’s total unrecycled waste. Whether garments go directly into a landfill, as it is in these cases, or are processed by a problematic recycling program, the crisis is only getting worse as the population increases and demand soars. Worse still is that our knowledge of the waste is incomplete, as much of it is hidden along supply chains.
While textile waste is a worldwide issue, cities like Dhaka in Bangladesh see the worst of it. Factories in Dhaka produce clothing for many high street brands like H&M, Zara, Gap, and even Walmart. In turn, these areas have the worst air pollution in the world and are surrounded by water that can’t possibly sustain life. Clothing made from polyester, which is essentially a plastic, takes up to 200 years to breakdown in landfill. While natural fibres like cotton or wool can theoretically biodegrade and compost (although current production levels far surpass sustainable biodegradability), landfills are still not suitable conditions for the disposal of natural fabrics. Wool, for example, leaks a type of ammonia when it becomes landfill.
As New York Fashion Week drew to a close last week, the industry’s editors, designers, representatives, and influencers will flock to London, Milan, and Paris to continue the festivities of a month of fashion. However, our dedication to haute couture may very well leave us with a very hot planet – and one more distressed than any 400 dollar pair of designer jeans.
New York City – a metropolis famous for its influence in the fashion world- has taken some measures to diminish the negative environmental impacts of an industry our city is so well-known for supporting. Many innovative ways to encourage sustainable production and disposal of clothing have been developed. These range from sponsoring and providing tax breaks to sustainable fashion brands and designers, to programs such as ReFashion NYC, which is a city-sponsored free and convenient clothing donation and recycling service.
The recent New York Fashion Week has given me a chance to witness, or at least an inability to hide from noticing, the environmental impact of both the production and disposal of the creative, beautiful, and bizarre fashion that we all associate with the city we live in – be it sock-like Balenciagas in streetwear or Oscars-worthy ballgowns. I’d love to do a project focused on how the city that’s largely considered the fashion capital of the world can implement measures to ensure that the clothing we love to buy, take selfies in, and then “minimize” (and then post pictures of our new “decluttered” spaces….) does less damage in pollution and wasted energy. I’d also really love to partner with one of NYC’s many textile-recycling branches to perhaps organize a class, or Macaulay, or Baruch-wide clothing-recycling drive? It might be a good way for us to see some a bit of the “instant” result of the positive environmental impact on our city that this course is meant to instigate.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/downloads/pdf/promotional-materials/re-fashionyc-brochure-re-fa-f.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/dec/06/landfill-becomes-the-latest-fashion-victim-in-australias-throwaway-clothes-culture
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44968561
Save New York from going Down the Drain
In an attempt to limit the consequences of increased rain flow on the infrastructure of its cities, Dutch urban developers have partnered with architects and designers in the Netherlands to engineer an innovative design for the tiles that line its city streets. Called the Rain(a)way project, developers of this low cost, attainable and eco-friendly initiative use a uniquely formulated pattern that is designed over tiles in the cities walkways to direct rainwater into suitable drainage systems. As simple as reinventing the outside design of bricks and tiles that are used to make up our city’s pedestrian waterways, American scientists and urban planners can utilize this idea to alleviate the increasingly harmful effects of flooding and puddle forming across Manhattan island as a result of swelling rainfall.
This redesigned brick overlay known as the Ebb tile is a perfect complement to something else New York urban planners should consider utilizing in cities walkways called the flood tile. This tile collects the water driven its way by ebb tile designs and lets it seep into the ground through tiny water-permeable openings. These tiles, if introduced to Manhattan, can replace traditional “closed pavement tiles”making natural water infiltration a very tangible reality of the city and a major step forward in the push for large scale flood preparation and reaction to increased rainfall/storm damage.
sources:
https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/7-cities-with-great-green-projects-others-should-imitate.html
Project Idea: The Future is Up
New York City began by growing horizontally, increasing the borders of the city and adding more and more buildings and streets. But at some point, the geographic limitations caused a sort of architectural evolution, to go upwards. Not a new spectacle of any sorts, but the skyscrapers and the fame the New York City Skyline is a result of alleviating the stress of an increasing population in the same area of land. This relates to what we discussed in class regarding resiliency and sustainability; continued stress will decrease resilience, with each consecutive stress having a harsher impact.
I wanted to look at what others had proposed as their projects and it seemed like there was a recurring theme, congestion, environmental stresses and its effect on the city’s resiliency. I wanted to combat NYC congestion for my project, but congestion is complex. It isn’t simply too many cars and people, not enough road space and public transportation. Its based on a fundamental issue of a seemingly infinite increase in population in an already finite set of resources; electricity, gas, water, food, and most importantly, space. Therefore, the only solution is to go up. There’s a thing called skyways, which are bridges between buildings that can alleviate sidewalk congestion and have other positive applications. There are cons as well that I wish to investigate, but I believe these skyways have multiple applications. From surveillance to reduce crime activity in the city, to reducing congestion, I think it would be really interesting to do a close-analysis on how skyways would both positively and negatively impact the city and future architecture. My father is an architect who has talked about how there’s purchaseable ‘air space’, the space above a building roof in cities that actually needs to be purchased if an adjacent building wants to build a much taller building. With this legislation already existing, there can be further monitoring to ensure environmentally-friendly protocols.
Trash to Treasure
Imagine turning something that seems like garbage into something that can be useful. Now imagine how much waste is produced in New York City and how great it would be if we could actually turn that waste into something valuable like energy. Well, in Sweden they have found a way to recycle more than 99 percent of all household waste. The way they do this is by burning waste and turning it into energy. Of course, they don’t burn everything since reusing, recycling, and composting are still better. However, burning waste for energy is a step towards zero waste. Since waste is a relatively cheap fuel, Sweden has, over time, developed a large capacity and skill in efficient and profitable waste treatment.
Source
.https://sweden.se/nature/the-swedish-recycling-revolution/
Project idea: geothermal energy
From solar power to hydroelectric energy, we are always evolving to find new sources of energy. But we always seem to forget that our biggest source of energy is right beneath our foot – the earth. Using geothermal technology, we can circulate cold water into the earth’s crust and get back heated water. Then, we can capture the steam and use the converted thermal energy as electrical energy.
Alternatively, home owners can implement their own geothermal system as an air condition unit. During the cold seasons, water temperature above the surface will be much colder than underneath the ground. The pipes will carry that cold water underground and return hot water. Conversely, warmer water sent down during warmer seasons will come back as cold water. Geothermal energy is an extremely versatile source of energy that can generate electricity, heat up, or even cool the area.
Another appealing fact about this technology is that it is a dispatchable source of energy, unlike solar or hydro power. Since the earth’s thermal energy is continuous, it doesn’t rely on unpredictable conditions like the weather for a stable source of energy. Also, it can used in any part of the world as long as the water pipes go underneath the earth’s crust. It doesn’t have to be a large scale facility to house this technology. Even small home owners can implement this system. Overall, it is a more versatile and efficient than mainstream renewable sources of energy.
Sources:
https://www.epa.gov/rhc/geothermal-heating-and-cooling-technologies
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/how-geothermal-energy-works.html
Treating the Water Supply
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How do we combat the ever-shortening clean water supply? Over recent years, our city has become more and more reliant on water from upstate reservoirs. While for now, this is an adequate solution to our growing thirst, we must look towards sustainable methods of accessing clean water and ways to protect our valuable reservoirs. We can look at cities like Singapore, where they desalinate ocean water and use recycled water supplies. If New York could also harness this ability, our thirst will forever be quenched.
Some sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_system
https://www.pub.gov.sg/watersupply/fournationaltaps/desalinatedwater
https://www.cleanwateraction.org/files/publications/ca/10_Ways_to_Protect_Our_Water.pdf
Green Buildings for NYC
What if I were to tell you that luxury buildings in Manhattan contribute around 50% of all carbon dioxide emissions in NYC, with buildings altogether contributing about 70%?
Countries like Italy have launched the construction of green buildings to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It is no secret that as the years go by, this city will tear down old buildings and replace them with new ones, and NYC should follow in those countries’ footsteps for construction of future buildings. In the meantime, we can introduce the idea of green buildings with more rooftop gardens and balconies.
Sources
Food Cycling
For my project proposal, I’d like to develop a food cycling program in NYC. Individuals and businesses throw out so much food on a daily basis and yet we have so many people that are left hungry at the end of the day. Food waste creates smelly and unnecessary garbage that goes to waste. If everyone can collaborate, we can make use of food waste and reduce food waste. Austin, Texas recently passed a law that banns restaurants from throwing out food. The Netherlands have grocery stores where people can “farm” their own herbs in store. I think NYC can take a step in that direction with the right resources.
Resources:
https://thetakeout.com/austin-restaurants-food-waste-trash-landfill-compost-1829464238
Photovoltaics and Floating Solar Plants
As my classmates already mentioned NYC uses a lot of energy and even though it is one of the most energy efficient cities in the US it still has a lot to improve on. I believe Photovoltaic panels are a solution. They provide clean – green energy and they are environmentally friendly. There are no harmful greenhouse gas emissions and solar energy is abundant. PV panels costs are decreasing and they will be more affordable in the future. PV panels are totally silent and are a perfect solution for urban areas and for residential applications. Residential solar panels are easy to install on rooftops or on the ground without any interference to residential lifestyle.
PV panels main problem is intermittency and unpredictability (the sun not shining at night but also during the daytime, there may be cloudy or rainy weather). All we need to do is find a solution to that by allowing the energy from sunny spots to cloudy ones. Also, PV panels can be damaged relatively easily so additional insurance costs are thus very important to safeguard a PV investment. We also need effective storage of energy (ex: Tesla Powerwall). This is where floating solar farms come into play. Floating solar farms provide cities that have limited space on land with somewhere to capture solar energy (perfect for NYC). They also allow underutilized areas, such as dam reservoirs, to become highly valuable power-generating stations.
https://news.energysage.com/floating-solar-what-you-need-to-know/
