A recent article from The Economist entitled “Does it really stack up?” analyzes the feasibility to grow crops in vertical farms in the heart of cities, as a greener way to produce food. But the idea is still unproven, according to Economist.

The underlying idea of vertical farming is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. Creating more farmable land out of thin air would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances since by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas.

Dickson Despommier, professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University in New York -who is widely regarded as the progenitor of vertical farming- says it would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way. He also adds, “the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can be kept to a bare minimum by growing plants indoors in a controlled environment”.

The idea of vertical farming can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC. Since then a wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms.

But, would it really work? According to Economist artificial light poses a big obstacle for vertical farms becoming an economically viable food source. Although such glass towers would provide some natural light to the plants, there would still be the need for artificial light.  Otherwise crop production would be uneven, with those crops closest to windows receiving more sunlight.

Peter Head, global leader of planning and sustainable development at Arup, a British engineering firm, states that immediate opportunity may simply be to take advantage of the space available on urban rooftops and to pursue urban farming rather than vertical farming. But rooftop farming may not be able to compete with other suppliers in a global market unless people are prepared to pay a premium for fresh and local food.

Via: Economist | TriplePundit

Most of us would probably prefer to impose our designs on grand vistas of idyllic acreage. However, most of us also have to make do with something much smaller, like a suburban backyard. If this is a matter of great regret remember it is also a peculiarly affluent First World perspective – we live in a world where many have no choice but to live off far less than a quarter acre and many for whom even this is an impossible aspiration.

How do you make the best of a backyard garden? Ultimately, it is your experiment; there is no universal backyard plan. As every yard will be different it is totally up to you or your family to decide what you would like to create. You may wish to begin with small projects such as creating a suntrap to give you a warm place to sit and have your breakfast on chilly mornings – even to provide your breakfast if you grow the right species. You could also plan a shady nook for those hot summer days, maybe in the form of a shade tree, maybe a small pergola covered in juicy grapes. The following tips and inspirations, derived from experience both tragic and comical, might help in whatever backyard transformation you may choose.

Starting Out

In this society, gardening is a big business burdened with experts telling you what you need to do and most importantly, what you need to buy, spray, spread, plant and so on ad infinitum. It is your backyard and gardening is not about feeding the economic machinery. Think of gardening as contemplative fun, productive and meaningful labour and a place to escape the manufactured stresses of everyday life. Go and sit in it, and get a feel for it. Before you know it you are starting to evolve the plan.

The Plan

Elements to consider include aspect, climate, your time, budget, needs and future plans and, most important in the city, your neighbours. Shade is often a constraint in built-up areas – give some thought to the extra shade you will create when all those fruit trees grow.

Consider the existing structures and features. Are you happy with their placements? Are they productive and useful – or are they disfunctional and a maintenance hassle? Translate your ideas and feeling onto a piece of paper or several pieces of paper. Draw in what exists and what will stay, as well as such constraints as windblown or shaded areas. Then allocate general areas for trees, annual vegetables, animals, access paths and other needs such as clothes lines and play areas. Don’t go overboard on function – humanity has aesthetic and spiritual needs as well.

If you need ideas there is a wealth of knowledge in books, magazines, and other people’s experience to help you draw up a plan. Send away for seed catalogues, visit local nurseries. Talk to your friends and neighbours, find out what grows well in your area. Visit other lots and take note of the structures and gardens. Observe why the connections between some components work well and others don’t. Note where your friends spend most of their time in their lots, and why. Observation at this point is the key.

Also remember ‘the problem is the solution’ philosophy. Perhaps your lot is concreted and you do not wish to jackhammer any of it to dig in a pond. The solution? Make use of an old bathtub or build your pond on top of the concrete using bricks, rocks and an old tractor or truck tyre.

The Soil

Soil is fundamental but don’t despair if yours is not ideal. Most Australian soils lack something. You can, if you wish, spend hundreds of dollars on soil tests. Alternatively, check out your soil yourself – is it full of life, particularly of the wormy variety? If it is not – it needs organic matter at the very least. Soil pH, or the acidity or the lack thereof, is also important enough to test for because it determines the availability of minerals. Bare soil is a no-no in the tropics and the subtropics, so mulch is important in these areas. Growing your own leguminous mulch is one of the best methods of soil improvement anyway. Think about improving soil quality through what you put on top of the soil and let the earthworms incorporate (an ancient practice going under such modern brand names as sheet mulching, no dig gardening and the magic of mulch).

Loosen compacted soil with a garden fork. Drainage is also important, as most trees like good drainage. Poor drainage may be a matter of poor soil texture (which can be improved) and/or topography (which might be difficult to change). Clay soils might appreciate the addition of sand and vise versa, but it is also hard to go wrong (in the longer term) with the addition of organic matter (general panacea for all soil problems). Rock dusts (quarry wastes) or even soil from somewhere else may supply the minerals that your soil lacks. Soil from elsewhere may also contain microorganisms missing from your soil – if you chance upon a tree growing better than your own of the same variety, take a handful of soil from underneath it and if you are lucky you may have acquired some beneficial bacteria and/or fungi. To a large extent if you look after your soil, your plants will look after themselves.

Getting It All In

In a small area, the main concern is space. Following the recommendations of your local agricultural inspector or the directions on seed packets might leave you just enough room for one small tree and a lettuce plant in a small backyard. However, small areas can be intensively planted as they can be (relatively) intensively cared for. Getting it all in is a matter of going up, going down, going sideways, and going with the flow (the McKenna theory of lateral gardening).

Going Up

This is a matter of using your vertical or high spaces as a growing support (or creating some where they do not exist) Consider even the roof; around the world many do. Overhangs can be the location of hanging trellises. High fences are natural trellises, as are houses and retaining walls, ‘feral’ or pioneer trees, balconies, chook houses, garages or even old clothes lines past their prime. The vine is the plant category invented to take advantage of natural or artificial trellises, to insulate, to shade, to beautify and to cool. Chicken wire, spread over surfaces, hanging down, pinned up or on any type of framework is the substance created to give the vine a home.

Plants of various heights, a balcony, or pots of various heights, can make the most of a scarce commodity like sunlight or horizontal space. Mounds, and such constructions as herb spirals also make the most of space by incorporating a vertical element into an otherwise uninspiring horizontal surface. Trees intent on taking over the yard can be kept small and productive (and their fruit within reach) by being potted, or tip and/or root pruned. Vertical stacking is the technical term for the art of putting things on top of each other – sheet mulching on concrete, vines on trees, beehives on roofs, ponds on top of spirals, gardens on roofs, bureaucrats in big tall buildings in city centres. Often the main limits are a lack of imagination and the willingness to experiment.

Going Down

Underground is the unseen dimension. Some plants feed deep and some feed shallow and so can be planted close together. Not enough soil depth? Why not dig out paths to subsoil level and build up topsoil elsewhere with the soil? Ponds are an obvious way of going down productively; a flow can be created between ponds at different levels. Ponds can also be terraced internally to suit the differing depth requirements of various plants. Water can be an extremely productive medium; rather than persist with a drainage problem area, why not turn it into a water-based garden, digging some areas down to create ponds and raising better drained mounds in other areas. Likewise, where drainage is poor but there is some slope, a chisel plough or like implement can be used to direct subterranean water from where it is not needed to where it might be more useful.

It is preferable to try and trap nutrients and water that naturally escape your system. You can use deep or spike rooted plants which can then be harvested as mulch – leucaena and comfrey are good examples. Water running down a slope to waste may be caught in contour depressions or into a hole to water a specific tree a short distance downhill. In sandy soils, where the water runs straight through, it may pay to bury subterranean water containers. And although it may be heresy to the local council, it is a fact that roof water and many needed nutrients are directed down subterranean pipeways to unproductive or destructive ends in river and seas. If possible this flow should be interrupted and the water tank and occasional piddle in the garden be considered useful subversion.

Going Sideways

This is the art of horizontal stacking, fitting more into less. Classic examples are the keyhole bed or its derivative, the mandala garden, where you get more access with less path; and the banana circle, where a single compost heap and watering point keep multiple plants happy. Edge is a useful concept here; wiggly edges – to ponds, garden beds and any ‘boundary’ – give more horizontal space, greater productivity and more interest to the system. Going sideways is also about connecting the elements and having them serve more than one purpose; as in Bill Mollison’s Parable of the Chicken. A mulberry is both chook and human food – why not plant it in the chook pen? A pigeon pea is potentially food, a mulch source and a soil improver – best incorporated in a garden as all three. It is hard to imagine a more multipurpose object than a chicken – egg and fertiliser producer, weed, pest and scraps eater, garden hoe, pet or, in a mutually exclusive use, Christmas dinner. In a small backyard, totally free-range chickens are usually garden destroyers; some form of confinement in a run is usually necessary.

Companion planting is an example of the same principle – nature seems to demonstrate that monocultures are preferred only by pests and modern agriculture. Background reading, observation around your area and some judicious experimentation are the way to find out what goes with what. Intensive vegetable gardens and mature trees do not generally go together so allow for each separately at the planning stage.

Going With

This is the Zen dimension, making the best of what is or turning problems into solutions. Very few of us inherit a blank slate with perfect soil, aspect and no problem plants, structures, conditions or neighbours. Rather than change the problem soil, why not find plants or uses suited to it, for example, blueberries in acid soil, ponds in poor drainage areas. Problem trees can be ready-made trellises, or can be brought down gradually through top and root pruning and turned into mulch as you go. Excess wind can be diverted to useful purposes as well as being blocked or impeded. Light or dark colouring, whether of leaves or walls, can reflect or absorb sunlight. As for neighbours, very few can remain hostile in the face of gifts of eggs, fruit or honey; this can be a beginning to co-operative actions on other fronts such as noise, traffic and community facilities.

Sometimes, it is just the mindset that is at fault; a whole destructive industry is based on paranoia about weeds, defined as plants we don’t want. However, weeds can also be thought of as soil protectors, indicators or improvers, many are food (for people, chooks, bees and pest predators) and most make good mulch and compost. An even more destructive industry is devoted to pests, seemingly defined as the entire insect population of the planet. Pests can be redefined as a vital signal of imbalance, as a tolerable nuisance on the way to generating its own solution if left alone, as predator (bird, fish, frog, insect and elsewhere, human) food, or as pollinators, scavengers or self motivated secateurs.

In transforming your backyard you may also like to create a recycling system. This may include recycling grey water, food scraps and/or excess produce. If you have space for small animals and/or poultry you will find that they handle most of the scraps, otherwise all scraps can be put in the compost. Chooks do not eat onions, garlic, citrus skins, tea or coffee. Most plain paper can be used for sheet mulching. Leftover cardboard can be used for pathways and other materials which are slow to break down can be ’slow composted’ in a banana or paw paw circle.

Continuing to Learn

This has been but a brief flit through backyard possibilities. Remember, a welter of additional information is available through books, courses and from other backyard gardeners. However, your greatest teacher is likely to be your own backyard – if you get down there and interact with all your senses. Much of the most productive time spent in a garden is not that spent digging and working but that spent sitting and contemplating.

This article was writen by Mal McKenna and Phil Dickie, and it is so good that we wanted to share it with all of you.

A living mural is a wall, even just one, which is part of a building or functions as a median and which is completely or partially covered with vegetation in the same way that living roofs are. This could include the façade of a house or building, or sometimes an interior wall. That’s why these walls are sometimes called vertical gardens.

What are the benefits of a green wall?

Plants give us many benefits: they filter pollutants from the air, absorb humidity and heat, capture greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is responsible for global warming, and provide us with oxygen. Overall, they improve our environment not only visually, and their ability to reduce the temperature also allows for energy savings.

Many buildings suffer from “sick building syndrome,” which refers to a series of illnesses that people acquire from air pollution in closed spaces. Green walls can solve this, filtering and purifying the air that we breath.

How is a green wall made?

Green walls are not just walls covered with vines, such as many houses and buildings are, but are walls that have compartments between two sheets of fibrous material that serve as to anchor the plants so they can root into the wall.

Just as we saw with the living roofs, there are systems that have a type of dirt between these layers, and others that only have hydroponic irrigation or that provide the plants with vital mineral salts through mineral solutions in place of soil.

There are two main types: living walls and green facades.

Green facades are made of vining plants that can grow directly on the wall or on specially designed structures. In both cases, the roots of the plants are in soil, in the ground, not directly in the walls.

This is how a living wall is different: the roots grow right in the wall itself. They are made with modular panels that can be polypropylene plastic containers. It has watering systems and a medium that they can grow in.

Among these living walls, there are some kinds that are known as active walls that are joined with the building’s ventilation system. They blow air from the wall and then it circulates throughout the entire building.

The city of New York is decided to stop heavy storms sending sewage spilling into city waterways. The city has 14 wastewater treatment plants that during heavy storms turn into major polluters because much of the city’s water system was built 150 years ago when it was usual to let rainwater drain into the sewage system. “New York City will have to spend $6.8 billion to fix the decades-old problem of flooded treatment plants”, said Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City.

So now the city is looking for an alternative solution. Some kind of catchment system it’s required to succeed. And this system will consist of “blue” and “green” roofs. Let us introduce both concepts. We have already talked about green roofs on Sustentator. It is a roof that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane.

However, a blue roof is explicitly intended to store water, typically rainfall. Blue roofs can provide a number of benefits such as temporary storage of rainfall to mitigate runoff impacts, storage for reuse such as irrigation or cooling water makeup, or recreational opportunities.

Bloomberg estimates that if the state allows it to use this kind of green technology instead of relying on “grey infrastructure” (such as storage tanks and tunnels) the city could save $2.4 billion over 20 years.

"Our PlaNYC goal of making 90 percent of City waterways suitable for recreations requires us to do more, and that means reducing the combined sewer overflows that have plagued the City for decades," Bloomberg said in a statement.

By capturing an inch of rain in 10 percent of the older neighborhoods (using a rain barrels and porous parking lots for example), plus other actions included in this new green water strategy, the city would reduce sewer overflows into waterways by 40 percent by 2030. Furthermore, it also would curb increases in water bills paid by businesses and residents.

Via: Reuters

Five years from the target date for the Millennium Development Goals, leaders from around the world have gathered this week at the United Nations to undertake a comprehensive review of progress and together chart a course for accelerated action on the MDGs between now and 2015.

The meetings resulted in the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date and the announcement of major new commitments for women’s and children’s health and other initiatives against poverty, hunger and disease, pledging more than US$ 40 millions to the cause.

But what about the environmental targets? Goal 7 establishes the aim to “ensure environmental sustainability” with four concrete targets:

- Target 1: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources

- Target 2: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss

- Target 3: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation

- Target 4: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

The results shown so far demonstrate that most of environmental targets are not on the track to meet the commitments made. Next there is a brief summary on how targets are or aren’t being met.

Not meeting the target:

· Deforestation: The rate of deforestation shows signs of decreasing, but is still alarmingly high. Percentage of forested area as percentage of land area has moved from 32% (1990) to 32% (2010).

· Climate change: Emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing substantially. From 21.9 billion of metric tons, in 1990, to 29.6, in 2007.

· Biodiversity: Though some success in biodiversity conservation has been achieved the loss of biodiversity continues—unrelentingly. Nearly 17,000 species of plants and animals are known to be threatened with extinction.

· Habitat loss: In 2010, 100% of world’s 821 terrestrial eco regions—large areas with characteristic combinations of habitats, species, soils and landforms— should have had more than 10 per cent of their area protected. In 2009 only half of these eco regions met the target.

· Endangered species: The IUCN’s Red List Index shows that more species are being driven towards extinction than are improving in status, especially in developing countries. Mammals are more threatened than birds.

· Drinking water in rural households: Despite overall progress in drinking water coverage and narrowing of the urban-rural gap, rural areas remain at a disadvantage in all developing regions (94% in urban areas versus 76% in rural areas). Globally, eight out of 10 people who are still without access to an improved drinking water source live in rural areas.

· Safe water supply: it still remains a challenge in many parts of the world

· Population without sanitation: In 2008, an estimated 2.6 billion people around the world lacked access to an improved sanitation facility. If the trend continues, that number will grow to 2.7 billion by 2015 instead of halving as the target sets.

· Sanitation coverage: Over the period 1990-2008, sanitation coverage for the whole of the developing regions increased by only 5 per cent in urban areas and by 43 per cent in rural areas.

· Improvements in sanitation: The richest 20 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa are almost five times more likely to use an improved sanitation facility than the poorest 20 per cent. These same findings show that open defecation is practiced by 63 per cent of the population in the poorest quintile and by only 4 per cent of the richest quintile.

· Population living in slums: Over the past 10 years, the share of the urban population living in slums in the developing world has declined significantly: from 39 per cent in 2000 to 33 per cent in 2010. However, in absolute terms, the number of slum dwellers in the developing world is actually growing is (828 million nowadays, compared to 657 million in 1990 and 767 million in 2000).

· Slum prevalence: Despite the efforts of some sub-Saharan African countries and cities to expand basic services and improve urban housing conditions, inaction by others has prevented overall progress from keeping pace with rapidly expanding urban populations.

On the way to meet the target:

· Ozone layer: Between 1986 and 2008, global consumption of ozone-depleting substances was reduced by 98%.

· Global fisheries exploitation: Global production of marine capture fi sheries peaked in 1997 at 88.4 million metric tons and has since declined slightly, to about 83.5 million metric tons in 2006.

· Drinking water: If current trends continue, the world will meet or even exceed the MDG drinking water target by 2015. By that time, an estimated 86 per cent of the population in developing regions will have gained access to improved sources of drinking water.

In order to face all these unmet targets several measures have been announced by countries, corporations and other organizations in order to improve the situation:

- The United States announced a commitment of $50.82 million over the next five years for a Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation seeking to install 100 million clean-burning stoves in kitchens around the world.

- Cameroon announced an Energy Sector Development Program to double energy production by 2015 and triple it by 2020.

- Water Health International committed to build 75 water purification plants in Bangladesh and expand its existing network of water purification plants to an additional 100 villages in India, providing access to clean water for 175,000 people in under-served communities in Bangladesh and India

- PepsiCo committed to ensure access to clean water for 3 million people around the world by 2015.

Via: MDG

Scientists have long known that the world’s plant inventory included many duplicates and no one was sure how many. And because of this confusion a project was carried out in order to make clear which was the correct list.

The project – which has taken nearly three years – was a request made by the Convention on Biological Diversity at their meeting in 2002. The ongoing study is being carried out by a team, led by UK and US researchers, who will announce, later this year, that the real number of flowering plant species around the world is closer to 400,000. However, when the list is published, there will be no coverage of ferns, nor algae, which account for about 10,000 and 30,000 species respectively.

"On average, one plant might have between two and three names, which doesn’t sound a great deal, but if you’re trying to find information on a plant, you might not find all [of it] because you’re only looking at one name,", said Alan Paton, assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. "That’s even more critical for economically useful plants: because they are more used, they tend to have more names."

2010 is the international year of biodiversity. And 2010 is also the year in which United Nations is making a review of how world is accomplishing the “Millenium Development Goals”. Goal 7 establishes the aim to “ensure environmental sustainability” with the concrete target of “reducing biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss”. Regarding this target the latest report launched by UN states that:

“Though some success in biodiversity conservation has been achieved, and the situation may well have been worse without the 2010 target, the loss of biodiversity continues—unrelentingly. Nearly 17,000 species of plants and animals are known to be threatened with extinction. Based on current trends, the loss of species will continue throughout this century, with increasing risk of dramatic shifts in ecosystems and erosion of benefits for society. Despite increased investment in conservation planning and action, the major drivers of biodiversity loss—including high rates of consumption, habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and climate change—are not yet being sufficiently addressed.”

Nowadays, as well as the likely 400,000-odd flowering plants, there are thought to be 15,000 species of ferns and their allies, 1,000 gymnosperms such as poplars and conifers, and 23,000 mosses and allies making up the plant kingdom. For comparison there are more than 1 million species of insects listed by science, 28,000 living species of fish, 10,000 birds and 5,400 mammals.

Via: BBC | The Guardian | UN

There are two main categories of green roofs. The intensive variety consists of about a foot of earth material, allowing for the growth of trees and shrubs, but involves a significant addition of weight to the building and higher maintenance costs. Intensive green roofs are designed for human enjoyment, acting essentially as aboveground parks. The below Austin City Hall roof designed by American Hydrotech is an example of this type of green roof.

The extensive type of green roof entails less weight and upkeep and can support groundcover and small plants with only 2-6 inches of growth media. This kind is generally used only for the environmental and economic benefits rather than for recreational use. When considering building a green roof, one must consider climate, cost, engineering feasibility, sustainability goals, and other possible uses for the roof such as solar panels.

Toronto has been working to study and promote green roofs for a number of years and starting in January put into effect a bylaw requiring green roofs on new developments in the city. In New York, Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for sustainability, PlaNYC 2030, includes the promotion of green roofs. Chicago now has about 500 such roofs, including its City Hall, above, and Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears tower), since Mayor Daley began encouraging their development 10 years ago. However, nowhere in the world compares to Germany, where is it estimated that 15-20% of flat-roofed buildings have green roofs. That figure is impressive and can be an example for other cities to follow suit.

Would you consider creating a green roof on your house? Would you pay a premium to live in an apartment building that has a green roof?

Resources for more information:

The Green Roof Centre, American Society of Landscape Architects

Upcoming Event:

Washington Regional Green Roofs & Walls Conference and Training

June 1-2, 2010, Washington, D.C.

Via: The Chicago Tribune, EcoSalon

There probably are loads of people who own land and don’t have the time to grow their own plants and food. Maybe they could hire someone to do that, but they might not have the money. On the other hand, there might be gardeners and farmers who are dying to have some land to work on. So, this recently launched website connects the dots and brings these people together.

Shared Earth is a non-profit organization, made up entirely of volunteers. In their website, they state: “we can change the way land is used and food is grown – one garden at a time.”

Thanks to this initiative, SharedEarth.com claims that there are now more than 28 million square feet of shared land.

Shared Earth team is made up by founder Adam Dell, who is a venture capitalist, Jeff Chambers, CTO and Technology Advisor, and John Dromgoole, who works as an advisor, and is owner of The Natural Gardener, Austin’s organic garden center.

Shared Earth’s “mission is to build a broad and trusting community of land owners and gardeners that yields the efficient use of land and a greener planet.”

Another similar project is Urban Patchwork, which is working to develop urban farming in Austin, Texas. It is also a non-profit organization, and looks for available land within Austin to grow food. It was created in 2009.

Would you share your land, or grow a garden at someone else’s place? What do you think about these projects?

VIA: WorldChanging / Statesman

California Grazing “provides holistic land management and brush & weed control through grazing”. They have over 800 goats, and offer their service in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and surrounding areas.

To control the goats and make them mow limited areas, California Grazing provides portable electric fences.

According to Google, the price of hiring these goats is similar to that of hiring lawn mowers. However, the benefits of the goats are quite interesting: the emissions caused by mowers are avoided, as well as the noise, plus goats fertilize the soil while grazing. And, Google workers get to have fun watching the four-legged mowers eat up extra weed!

Biking information for 150 cities in the United States is now offered.

Some of the criteria considered while designing the routes include avoiding freeways and high-traffic areas, as well as giving preference to gentle terrain. Ideally, hills are avoided.

Plus, Google is developing a mobile version.

There is also information about bike trails, lanes and recommended roads. You can customize your journey, including places you want to visit along the way to your final destination.

Basically, you just need to insert your starting place and where you’re headed and the software will do the rest.

There are three types of lines, with different colors.

-Dark green stands for dedicated bike-only trails

-Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road

-Dashed green indicates roads designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

Hopefully, Google will take this to other countries, helping bicycles grow as a sustainable transport alternative.

To start using it, click here

For more information, click here

It all depends on how we address the making of a school garden. The more open and creative we are while designing a program, the more we’ll be able to make gardening an extremely enriching experience for all those involved.

To begin with, gardening is healthy for kids. It makes them spend time outside, breathing fresh air, doing a physical activity. Besides, they learn to work cooperatively, helping each other, distributing tasks among kids, and working as a team. It also shows them literally how their effort counts and is crucial for plants to be healthy and grow and give them food.

Concerning the more formal side of education, if intelligently planned, gardening can help enrich curricular contents. The different subjects can be related to different gardening activities. The first subject that comes to mind is science; students can study and experience what they study, such as plants’ life cycles, or the composition of the soil, or different plant species and insects.

Other subjects can also be included while working on the garden. For example, kids can learn about different ways in which society has worked the land to get food during time. This way, history and anthropology would be strengthened by kids’ experiences with gardening. Also, math can be applied while gardening. For example, kids can be asked to count seeds, or calculate the amount of land available and how much plants will fit there. And also estimate the percentage in which a certain vegetable completes a person’s nutrition needs.

Gardening also helps kids relate to nature in a real, personal manner, by being in direct contact with it, and learning about the interdependence that exists between humans and nature. How can they learn this? By realizing that if they take care of plants, these will grow strong and healthy. And the healthier the plants, the better the vegetables they provide them with, which in turn makes kids themselves healthier. This is excellent for increasing kids’ environmental awareness. They will learn lessons that will later help them become more responsible, caring citizens and inhabitants of this world.

Further, it is very useful for kids to know how the food process works. And hopefully, gardening activities will make them prefer healthier, more organic food in the future.

Other qualities they can incorporate are the ability to work responsibly without getting instant gratification. They can learn to care for the plants, knowing that they will need to wait weeks or months, before seeing the expected results.

Lastly, if composting is included in a school garden project, kids can learn about recycling. The concept of waste can completely change for them after working and experiencing a composting project. They can understand how in nature, there is no such thing as waste, and that what we usually dispose of as such is exactly what, through composting, becomes food for new life.

What do you know and think about gardening for kids?

VIA: Kids Gardening

The center is located in an industrial area near the Port of Wilmington, in the state of Delaware. It claims to be the biggest of its kind on the East Coast of the US.

It aims to produce 100,000 tons of compost yearly, starting on April, when the center will become fully operational. Where will all this compost come from? From around 160,000 tons of waste, that instead of being thrown to contaminating landfills will be generating a useful product.

Clients that dump their waste there have to pay $50 per ton, much less compared to the fee paid to dump waste in one of the three landfills in the state.

How does the process work? First, the waste is classified and all non-degradable material is removed. The organic waste is sent to around 12 long heaps, where the process begins. Within eight weeks, and with the help of special aeration and regular turning, it all becomes compost.

The heaps reach a temperature of 160 F in a few days, which kills any fecal coloform, salmonella and weed seeds. Temperature and oxygen levels are monitored by computers.

According to Nelson Widell, one of the partners of the founding company, this type of project is possible thanks to rising landfill fees, and a global increasing conscience on environmental affairs.

A remarkable initiative, which we hope succeeds, and inspires similar projects.

VIA: Reuters

GIFTS

In case you still haven’t bought all the presents you needed to buy, we suggest that you choose giving services instead of things. For example, you can offer tickets to a show, or a dinner some place nice, instead of buying stuff.

The wrapping of the gifts you make is also very important. Try to minimize the amount of paper you use for wrapping. There are options, such as old newspapers, magazines, pieces of cloth, shoe boxes. By using your creativity, you will avoid tonnes of paper from being sent to landfills. On the other hand, this year you can save all the wrapping paper accumulated on Christmas, and re-use next year! It’s not cheap, it’s green!

TRAVEL

If you are going somewhere, try to use public transportation. If you go by car, try to share your ride, so each of your footprints will be diminished. Also, check out our driving tips in Green Suggestions. Mainly, the speed you drive at is a key factor determining your fuel consumption.

Wherever you go, it will be best if you eat local food, that is on season. Doing so, contamination generated from transportation will be reduced.

If you travel by plane, you can offset your carbon footprint; do something that will help the environment, to compensate for your own contamination. Try to use e-tickets; they can help you avoid cues, you can save paper and time. Also, believe it or not, holding your pee until you are back on land, is good for the environment.

DECORATION

Try to re-use the stuff you had last year. It is best to spend a bit more on things you know will last, instead of buying cheap lower-quality stuff, that you will probably need to replace on a yearly basis. Another option is to recycle trash, like paper, cardboard, cans, bottles, and use them to make Christmas decoration. This can also be a really nice activity for you to do with your kids during holidays. Concerning the tree, apparently it is better to have a real one, rather than a fake plastic one.

CARDS

Sending and receiving cards is so nice, but so waste-generating too… You can switch to sending e-cards, or just calling the people you care about.

Cement, concrete, tile, and other materials that are usually used to construct roofs or terraces for homes and other buildings usually generate a lot of heat that accumulates from the sun. They then release the heat, creating what is called the heat island effect. This effect is the reason why it is hotter in a concrete city and cooler in a garden.

This line of reasoning gave rise to the idea of green roofs, which are basically roofs covered with vegetation.

Why cover our roofs with vegetation?

There are many reasons. The main one is to add something green, some vegetation, to cities, which provides numerous benefits. For example, it absorbs greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Plants also purify the air of other pollutants that are common in cities.

They accumulate water, therefore reducing erosion from storms. They also absorb sound, so they reduce sound pollution that is so common in the urban environment.

As we said before, they avoid the heat island effect since they work as thermal insulators This also helps to save on energy, because it keeps buildings cooler in the summer. And not just a little cooler – they can reduce a building’s temperature significantly.

But how is a green roof done?

There are many styles and ways – semi-intensive, intensive, and extensive, depending on the planting depth, the medium in which they will be planted, and if there will or will not be dirt for the plants.

The most typical rooftop gardens require a reasonable depth of dirt so that large plants or grass can grow, and they are considered intensive, because they require lots of maintenance, irrigation, etc.

Usually this style of green roof is used in places with large, wide terraces or flat rooftops, so that the garden can have fragrant plants, herbs, and small trees.

On the contrary, extensive green roofs are designed to be self-sustaining and require only minimal maintenance, such as sowing a few seeds once a year. They are frequently used on roofs that cannot be easily accessed, such as on houses, etc.

These can usually be established over a very fine layer of dirt, or sometimes even over a base of moist gravel. Usually moss or other low plants are planted.

This type of roof is not very complicated to install, although obviously consulting an architect is recommended, since installing a green roof requires a series of modifications to the surface of the roof.

Taking this into account, the BIOCHAR FUND was created to combat hunger, deforestation, energy poverty, and global warming simultaneously. BIOCHAR is a carbon-rich product obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass that allows the replenishment of nutrients in poorly productive soils.

The current practice in many countries is to cut down forests in order to cultivate the soil, consequently destroying the biodiversity and liberating tons of carbon that were stored in the trees. The soils obtained from deforestation, aside from being poor in nutrients, are also incorrectly managed after the first crop. Eventually, they are abandoned and new extensions of forest would have to be slashed for cultivation. This completely unsustainable cycle generates more desertification and the destruction of biodiversity and forest. Around 300 to 500 million subsistence farmers depend on this practice for their food supply.

As earlier mentioned, the BIOCHAR FUND aims to break this negative vicious circle by addressing deforestation, desertification, hunger and energy poverty. To accomplish this, it proposes a new circle of production through the enrichment of the soil with biochar thus preventing desertification and further deforestation in order to replace non-productive land. After this, crop residues are used in an efficient pyrolysis process that produces both biochar and electricity, thus creating a new, productive and sustainable cycle.

The BIOCHAR FUND works with the poorest of the poor and marginalized sectors of society : food-insecure subsistence farmers at the margins of tropical forests in Central Africa. Women do most of the farming work in these communities. They also manage families belonging to the "ultra-poor", that is, people trying to survive on less than $0.50 per day.

This is another example that sustainable alternatives that involve both nature and all human beings from every social sphere are possible.

For more information, you can visit www.biocharfund.org .

The project involves 20 lots located in a hill side. It is being directed by Jean Paul  Cazedessus, American born in California, but that has been living in Costa Rica for the past 20 years. Today, the construction of its first house called “Boomerang” has been finished (name due to its roof shape on an aerial view). This project not only suggests building sustainable homes, but also to build a sustainable society with the same goal: living in sustainability.

Taking advantage of the hill side, the lots have been strategically located in order to make the gathering of gray water easier and more efficient. This water will be properly treated in a water facility treatment plant that will be located in the base of the hill. All homes will have grass roofs. These roofs not only offer the advantage of great thermal isolation but also will give the urbanization a feeling of dissapearing effect while looking from the hilltop. 

Another thought for the future is to plan investments among residents aiming to seize natural resources to generate energy and harvest their own food. Besides solar panels that can be installed on the roofs, a common wind power turbine mill could be installed taking advantage of the excellent wind conditions of the region. The energy generated would supply all homes and the extra energy produced can be sold to the electrical power company that will help to recover the investment faster.

You can find more information in the next link: www.b-green.org

The state of Hawaii can be made into a sustainable paradise. It is still very far from achieving this goal, but it is on the right path. To begin with, it has a large variety of renewable energy sources, and those with political power have a predisposition to this important change. Today Hawaii depends on 90% of the imported petroleum to generate electricity, the highest level of all of the states of the United States. At the same time, Hawaiian citizens pay the highest energy costs in the entire country. This energy dependence prompted Governor Linda Lingle to look for a change in the state’s energy system. That’s why she is researching and carrying out a series of projects intended to get 40% of the state’s energy from renewable sources by 2030.

The conditions for achieving this are already there. Each of the six main islands that make up Hawaii has at least one renewable energy source. On Maui, there are waves for generating wave energy. On Lanai and Molokai, there is wind for eolic energy. On Oahu, there are solar panels. On Kauai, energy is produced from biomass. And on Hawaii, they are working to convert seawater into electricity. Last year, the Hawaiian government established an agreement with the Hawaiian Electric Company: the idea is that together they will achieve the goal of the island generating 40% of its energy from renewable sources for 2030.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of obstacles. In Hawaii, the greatest consumer of energy is Honolulu, the state capital, but the majority of the energy sources are 160 or 240 kilometers away. Furthermore, the state has six electrical networks, one per island, and none of them are interconnected. Another problem has to do with the social side of the issue. In Hawaii, there is a division between the rural and urban populations. Many of the inhabitants of the less populated areas are tired of receiving orders from Honolulu, with its mega energy plan. There are even groups, such as the Pele Defense Club, that defend the god of fire and the volcanoes, who they call Pele, and consider geothermic energy to be sacrilegious.

Solutions suggested to overcome these problems are: In regards to the disconnection between the electrical grids, to connect them with an undersea cable system. To address potential opposition by certain communities, there are plans to offer support and financing for needs that these groups identify, such as conservation of marine life. One of the individuals responsible for the project stated that the islands are being pressured to supply energy for Oahu, and that they should be compensated somehow.

One of the measures being considered to achieve the goal for 2030 is to reduce the consumption of energy and make it more efficient. One of the proposals consists of reducing the usage of air conditioning in high quality hotels. At the same time, Governor Lingle managed to pass a law that requires family homes built starting in 2010 to have thermal solar panels.

Source:

NY Times

More info:

Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative

Hawaiian Electric Company