Just this morning I saw a great tweet on the feed for Beyond Coal–the Sierra Club’s initiative to phase out coal fired power plants and stop new ones from developing–about new exercise equipment being tested for gyms. The “Green System” ellipticals and bikes will A) feed energy back to the grid and B) Show exercisers how many watts they are producing. Similar products in existence are inverters that can be attached to various stationary bikes. This set up, which includes both the bike/elliptical and the inverter, will increase system efficiency by 40%, allowing for up to 70% of the energy created by exercisers to be returned to the grid. Additionally, programs to incentivize maximum energy production are in the works. Discounts on gym memberships and other prizes will be awarded to those who perform, which is of course why we are at the gym in the first place.  The pilot is set to launch at the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada this February.  But I think this could work in our over-achieving, competitive, vanity obsessed, future thinking city as well.

There are of course micro-scale examples of translating this energy into use. Occupy Wall Street campers were using bicycle power generators–only after the NYPD confiscated their gas fueled ones. The annual Coachella music festival has the Energy FACTory DJ Mixer, which is a power-cordless stage where musicians play their sets powered by the see-saws, bikes, and a human-hamster wheel that power the equipment. (Note, the video linked there talks about a whole slew of sustainability projects that people engage with at Coachella. Watch it!) And  on a similar note, there is the green dance floor that captures the energy of the party people upon it.  NYC apparently has a few of these. I have yet to encounter one, but let us know if you have!

The initiative to accept food stamps at Grow NYC markets began in 2007 and at that time, these transactions amounted to a few thousand dollars. By 2009, it was $251,000. In 2010 we were up to $505,000. And in 2011, $620,000 worth of food stamps was spent at participating Grow NYC markets. Note, there are other markets that accept food stamps that are not affiliated with Grow NYC. A map of them can be seen here.

Nationwide, low-income Americans spent about .01 of their foodstamps in Green Markets. GOOD has a nice map showing which states have signed on to make this type of transaction more convenient for their food consumers and they kindly outline which states continuously hold out. Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.  I’d be interested in seeing  a map that highlights overlap between big agribusiness turf and the program deniers.

We still have a long way to go in getting fresh food to all Americans. But it took many steps for the food system to change, to the point where the Crop Life Association came out against Michelle Obama for declaring the White House Garden as organic. For some seriously mind-blowing reading, take a look at the association’s call to arms for a letter writing campaign to tell the First Lady that the garden should not be organic.  For a more indepth discussion of that whole escapade, you can listen to Michael Pollan’s Illustrated Food Rules on the January 2nd, 2012 Leonard Lopate show.

Ultimately, every step taken to bring us to our current food system status-quo, every bill signed, every food pyramid created, every subsidy awarded, every cultural norm established, will need to be replaced by steps in a different direction, supported by a vision to take us there. I’d like to think that $620,000 worth of food stamps spent at  Grow NYC markets in 2011 is one of those steps.    [image via year of plenty]

We recycle only 15% of our waste stream, which is down from our high of 21% (still not that impressive) in 2001. And the city is researching various pay-as-you-go systems that would charge people different rates on their waste, based on volume. As is usual, the reality of our sub-par recycling performance is a mix of behavior–New Yorkers allegedly only sort about half of what could actually be diverted from the landfill, bad communication–people are seriously confused about what can and cannot be recycled, and a lack of incentives and clear benefits to making changes.Public information is not going to be enough on this one. Sound familiar!?

The discussion of composting toward the end of the article focuses specifically on businesses and their practices. But mentions nothing of the pilot projects to collect compostables at more farmers markets–which of course are wrought with problems. That stuff gets hauled pretty far to become nutrient rich “black gold.” I am personally curious as to whether that stuff has had any sort of impact on the overall waste stream. Check out where you can compost in your neighborhood by visiting the Greenmap Compost guide. And save your take out containers and compostable items for a week to see where you can do more.

[image via Ecoteurre]

My favorite response was found on Tree Hugger, who very simply said: “You Are Now One of 7 Billion People on Planet Earth.  Our recommendation: Live accordingly.” There is of course a more in-depth discussion of what this all means for limited resources paired with growing appetites for them over at Dot Earth.

I guess I would probably say the same thing to these babies as I would to any other one: You were born into exciting and amazing times, but they are also full of anxieties and concern that a lot of things need to be fixed. So you will have to work hard to contribute to the cause of betterment. Also, that is not going to get any easier for you, so you will have to be innovative, but you will have tools and talent beyond measure to make that happen. You will also have to learn about the role of lobbying in politics if you want all of your efforts to go anywhere. Live in a city. Be close to the people you care about. And yes, you will survive your teenage years.

In the time I wrote this, many more babies were born. And we now have 7,000,274,589 people on the planet. What do you you want to tell them?

[image via World Population Day]

But their 2-D reality can sometimes create disconnect between the 3-D world we live in and what we are looking at. Enter the 4D map! Created by Stephan Van Dam, the only cartographer with work in the permanent collection at MOMA, and the creator of many maps you have no doubt utilized, the 4D mApp launches this week at AIGA New York. You will, be welcomed into the 4th dimension when you attend the event, as the exhibit space itself will be a 4D map. To learn more about the mApp and about the other great maps that Van Dam has created, visit their website.

To learn more about the event at AIGA, read the info below which is from their site:

“Stephan Van Dam has been playing with dimensionality and the sex appeal of maps ever since inventing the patented 3D UNFOLDS pop-up maps to 85 cities around the world, 26 of which are in the MoMA Collection. Here comes VanDam’s 4DmApp, the world’s first series of maps where you become part of the map in 4D cartographic space. Celebrate at the launch party and step inside the map while sipping a drink. See 4DmApp take over the AIGA National Design Center in a large scale “projection mapping”…a first for NYC. Immersive, sexy and fun!

TIME AND PLACE

Wednesday 26 October 2011
6:30–8:30PM

AIGA National Design Center
164 5th Ave
New York, NY, 10010

All of these options have benefits and drawbacks, conveniences and hassles, but they all help us support local, fresh food supplies, which is mutually beneficial for both producers and consumers.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Mallory Sustick who is involved in a new farm to table (via the internets) project called Plovgh (pronounced plough).  You will notice that their site is still in development, but as it says on there already, “Plovgh is a way to find, purchase, and receive food from farms.” It is sort of a hybrid, mash-up of many different models of sustainable food procurement in New York City. It is like a farmers market because there is no middle-man: You buy products based on certain farmers offerings, through Plovhgs website. It is like a CSA, because there is a specific pick up point in your neighborhood where you go get your goodies. And well, actually, nothing is really like the Park Slope Food Coop. It is, after all, the largest working food coop in the country. But you get my point. The Plovghs model will connect people to local farmers on their terms and schedule, at prices that are comparable to existing offers for such foods.

Check out their website and sign up to receive updates and news. You can follow them on twitter too @plovgh. [Image credit: Hand Plough by Frankie Roberto, on Flickr.]

City Atlas, a digital platform developed by the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College and Artist As Citizen, launches this Thursday at www.thecityatlas.org. Generously supported by a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation award, City Atlas guides and inspires New Yorkers to participate in building a more sustainable future. An optimistic, relevant, and accessible hub of daily resources and ideas, the Atlas creates new and larger audiences for sustainability by mapping the important work being done by members of New York’s rich cultural, scientific, political and grassroots communities. City Atlas consists of the following components:

Explore | A collection of interactive maps tracing New York’s changing present and possible future

Lifestyle | A daily feed of events, tips, new ideas, and  ‘     NY Back’ volunteer opportunities

People | We ask New Yorkers–everyday people and experts alike–to share their thoughts on the city’s present and future.

Lab | Our very own micro funding initiative supporting innovative, participatory, and on the ground sustainability work in NYC

Archive | A collection of recent creative projects about the city

The weekly ‘Atlas Beat,’ which is pictured above, will feature a map of our top listings for the week, including current events,  new ideas, and fun facts.

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From his blog: At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.

Here is a great video from DEP about how the wastewater treatment process works at the North River Plant. The plant utilizes gravity to bring sewage to the plant: wastewater runs downhill to the plant from the higher elevations of Washington Heights and Inwood. An artificial slope is created to bring the wastewater up from Lower Manhattan: “a sewer line about six inches below the street at Bank Street gradually drops to a depth of 50 feet by the time it reaches the Upper West Side.” Once it gets to the plant, the wastewater is pumped five stories up by engines like the one that caught fire last week. As the sewage slowly descends, “it goes through aeration and settling tanks, as well as a biological process that digests much of the waste”.

When the fire shut down the North River plant, the city temporarily returned to dealing with Manhattan’s West Side sewage as it had prior to the Clean Water Act in 1972: dumping it directly into the Hudson River and Harlem Rivers. Here is a list of the 56 outfall locations, through which the waste water rushed out into the rivers. The sight of raw sewage in the water on Friday made me appreciate the 14 sewage treatment plants that were built with federal funds after 1972.

While the infrastructural improvements precipitated by the Clean Water Act have significantly improved the quality of our waters, New York City, like many other older urban areas, has a combined sewer system. This sewer system is a result of 19^th Century engineering, which could not have foreseen modern rates of water usage. The system does not separate clean rainwater from dirty wastewater. During heavy rains, when a lot of rainwater enters the sewers, the capacity of the sewer system becomes exceeded. The excess water is discharged directly into the rivers, similarly to what happened last week when the North River plant was out of commission. Even though the amount of wastewater dumped into the water— 360 million gallons—  is horrifying to think about, the Combine Sewer Overflow (CSO) sends a similar amount of wastewater into the water after a few days of very heavy rainfall.

Now that the plant is running again – thanks to one hundred people working overtime on an extremely hot day – the raw sewage will decapitate in a few days, making the waters safe for usage. As far as long term solutions to the CSO problem, the most sustainable options are those that decrease the amount of water that enters the sewer system (source-control), rather than “end of pipe” controls, which attempt to deal with the wastewater after it enters the system (large holding tanks, for instance). Here are some figures from Riverkeeper about green solutions to the CSO problem:

• Greenstreets could decrease CSOs by 14,800 gallons
• Street trees could decrease CSOs by 13,170 gallons
• New green roofs could decrease CSOs by 810 gallons; retrofitted green roofs could decrease CSOs by 865 gallons; and incentivized green roofs could decrease CSOs by 12,000 gallons
• Rain barrels could decrease CSOs by 9,000 gallons.

Images courtesy of Gotham Gazette, New York Times and Wikipedia

Food trucks allow entrepreneurs to bypass crippling commercial rents in New York, opening up small-business ownership to a wider range of people. The trucks add to the cultural landscape of the city, allowing people to interact with public space in a novel way. Finally, many food trucks produce cheap, innovative and delicious food. On the other hand, the restaurant owners who are paying the crippling commercial rents are not pleased with competition springing up on their doorstep. Idling trucks are terrible for the environment, and there are many people who are mad about the lost parking spaces.

While the city has been struggling with whether to encourage or discourage the seemingly exponential growth of food trucks, some real estate developers have looked to the recent clampdown as an opportunity.   The Rockrose Development Corporation has recruited a group of food trucks to set up shop on a lot in LIC, Queens.  Some vendors who will be using the lot are the same ones who got kicked out of Midtown.  Food truck courts have long been a fixture in other cities, including Austin, Portland, and Los Angeles.  A comment on a New York Times article about the new food-truck court in Queens reveals the contested nature of space in New York City, even outside of Manhattan:  “as a rent paying, fixed space, local restaurant owner, can’t say I am happy about the news.”

The contest over street space between vendors, the city and business owners is an age old battle.  It will most likely continue, as long as real estate in New York remains an expensive commodity.  A few days ago, the food vendors along Forsyth Street and the Manhattan Bridge have been evicted, most likely temporary.  The city has a tumultuous relationship with vendors on 125^th Street and booksellers on West 4^th Street for the last twenty-five years. The Essex Street Market – still in operation on the Lower East Side–was open in the 1930s by Mayor LaGuardia to reduce pushcart congestion in the neighborhood.  In fact, pushcart vending in New York has been regulated here since 1691, when it was a tiny Dutch colony.

Images courtesy of www.newyorkstreetfood.com and www.ourfoodshed.com