Posts tagged with "Photography"
Recycling...The Least You Can Do
By Shira | Nov 13, 08 01:23 PM
Did you know that November 10-16 is International Recycling Week? Neither did I, until it showed up in one of my RSS feeds. Recycling is a good thing, but really, it's the least you can do. If there is a recycling system set up in your region, how could you not wash out your cans and bottles and put them curbside? In Ithaca, recycling actually saves you money because it's free, whereas you have to pay for garbage collection by weight. The problem is that so much public campaigning goes into promoting recycling, and very few people know that there are much more drastic ways to reduce your waste.
For the past month, I've been participating in the Ithaca freeskool reading group on permaculture. We're reading David Holmgren's Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. In Holmgren's chapter on waste, he outlines that in an ideal system there is no "waste" - only material that can be repurposed for food, fertilizer or some other utility.
Most people have heard "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in which the first is preferable and recycling is only what you should do after you've exhausted use, but Holmgren adds a couple more key Rs to the list - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle. To refuse is paramount, especially in the United States, which is disproportionately responsible for resource consumption and carbon emissions. To refuse is pretty easy when you start asking yourself "Do I really need this?" before purchasing new stuff.
Repair is another key step. Do you always get holes in your jeans in the same place - how many times have you patched your pants and kept wearing them? It might be easier to get a new DVD player when yours breaks but why not get it repaired - even if it takes a little more time and maybe even more money? The problem with our culture is that we're focused on convenience and money and have lost our understanding of true cost and true wealth.
Recycling is great and definitely something we should be doing as a society, but it is still very expensive and frustratingly limited. Even in a green oasis like Ithaca, there are only certain containers that can be recycled and the rest go to landfills. And don't even get me started on Tetra Paks.
So, while it's International Recycling Week, and I have your attention, why not think of some significant ways you could reduce your waste before recycling? Here are a few things we're doing:
- Buying very little and whenever possible, getting stuff for free or stuff that's been owned and used by someone else first. We're planning on building our future home from mostly salvaged (and natural) materials.
- Buying local to reduce the amount of resources and waste that go into transporting goods across the world.
- Using tote bags instead of plastic/paper bags and buying food in bulk in reusable containers. The Greenstar coop has an awesome bulk food section, including shampoo and cooking oils!
- Fixing stuff. Ari has a knack for sewing and has breathed new life into many pieces of clothing. When the cassette tape part of our stereo broke, we found a shop in Brooklyn that could fix it. Now we can keep listening to our cheesy tape collection from the 80s and 90s and there's one less piece of electronics in a landfill.
- Composting. We're looking forward to having our own land and building a composting toilet. My dream is to convert methane gas produced by our poo into energy. In the meantime, we compost all of our organic material. We drop off our food compost at the coop, but in the spring, well put it into our garden.
So yes, recycling is good, but it's still a compromise when it comes to consumption and waste. Don't forget to first refuse, reduce, reuse and repair!
Previously:
More: Activism | Economics | Environment | Happenings | Media | Photography
The Ithaca Green Buildings Open House
By Shira | Oct 17, 08 04:25 PM
Ari and I spent the first weekend of October climbing on people's roofs, investigating their toilets, and befriending their goats. No, we weren't being inappropriately nosy - it was all part of the 2008 Ithaca Green Buildings Open House!
In partnership with the American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, Ithaca Green Building Alliance and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association organized the two-day event in which twenty-seven sites were open to visitors.
As aspiring owner-builders with a vision for a naturally-built, sustainable ecovillage, the tour offered an amazing opportunity to see what building and energy techniques work locally, and to meet a bunch of really cool people. In addition to a lot of photovoltaic systems, we checked out some amazing living/green roofs, unconventional stoves, outhouses, vegetable gardens, and really, really long driveways.
Folks were using a variety of building-techniques including timber-frame, strawbale, earth-berming and round construction. We also learned, not surprisingly, that a lot of green home-owners love animals. We made friends with many cats and dogs and even a couple of goats!
We managed to visit six homes, but my favorite was the first - Sarah Highland's straw-clay timber-framed house-in-progress. Sarah designed and is building the house herself, with help from friends. It's surrounded by beautiful land featuring a pond, an adorable sauna, and a composting toilet outhouse, which Sarah and Liz lovingly refer to as their "room with a view" and which is also temporarily housing their solar panel equipment.
While some of the other homes on the tour were just as beautiful, Sarah had designed and built the house mostly by herself, which is pretty damn impressive. The masonry stove itself, is something to behold.
All in all, it was a great tour. My take-aways are:
- It's all about the land.
- If you're not too far from the road, being on-grid has some benefits, even if you're generating most of your own power.
- Wood is a beautiful building material.
- Solar systems are easier to maintain if they're not on your roof. Unless of course, if you have a solar hot water system on top of your earth-bermed green roof like the Bensons.
- Water catchment is easy - all you need is a barrel.
- Being a bit of a gadget geek is good.
- It makes sense to design a home where you can age in place.
- Salvaged and vintage stuff is awesome.
- Make friends with your local saw mill.
Here are some of my favorite photos from the tour...
liz says she likes big "crazy" ideas like bike generators - me too!
approaching tina macdonald's place
visitors on the bensons' earth-sheltered living roof
the bensons' roof is so cool...
Hopefully it won't be too long before our home is part of the Ithaca Green Buildings Tour...
More: Animals | Economics | Education | Environment | Film and Video | Happenings | Housing | Photography | What we're up to
Goodbye NYC Flickr...
By Ari | Oct 3, 08 06:48 PM
I'm paring down the many groups (305!) I'm in on Flickr and I've just realized I should say goodbye to the NYC-specific groups I likely won't have many submissions for, at least not until we visit one day. So sad! I really liked a lot of them so I thought I'd post them here, in case anyone out there is also on Flickr, and wants to meet other NYC photographers or share their NYC work.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Graffiti
11 Spring St
Nature NYC
Figment*
Bushwick, Brooklyn
New York City
Arts in Bushwick
More: Photography | Technology
