I just came across a really interesting article about an Aquaponics (among other things) greenhouse in New Jersey.
Juicy tomatoes, scrumptious fish, lettuce, herbs, exotic flowers and ornamental plants can all be found growing year round in Burlington County under a single roof.
The place is a dump. Literally.
Hard to believe? The Burlington County Resource Recovery Complex, more commonly known as the county landfill, ships between 150 to 200 pounds of tomatoes to a Princeton restaurant weekly.
Another 1,000 pounds of silver-striped tilapia leave the complex every six weeks headed for a fish market in the Chinatown section of Philadelphia.
An Israeli company is now growing lettuce and herbs, and a company from Taiwan is growing colorful orchids, all within the environmentally friendly confines of the resource recovery complex, which straddles the border between Florence and Mansfield.
The complex is also host to the Rutgers EcoComplex, a research and development center devoted to helping environmental research and entrepreneurship.
“We’re obviously involved in a lot of different things, but they all fall under the overall sustainability effort,” said Dave Specca, acting director of the EcoComplex.
The 46,000-square-foot green-house opened in 1996 on the Florence side of the landfill and the EcoComplex opened four years later on the Mansfield side.
Both are powered by methane, a byproduct gas produced by decomposition in the landfill, which is converted into electricity by microturbines outside the greenhouse. The electricity powers the sunlamps in the greenhouse and also heats the building so that the tomatoes and other plants can be grown year-round, Specca said.
What a beautiful day! I was just out in the yard checking on my compost bin and was blown away by just how warm and sunny it was. It’s currently 16 C (60.8 F) and should get even warmer this afternoon.
I was very happy to see lots of springtails and red worms active in the bin - temperatures are still quite cool in the lower regions, but I have little doubt the heat of the sun combined with increasing biological activity will lead to rising temperatures in the composting mass.
Anyway, enough about composting - this is supposed to be a post about chickens!!
I guess the beautiful weather, along with my most recent (huge) issue of Mother Earth News has really helped to kickstart my excitement about my plans for this year.
Referred to as “Giant Garden Issue”, this hefty edition definitely seems to live up to it’s promise - but it wasn’t actually the gardening articles that first caught my attention! It was a couple articles related to raising your own chickens. This is something I’ve had ‘back-of-mind’ interest in for quite some time, but I guess have not really given much thought to simply because I’ve always lived in an urban area. Well, as one of the articles suggests, it’s actually quite common for people to keep chickens within the confines of towns and cities.
Of course, I definitely should have known this…
When I was young (10 or so) I spent most of one summer in England. One of the things I can still vividly remember about the house we stayed at was that the owners kept chickens in a small coop beside their driveway. Interestingly enough, the house was located in the middle of a pretty big city. I can still remember being absolutely blown away by the difference in taste between the fresh eggs from these chickens and those from the supermarket back in Canada.
According to the main Mother Earth News article, there can also be some significant health benefits to raising your own as well! While I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to eat the chickens themselves, having lots of fresh eggs available would be great!
This is definitely something I’m going to look into a little more. I even chatted with my wife about it, and the only question she had (something I’ve wondered myself) is how to care of the chickens during the winter?
Anyway, I will definitely write more once I do some more research.
Just came across an interesting article describing a composting program set up at a Washington state minimum security prison several years ago.
It’s actually just one component of a very cool sustainability intitiative taking place at a number of Washington correctional facilities.
I think it’s great to set up programs like this at prisons and various other institutions - it’s good for the environment, it’s a good way to to provide constructive work for the inmates, and it probably ends up saving tax payers money in the long run.
Here is a blurb:
Inmates began collecting the food waste in November 2004 to supply food for the worms at the correction center’s composting operation, Cedar Creek business manager Tom Matthews said.
About 3,000 pounds of food waste per month goes to the composting plant, Matthews said.
In addition, the corrections center has reduced per capita water consumption by about 25 percent in recent years, he said.
It’s all part of a larger sustainability project at this prison and others around the state. At Cedar Creek, other ventures include rain barrels to collect rainwater for outdoor irrigation, an organic garden, a bee-keeping operation to produce honey and hand lotion, and a green roof project.
A 2006 study of the treatment plant by consulting engineers hired by the Corrections Department determined that the wastewater flows and concentrations of suspended solids and biological oxygen demand had dropped enough that the inmate population could be increased in 2008 without the need to spend more than $1 million to upgrade the treatment plant.
A recent question from one of our readers re: ‘green driveways’ inspired me to do some research on the topic. From what I can tell there are two main approaches:
1) creating a driveway that is literally ‘green’ with vegetation, and 2) using some form of porous concrete or asphalt.
Both of these options have the advantage (over traditional driveway paving) of allowing rain water to drain into the ground, thus helping to remove pollutants and lessening the burden on storm sewers and local water bodies. The vegetative option has the added advantage of eliminating (or at least greatly reducing) the ‘heat island’ effect associated with paved areas, not to mention offering a certain natural aesthetic appeal.
Let’s look at the vegetative options first. Of course the easiest approach would be to simply rip out your driveway then plant grass - the downside of this approach however, is that over time the earth will get compacted and ruts will form. In order to maintain good drainage some sort of structural lattice is required - typically made of concrete/stone or high density plastic.
One example of the plastic lattice approach is Grasspave2, one of a number of innovative products offered by Invisible Structures Inc. Here is a blurb from the Grasspave2 page:
Grasspave2 is a structure which provides incredible load bearing strength while protecting vegetation root systems from deadly compaction. High void spaces within the entire cross-section enable excellent root development, and storage capacity for rainfall from storm events. Stormwater is slowed in movement through and across Grasspave2 surfaces, which deposits suspended sediment and increases time to discharge. Suspended pollutants and moderate amounts of engine oils are consumed by active soil bacteria, which are aided by the system’s excellent oxygen exchange capacity.
Be sure to check out the Invisible Structures website - they have a variety of intriguing drainage solutions.
If you are looking for some excellent ‘how to’ info on building your own green driveway I highly recommend checking out this HGTV article: A driveway that looks like a lawn. It takes you step by step through the process of installing your own turf driveway using a plastic lattice.
Ok, moving on the the topic of ‘porous pavement’…
There seems to be quite a lot of good info on this topic. Here is an exerpt from and interesting webpage about porous pavement:
What is porous pavement:
Porous pavement is a permeable pavement surface with a stone reservoir underneath. The reservoir temporarily stores surface runoff before infiltrating it into the subsoil. Runoff is thereby infiltrated directly into the soil and receives some water quality treatment. Porous pavement often appears the same as traditional asphalt or concrete but is manufactured without “fine” materials, and instead incorporates void spaces that allow for infiltration.
Why consider porous pavement:
Traditional stormwater management practices significantly reduce groundwater recharge has led to a number of environmental concerns in recent years. As infiltration decreases, base flows in streams are decreased and previously flowing, small streams now often dry up between rains. Homeowners and public water suppliers often rely on wells that tap groundwater. Without recharge, the threat exists that these drinking water supplies could dry up rapidly
If you are interested in learning more about this topic I highly recommend you check out the EPA’s Porous Pavement Factsheet
I also highly recommend this excellent article all about the advances in the porous pavement field (actually provides a lot of great info about alternative pavement options in general)
It’s amazing the goofy tools you can find online these days!! If any of you happen to want to write YOUR own news story, be sure to check out The Newspaper Clipping Generator. It’s lotsa fun!
Ok, so back to the topic at hand! As you can see we have officially launched our EcoSherpa Newsletter. Fairly soon I will be setting up a page (accessible in the top menu) where you will find more info as well as archived editions (once we have some).
To sign up, simply fill in the form found in our sticky post (or newsletter page once it’s live).
Our first main edition should be released sometime in early April.
Oh, and by the way - be assured that there are definite advantages to joining our list. Aside from staying up to speed with anything new and exciting with us, and having access to our monthly newsletter, we will be providing various other ‘eco-goodies’ for our list members in coming months.
Seeing the glorious warm sunlight melting snow off my deck today inspired me to free my compost bin from its snowy cocoon. Truth be told (and indicated in the first photo), the ‘cocoon’ has receeded considerably in recent weeks. As you may recall (from this post) I piled the snow pretty high so as to provide as much insulation as possible, but its amazing what a few mild days and some late winter sun can accomplish.
I wasn’t too surprised to see that not much has changed inside the bin since it was buried. I have little doubt however that we’ll start seeing some serious biological action very soon. Temperatures are actually expected to get up past 10 degrees C (50 F) this week so that should really help kickstart microbial activity.
I’m certainly glad to have access to the outdoor bin once again. My indoor worm bins have been processing a fair amount of food waste, but it’s getting to the point where I need to start diverting kitchen scraps (at least until the worm bins stabilize somewhat).
Anyway, that’s all for now, but rest assured there will be more composting news before too long!
Note: The Winter Composting Extravaganza has moved to a new home. To catch all the latest winter composting action be sure to check out the Compost Guy Winter Composting Page.
I was over at YouTube a few minutes ago and came across a promotional video for Eco-Challenge, the adventure racing competition (According to a few websites I came across, the Eco-Challenge is no longer running). Even if you are not into adventure racing, watching the video will help lighten your day. The video contains breathtaking scenery and demonstrates the beauty and power of our planet. If you have a few minutes to spare today, have a look at the video. It might inspire you to do something helpful for the environment.
According to Marketing Daily, the trend in the garden this year is to be eco-chic. Gardening experts say, rising fuel prices and concerns over global warming will shape gardening this season. I am happy to read that the biggest trend for 2007 is environmentally friendly gardening.
I am very anxious to get into my yard and start gardening. It seems like an eternity since I was last covered and dirt and eating sun-ripened tomatoes off the vine. My garden last year measured 25′ x 22′ and I was able to grow pounds upon pounds of tomatoes, peppers, beets, lettuce, beans and many other veggies. This year I am planning on expanding my efforts and will be experimenting with patio planters and hanging baskets. I have quite the challenge in my yard, three massive black walnut trees that are a nemesis to my tomato plants. Unfortunately, black walnut trees (Juglans nigra) produce a toxic substance that kills tomato, green pepper and potato plants (and many others). I had a few of my tomato plants die last year but was able to keep 25 plants alive and well with, regular watering and feeding (organic fertilizer).
Speaking of organic fertilizer, I was over at TerraCycle this morning and found some great new products for 2007. They have included a Tomato Plant Food, A Garden Fertilizer and Lawn Fertilizer. I am excited to test these products out and will be writing regular posts about my garden, once spring arrives. At the moment, spring is a bit delayed as we are getting about 5 cm of snow this morning.
Enough with my rambling about my garden (the thought of escaping the office to toil in my garden can be a bit overwhelming), to read the entire article, go to Marketing Daily.
Just thought I’d take the opportunity to provide a bit of an EcoSherpa update. It’s been a little while since my last one, and we have a couple of announcements so I figured this was as good a time as any.
Awhile back I announced a new feature called ‘EcoSherpa Green News’. Essentially the idea was that I would periodically (several times per week) provide readers with a collection of interesting eco headlines from various news outlets and the green blogosphere, along with a brief descriptive blurb. In theory it seemed like a good idea, but in actuality it turned out to be far more time consuming than I had originally anticipated. As a result, it died quickly and quietly after only six installments.
In the spirit of continuing to connect our readers with the latest environmental news, we have decided to add some RSS feeds to the site. Aside from the Reuters feed in our ’sticky’ post (the post that stays above all the rest), we will also be creating a separate page where you will be able to find a variety of environmental feeds. Unlike our Green News feature, these headlines will not be hand-picked, but you can be sure they are coming from high quality sources and of course they will change quite frequently as well.
Also, I am happy to report that we are FINALLY starting up our EcoSherpa Newsletter. We had originally planned to launch the newsletter back in January, but…well…you know what can happen sometimes. The important thing is that it will be up and running very soon (early next week). That’s all I’ll say for now, but of course you can expect to see an official newsletter launch post once we are ready to go.
Well, I think that is pretty well all for now!
As always, if you have any questions/comments/suggestions don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Just came across an interesting article at CNNMoney.com. Apparently Ted Turner’s daughter, Laura Turner Seydel, and her husband have built the largest eco-home in the U.S. - it will be the first home over 5000 sq ft to receive LEED certification.
She and her husband, Rutherford, an environmental lawyer, spent $1.5 million to construct EcoManor - some 10 percent extra for going green, estimates architect Bill Harrison. But he predicts that the Seydels’ energy costs will be 80 to 90 percent below average for a like-sized Atlanta home.
EcoManor was born four years ago when Laura - who serves on more than a dozen nonprofit environmental boards - and Rutherford bought a shabby two-bedroom cottage behind their sprawling hilltop home. They had planned to turn it into a guesthouse.
But a few weeks after their purchase, a magnificent 200-year-old oak, whipped by a storm, fell and crushed the tiny house. Ted Turner is the one who, after touring the devastation with Rutherford, prodded the Seydels to tear it down and rebuild. “And when they started from scratch, they decided to go eco-friendly,” Ted recalls.
Or more like eco-obsessive. Self-proclaimed environmental activists, the Seydels collect rainwater to fill their toilets - low-flush, dual-flow units from Japanese manufacturer Toto. (”Press button No. 1 when you go No. 1, and No. 2 when you go No. 2,” instructs Laura, 45, as we tour the master bathroom, which is naturally lit via four solar tubes.) Meanwhile, used “gray” water from the Seydels’ sinks and showers passes through filters and irrigates the lawn - which is drought-tolerant, of course.
Throughout the five-bedroom house (the Seydels have three children, 9, 11 and 14), the doors are wheat-core - yes, composed of wheat, and formaldehyde-free. In the first-floor study the wallpaper is recycled newspaper, though you’d never know it: It’s an elegant-looking linen white.
The way I see it, even if the lifestyles of the rich and famous do tend to be a tad excessive (yes that’s an understatement), it’s at least nice to see someone making a real effort to lessen their impact (while many more will do absolutely nothing to change their ways).
By the way, you can also check out the Seydel’s website: www.EcoManor.com for more info.
