Add to the ever increasing NYC bucket list

Add to the ever increasing NYC bucket list

New York City: top tours
1. CityRover Walks NY 2. Real New York Tours 3. Gotham Walking Tours of New York City	4. Famous Fat Dave’s Food Tours 5. Scott’s Pizza Tours 6. New York Fun Tours

Cash from Trash; event summary of a Columbia University sponsored Panel discussion

Colin Beaven was the moderator of the event; considered by MSNBC as one of the 10 most influential men. He’s most widely known for the ‘no impact’ living method introduced by him and his family, which now has spread to a ‘no impact week’ where anyone can join in anytime they want. More information at http://noimpactproject.org/experiment/

Thoughts from Colin:

There is such a thing as benefit based environmentalism. Not every environmentally friendly act one does has to be seen as a sacrifice. Most of the time the end result is people are happier and companies save money. Currently, 97% of the raw materials used in making a product are converted to waste; in terms of water, deforestation and mountaintop coal used.  Also, there is a lot of waste related health issues as most industries target poor communities and areas for establishing business. It sometimes turns out to be health traded for jobs.

 

Thoughts from guest speaker- Resa Dimino:

More than 20 years of experience in the private, public and non-profit world in environmental stewardship. She spoke from a govt perspective for NY state.  Currently, the amount of waste (not recycled) generated by a NYorker is 4.1 pounds pp pday. The ‘beyond waste plan’ is a 20 year NY state funded program that hopes to change this figure to ‘0.6’.

They hope to achieve that by following three major tenets:

1. Reuse, recycle, reduce
2. Increase organic recovery (through means such as composting); could account for 30% reduction
3. Product, package stewardship.

 

Thoughts from guest speaker- Justin Green:

Build It Green! NYC started a few years ago and already has more than one store and provides employment to more than 20 people. Their business model is  (as described by Justin) a mix between a Home Depot and a Goodwill where buyers can find products recovered from being waste at 50-80% discounts from what a Home Depot would sell it at.  Although commendable, NYC still produces 16,000 tons of such waste a day and org. such as these are able to divert 900 tons/ year of that waste.

The biggest concern he brought up is around ‘non residential’ waste. These are currently handled by private companies and the city doesn’t factor it into their policy work. There’s a lot that can be done in improving this area and theirs is only one model and approach.

 

Thoughts from guest speaker: Ian Yolles:

Recyclebank taps into the social motivation behind recycling by linking doing good (in this case recycling) to getting rewarded (discounts/coupons) and helping the community (discounts are for local businesses).

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Initially I had personally not thought much about recyclebank’s business model because the rewards they were offering was ‘more stuff’; that would eventually turn into waste. So where was the net reduction? What I liked about recyclebank this time around was that they were looking into other areas of social motivation, such as:

1. Energy use
2. Water use
3. Smart transportation.

In the end, whatever works in the short term (in this case material rewards) is better in bringing about a cultural shift towards more recycling.

 

Thoughts from guest speaker: Albe Zakes:

Terracycle had its foundations in composting but now they handle all kinds of waste and even make bags from car seat belts and kites from chip bags. One point he made that resonated well was in nature there is no waste; waste is pure manmade phenomena.. Everything is recycled. There’s no concept of ‘waste stream’, no matter how natural it sounds.

They involve various communities and to some extent the initial creators of the waste; the manufacturers.

It’s become a huge success both financially and in terms of spread with business in over 20 countries, 90000 collecting units (mostly schools, churches etc) and over the last 4 years has saved 2 billion units of waste from going to landfills.

They are currently doing some interesting work with hospitals which tend to have a huge waste bill due to ‘single use’ policy.

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Two years ago when I had seen a movie on teracycle and been into the teracycle flagship store, I was a bit disappointed because it didn’t look like they were making a big dent in reusing wasted packaging.  This was my conclusion based on the types of products made from the type of materials used. Yet, it’s such a success and has been able to reduce substantially the need to use virgin materials. Imagine how much more we could achieve if we came up with solutions for bigger items like cars, refrigerators, electronics etc. There’s so much potential to be tapped.

 

 

Group discussion:

 

1. Public education and cultural change is a must to tackle any waste issues in the long term. Most people have no idea how much waste goes into producing goods or how much waste is leftover after using a product. They also feel once down the trash, waste magically disappears and doesn’t meet them again. It’s important to explain product life cycle and cradle to cradle understandings.

 

2. A lot can be done to reduce existing waste instead of looking at short term solutions with future negative impacts. For example, only 15% of all waste is currently recycled in NYC. This can definitely be increased. A lot of organic waste can be composted instead of using fertilizers, pesticides etc.  Anerobic decomposition has potential so as other solutions. Creating incendiaries that burn waste to produce energy will not only release all sorts of harmful gases into the atmosphere but also will require constant waste to be created to keep them running.

 

3. Proper product stewardship and extended producer responsibility will go a long way in assuaging this issue. Example being Xerox. Once they change to the ‘sell’ vs. ‘lease’ model of doing business, they have been constantly designing better products to get the most use out of their equipment and producing as less waste as possible.

 

4. Govt. role vs. Manufacturer role.Belgiumhas been able to create a successful model with handing over responsibility to the same team for both designing and disposing of the waste. And as a nation it’s continuing to experience growth even with companies taking responsibility for their waste. In US, tax payers pay the cost of transporting trash from place of use (NYC) to place of landfill (Ohio, PA, etc).

 

5. Cultural shift:  Prior to WWII, conservation was in vogue and very well practiced. Waste is mostly a product of poor planning, bad design and hard marketing.

March 22nd- World Water Day

22nd March is World Water Day. When this day start? When did water need a day to be protected? Who does water need protection from? Who will suffer the most from lack of clean and safe water? It’s ironic that the answer to both the last questions are the same: human beings.

So what are some of the biggest issues related to water? From my perspective, they are different for different parts of the world.

1. In developing countries- it is access to safe water. There are about 2.6 billion people in the world in need of safe water and sanitation (watsan). Many people (mostly women) travel long distances in search of water and spend approximately 200 million hours a day collecting water. Both access and quality of water are the main issues here.

2. Compared to that in developed countries such as US- there are different types of water issues; mostly as serious but not many people care to solve or sometimes even acknowledge the issue. It’s mostly to do with water wastage; using a lot more than necessary for basic tasks, polluting it with all sorts of urban (trash from pavements, plastics etc) and rural pollutants (pesticides, fertilizers etc)

In honor of world water day, I have put down some thoughts on a water NGOs and also on some promising water technologies:

Water.org- founded by Matt Damon and Gary White; it hopes to benefit one million people by 2015 by providing access to safe water and sanitation by introducing solutions such as WaterCredits. Essentially, waterCredits (learn more at watercredit.org) give microloans to people who want to use the money to introduce access to safe drinking water and sanitation in their neighborhoods.

 

Some solutions being considered: 
1. Urban rainwater harvesting 
2. Products such as concentrated detergents that use less water 
3. Water footprinting 
4. Drip irrigation 
5. Airdrop technology(http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/08/dyson-award-2011-winners) 
6. Better water conservation through LEED practices applied in new building design. According to greenbiz.com; LEED 
buildings in 2011 resulted in major reductions in water use—48 billion gallons of water saved in 2011 alone.

This is a book- Book review

I had read an excerpt of ‘This is a book’ in some magazine a while ago and had decided then that I would read this book some day. It was not dissapointing at all. I had loaned it from the library so had to return it before I was able to complete it, but whatever essays I read where hilarious. Demetri Martin is a gifted humorist and although it didn’t make me completely forget my troubles or pain, it did bring a smile to my face during what I would consider two of the  most emotionally intense months of my life in a very long time.

One of my favorites is the one about a bee. It tells a story of a lady being stung by the bee from all sorts of perspectives; the lady who got stung, the bee who did the act, the magazine used to squash the bee, the squirrel observing the whole episode and so on and so forth. It made me realize that in life it’s a lot about perspectives. You may perform an act that seems perfectly reasonable and accountable from your end but when looked at from another person’s perspective is as convoluted as possible. Maybe the initial reaction is of disbelief but when we explain our thought process (and sometimes that’s the hardest part)that went into it, it makes a little more sense, even if we don’t agree with the logic or reasoning.

In any case, you can’t do much besides completely be honest with yourself and know the true reaons and sometimes there are two levels of reasoning; that which we convince ourselves (the bee was attacking us) and that which is at a subconcious level (i don’t like bees and therefore am justified in getting rid of it).

Coming back to the book, I would recommend it and end with this funny saying from the book:Americans are now officially fatter than snowmans. 
Check out this excerpt from online: 
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/02/28/110228sh_shouts_martin

Last museum of 2011- Morgan library & museum

NYC is so great; almost all avenues has a beautiful museum tucked away somewhere. This one I had to visit before end of the year because they had a special exhibition that was getting over on Dec 31st. It was a set of drawings by a few french artists such as Eugene Delacroix. They were artists who thrived during the French Revolution of 1789 through the reign of King Louis-Philippe. The drawings are by such noted artists as David, Prud’hon, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, and Corot. It was interesting to note that most drawings are first many drawings and then they take the shape of a single painting. Also, another new concept was that many of them drew animals; both live and dead and enjoyed that.

Coming back to the museum; it’s the former house of the America’s renowned financier: J.P. Morgan. It’s a beautiful building with plenty of sunlight and open-ness. They have an interesting introductory video which I never got to see; but got a free pass to visit again; something which I am looking forward to. The museum on Madison avenue has a gallery space, performance hall, cafe, restaurant and a very nice gift shop. It houses more than 300 of the Morgan’s most treasured objects.

They host movies, gallery talks, concerts and so many interesting exhibits..including an exhibition on works of Charles Dickens if anyone is interested in seeing that..come on over to NYC to visit the Morgan museum and library..

Book review: The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria

It took me a really long time to finish this book but I am glad I did. It wasn’t very heavy reading but certainly not the kind you can’t put down.

It was very well researched and frank in its opinions and thoughts, yet..I didn’t feel it had too much to offer in terms of newness. I did learn and feel sorry about USA’s education and health care system.

It gave a good in-depth view of the upcoming countries such as India, China and USA. It’s a little out dated now but not too much. In general, I admire Fareed Zakaria and his knowledge of politics and world economics

NY Historical Society- Xmas 2011 visit

I had read about the newly renovated NY Historical Society in the WSJ. This line is what inspired me to visit it as part of my NY museum tour. “An enlarged entrance and new windows (expertly harmonized with the original facade) open the building to the park and flood it with light. Just inside the entrance, a clear-glass barrier, necessary to control atmospheric conditions, allows one to instantly see the wide expanse of the renovated interior.zzz’

I didn’t realize it’s located right opposite AMNH (american museum of natural history) and is the oldest museum in New York City..It’s a great location and a beautiful 4 storied museum. They had a special multimedia show on NYC. It was quite nice. As quoted in the WSJ: New-York Historical Society—part art museum, part school, part major research center, part changing exhibition gallery—which is dedicated to promoting knowledge of New York’s turbulent past and its rightful, if too often neglected, place in U.S. and world history.

We saw a great Tiffany lamp collection, all hand-made and also learnt that NYHS is responsible for introducing the concept of Santa Claus. Definitely worth a visit.