Citysol Kids of All Ages Day
Monday, July 6th, 2009| July 12, 2009 | ||
| 11:00 am | to | 6:00 pm |
SUNDAY JULY 12 at 11AM : Kids of All Ages Day
11:30 PM — Rachel Trachtenburg’s Homemade World with the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
12:30 PM — Just Food- Learn the ancient art of fruit canning!
1:30 PM — Solar One- Check out the Solar One bike blender project, buy a bike-blended smoothie and learn about bike mechanics!
2:30 PM — The Madagascar Institute- Make your own generator; you have the power!
3:30 PM — Band of Bicycles- Bicycle-powered spin art for kids of all ages.
4:30 PM — Wide Open Eco-Pet Fashion Show- Dress up your pet in an eco-extravagant costume to die for! Use found, reclaimed, reused and recycled materials to show off your creativity and your pet’s fabulousness! Win a Big Blue Ribbon! Hosted by performance elf Reverend Jen!
Lots of stuff for kids to do, plus workshops and panel discussions for the grownups. Make crafts, check out the BioBus, a solar-and-wind powered laboratory on wheels, build a hand-crank alternator and learn about how electricity works, and many more! Plus hang out under Eco-Pioneers Solar Tent and chill at the Tiki Bar!
Bring your own cup and get beers for $2 off the regular price! Reuse the cup we give you, and it’s $1 off!
Write a letter for our I Heart PV campaign to increase solar energy generation in New York State and have a beer on us. Check out http://iheartpv.org for more info.
Posted in Art, Biofuel, Citysol, Design, Education, Food, I Heart PV, Legislation, Recycling, Solar One Events | Permalink
Green from the Ground Up
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009| May 11, 2009 | ||
| 6:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
In this workshop Solar One will introduce, define and discuss the economic and quality of life implications of three solar rooftop applications that have considerable promise in the five borough area: solar thermal technology, photovoltaics and white roofs. Note Location: University Settlement, 273 Bowery (at Houston)
6:00 PM - Navigating NYC’s Recycling Landscape
Recycling: it’s good for the city, benefits the planet and is required by law, but many find the reality of recycling challenging. How does your building’s program measure up and how can you improve your recycling performance?
Residential building managers, superintendents, board members and others will benefit from this presentation from the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education (OROE). Hear about new recycling laws and old misconceptions. Find out how to avoid fines, improve your recycling program and get your tenants to recycle. Learn about other ways to reduce waste, recycle more and help make NYC a little greener. OROE is a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City.
7:00 PM – Combating Rising Energy Costs with Energy Efficiency for Multifamily Buildings
Concerned about the increasing costs of energy in your building? Green from the Ground Up presents a workshop for Energy Efficiency in Buildings that offers tips on reducing your building’s energy use while making an environmental impact. Learn how to improve your building’s energy efficiency in lighting, appliances, and heating systems, thereby lowering your fuel and utility bills.
In this workshop, Solar One’s NYSERDA Energy $mart Communities Coordinator will discuss government incentives available for your building such as the Multifamily Performance Program, and weatherization programs. Vendors will be available to answer any technical questions, and to sign up your building for an energy audit.
8:00PM – A Survey of Solar Energy Roof Applications for NYC: Solar Thermal, Photovoltaics, Green Roofs and White Roofs
Over one million buildings make up New York City’s one of a kind built environment, and the nearly one billion square feet of largely vacant roofscape that mark its vertical border amount to what is perhaps our most underutilized asset. Our roofs have an enormous potential to accomodate clean solar energy applications and therefore to address a number of our most pressing local energy challenges, including the urban heat island effect, escalating household energy costs, power failure, growing carbon emissions, and poor air quality.
Posted in Education, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, NYSERDA, New York City, Other Events, Photovoltaics, Photovoltaics, Recycling, Renewables, Solar One Events, Solar Power, Sustainability, Waste, green roof, green roofs | Permalink
Manhattan Announces Green Jobs For the Ex-Homeless
Monday, April 27th, 2009
This past Friday, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced an innovative plan that will help curb NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously providing jobs for those most in need of them. The Go Green! Cooking Oil Recycling Program will employ formerly homeless and incarcerated individuals to pick up used cooking oil from local city restaurants free of charge; the oil will then be sold to companies that conduct biodiesel conversion, cutting down on the use of standard diesel gasoline – among the dirtiest of hydrocarbon-based fuels – in commercial vehicles in and around the city.
The service will be conducted by RWA Resource Recovery, a venture of The Doe Fund and its Ready, Willing and Able Community Improvement Project. To date, RWA Resource Recovery has collected nearly 725,000 gallons of biodiesel since its inception in early 2007, an amount that should increase at a substantial rate under the new agreement; in March alone, RWA added 50 new client businesses around the city. Overall, through this community improvement project, The Doe Fund has aided more than 3,000 formerly destitute New Yorkers in their quest for self-sufficiency. The program will also partner with the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which will conduct education and outreach by training local students to serve as “eco-consultants” to help recruit other businesses into the program.
In addition to this venture, which will expand to neighborhoods in upper Manhattan over the next few weeks, the state will provide further incentives for biodiesel through tax credits for users and producers of the alternative fuel. Given current economic and employment trends, the Go Green! Cooking Oil Recycling Program will provide much-needed hope and opportunities while at the same time making progress towards a cleaner city.
Sources: “Speaker Sheldon Silver and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer Announce Free Cooking Oil Recycling Program for Local Restaurants”, press release – 4/24/09, Manhattan Borough President’s Office official website (www.mbpo.org); RWA Resource Recovery website (www.rwarr.org); The Doe Fund website (www.doe.org); Lower East Side Ecology Center website (www.lesecologycenter.org).
Posted in Biofuel, Green Collar Jobs, New York City, Politics, Recycling, Waste | Permalink
Go Green LES Earth Week 2009
Monday, April 20th, 2009| April 25, 2009 | ||
| 2:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
GO GREEN LES Allen Mall 6 Green Celebration
Saturday, April 25th, 2 p.m.
Allen Mall 6 (Enter at Allen and Rivington)
Come celebrate with Time’s Up! and GO GREEN LOWER EAST SIDE as we bring one of the malls on Allen Street to life the Saturday after Earth Day!
The DOT has a bike lane redesign in the works for Allen St and we’re excited by the potential for revitalization on the mall in the middle of Allen St.
Times Up! will be offering FREE Bike Repair Education, Helmet and Safety Checks, and FREE Seed Planting Workshops
Other activities and events include:
FREE Green Maps for all
FREE Energy Efficiency Assessments & Evaluations
FREE Green Jobs summer training for students
FREE CFL Bulb Giveaway
Also check out the Youth Photo Exhibit and Vision for the Mall and Avenue of the Immigrants Exhibit
Other Group Involved:
Solar One, NYSERDA Energy $mart Communities, Green Maps, Win Win Campaign, Hester Street Collaborative, Green Market, LES Boys and Girls Club, LES BID, EcoBizNYC, NYRP, AAFE, Manhattan CB3, NYC Parks and Recreation
Also With:
Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, NYS Senator Tom Duane, NYS Senator Daniel Squadron, Councilmember Alan Gerson, Councilmember Rosie Mendez, Asseblymember Brian Kavanagh
Posted in Art, Green Building, Green Collar Jobs, NYSERDA, Recycling, Solar One Events, Sustainability | Permalink
Come Craft with Us at Sustainable NYC on Thursday March 19
Friday, March 13th, 2009Some of you may remember the offsite Green Renter Lecture that Chris Neidl held at Sustainable NYC, a really cool and lovely eco-boutique on Ave A in the East Village. Owner Dominique Camacho has generously offered us her storefront windows for a Solar One display that will be up through spring. We’ve decided to make something solar and recycled, and came up with the idea of making flowers out of old shopping bags, then attaching some to solar panels with little motors. Those flowers will spin when the sun hits them, and the display will be interactive because passersby will be able to stop the spinning by blocking the light. Pretty cool, huh? After we take the display out of the window, we’re planning to have it at our Solar One events this summer.
This is what the flowers look like:
On Thursday March 19 at 6pm, bring yourself, your crochet hooks and knitting needles, your old plastic bags and your ingenuity. The flowers in the pic were made with a D crochet hook and the pattern will be available next Thurs, but if you’d rather knit, or have another idea for a flower pattern, well, bring it on! The more variety, the better. We’ll be meeting at Sustainable NYC at 139 Ave A between St. Mark’s & 9th St. There will be free snacks and tons of fun!
For those who are interested in the design/construction aspect of the display, please email Events & Marketing Coordinator Dina Elkan at dina@solar1.org for more info on where and when we’ll be putting it all together. We’d like to have the display in the window by April 1.
To recap:
What: Create flowers out of plastic bags by crocheting or knitting
Where: Sustainable NYC, 139 Ave A between St. Mark’s & 9th Street
When: Thursday, March 19 at 6pm
Bring: Old shopping bags (transluscent plastic only, please! The opaque, shiny bags get too sticky to work with easily), crochet hooks and/or knitting needles, your friends, your brilliant ideas and lots of enthusiasm!
We hope to see you there!
Posted in Design, New York City, Recycling, Renewables, Solar One, Solar Power, Sustainability, Waste | Permalink
Green Renter:Navigating NYC’s Recycling Landscape with Christina Salvi, Office of Recycling Education and Outreach.
Monday, March 9th, 2009| March 23, 2009 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 8:30 pm |
Recycling: it’s good for the city, benefits the planet and is required by law, but many find the reality of recycling challenging. How does your building’s program measure up and how can you improve your recycling performance?
Residential building managers, superintendents, board members and others will benefit from this presentation by Christina Salvi, Outreach Coordinator for the city’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education (OROE). Hear about new recycling laws and old misconceptions. Find out how to avoid fines, improve your recycling program and get your tenants to recycle. Learn about other ways to reduce waste, recycle more and help make NYC a little greener.
(OROE is a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City.)
Posted in Recycling, Solar One Events | Permalink
Green Renter – Labor and Structure: Overlooked Aspects of Recycling in NYC with Samantha MacBride, Deputy Director of Recycling, NYCDOS
Sunday, January 4th, 2009| January 26, 2009 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 8:30 pm |
Public education and economic viability are two important features of making recycling work in NYC. But the often unseen labor of custodians, collectors and sorters is no less important; as is the physical set-up of buildings, streets, and public spaces This talk discusses how labor and structure enable successful recycling, encouraging New Yorkers to consider how important these seemingly “background” issues are to the viability of sustainable waste management.
Posted in Recycling, Solar One Events | Permalink
New Energy Technology Is All Rubbish
Monday, November 10th, 2008
Imagine a technology that not only generates energy with minimal greenhouse gas emissions, but that can even remove existing emissions sources while also solving the problem of garbage disposal. If St. Lucie County in Florida proves correct, plasma incinerators may be one more option in our growing sustainability portfolio. Instead of dumping its trash in landfills, St. Lucie County hopes to blast it with streams of superheated gas (known as plasma) at temperatures of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, organic matter vaporizes into a form of gas that can be used to power turbines, generating waste steam that could be then be used to create more energy. Inorganic matter such as aluminum cans could be used as recycled material for construction and infrastructure, including filler for roadbeds.
Not only does St. Lucie County hope to provide power for 50,000 homes in the process, but, by keeping trash out of landfills, it would significantly curb methane emissions that would result from decomposition. In addition, the plasma process itself (also known as plasma arc gasification) apparently generates far fewer emissions than standard incineration, and the county administration expects that the resulting energy will be no more expensive than natural gas.
Though plasma plants have been around since the 1980s, St. Lucie’s will be the first intended specifically for waste disposal. Expected to go on-line in 2011, city planners anticipate that it will process 1,500 tons of garbage daily and will supply the local energy grid with 60 MW of electricity (though some sources claim that public outcry (see below) and other logistical difficulties have caused GeoPlasma – the plant’s owner and developer – to propose a scaled-back verison that will process only 200 tons per day).
The plan is not without controversy, however. Skeptics claim that the technology is unproven and may release unsafe amounts of dioxin and other cancer-causing particulates into the community. Others claim that the proposed benefits may be overblown; a study of a similar plasma arc waste disposal facility in Honolulu concluded that the technology actually increased waste disposal costs while providing little if any environmental benefit. Until such concerns are abated, our trash isn’t likely to go anywhere but into the ground.
Sources: “Plasma Turns Garbage Into Gas”, Scientific American; “Doctors Say: Be Careful, St. Lucie County; make Geoplasma prove its claims about proposed arc incinerator”, www.tcpalm.com; “City to Brief Council on Plasma Arc Recommendations For Landfill Reduction”, City of Honolulu Department of Environmental Services (press release); “Can We Turn Garbage Into Energy? The Pros and Cons of Plasma Incineration”, www.slate.com; “Plasma arc waste disposal”, “Plasma (physics)”, www.wikipedia.com; “How Plasma Converters Work”, www.howstuffworks.com; “The Prophet of Garbage”; Popular Science; “Generating Power From Waste”, www.recyclingexpert.co.uk; www.geoplasma.com (Geoplasma homepage).
Posted in Global Warming, Pollution, Recycling, Solar One, Sustainability, Technology, Waste | Permalink
CFLs Soon Safer to Handle
Saturday, July 12th, 2008
In the not-too-distant future, it looks like you’ll be able to handle your CFLs without worrying about the hazards of mercury.
While Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFLs) have long been seen as a technology with significant potential to conserve electricity and reduce consumer energy costs, one of their main drawbacks has been public trepidation about exposure to this toxic element if a bulb happens to break. Now nanotechnology researchers may have developed a way to reduce this concern. According to an article in this week’s Science Times, experiments with microparticles of various elements including sulfur, copper, nickel and most notably selenium have demonstrated promising results when binding with mercury. Potential applications could weave “nanoselenium” into CFL packaging and special cloth with which to mop up breakage, even plastic bags for recycling spent or shattered bulbs.
This means one less reason not to make the switch to these spiral-shaped icons of energy efficiency. Anyway, you won’t have a choice beginning in 2012. As a consequence of last December’s energy bill, traditional incandescent bulbs will be phased out of use, beginning with the 100-watt bulb and ending with the 40-watt in 2014. This ensures that, while we may not necessarily know how bright the future will be, getting there will be a whole lot more efficient.
Posted in Energy, Energy Efficiency, Legislation, Pollution, Products, Recycling, Renewables, Technology, Tru Light | Permalink
Where Are Your Old Cellphones?
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
Our friends over at INFORM have started a new series called The Secret Life. First on the agenda: cellphones. These devices that have totally transformed communication over the past 20 years have also become too-synonymous with “disposable” leading to their being sent by the millions to landfills and incinerators. And yet, many, if not all, of the materials used to make them are reclaimable and/or recyclable.
INFORM has put together a great 5 minute video about the need for more cellphone recycling, while also showing in some detail what happens to these phones during the recycling process. We encourage you to check out their website, watch the video, and then take those old phones out of your junk drawer and find a way to recycle them (they provide the info on how to do just that, of course).
In addition, this seems like a great time to remind everyone about the Greener Gadgets Conference coming up this Friday, February 1st. Our recent Green Renter with conference co-chairs Marc Alt and Jill Fehrenbacher was a great overview of the need to re-think the design process for digital technology, complete with some great examples like the BOGOlight that the audience got to pass around and test out. We’ll have a video version of their presentation on our site soon, but you can register for the conference right now.
Cellphone image by Chris Jordan, taken from inhabitat.com
Posted in Pollution, Products, Recycling, Sustainability, Technology, Waste | Permalink
