Miracle Toilets in Haiti

A great interview with Sasha Kramer, the founder of a Haitian NGO, SOIL. The organization builds dry composting toilets throughout Haiti and turns human waste into nutrient-rich soil for urban agriculture. Check out her amazing work in the video above!

Team Awesome Space Pizza

TEAM AWESOME SPACE PIZZA from Farolito Films on Vimeo.

The guys from Roberta's are at it again with this phenomenal video for Yoxi the social change/challenge site. The Challenge: To Reinvent Fast Food. The Answer: Team Awesome Space Pizza. Roberta's short film is about solving world hunger, putting a farm on every rooftop in NYC, and making pizza in outer space. Cheggit!!

Keep x Animal Collective

The groovy folks from Animal Collective have partnered up with California sneaker brand Keep to release a limited run of collaborative sneakers to benefit the Socorro Island Conservation fund, a non-profit working to preserve the unique biosphere of the Revillagigedo Archipelago off Baja California. Each sneaker ships with a 4-track cassette tape featuring a previously unreleased solo track from each member of the band. I love the embroidery work and deep sea style of Deakin's Guerra Hi-top above. Check out all the other styles here and pre-order your pair HERE today!

EcoArk

A cutting-edge engineering project has turned 1.5 million used plastic bottles into the world’s first large-scale recycled-plastic building.

From a distance, the building looks like a smart new addition to Taipei’s skyline—an angular, approximately nine-story-tall silver and white structure on Zhongshan North Road, not far from Taipei’s landmark Grand Hotel. Close up, it is a surprise for first-time visitors, as it is constructed with plastic bottles—1.5 million of them to be exact.

Since the building, known as the EcoArk, has taken shape, it has received much attention not only from local media, but international media including the BBC, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and Bloomberg news services. National Geographic also has been filming it for the last half year for the TV channel’s MegaStructures program to air in early January.

The Taiwanese company that built it, Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development Co. Ltd., a relatively young company started by a Taiwanese overseas returnee in his 30s, has also garnered a lot of attention. That is because the EcoArk is the world’s first fully functional, large-scale plastic building made from recycled plastic bottles. Taiwan is one of the biggest consumers of plastic bottles in the world, with the island’s 23 million residents using up to 4.6 billion polyethylene terephthalate or PET bottles each year. It took the company only a couple of weeks to gather enough used bottles to make the building, which it did by collecting them from department stores belonging to the Far Eastern Group, the project sponsor and one of Taiwan’s biggest conglomerates.

Read the full article here!

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox

After escaping from an insane asylum where he was locked up for spreading the gospel of the Moral ABC, Dr. Emmanuel Bronner decided that the best way to spread the message of his All One faith was to make the best soap in the world and print the Moral ABC on the label. Thus Dr. Bronner's Magic 18-in-1 Pure Castille Peppermint Soap was born. A 5th generation soap maker, Bronner's vision for uniting spaceship Earth is carried out through the ethics and practices of the company. His grandson now helms the family-owned business using only organic fair-trade ingredients, investing in olive oil from the holy land, and was the first company to use 100% post consumer recycled bottles! Check out the clip from Sarah Lamm's amazing documentary about the man, the mission, and the soap.

Vertical Gardening, NYC Style

Really amazing writeup about vertical gardens in NYC! This would be an amazing spring project -- a living work of art!

GIVEN the chance to accompany a team of botanists on a plant-collecting expedition to South America, most gardeners would probably be satisfied with the experience. They wouldn’t come home and try to recreate the rain forest in Manhattan.

But Michael Riley isn’t like most gardeners. Mr. Riley, a former commodities trader turned plant expert who went on to become assistant director of the Horticultural Society of New York, was eager to move beyond potted plants in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to many others. It took a number of expeditions, a lot of research and more than a decade and a half, but by 2003 he had figured out how to grow a wall of plants inside his Upper West Side apartment.

“In the rain forest, I realized that plants didn’t need to grow in pots with labels,” said Mr. Riley, 64. “I wanted to grow plants in ways that were natural to them.”

With his partner, Francisco Correa, a Spanish teacher who is now 52, Mr. Riley attacked a corner of his living area, stripping the walls of plaster and affixing exterior-grade plywood to new and existing building studs. On top of the plywood went bitumen roofing to protect the walls. Cork bark was then stapled over that, and plants were inserted into pockets in the cork. Sprinklers and lighting were installed overhead, trenches were put in at the base of the walls to catch water that trickled down, and pools were added in the middle of the room to increase humidity. Read the full article here!

HSNY Screening: Know Your Mushrooms

Im a huge fan of The Horticultural Society of New York and tonite they have an awesome program...a special screening of Know Your Mushrooms followed by a Q+A with Gary Lincoff, one of the experts interviewed in the film. Check the info and trailer below!

WEDNESDAY, October 7
Green Screen Film Series:
Know Your Mushrooms
With special guest speaker Gary Lincoff
Written, Produced and Directed by Ron Mann
Original music by the Flaming Lips

Mushrooms – we put them on our pizza and steaks and in our soups and salads, we marvel at their variety and are sometimes repelled by their grotesque beauty when encountering them in the bush. And yeah, some have even sampled their more exotic possibilities and asked the question: "Do mushrooms come from a far away planet?" Still, others have asked: "Can mushrooms save the planet?"

The world of fungi and their integral relationship with the health of the planet have only recently been appreciated. The oldest and largest living organisms recorded on Earth are both fungi. And their use by a new, maverick breed of scientists and thinkers has proven vital in the cleansing of sites despoiled by toxins and as a “clean” pesticide among many other environmentally-friendly applications.

Know Your Mushrooms follows uber myco visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans (two of the more expert and unforgettably mercurial characters in the community) as they lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.

At The Horticultural Society of New York
Doors open at 6pm; film starts promptly at 6:30pm
HSNY Members $5; non-members $10

Vertical Farming

NOTE: This is one of the most important Op-Ed pieces I've read in awhile! Let's bring agriculture to the heart of our cities!!! Happy Monday reading.

By DICKSON D. DESPOMMIER

If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

"Imagine a farm right in the middle of a major city. Food production would take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.

Now apply the vertical farm concept to countries that are water-challenged — the Middle East readily comes to mind — and suddenly things look less hopeless. For this reason the world’s very first vertical farm may be established there, although the idea has garnered considerable interest from architects and governments all over the world.

Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years. (Disclosure: I’ve started a business to build vertical farms.) There is a rising consumer demand for locally grown vegetables and fruits, as well as intense urban-farming activity in cities throughout the United States. Vertical farms would not only revolutionize and improve urban life but also revitalize land that was damaged by traditional farming. For every indoor acre farmed, some 10 to 20 outdoor acres of farmland could be allowed to return to their original ecological state (mostly hardwood forest). Abandoned farms do this free of charge, with no human help required.

Read the full NYTimes Op-Ed here.

Donate Your Phone, Save a Life

Hope Phones, a program dedicated to recycling old phones to medical clinics in developing countries, does a great service for both clinics in need and for folks who need to get rid of an unused phone. Leave a comment if you'd like to donate a phone and we'll get collection materials together to send off a box of 50!!

Every cell phone given to community health workers connects distant patients to a medical clinic. A $10 cell phone will give 50 families access to emergency medical care, health information, transport services, and clinic resources.

When your old phone is received by the recycling center, it is given a value. We’ll use this value to purchase appropriate, usable cell phones for community health workers at the medical clinics. The average donated phone in the US will allow us to purchase 2-3 cell phones for clinics.Thanks SwissMiss for the info!

Food Truck 2.0

When you talk to folks in NYC about food trucks, they usually assume you mean one of those big industrial trucks slinging tacos, coffee, ice cream, or dumplings. Over the last two days, I've serendipitously run into the work of filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney and their efforts to increase awareness about urban farming and sustainable living! Their food truck is Cheney's 1986 Dodge pickup which they've planted with a variety of heirloom tomatoes, arugula and herbs in the truckbed. Using a solar-powered time-lapse camera mounted on the roof of the truck, they are slowly but surely posting their adventure online. For $20, you can share in the truck farm bounty and a promise to receive a copy of the finished Truck Farm DVD. More than a real way to feed urban dwellers, I love that this project challenges people to think of their own creative and sustainable way to engage in food production and gives a new spin on the idea of an urban farmer. Check out Ellis and Cheney's 2007 documentary film on the industrial food industry, King Corn too!

Kombucha - Detox Summer

After a phenomenal weekend of backyard barbecue birthday blowouts, chicago house house parties, and rooftop sunsets you might feel the need for a little detox in your life...I know my Tuesday morning haze was enough indication that my liver might need a little break. What better time than to start a kombucha regiment than the first of summer?

Kombucha has seen a huge resurgence in the last couple of years but the fermented tea has been consumed for centuries by Chinese, Russian, and Eastern Europeans for its healing and digestive properties. Those in the new age/hippie dippy set are familiar with the beautifully packaged versions sold at high-end delis for $4.50 a bottle with names like Synergy and Wonder Drink but a quick google reveals that you can easily make and bottle this fizzy jam in the comfort of your own home! I started the process today with this quick recipe to make the "mother" culture and will be on my way to making my first batch of tea by next week! Check the starter recipe from Food Renegade below:
1 bottle of Organic, Raw Kombucha
1 glass jar
1 kitchen towel
1 cup of room temperature black tea sweetened with 1 tbsp sugar

Pour the bottle of kombucha and sweetened tea into a glass jar. Cover it with a towel so it can breathe but be protected from insects and other contaminants. Let it sit. With time, a new "mother" culture called a SCOBY will start to form on top of the liquid. It will appear first as a thin film, then slowly fill in and thicken up. Once it’s about 1/4 inch thick, it’s ready to go. You can let it sit longer and get even thicker. Should take 1.5-3 weeks depending on room temperature!

Check full directions on how to brew your own kombucha once you've cultured the mother here and here!

WWOOF: The New Jet Set

Unemployed? Travel-bug bite you in the ass? Welcome to the new jet set.

WWOOF is an amazing international network of organic farms, smallholdings and gardeners that welcome volunteers to come through and work the farm, and in return, receive free room and board for the duration of their stay. Founded in 1971 when a London-based secretary "Sue Coppard, recognised the need to provide access to the countryside for people like herself who did not otherwise have the means or the opportunity, and who were keen to support the organic movement . Her idea started with a trial working weekend, which she arranged for four people at the bio- dynamic farm at Emerson College in Sussex through a contact in the Soil Association."

WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) connects people like you and me to sustainable farming opportunities around the world. Want to help reforestation efforts in the Mexican Yucatan? What about growing grapes with Ahmet Karabacak's family in Ergü, Turkey? Or helping with school farms across Sierra Leone? Check out their different programs for your next trip or support WWOOF's international efforts to increase dialogue about sustainable living.