Living in the Future 25 - Sanford housing co-operative (by undercurrentspaulo)
permaculture and community gardening
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January 6, 2012
December 13, 2011
October 20, 2011
It’s called the Skyscraper Vertical Garden, and it is perfect for growing cucumbers, tomatoes, pole beans, and other climbing vegetables where space is limited. Made from Western red cedar….function + beauty.
October 12, 2011
See Mumbai’s take on urban gardening and sustainability in this great short.
(via mockgardens)
October 9, 2011
October 6, 2011
This farm provides organic food for a farmers market, CSA, and six organic restaurants, has zero carbon footprint, uses rainwater instead of irrigation, keeps chickens & rabbits for manure and nutrients, and uses compost for soil. It’s a closed loop system: everything that goes out can come back.
Where is this 6,000 square foot model organic farm? On a rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Meet The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm.
via thedailyfeed
Yesssss!
(via wilddirt)
October 5, 2011
''Vertical street' collects rainwater'
From New Scientist:
The world’s first “vertical street” will soon be built in Melbourne, Australia.
Every sixth floor of the 35-storey building will have gardens capable of growing trees up to 10 metres tall and the entire building will be boasting the very latest in green technology.
While roof gardens and landscaped balconies have been constructed in the past, project architect Robert Caulfield of CK Designworks, Melbourne, says this is the first time that five high-rise communal gardens have been attempted in the same building.
To achieve this feat, purpose-built planter boxes allowing tree roots to grow in the confined 120-square-metre gardens, and structural supports that hold the weight of the soil and trees will be used. Heat-reflective glass and solar-powered lighting will also be incorporated.
Since the site is a mere 360 square metres, the building’s external walls - more than 8000 square metres - will be used to catch rainwater. “This is unusual,” says Caulfield. Normally strong winds “just blow the rain off the building”.But, in this development, triangular balconies and a jagged façade are used to reduce the sideways movement of the wind, minimising the water escaping from the side. The catchment will feed into the building’s water supply to be used for garden watering and toilet flushing.
Check out the rest of the article here.
October 4, 2011
Solar energy: ‘Bringing light to the poor, one liter at a time’
From Reuters:
A bottled liter of water with a few teaspoons of bleach is proving to be a successful recipe for dwellers in the light-deprived slums of the Philippines. The simple technology is spreading sunlight in places where it has never been, and saving residents money at the same time.
October 3, 2011
Great example of a fruit tree guild. Click for larger.
September 27, 2011
Looking for a sustainable way to keep out weeds and replace mulch? Recycle your newspapers in your garden!
September 27, 2011
Compact vegetable garden, in a box, with built-in trellis. Instructions at the link.
September 25, 2011
String gardens….and flower pots made with recycled cans. Great tutorial at the link.
September 25, 2011
Peru: Invasion Verde, installed 2010.
This public park in Lima was created in the middle of the the city, and incorporates recycled tires for planters and a children’s playground. A few rolling hills and grass-cushioned benches complete Lima’s urban public garden.
September 23, 2011
Glass Roof Tiles Collect Energy
The roof is typically the best and biggest part of most homes for energy collection. But most of the available systems for gathering this energy are unsightly. That’s not a concern for these roof…
September 17, 2011
Benvironment: Why we paid for windfarms to shut down on three windy days
Did anyone notice the winds last week? I’m sure you did. It was a tad breezy. But it was a tad TOO breezy for Britain’s beleaguered electricity transmission network.
The National Grid confirmed this week that on Saturday, Sunday and Monday it stopped a number of wind turbines in Scotland because high winds threatened to cause an overload in power output and block the grid.
The energy produced by windfarms can’t be stored, and the network from Scotland to England can’t cope with the peak generation. When high power output from Scottish wind farms coincides with low electricity demand periods at night, the local transmission network overloads. In these scenarios the National Grid cuts off a number of wind farms to ease congestion. This ‘curtailment’, as a National Grid spokesman put it, was between 300 MW and 750 MW per day. I have no idea how many wind turbines that amounts to but the spokesman said that 650 MW is about 13 windfarms.
What’s disturbing about this, I hear you ask? The disturbing bit is that the energy companies are PAID when this happens. PAID by you and me. These are called ‘Constraint’ payments, which are expected to total nearly £300 million per year by 2020 and which, according to the Telegraph, can be worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced.
Apparently last year this happened on 25 days. The National Grid estimates it will rise to 38 in the next few years…….but with the Government pushing to increase wind generation seven-fold by 2020, we can only guess at how many days that will rise to year on year and how much this will be costing us.
Madness.
(Source: af.reuters.com)
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