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Breaking the use-and-discard cycle, one repair at a time

“As a nation we’ve begun to rethink our rela­tion­ship with food — what we eat, and where it comes from,” says set designer San­dra Gold­mark. “Now is the time,” she con­tin­ues, “to rethink our rela­tion­ship with con­sumer objects as well.” Along with hus­band Michael Banta and a num­ber of fel­low the­ater arti­sans, Gold­mark will open a four-week Pop-Up Repair Shop in Inwood this June.

In a video for the pop-up shop’s suc­cess­ful Indiegogo cam­paign, Gold­wa­ter explains that “This shop is the pilot pro­gram of a larger project aimed at break­ing the cycle of use-and-discard con­sumer goods.”

Begin­ning June 1, you can take your house­hold goods to Pop-Up Repair’s home at 4975 Broad­way. There, a staff of the­ater pro­fes­sion­als with years of on-the-job expe­ri­ence in mak­ing and fix­ing a wide range of objects by hand will be on hand to repair your lamp, chair, kitchen item, small elec­tron­ics, bag — or what­ever else you may bring in. Accord­ing to the shop’s descrip­tion, “The first few cus­tomers will be ‘pay what you will,’ and from then on we will charge a rea­son­able fee (this is part of the exper­i­ment, to learn whether and how much peo­ple will pay).”

One fac­tor bar­ring con­sumers from seek­ing repair on their bought goods is the mat­ter of cost effec­tive­ness — with man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers con­struct­ing prod­ucts that quickly break or obso­lesce, it is often less expen­sive to buy a new replace­ment than it is to fix what’s bro­ken. The Repair Shop is an exper­i­ment aimed at dis­rupt­ing this waste­ful cycle through a pos­i­tive model: afford­able, thought­ful, community-based labor.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Pop-Up Shop, fol­low them on Face­book and watch the video below to meet the repair­ers you’ll find at 4975 Broadway:

Youth as Untapped Capital


Screen Shot 2013-05-09 at 1.33.18 PM

“’Youth,’ accord­ing to Oscar Wilde, ‘is wasted on the young.’ While this old adage remains today, it is this panel’s con­tention that, with proper nur­ture, youth has the poten­tial to be a pow­er­ful force. Youth is, after all, a vast global neigh­bor­hood replete with its own gov­ern­ment, social net­works, and modes of learn­ing. Youth’s prob­lems emerge from the unstop­pable shadow of the world it enters. Youth as Untapped Cap­i­tal is the sub­ject of this panel, where men­tors and inno­va­tors dis­cuss the incred­i­ble capac­ity of today’s youth as inno­va­tors for change.” — from IDEAS CITY, a four day explo­ration of the future of cities, held in Lower Man­hat­tan from May 1 – 4, 2013, orga­nized by the New Museum.

CITY ATLAS was glad to par­tic­i­pate in the IDEAS CITY Street­Fest this year with our Share Your City tat­too project. We also took the oppor­tu­nity to attend sev­eral of the con­fer­ence pan­els held at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, which we will cover in these pages, begin­ning today with the IDEAS CITY panel on youth at a time of rapid transformation.

Den­nis Scholl of the Knight Foun­da­tion mod­er­ated the panel, which explored how orga­ni­za­tions can access the energy and capa­bil­i­ties of young peo­ple in cities every­where. Four pan­elists were invited to present their work: Naomi Hirabayashi of DoSome​thing​.org, visual artist Barry McGee, visual artist Car­los Motta, and Ellin O’Leary of Youth Radio.

DoSome​thing​.org is a plat­form that allows young peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in social activism with­out need­ing “money, a car, or an adult”.  There are pre-defined cam­paigns with action items that peo­ple can par­tic­i­pate in, or peo­ple can cre­ate their own. Naomi talked about the great suc­cess of their pro­grams in mobi­liz­ing youth to act on diverse issues, from home­less­ness to tex­ting while dri­ving. She showed how DoSome​thing​.org taps into the unique and advan­ta­geous posi­tion young peo­ple have over an adult author­ity fig­ure when edu­cat­ing other young people.

Painting by Barry McGee

Barry McGee

Barry McGee’s inter­ests are in “youth­ful activ­i­ties and things that are slightly agi­tat­ing”, mainly in the form of street art. He sees graf­fiti as a venue for self-expression in pub­lic spaces, con­trast­ing it with large print adver­tise­ments: “A tag isn’t sell­ing any­thing but yourself…[just] your beau­ti­ful name.” He also talked about how kids in San Fran­cisco are sub­vert­ing author­ity by tag­ging using the free anti-graffiti paint intended for paint­ing over graf­fiti. McGee showed us how youth are per­sis­tent in mak­ing their mark “in the land­scape of things”.

Installation by Carlos Motta

Car­los Motta

Car­los Motta’s pre­sen­ta­tion focused on his doc­u­men­ta­tion of queer youth activism, in par­tic­u­lar, activism that lies out­side of main­stream pol­i­tics. The national focus on gay rights mainly involves the insti­tu­tions of mar­riage, mil­i­tary, and the prison indus­trial com­plex. Motta is inter­ested in rad­i­cal activism that works out­side of this space. In his research, Motta has inter­viewed Quee­ro­c­racy, a group that has worked on AIDS fund­ing and crim­i­nal­iza­tion based on HIV sta­tus, and Felipe Baeza, an undoc­u­mented U.S. res­i­dent and queer activist, who focuses on the rights of undoc­u­mented res­i­dents, espe­cially their right to an edu­ca­tion.

Ellin O’Leary spoke about her orga­ni­za­tion, Youth Radio, which gives low-income youth the resources to pro­duce radio shows, videos, music, and other forms of dig­i­tal media. This allows young peo­ple to share their expe­ri­ences with a wider audi­ence, via a chan­nel they have com­plete con­trol over. She also talked about the inte­gra­tion of Youth Radio into the Oak­land com­mu­nity.  Young par­tic­i­pants at the orga­ni­za­tion helped trans­form the exte­rior of the build­ing into a memo­r­ial to Oscar Grant. They also helped start Art Mur­mur, a night street fes­ti­val cen­tered on the arts. Allow­ing the youth to start their own ini­tia­tives at the orga­ni­za­tion has helped the pro­gram to be accepted by the community.

Den­nis Scholl started off the panel dis­cus­sion by ask­ing how we can get youth ‘onto the board.’ At this state­ment, a man jumped up from the audi­ence and launched into a spo­ken word per­for­mance about the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion and the neg­a­tive impact that will be caused by bud­get cuts for many school sys­tems.  He also remarked on the fact that many impor­tant life lessons are miss­ing from the school cur­ricu­lum; for exam­ple, money and phys­i­cal appear­ance aren’t every­thing. The pan­elists looked on, sur­prised and inter­ested. At the con­clu­sion of the per­for­mance, Den­nis revealed that we had expe­ri­enced a “Ran­dom Act of Cul­ture num­ber 1,245”. The per­former was Jamarr Hall, a mem­ber of the Philly Youth Poetry Move­ment, and Den­nis had invited him to the panel.

Dur­ing the sub­se­quent Q&A, the speak­ers touched on the themes of empow­er­ing youth, self-organizing, and the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Speak­ers com­mented on the impor­tance of giv­ing youth choices and options as a way to empower them. Car­los men­tioned youth activists in South Korea, who were able to self-organize and find safe places to meet. The speak­ers also dis­cussed the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges that come with any change. Social media and SMS gives youth a way to self-organize and com­mu­ni­cate quickly but at the same time, there are some groups that are mar­gin­al­ized on these platforms.

Audience feedback

The audi­ence speaks back.

The first audi­ence mem­ber that spoke gave a cri­tique rather than a ques­tion. He chal­lenged the entire premise of the panel, remark­ing that youth did not want to be on “the board” with the pan­elists, and they were more inter­ested in mak­ing their own board. He told the panel that instead of try­ing to solve society’s prob­lems, “you need to focus on the obsta­cles you present…We’re wor­ried about you. We don’t trust you.” He also pointed out that there were very few young peo­ple at the panel.

The pan­elists did not reply.

More ques­tions fol­lowed from the audi­ence, from edu­ca­tors and adults who work with young, low-income peo­ple, about how to allow kids to be freer and unre­stricted and how to get low-income stu­dents inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in com­mu­nity service.

But none of the ensu­ing dis­cus­sion was as inter­est­ing as the chal­lenge from that first audi­ence mem­ber. The inter­ac­tion left me think­ing, what was the pur­pose of a panel about youth put on by adults for adults? Are peo­ple co-opting the tal­ents and enthu­si­asm of young peo­ple for their own pur­poses or empow­er­ing them? Teens today face a world under­go­ing rapid change, and young people’s opin­ions on crit­i­cal issues don’t yet match up with the scale of the issues them­selves. Every step that helps young peo­ple engage more fully can­not be val­ued highly enough, and maybe they should be mak­ing their own board.

 

IDEAS CITY FESTIVAL

IDEAS CITY explores the future of cities around the globe with the belief that arts and cul­ture are essen­tial to the vital­ity of urban cen­ters, mak­ing them bet­ter places to live, work, and play. Founded by the New Museum in 2011, IDEAS CITY is a major col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tive between hun­dreds of arts, edu­ca­tion, and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions. This year’s theme is Untapped Cap­i­tal, with par­tic­i­pants focused on resources that are under-recognized or under­uti­lized in our cities.

Make sure to stop by City Atlas’s Booth and choose from a vari­ety of tem­po­rary tat­toos to show what you love most about sus­tain­able NYC!

Plan Your Visit Here

IDEAS CITY is a bien­nial Fes­ti­val in New York City of con­fer­ences, work­shops, an inno­v­a­tive Street­Fest around the Bow­ery, and more than one hun­dred inde­pen­dent projects and pub­lic events that are forums for exchang­ing ideas, propos­ing solu­tions, and accel­er­at­ing cre­ativ­ity. Addi­tional Global Con­fer­ences are orga­nized annu­ally in key urban cen­ters around the world to iden­tify urgent issues.

“As an insti­tu­tion ded­i­cated to new art and new ideas, the New Museum strongly believes that the cul­tural com­mu­nity is essen­tial to the vital­ity of the future city. We also believe that the cul­tural sphere is still a rel­a­tively untapped source of enor­mously pow­er­ful cre­ative cap­i­tal, espe­cially in its poten­tial to stim­u­late eco­nomic devel­op­ment and fos­ter greater inno­va­tion in other fields. The IDEAS CITY ini­tia­tive is an unprece­dented step in expand­ing both our institution’s mis­sion and its poten­tial as a com­mu­nity hub, draw­ing the cre­ative pop­u­la­tion together as agents for change.” —Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Direc­tor, New Museum

Jane’s Walk NYC

On Sat­ur­day, May 4 and Sun­day, May 5, thou­sands of New York­ers will come together for Jane’s Walk NYC – a week­end series of 100+ FREE guided walks (and bike rides!) through­out New York’s five bor­oughs. Reg­is­tra­tion is NOT required.  Whether you choose to stroll through neigh­bor­hoods you love or dis­cover new neigh­bor­hoods you’ve never vis­ited, you’ll enjoy this inter­na­tional pro­gram cre­ated to com­mem­o­rate the life and legacy of urban­ist Jane Jacobs. Scroll down to view the walk sched­ule. For more infor­ma­tion: http://​mas​.org/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​/​j​a​n​e​s​w​a​l​k​n​yc/

Tips and Impor­tant Information

  • The dead­line to sub­mit a walk is Fri­day, April 26th at 6:00 PM.
  • Walk leader infor­ma­tion ses­sions will be held in the MAS offices on Thurs­day, April 11 at 6:00 PM and Mon­day, April 15 at 1:00 PM.  To RSVP for a ses­sion, email janeswalknyc@​mas.​org with your pre­ferred date.
  • You may choose to start your walk at 9:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 3:00 PM, 6:00 PM or 9:00 PM.
  • Lead­ers are strongly encour­aged to lead their walks twice over the course of the weekend.
  • Your walk must be at least 30 minutes.
  • Plan to arrive a few min­utes early for your walk at the designed meet­ing location.
  • Meet­ing places can be located using Google Maps, and the MTA Trip Plan­ner is help­ful for tran­sit information.
  • All Jane’s Walks NYC will pro­ceed rain or shine.
  • Check your walk list­ings before depart­ing on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day in case there are any last-minute changes.
  • Join mul­ti­ple walks in one day and through­out the weekend.
  • Ask ques­tions and offer insights–Jane’s Walk works best when there is a friendly dia­logue through­out.  Intro­duce your­self to other walk­ers, vol­un­teers and hosts. Be curi­ous! Every­one host­ing a Jane’s Walk is a vol­un­teer and pas­sion­ate about the city we love.
  • Fol­low the action and join the con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter using #janeswalknyc.  Also, be sure to take pic­tures and upload them to our Flickr group, and share your pho­tos and thoughts on our Face­book page.
  • Wear sen­si­ble shoes and dress appro­pri­ately for the weather. Jane’s Walks vary–some are just one building’s inte­rior; while some are a solid two hours and 40 blocks long.
  • Bring friends and fam­ily to enjoy this spe­cial weekend!
  • Please Note: Walk details are sub­ject to change

NYC Wildflower Week: May 11-19th

NYC Wild­flower Week presents a full week of free events to show­case the 53,000 acres of open space and 778 native plants in NYC’s 5 bor­oughs. The goal of the week is sim­ple: to encour­age New York­ers to get to know the nature in their own back yard and to inspire them to pro­tect this nat­ural her­itage for future gen­er­a­tions. In 2012 we are expand­ing on this model by launch­ing National Urban Bio­di­ver­sity Week with part­ners in cities across the coun­try. Check out Nature Block Party to learn more!

Over 30 events will be held across all five bor­oughs! Check here for the event list­ings (com­ing soon). Learn more about NYC Wild­flower Week and the impor­tance of wild­flow­ers every­where here.

Growing the Battery Urban Farm

http://www.thebattery.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BatteryUrbanFarm1.jpg

The Bat­tery Urban Farm, a project of the Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy, sprang up in the spring of 2011. It is the largest edu­ca­tional farm in Man­hat­tan. I recently sat down for an inter­view with Lau­ren Kaplan, the farm’s Project Coor­di­na­tor, to learn about how the farm has evolved, how it weath­ered Hur­ri­cane Sandy, and what 2013 holds for the orga­ni­za­tion. To get involved with the Bat­tery Urban Farm, come to their vol­un­teer days on Wednes­days from 4–6 pm.

What were some of the big projects you worked on this sea­son– new school groups, other ways the farm expanded? What was dif­fer­ent from the first year?

2012 was a thrilling year for us. As you know, The Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy opened the farm in April 2011, and we worked with about 860 stu­dents over the course of that first year. In our sec­ond year, we rec­og­nized some new needs from our com­mu­nity, and made sig­nif­i­cant pro­gram changes to respond to those. We brought on a mag­nif­i­cent Farm Edu­ca­tor and Farm Fore­man, devel­oped cur­ricu­lum for our guided farm edu­ca­tion classes, stream­lined field trip vis­its for schools and camps with our Enrich­ment Visit program–and we launched a City Seedlings sum­mer pro­gram for lit­tle chil­dren, weekly vol­un­teer hours, and monthly Sat­ur­day har­vest hours and com­mu­nity farm-stand days.

We were lucky enough to part­ner with Grow to Learn NYC to get our food into school cafe­te­rias, and decided to host a new Spring Fest event for our fam­i­lies and farm friends. (We even got a sur­prise visit from Grow­ing Power’s Will Allen!) Ulti­mately we ended up dou­bling the num­ber of stu­dents we worked with to 1,800. All in all, a pretty amaz­ing sec­ond year.

BattFmKids

What did the hur­ri­cane do to the farm? The offices? How does this bode for the future of the farm, Bat­tery Park, and the Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy in gen­eral? 

The Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy took a blow–there’s no doubt about it. Our office, on the lower level of a water­front build­ing, was quite lit­er­ally washed away–we had floor to ceil­ing flood­ing for days. The walls fell down. We lost lit­er­ally every­thing. The park was flooded, but between our amaz­ing staff and tire­less vol­un­teers we man­aged to a lot of dam­age control–flushing out soils and cut­ting back plants. Recent soil tests have assured us that we can be plant­ing by April!

With all of the unan­tic­i­pated expenses and the month with­out any office space, equip­ment, or sup­plies, we are cer­tainly set back, and are still in the process of recov­ery… But just like our gar­dens, we’re resilient, and are inves­ti­gat­ing new rela­tion­ships and fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties (includ­ing our soon-to-be-announced Indiegogo cam­paign!) to help us spring back.

There have been plans to move the farm’s loca­tion since it started… what is the plan now? What are you work­ing on over the win­ter? What are plans for next season?

The Bat­tery Urban Farm was orig­i­nally started (at the request from eight stu­dents) as a one year project. But what do you say when those students–and hun­dreds more–all want the farm to stay? You say yes. Bat­tery Urban Farm isn’t going any­where. We might relo­cate or change in shape a bit, as we grow and make room for the Bike­way – but we’re here for good, as long as our com­mu­nity wants us and the fund­ing is in place.

We’ve been using the win­ter to map out some really excit­ing new goals for this year, includ­ing plans to pilot a Teacher Train­ing course to enable teach­ers and gar­den­ers to become gar­den edu­ca­tors, roll out some edu­ca­tional sig­nage in the farm, and to fur­ther develop our Edu­ca­tion Appren­tice­ship and Farm Intern­ship pro­grams. The first big change you’ll see, though, is our Earth Fest event on April 20! [Note: to learn more about Earth Fest and other recent farm hap­pen­ings you can read the newslet­ter here].

The Battery Urban Farm http://skycolorsustenance.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/1.jpg

The Bat­tery Urban Farm http://​sky​col​or​sus​te​nance​.files​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​9​/​1​.​jpg

What are the Bat­tery Conservancy’s plans for their other projects?

The Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy has always fol­lowed sus­tain­able prac­tices in the farm, but this year we’re tak­ing it a step fur­ther to not only prac­tice but pro­mote sus­tain­abil­ity within our com­mu­nity. We are thrilled to be kick­ing off the sea­son and cel­e­brat­ing Earth Day with Earth Fest: an event to bring fam­i­lies and farm friends together to pro­mote food, farm­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity in our com­mu­nity. We hope you’ll join us for a day of ser­vice on the farm, which will include demon­stra­tions, arts and crafts, work­shops and games–and other activ­i­ties to inspire all of us to eat thought­fully, reduce waste and feel empow­ered to cre­ate more green space in our communities.

Also, keep your eyes open for more updates on the spec­tac­u­lar Sea­Glass, our amaz­ing aquatic carousel that sim­u­lates a ride to the bot­tom of the sea. The cham­bered nautilus-inspired pavil­ion is being con­structed now, and we will have a sneak pre­view of the ride at our annual gala in June before it opens to the pub­lic in fall.

SeaGlass Carousel http://livedesignonline.com/site-files/livedesignonline.com/files/archive/livedesignonline.com/architainment/carousel318x253.jpg

Sea­Glass Carousel (http://​livedesignon​line​.com)

How do you see the Bat­tery Urban Farm fit­ting in with the larger farm­ing scene in New York City? Do you col­lab­o­rate with other farms locally? Do you see Bat­tery Urban Farm hav­ing a niche or a spe­cific role to fill?

There are a lot of really excit­ing farms and gar­den projects sprout­ing up all over NYC, and one of our goals is to con­tinue to encour­age more of that–both pas­sively by serv­ing as a model and inspir­ing exam­ple, and actively through events and work­ing with part­ner orga­ni­za­tions. Each of these farms and gar­dens has some­thing spe­cial to offer.

Bat­tery Urban Farm is unique in two ways. First of all, we’re very acces­si­ble, located at street-level in the mid­dle of a pub­lic park, rather than squeezed into an empty lot in the mid­dle of a block or tucked away on a rooftop, where passersby can­not see (and often aren’t even aware of) the farm. Any­one can walk into Bat­tery Urban Farm, includ­ing any of the 6 mil­lion vis­i­tors that The Bat­tery receives annu­ally. Sec­ond, we are the largest edu­ca­tional farm on pub­lic land in all of Man­hat­tan. And as the #1 “top gainer” in the 9-and-under pop­u­la­tion (a whop­ping 129% growth accord­ing to a recent NY Times arti­cle), Bat­tery Urban Farm is in a prime posi­tion to serve a key edu­ca­tional role in the lives of thou­sands of down­town chil­dren and schools. We are a model, and we hope to see sim­i­lar projects in other NYC pub­lic parks to com­ple­ment the good work that indi­vid­ual schools and com­mu­nity gar­den­ers are doing. We all need to work together to inspire young farm­ers and a gen­eral appre­ci­a­tion for the work that we do (and the food that we grow).

Ulti­mately, though, we feel that each NYC farm or gar­den has a very impor­tant role to play and some­thing unique to offer, and we try to con­nect our stu­dent farm­ers and their fam­i­lies with as many of these projects and orga­ni­za­tions as we can.

Have your expe­ri­ences work­ing at the farm changed your views on sus­tain­abil­ity? What do you see work­ing and what needs to be improved in New York? Espe­cially in light of Hur­ri­cane Sandy, have you noticed a con­ver­sa­tional shift around sus­tain­abil­ity and urban farming?

I have noticed that exist­ing con­ver­sa­tions about sus­tain­abil­ity have begun to ref­er­ence Storm Sandy as fur­ther evi­dence of our need to make pos­i­tive changes. I unfor­tu­nately can­not say that I per­son­ally have seen many new con­ver­sa­tions start in sec­tors that maybe weren’t pre­vi­ously con­cerned with sus­tain­abil­ity – but I would love to be proven wrong about that. The short­est answer I can give to this ques­tion is to read the rec­om­men­da­tions in the Urban Design Lab’s The Poten­tial for Urban Agri­cul­ture in NYC. Short of that, one of the biggest changes I believe we can and should make now is to cre­ate a city-wide com­post­ing pro­gram. 40 per­cent of food is lost from farm to land­fill. We rec­og­nize the need, we have the tools, and it can hap­pen now. NYC needs to build on the great work that GrowNYC and the NYC Com­post Project have already started with DSNY. I also think we should fol­low Chicago’s inspir­ing exam­ple in stream­lin­ing and for­mal­iz­ing the process to make pub­lic land avail­able for farm­ers and farmer devel­op­ment programs.

On a more per­sonal note, I believe that you make more pos­i­tive change when you inspire healthy
eat­ing habits than you do when you limit unhealthy ones. Rather than spend­ing our time try­ing to tax or out­law the bad foods, let’s edu­cate kids on what good food is and get them excited about it by allow­ing them to grow it, tend it, har­vest it, pre­pare it, and taste it them­selves. Let’s see if they inspire their par­ents, like these boys did, to make changes at home–whether it’s cook­ing or com­post­ing more or wast­ing less. Let’s do more in this city to get par­ents and teach­ers to start gar­dens in their back­yards. Let’s inspire peo­ple to want to make good or more well-informed deci­sions rather than try­ing to take some­thing away from them.

[Sea­Glass Carousel, which is com­ing to the Bat­tery, is designed by WXY Archi­tects; see our inter­view with archi­tect Claire Weisz here.]

 

Little Landscapes: March 2– April 22nd

4793448216_0afb4b7af8_zBring your lit­tle one to the Everett Children’s Adven­ture Gar­den to explore nature and plant sci­ence through hands on activ­i­ties. Their most cur­rent pro­gram looks closely at a wide array of artis­tic and sci­en­tific ter­rar­i­ums. Kids can cre­ate their own rocky, mossy, or flo­ral world in a jar to take home!

This event extends from March 2– April 22nd.

 More Info

 Photo: Ten­nant Lim

The Orchid Show: March 2– April 22

orchids-1-of-3The New York Botan­i­cal cel­e­brates their 11th annual orchid show with thou­sands of orchids arranged by Fran­cisca P. Coehlho. The very antic­i­pated exhi­bi­tion the largest of its kind in the United States dis­plays orchids of a vari­ety of col­ors, sizes and tex­tures. Join them and explore their col­lec­tion of orchids from all over the world includ­ing orchids from Aus­tralia, Africa, South Amer­ica, and Mada­gas­car. The orchid show will run from March 2nd through April 22nd, 2013.

More Info

Photo: Cecile­vi­sion

Not-so-sustainable seafood?

McDon­alds will be the first national restau­rant chain to have 100 per­cent of their seafood cer­ti­fied sus­tain­able by the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil (MSC), an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in London.The MSC also cer­ti­fies Whole Foods Mar­ket and Wal-Mart’s seafood, and McDon­alds Europe is already using their sus­tain­able “eco-label” as well.

A sin­gle Alaskan pol­lock fish­ery sup­plies all of McDon­alds seafood needs for their Filet-O-Fish sand­wich and new Fish McBites. (On a more local scale, there are now Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Fish­eries, includ­ing sev­eral in the NYC area, like Big City Fish Share, as seen in City Atlas, 10/16/12.)

 

Marine_Stewardship_Council_EcolabelWhat is “sus­tain­able seafood”? Is this a real step towards envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity? Sev­eral large cor­po­ra­tions are using the MSC label to send a mes­sage to con­sumers that their prod­uct is con­tribut­ing to a bet­ter planet and pre­serv­ing fish­eries. Yet many sci­en­tists and envi­ron­men­tal­ists believe that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are sim­ply “greenwashing”–misleading con­sumers into think­ing they are mak­ing a bet­ter choice for the envi­ron­ment when they are not. Who is right?

First, what is the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil, and how do they make their deci­sions? Accord­ing to their web­site, the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil fol­lows three prin­ci­ples when decid­ing to cer­tify a major fish­ery sustainable:

1. The fish­ing can con­tinue indef­i­nitely and is not over­ex­ploit­ing the resource;

2. Envi­ron­men­tal impacts are min­i­mized, and fish­ing oper­a­tions are man­aged to main­tain the ecosys­tem of the fish­ery (min­i­miz­ing bycatch);

3. The fish­ery meets all local, national, and inter­na­tional laws and has a man­age­ment sys­tem in order to adapt to chang­ing circumstances.

The sus­tain­able fish­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is valid for five years with an annual checkup to ensure stan­dards are con­sis­tent. Each step of the process from boat to table must also be cer­ti­fied by the MSC Chain of Cus­tody stan­dard to ensure trace­abil­ity, safe­guard the reli­a­bil­ity of the MSC label, and pre­vent ille­gal fishing.

The idea for the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil began in 1992 fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Nova Sco­tia cod fish­ery, which caused thou­sands of peo­ple to lose their jobs and exten­sive ecosys­tem destruc­tion. In an effort to increase effi­ciency in reg­u­la­tion of envi­ron­men­tal indus­tries, Michael Sut­ton, then vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund, decided to cre­ate a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for the world’s fish­eries. The World Wildlife Fund part­nered with Unilever, one of the largest pro­duc­ers of fish prod­ucts, and the MSC was formed in 1997. Dur­ing the first ten years inter­est in sus­tain­able fish­ing remained low, and the MSC was barely scrap­ing by.

In 2006 they decided to pitch to Wal-Mart, and this proved to be a game changer for the strug­gling orga­ni­za­tion. Wal-Mart agreed to sell all MSC cer­ti­fied seafood by 2012, and other large retail­ers quickly signed on to fol­low suit. Now the demand for sus­tain­able seafood is out­strip­ping the sup­ply, and crit­ics counter that this has caused MSC to com­pro­mise their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion standards.

The Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion, but they earn roy­alty fees from the com­pa­nies that use their label. For McDon­alds, the fees will be based on the num­ber of seafood prod­ucts that are sold, which pre­sum­ably will increase once the sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is imple­mented and adver­tised. In addi­tion, stores such as Whole Foods Mar­ket charge more for cer­ti­fied seafood than non-certified, and fish­ing indus­try exec­u­tives report earn­ing around 10 per­cent more for prod­ucts labeled by MSC.

The profit incen­tives, plus some sci­en­tif­i­cally ques­tion­able cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, have raised ques­tions about the trans­parency and valid­ity of MSC’s methods.

The Ross Sea Antarc­tic tooth­fish fish­ery is lit­tle known and con­sid­ered an “exploratory fish­ery” by sci­en­tists and the indus­try, but MSC has already labeled it a sus­tain­able fish­ery. Researchers do not even know basic facts such as the tooth­fishs’ spawn­ing loca­tion, and “it should never have been up for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the first place. There just isn’t suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to say whether it’s sus­tain­able or not” says Green­peace oceans cam­paigner Richard Page. He con­tin­ues, “I will go as far as to say con­sumers are being duped. They think they are buy­ing fish that are sus­tain­able and can eat them with a clean conscience.”

Other con­tro­ver­sial cer­ti­fi­ca­tions by the Marine Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil  include “krill in the Antarc­tic, tuna and sword­fish off the U.S. coast, pol­lock in the East­ern Bering Sea where stock lev­els fell 64% between 2004 and 2009, and Pacific hake which suf­fered an 89 per­cent fall in bio­mass since 1989.” Due to the uncer­tainty over the Antarc­tic krill sus­tain­abil­ity Whole Foods Mar­ket decided to not sell any krill oil sup­ple­ments, even those car­ry­ing the MSC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Biol­o­gist Susanna Fuller, of the Ecol­ogy Action Cen­tre, says she has watched the MSC sys­tem “strug­gling with meet­ing the demands of the sys­tem that they helped cre­ate… They have ended up hav­ing to lower the bar.”

How­ever, MSC’s CEO Rupert Howes argues that the MSC would not label prob­lem fish­eries sus­tain­able just to sat­isfy demand, because, he says, they eval­u­ate each fish­ery based only on sci­en­tific evi­dence. But, he adds, “We want to see oceans fished sus­tain­ably for­ever. We’re not going to achieve that by becom­ing a small niche orga­ni­za­tion that engages with a hand­ful of per­fect fisheries.”

For more cov­er­age please visit NPR’s three part series, and a debate between experts at the New York Times (3/4/13).

Image: Wiki­me­dia

Little Landscapes

4793448216_0afb4b7af8_zBring your lit­tle one to the Everett Children’s Adven­ture Gar­den to explore nature and plant sci­ence through hands on activ­i­ties. Their most cur­rent pro­gram looks closely at a wide array of artis­tic and sci­en­tific ter­rar­i­ums. Kids can cre­ate their own rocky, mossy, or flo­ral world in a jar to take home!

 More Info

 Photo: Ten­nant Lim

Designing with Farmers: Saving Land and Growing Food in the Modern World

What: Apart­ment Ther­apy Design Evenings
Who: Design­ing with Farm­ers: Sav­ing Land & Grow­ing Food in the Mod­ern World
When: Feb­ru­ary 20, 2013
Where: ABC Car­pet & Home I 888 Broad­way, NYC

We’re back and very excited about a brand new topic for our first Design Evening of 2013! This month our theme will be Design­ing with Farm­ers: Sav­ing Land and Grow­ing Food in the Mod­ern World.

To kick off the evening we’ll be view­ing a short film enti­tled Grow­ing Farm­ers. Fol­low­ing that, Maxwell will be joined on stage by three of the stars of the film to dis­cuss the film and also the topic of design­ing with farmers.

More on our guests:

GROWING FARMERS - <strong>Scott Chaskey</strong>, Quail Hill Farm, Amagansett, NY.jpg
Scott Chaskey is a farmer, poet and an edu­ca­tor. He has worked as poet-in-residence in numer­ous schools and muse­ums, through­out New York and in Eng­land. Employed by the Peconic Land Trust as a stew­ard of land, he has farmed gar­lic, pota­toes, greens (and sixty other crops) for over twenty years at Quail Hill Farm, one of the orig­i­nal Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture farms in the coun­try. He is a found­ing Board mem­ber of the Cen­ter for Whole Com­mu­ni­ties (Vt.) and of Sylvester Manor Edu­ca­tional Farm (NY), and is past pres­i­dent of the North­east Organic Farm­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of New York. He was named Farmer of the Year by NOFA-NY in 2013. In 2004 he edited “Free Con­cert,” the final book of poems by his teacher, Mil­ton Kessler, pub­lished by the Etr­uscan Press, and in 2005 his most recent book “This Com­mon Ground, Sea­sons on an Organic Farm” was pub­lished by Viking/Penguin. He is presently work­ing on another book, “Seed­time,” to be pub­lished by Rodale in 2013.

GROWING FARMERS - Katie Baldwin & Amanda Merrow Amber Waves Farm, Amagansett, NY 2.jpgAmanda Mer­row and Katie Bald­win are the founders of Amber Waves Farm in Ama­gansett, New York. The pair have been farm­ing together on the east end of Long Island since 2008, when they met dur­ing a season-long farm­ing appren­tice­ship at Quail Hill Farm, also in Ama­gansett. They are part of the national move­ment of young peo­ple com­mit­ted to revi­tal­iz­ing America’s food sys­tem by help­ing peo­ple become empow­ered and excited to make thought­ful food choices through a deeper con­nec­tion to their food and the peo­ple who grow it. Katie and Amanda have been fea­tured on the Food Network’s Bare­foot Con­tessa, The New York Times, the Wall Street Jour­nal and many local pub­li­ca­tions for their work at Amber Waves Farm. They fre­quently speak at regional work­shops and con­fer­ences geared towards organic grow­ers and consumers.

Streetfilms re-introduces Zozo, the purple livable streets hero!

Street­films is rein­tro­duc­ing their Jim-Henson-designed, child-friendly urban plan­ning mas­cot: Zozo, the pur­ple liv­able streets hero. As described on meet​zozo​.com, “Zozo makes friends wher­ever he goes. Zozo loves to talk to peo­ple about walk­ing, bik­ing, using tran­sit and mak­ing a bet­ter, hap­pier city. As New York becomes more liv­able, the more Zozos will come back to join him.” (Yipes!)

Street­films, an orga­ni­za­tion that pro­duces short films about trans­porta­tion around the world, is now bring­ing Zozo back to where he once belonged. Although orig­i­nally designed and devel­oped last year, the project–which includes a series of vignettes, col­or­ing pages, and teach­ing curriculum–never gained a large fol­low­ing because it’s cre­ator, the Liv­able Streets Edu­ca­tion project, is no longer oper­at­ing. The 10 Zozo vignettes are meant to teach chil­dren about the impor­tance of street safety, as well as the ben­e­fits of walk­ing, cycling, and using pub­lic trans­porta­tion. And, although meant for chil­dren, these videos will make every­one laugh.

To help Street­films spread the word about Zozo, watch their videos on Vimeo, print out col­or­ing book pages at the project’s web­site, meet​zozo​.com, and talk to your kids and your friends about the project. Street­films also doc­u­mented the cre­ation of Zozo project in their short doc­u­men­tary “The Search for the Zozo.” Check it out!

KochAndGonzoIt’s worth not­ing that NYC has a unique his­tory of civic-minded Hen­son crea­tures, as can be seen in this photo of the late Mayor Ed Koch and the mup­pet Gonzo at a press con­fer­ence. (The mayor remarked, “If he can also bal­ance a bud­get, I’ll hire him.”)

Photo, top: Street­films; bot­tom: mup​pet​.wikia​.com 

 

From Garbage to Gardens: Greening the New York City Housing Authority

How can New York City’s pub­lic hous­ing, home to more than 400,000 New York­ers, set an exam­ple for the city in becom­ing a cleaner and greener place to live?

Join the Museum’s Neigh­bor­hood Explor­ers from the Lehman Vil­lage Com­mu­nity Cen­ter to learn about their work to intro­duce com­post­ing to reduce waste in their neigh­bor­hood. Hands-on activ­i­ties will teach work­shop par­tic­i­pants how com­post trans­forms garbage into gar­dens and how they can get started “green­ing” their own neigh­bor­hoods.

“Dirt! The movie” — Free Green Film Screening

Dirt movieJaime Lee Cur­tis nar­rates this film about the envi­ron­men­tal, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and cul­tural rela­tion­ships to dirt.

From vil­lages bat­tling cor­po­ra­tions, to the rise in organic farm­ing, to edi­ble school yards, peace of mind through hor­ti­cul­ture in pris­ons and solu­tions to health crises, this film explores world­wide efforts to recon­nect with this ancient thing.

(More info)

Building a Resilient and Livable New York

Screen Shot 2013-02-19 at 10.55.59 AMPlease join The Munic­i­pal Art Soci­ety of New York on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2013 at the CUNY Grad­u­ate Cen­ter, located at 365 Fifth Avenue at East 34th Street in Man­hat­tan, for a half-day con­ven­ing on Build­ing a Resilient and Liv­able New York.  The day will begin at 4:00 PM and go until 8:00 pm.  We hope you will join us for all or part of the event. 

4:00 PM The Future of East Mid­town
The City of New York is propos­ing an ambi­tious plan to rede­velop East Mid­town. Join inter­na­tional and local thought-leaders to dis­cuss MAS’s report on the future of a diverse and vibrant East Mid­town fea­tur­ing pre­sen­ta­tions, a panel dis­cus­sion and Q & A with the audience.

6:00 PM Recep­tion in Proshan­sky Audi­to­rium Lobby
Cel­e­brate the pub­li­ca­tion of New York Times writer Sam Roberts’ newest book Grand Cen­tral: How a Train Sta­tion Trans­formed Amer­ica with a wine and cheese recep­tion. Books will be avail­able for pur­chase and signing.

7:00 PM Voice for a Liv­able and Resilient City 
Join us for the 120th Annual Meet­ing of The Munic­i­pal Art Soci­ety of New York, to cel­e­brate the Wan­gari Maathai Award schol­ar­ship win­ners and the Bren­dan Gill Prize hon­oree, and to learn about the strate­gic lead­er­ship MAS is pro­vid­ing to ensure a liv­able and resilient New York City. All are wel­come and encour­aged to attend this meet­ing where mem­bers will also vote on a slate of pro­posed directors.

Reg­is­ter here to attend.  Doors open at 4:00 PM and you are wel­come to attend all or part of the event.  We look for­ward to see­ing you on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2013.

Arts, Culture & Fun: Soul Food Junkies Film Screening

Soul Food dishCol­lared greens, corn bread, black eyed peas, fried chicken, mac and cheese. These are some of foods typ­i­cal of an African Amer­i­can “soul food” feast.

At this free film screen­ing of the PBS film, “Soul Food Junkies,” food jus­tice activist and farmer, Yon­nette Flem­ing will be there (in per­son) to talk about the health aspects of this impor­tant meal.

More info

A Road Once Traveled

Central Park arealWhen you think of Cen­tral Park don’t you think of war? This Sun­day, CP tour guides will dis­cuss how the north­ern high­lands of the park were used in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War and War of 1912.

(more info)

image: cre­ative commons

Starting a Compost System at your School

Join the NYC Com­post Project in Man­hat­tan and learn how to set up a com­post pro­gram at your school.  We will dis­cuss how to build staff, par­ent, and vol­un­teer sup­port and how to incor­po­rate com­post­ing edu­ca­tion into the class­room. You will learn about com­post bin options and how to sucess­fully run your com­post sys­tem. Reg­is­tra­tion required. Work­shop fee $5 per person.

To reg­is­ter, go to: http://​www​.lese​c​ol​o​gy​cen​ter​.org/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​/​c​a​l​e​n​d​a​r​.​h​t​m​l​?​t​a​s​k​=​v​i​e​w​_​d​e​t​a​i​l​&​a​m​p​;​a​g​i​d​=​2​5​1​&​a​m​p​;​y​e​a​r​=​2​0​1​3​&​a​m​p​;​m​o​n​t​h​=​2​&​a​m​p​;​d​a​y=5