Not All Energy is Created Equal

The nonprofit SmartPower is hosting an ad competition, and this is the submission from our friends at GreenTeam. Check out the other candidates here.

Seven New (Garbage) Wonders of the World

by Aaron Labaree

Swiss entrepreneur, adventurer, filmmaker, and aviator (whew!) Bernard Weber has a dream: for the citizens of earth to elect seven contemporary Wonders of the World. The organization he founded, The New7Wonders Foundation, is currently promoting the election and will tally the votes. On July 7, 2007 the list of mankind’s most awesome architectural achievements—according to those who vote—will be unveiled.

This campaign, while slightly kooky, is benevolent enough. One of its main goals is to draw attention to “the destruction of nature and the decay of our man-made heritage.” But its nominations are generally disappointing.

They include the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, and the Statue of Liberty. The charm of the original Seven Wonders of the World is that almost no one remembers what they are, only one of them—the pyramids of Giza—is still standing, and at the time they began to be compiled (around the second century B.C.E.), going to visit even one of them would have been an epic adventure.

The N7W’s list is unwonderful because all the sites are heavily photographed, easy to get to with a little money, and seen by millions of people every year.

But there are megastructures around the world that are hard to get to, rarely seen, and leave the visitor awestruck at man’s ability to impose himself on nature. These are the structures built for and of garbage.

Trying to honor both N7W’s humanitarian sentiments and the original list’s aura of exoticism, I’ve compiled a shadow list chosen from these garbage sites. For some help identifying the most spectacular, I spoke to Ann Leonard, an expert on trash who has traveled around the world for almost twenty years visiting waste sites, most recently with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

Here, in no particular order, are my nominations for the Seven Wonders of the Garbage World.

Big Shrimp Problems

The New York Inquirer managed to obtain the following transcript of Sean Connery and friends ordering dinner at a Red Lobster in Glasgow, Scotland.

Waiter: Have you lads made up yerr minds about what you'll be havin' then?

Sean: Well, this is Red Lobshter is it not?

Waiter: 'tis.

Sean: And it is LangoustineFest is it not? We'll be having as much local langoustine as may fill our bellies. Now, you know I prefer all things Scottish, so our scampi is local isn't it?

Waiter: Ahhh, funny story about that…

Well, this story is not so much ha-ha funny as it is boo-hoo funny. Langoustines are a briny delicacy, similar to shrimp, favored by the Scots, the French, those Canadians who live in made-up places like New Brunswick, and New York Times food critics. 

One Liners: Around the World With Eighty Shrimp

The Inquirer's week of waste has been anything but! For Friday's One Liners, here are the highlights:

• The Seven New Wonders of the World: They're All Garbage.
• A history of New York City's garbage.
• Why living in New York makes you a better person (hint: you're energy-efficient!).
• Dead under 100 tons of garbage in Harlem, no kidding.
• And last, but not wasted: the 12,000-mile journey to Thailand, for langoustines.

Harlemitis

Across the street from a row of renovated brownstones on 5th Avenue is one of the smallest official parks in the city––and one of the most disturbing slices of Harlem history. Its grassy rectangular imprint on the block is a ghost of the brownstone that used to stand on the corner of 128th Street and 5th Avenue. This is Collyer Brothers Park, which takes its name from the two reclusive brothers, sons of Manhattan gentry, who in 1947 were discovered dead in their three-story brownstone under 100 tons of their own garbage.

Homer and Langley Collyer were written about in medical journals and even had a disease (Collyer Brothers Syndrome) named in their honor to account for this neurotic inability to dispose of things. Perhaps there should be a corollary to this disease as it applies to their stubborn refusal to leave Harlem, even as it descended into an entropic urban wasteland. Perhaps we can call it Harlemitis.

Though 99% of people who know Harlem know it as the vortex of black urban life, its existence in the years before the depression and before the Collyer Brothers descended into madness speaks of a very different neighborhood. Harlem was affluent, posh, and overwhelmingly white, and if the Collyer Brothers had had their way, perhaps it would have remained that way.

Or perhaps it’s turning back.

In Homer and Langley Collyer’s stubborn refusal to leave Harlem, even when most white residents had fled to the suburbs, one might be tempted to tease out a metaphor for the neighborhood now and its continued resistance to gentrification. Many Harlemites know that this resistance, though powerful, cannot last. Collyer Brothers die, and neighborhoods like Harlem do gentrify, though perhaps more slowly than most. --MIK AWAKE

Hey Kid, Look at This!

(From Aaron Aardvark's flickr.)

Recycle or You're Headin' For the Slammer

The City of New York WasteLe$$ site (ooh, the wit in that name!) declares at the outset, "Recycling is the law in New York City. Residents, schools, institutions, agencies, and all commercial businesses must recycle." Yes, while there were cutbacks after 9/11, the policy, and so ought to be the practice citywide, is that everyone has to recycle.

Okay, the headline here is exaggerated, so sue us. Tossing bound books in the garbage can (that's a no no!) won't win you a backseat ride to the local precinct. However, it's supposed to earn you a fine, $25 the first time, $50 the second time, $100 the third, oooh it gets so aggravating, and a hefty $500 ticket for anyone with four or more notices in a six-month period.

Of course, knowing where to toss what where can be confounding. Rule of thumb: paper, plastic, metal, and glass can be recycled. The rest, well, check the Department of Sanitation's exhaustive list; it should cover most everything, including what to do with that old dehumidifier. --ANDREW BAST

The Energy-Efficient Big Apple

Take a walk on Brooklyn Bridge some evening and look at all the lights twinkling in the skyscrapers and apartment buildings of Manhattan. Besides being beautiful, you also have to wonder, how much energy is that wasting? The rush and glitter for which New York is famous must also have a terribly high energy cost, right?

Actually, no. Because of its extreme population density (almost 67,000 people per square mile in Manhattan, compared to the U.S. average of about 80), the city’s extensive public transportation network (nearly 60% of New Yorkers take mass transit to work), and its forward-thinking laws on energy conservation (New York spent $251 million in 1994 to help consumers switch to water-conserving toilets), New York is actually one of the most energy-efficient locales in the U.S.

New Yorkers use only about one-third of the gasoline of the average American, and one-half of the residential energy (not surprising to those of us familiar with the size of the average New York City apartment). New York has just .62 vehicles per household, while the rest of the country has 1.9. Water use had decreased steadily from 1979 from slightly more than 1.5 billion gallons per day (a stupefyingly high 189 gallons per capita per day) to about 1.1 billion gallons or 136.6 per capita in 2003.

So next time you are jostling your way to work on a crowded subway train, or listening to some smug politician talk about the superior values of the heartland, congratulate yourself on making New York one of the most responsible, energy-efficient cities in America.

Now turn off the faucet. --JESSICA STILLMAN

(Image from nicoze's flickr.)

From Pig-Roamed Streets to 19% Recycling Rate

1800s | Herds of pigs roam the streets consuming garbage, acting as New York City’s first trash collectors. Unfortunately they leave behind plenty of waste of their own

1880 | 15,000 horse carcasses are removed from the streets

1881 | Department of Street Cleaning formed in response to an uproar over litter-filled streets

1880s | 75% of waste is dumped directly in the Atlantic Ocean

1895 | First recycling plan is mandated. Food waste is compressed to yield grease for soap products and fertilizer. Paper is salvaged and ash is landfilled

1897 | A report finds that of 255,000 tenement dwellers, only 305 have a bathroom in their home. Public restrooms are built

1905 | Garbage incinerator built to generate electricity to light the Williamsburg Bridge

1918 | Labor shortages due to World War I end recycling. The city builds more incinerators and landfills

1989 | Recycling becomes mandatory once again,

1994 | Last incinerator closes

2001 | Last landfill, Fresh Kills on Staten Island, closes.

Today | New York recycles 19% of its waste. That’s about the same as the national average but ranks 18th on a list of cities, far behind Seattle (52%) and San Francisco (42%)

(Makeshift trashcan from dchadwick's flickr stream.)

Into the Bin

by Elizabeth Keenan

Living in New York, it is hard not to notice the people shoulder deep in dumpsters or sifting through trash cans. While many turn a blind eye, finding food in the trash is generally accepted by urbanites as an act of necessity for the homeless.

However, that's not altogether true. In fact, the practice goes by many names. Call it dumpster diving, dumpstering, binning, trashing, garbing, or garbage gleaning, and it is performed by a range of people, not just the needy.