Living Machines

Sewage treatment in NY (and most of the world) is a chemical and water intensive process. There are alternatives though - one of the longest running is the Living Machine system at Findhorn, Scotland. It uses natural ecological processes to safely (and prettily!) turn sewage back into clean water.

[updated 12/07/08 - apparently there is some argument about who owns the term "Living Machine" - see comments below.]

Here is some info about how it works from the Findhorn ecovillage website:

To improve the cycle of water use for the settlement, we have developed a phased plan for responsible water management. In Phase I we built our own waste water treatment facility, completed in 1995, called the Living Machine®. A technology developed by Dr John Todd, it uses natural non-chemical biological systems to clean our sewage and creates a mini-ecosystem within a greenhouse environment, mimicking nature’s own water cleaning system. In Phase II we will be constructing a water distribution system to recycle the water from the Living Machine on-site, reducing our use of mains water.

On the 13th of October 1995 Jonathan Porritt opened Europe’s first Living Machine ® at the Findhorn Foundation. This ecologically engineered sewage treatment plant is designed to treat sewage from the population of up to 300 people living at the Findhorn Foundation and is providing a research and educational facility to promote this technology throughout Europe

Living Machines ® treat wastewater based on a ‘whole systems’ approach to biological technology. They utilise a set of sequenced, complete ecologies. Treatment can be taken to advanced standards in cost effective projects which are reliable, robust and aesthetically pleasing. The approach represents a shift from high energy, chemically intensive treatment, to the adoption of the principles of ecological engineering.

Diverse communities of bacteria, algae, micro-organisms, numerous species of plants and trees, snails, fish and other living creatures interact as whole ecologies in tanks and bio-filters. Depending on the climate, Living Machines ® can be located outdoors, in protective greenhouses, or under light shelter

In the Living Machine ® system, anaerobically treated sewage arrives in a greenhouse containing a series of tanks. These contain species which break down the sewage naturally as it moves through the tanks. In many systems, fish and plants are being produced, which can then be sold. Living Machines mirror processes that occur in the natural world, but do so more intensively. At the end of the series of tanks, the resulting water is pure enough to discharge directly into the sea or to be recycled. The technology is not only capable of meeting tough new sewage outflow standards, but uses no chemicals, and has a relatively inexpensive capital cost attached.

Current industrial projects in North America involve the re-use of the treated wastewater for non-drinking purposes within production facilities. These uses include washing, irrigation, etc.

The research behind this technology has been carried out by Dr. John Todd, an eminent Canadian biologist, through the non-profit research organisation - Ocean Arks International of Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Living Technologies is the firm which designed and built the Findhorn Living Machine ® and others which are listed on the following, more technical, page.

If you are interested in building a natural waste water treatment system visit Living Technologies Ltd

LIVING MACHINE ® is a registered trademark/service mark of Iasis Limited, Taos New Mexico. All rights reserved.

NYC Watershed in Danger

There’s a Gas Rush in the Catskills…

The Catskills Gas Rush
It was a weekend house—until I got a letter from the landman, telling me I was living on a huge, untapped source of natural gas. Riches beckoned. How much were my environmental principles really worth?
by David France
Published Sep 21, 2008 in New York magazine

I first learned of the natural-gas land rush that is gripping some of the most scenic areas of New York and Pennsylvania when a thick envelope arrived in my upstate mailbox. The letter, signed by someone named Daniel F. Glassmire VI, was written in an ostentatiously baroque language that, as even he seemed to acknowledge in a dense preamble, could be mistaken for gibberish. I didn’t understand it at all until I corrected his punctuation and read it out loud.

“Hello,” it began. “My name is Danny, a young man in the way of prospecting, for about 14 months wet behind the ears but now and again really sharpening this experience of newness. Through all that—or anything else of importance (or trivia)—I would really like you to get an involved look-see into the dimensions of this Leasing proposal … I would clearly within this matter really look forward to meeting, if it would be possible, you at your residence for as long as you like, and for remaining in communication as many times as would follow for you in the best assurances of clarity. You are the decision-maker. The only possible goal would be to keep to your decision. What I have to show you is a mere compliment to where you go in decisions, and what is said through any presentation only has influence through your clear and finalizing decisions. It should hopefully be fun enough, as it ought to remain, regardless of turnout, as the stuff of interest.”

My boyfriend and I own a former dairy farm near Margaretville, New York, a tiny Catskills village in Delaware County. Half its 95 acres are rolling pastures. The rest is a dense forest canopy, the teeming home to enough bobcats, coyotes, bears, minks, and game birds to fill a season on the Discovery Channel. We entertain hippie dreams of one day raising sheep and goats (or quince or tilapia or anything organic).

From stoop to porch, the drive is exactly three hours. Before 9/11, that was generally considered too far away. So we got the place—and a run-down six-bedroom Victorian farmhouse—for next to nothing. Now, thanks to Al Qaeda, people like the feel of distance. They’ve pushed up prices tenfold. Still, it’s nothing like the Hamptons, at least not yet. There’s no high-stakes social swirl, no see-and-be-seen. We spend our evenings on our respective porches thankful for the unspoiled mountain expanses and sagging dairy barns that separate us, no light but the twinkling stars. Read more »

Cuba’s “Green Revolution”

When Russia withdrew its support from Cuba at the end of the Cold War, the Cubans needed to rethink the way they did agriculture - and fast. You can now find organic (they don’t have access petroleum intensive fertilizers and pesticides) food-growing gardens throughout the capital city. Is this what the future holds for cities all over the world?

Where dead electronics go…

Here’s a 60 Minutes video about what happens to all our old computers, ipods, and cell phones when we are done with them.

Watch CBS Videos Online

LED Lights at Curious

One of the LED light bulbs we were test driving for replacing bulbs at Curious has already burned out.  And it was too dim to begin with.  The search continues!  So far it looks like we are going with this one: http://www.greenelectricalsupply.com/7-watt-r20-flood-cfl-ww.aspx

The light is a little cool even though it is 2700k, but otherwise it’s great.

Transition Towns

As effects related to climate change and peak oil come nearer, some towns are coming up with actionable plans for how to deal with a low-energy, localized future. In effect, learning how to “transition” back to a place where they can function well without an abundance of cheap oil.

Check out this article for more info:

Communities plan for a low-energy future
‘Transition initiatives,’ begun in Britain, aim to empower people to tackle effects of climate change and decline of oil.
By Judith D. Schwartz| Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor/ September 11, 2008 edition

A year ago, Pat Proulx-Lough felt so overwhelmed by reports about climate change that she couldn’t even listen to the news. “My husband was finishing a dissertation on water resources, and I became hopeless and fearful,” says Ms. Proulx-Lough, a therapist in Portland, Maine.

Fast-forward to summer ’08 and Proulx-Lough is not just hopeful, but excited about the future.

What happened? She tapped into the Transition movement.

Transition Towns (or districts, or islands) designate places where local groups have organized to embrace the challenge of adapting to a low-oil economy. As the movement’s website (www.transitiontowns.org) states, it’s an experiment in grass-roots optimism: Can motivated citizens rouse their neighbors to act in the face of diminished oil resources and climate change?

“We don’t know if this will work,” says Ben Brangwyn of Totnes, England, who in 2007 helped launch the Transition Network to support Transition Towns worldwide, “but if we leave it to the government it will be too little, too late. If we do it on a personal level, it won’t be enough. But if we do this as a community, it may be just enough, just in time.”

The Transition movement is high-concept and hands-on, combining homespun common sense and camaraderie (bread-baking workshops, “seed-sharing Sundays”) and sophisticated 21st-century organizing (Skype audio conferencing, online wikis, open space technology).

Each Transition “initiative,” as it’s called, begins with a core group willing to serve as a steering committee. In Sandpoint, Idaho, for instance, Richard Kuhnel assembled a group through small discussions at his home. Next comes an action plan and lots of old-fashioned unpaid legwork.

While the concerns – climate change and peak oil (the idea that the world will soon pass its maximum petroleum production and start to decline) – are somber, the approach is upbeat. As the movement’s founder, Rob Hopkins, is fond of saying, “It’s more like a party than a protest march.”
Read more »

6 Safe Green Investments

With Markets Tumultuous, Invest in Energy Efficiency for a Safe Return on Investment
By Dan Shapley

Check out these tips for guaranteed ways to save money in the long run.

New Gardens in NYC

From the NY Times:

November 6, 2008
Healthy Spaces, for People and the Earth
By ANNE RAVER

TWO gardens completed in the last month by the New York Restoration Project — one in Queens, by Walter Hood, a California landscape architect; the other in Harlem, by Sean Conway, a Rhode Island garden designer — demonstrate how sustainable technologies like rainwater collection and solar and wind power can be incorporated into landscapes that are varied enough to fill many needs.

The actress and singer Bette Midler, who founded the Restoration Project, a private nonprofit organization, in 1995, said that she has been courting imaginative designers to enlarge the scope of community gardens so that “everyone who has a stake in the garden is able to use it the way they want to: some want to grow fruits and vegetables, others want a quiet place, some want to play ball. So all these things have to be taken into consideration.”
Read more »

New Carting Company

Five Star Carting is our new recycling service at Curious.  Our old one went out of business.  Makes me uneasy that recycling doesn’t make money…

Storing food for the winter

Check out this NY Times article about electricity-free food storage.

November 6, 2008
Food Storage as Grandma Knew It
By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

IN a strictly technical sense, Cynthia Worley is not transforming her basement into a time machine. Yet what’s going on this harvest season beneath her Harlem brownstone on 122nd Street, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is surely something out of the past — or perhaps the future.

The space itself is nothing special: Whitewashed granite walls run the width and depth of the room, 16 feet by 60 feet. A forgotten owner tried to put in a cement floor, but the dirt, which takes a long-term view of things, is stubbornly coming back. “It’s basically a sod floor,” Ms. Worley said.

What’s important is that the shelves are sturdy, because Ms. Worley and her husband, Haja Worley, will soon load them with 20 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of onions, 30 pounds of butternut and acorn squash, 10 heads of cabbage, 60-odd pints of home-canned tomatoes and preserves, 9 gallons of berry and fruit wines, and another gallon or two of mulberry vinegar.

The goodies in the pint jars and the carboys come from the Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden, which the Worleys founded across the street. The fresh produce is a huge final delivery from a Community Supported Agriculture farm in Orange County, which they used all summer. Packed in sand and stored at 55 degrees, the potatoes should keep at least until the New Year. The squash could still be palatable on Groundhog Day, and the onions should survive till spring. Ms. Worley, who counsels and teaches adults for the New York City Department of Education, and Mr. Worley, a neighborhood organizer and radio engineer, will let their basement-deprived friends store vegetables, too.
Read more »