Call it the sit-in heard around the world.
Greta Thunberg, a ninth-grader from Sweden, began protesting her country’s lack of action on the issue of climate change last summer. Thunberg sat on the steps outside of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm holding a protest sign, one small 15-year-old against some of the most powerful industries and political forces on the planet. “The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe — it doesn’t exist today,” Thunberg, since nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, told The New Yorker. “We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on.”
Thunberg may not be a politician (yet), but her words have helped kickstart a global student movement, if not an all-out war, against the fossil fuel–guzzling status quo. On Friday, March 15, youth all over the globe walked out of school and took to the streets to raise awareness of the all-too-inconvenient, all-too-easily-skirted issue of climate change. An estimated 1.6 million students in more than 300 cities joined the protests, geographically dispersed but united under a single hashtag: #FridaysforFuture.
Protests in New York rolled out over the five boroughs, attracting students of all ages, though the younger ones were chaperoned by parents and teachers. A few thousand mostly high school–aged students in Manhattan gathered first at Columbus Circle, then walked up Central Park West to the Museum of Natural History. On the front steps of the museum, they unfurled signs with slogans like THERE IS NO PLANET B and chanted “Climate change is not a lie / We won’t let our planet die!”
NationSwell joined the protesters, seeking answers to one critical question: How do you think we can fix climate change and save the planet?
One of the youngest protesters, a kindergartner named Nico Pascarella from the nearby Hudson Valley, was accompanied by his mom. He was aware of some of the problems caused by a changing climate, if a little short on actual solutions. “There’s trash in the ocean,” Nico said. “It can kill the animals, and if we throw out straws, the turtles can die.”
Lucy Blum, a sophomore at Beacon High School in Manhattan, told NationSwell, “We’re going to grow up in this world, so we need to make it the way we want it.”
Some students were more blunt. Anthony Prudent, a 10th-grader from Laguardia High School in Manhattan, had a message for adults not present at the protest and/or in denial about the catastrophic implications of global warming: “Show your fucking selves!” He went on, “Sorry to be selfish, but I want to have a future. Also, elect people who listen to people and not to their wallets.”
Zero Hour NYC is a climate-justice nonprofit that helped organize the protest. Natalie Sweet, a sophomore at Horace Mann in the Bronx, volunteers with Zero Hour NYC and said that these strikes were an important first step, but that much more needs to be done by our government. “The IPCC [says that] we have 12 years to live, which is backed by science-based evidence,” Sweet said of the global-warming report released last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We need reminders like these climate strikers to help push forward legislation, like a 100 percent switch to renewable energy by 2050,” Sweet added. The strikes are only as important as what happens afterwards. Call lawmakers and tell them the facts. It’s a bipartisan issue — it doesn’t take [just] Democrats or Republicans. To show that we have a common goal is an extremely powerful thing.”
Ajani Stella, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, is already an experienced activist. He runs his own informational website and is also a youth advisory board member of the Human Impact Institute. “We need to divest from fossil fuels now. By keeping our money in them, we’re basically saying that we don’t care,” Stella said. “Well, stop not caring!”
Stella said that when he grows up, he wants to be a climate engineer and work on designs for an electric aircraft. “Batteries are heavy, but so is gasoline,” he said. “Once we switch to a clean-energy grid, the transportation sector will be close to zero emissions. Events like these make me hopeful that the next generation of voters and politicians are going to work to fix [climate change].”
The next youth-led global protests are scheduled to take place on May 3. Keep up with the latest news on the strikes here, and watch NationSwell’s video above to learn about what solutions the next generation has to fight climate change.
Tag: sustainability
You’re Going to Die (Eventually). Let’s Make Sure It Doesn’t Hurt the Environment
Nate Fisher’s burial scene in the HBO series “Six Feet Under” was a watershed moment in the green-burial movement: It introduced the idea of human composting to a mainstream audience, says Mark Harris, author of a book about natural burials, in a blog post on the subject. “I’ve long believed that [the episode], which aired on August 21, 2005, did more to sell the idea to the greater public than any newspaper story, newscast or magazine piece at the time,” he writes.
Yet despite such a prominent cultural marker (not to mention the myriad environmental benefits), human composting is not yet legal in any U.S. state. Over the last few years, 17 states have legalized a process called alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water cremation, where bodies are dissolved in a mix of water and lye. Alkaline hydrolysis is greener than regular cremation: While one single traditional cremation emits as much carbon dioxide as a 1,000-mile car trip, alkaline hydrolysis emits much lower rates of emissions and uses a quarter of the energy. But in most states, bodies must be buried, entombed, cremated or donated to science, which means you could be arrested for burying grandma beneath her favorite dogwood tree.
This is why a bill recently introduced to the Washington Legislature by state senator Jamie Pedersen is being watched very carefully by green burial enthusiasts. The bill — which seeks to expand the options for disposing of human remains after death, including the practice of composting human bodies — was passed in committee and may be up for a floor vote in the next few weeks, according to Chris West, Pedersen’s communications specialist.
As we’ve previously covered, green burials are becoming more popular in this country. In the U.S. in 2006, according to the Green Burial Council, there was only one council-approved provider of green burials; there are now more than 300 today, and that number is rising.
This makes sense for financial as well as environmental reasons. Traditional burials can easily cost upwards of $10,000, and embalming fluids leach toxins like formaldehyde into our soil and groundwater supplies. Space is also a major concern, especially in urban centers: in New York City, no new cemeteries have been established in over 50 years, so the cost of each individual plot is also rising.
While cremation is already viewed by many as a more environmentally friendly option than a casket-and-concrete vault, it requires an input of fossil fuels and results in the production of CO2, around “a metric ton per body,” according to Katrina Spade, whose Seattle-based public benefit corporation, Recompose, is at the forefront of the human composting movement. “Recomposition uses one-eighth the energy of cremation,” Spade says. It also saves money: Spade estimates each human composting would cost a mere $5,500.
“I started this work because I saw the funeral experience as something worth improving, and I’ve since had several deaths of loved ones really affirm that idea,” Spade says. “Decay and decomposition are amazing processes we are terrified of because they might seem icky and scary — your body aging, your food rotting — but without those processes, we would not be alive.”
If you’re a funeral traditionalist but also have our planet’s best interests at heart, the negative environmental impact of the rituals surrounding death in this country might be enough to change your mind. In the U.S., according to Grist, 30 million board feet of wood, 1.6 million tons of concrete, 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid and 90,000 tons of steel are used every year for conventional burials. Cremation releases 250,000 tons of CO2 each year, the equivalent of burning nearly 30 million gallons of gasoline.
By contrast, bodies that are cremated via composting generate about a cubic yard of compost per person, Spade says, nourishing the soil with needed minerals and other nutrients. In 2018, a team at Washington State University, led by compost science expert Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, showed that human bodies could be safely and efficiently converted to “earthy organic material.” The study used six bodies that were donated to the university for science. Carpenter-Boggs and Spade are currently working on an Urban Death prototype they anticipate to complete by 2023.
While the “ick” factor might remain, it seems attitudes around human composting are changing. In 2014, green burials only made up about five percent of funerals, and there were about 40 certified green burial grounds in the U.S. But according to a 2017 National Funeral Director Association survey, 53.8 percent of respondents indicated an interest in exploring green funeral services, and 72 percent of cemeteries are reporting an increase in demand.
“The funeral industry is a $20 billion industry,” says Spade, who was awarded an Ashoka “changemaker” fellowship in 2018. “The idea that every person can ‘own’ a piece of land for eternity, in the form of a cemetery plot… is not a sustainable model, especially for cities with space constraints.”
More: Can Americans Accept This Environmentally-Friendly Burial Method?
Correction: A previous version of this article featured outdated pricing for Recompose’s services.
Why Green Classrooms Could Be the Schools of the Future
When Golestan Education took over the old St. Jerome’s Catholic school in El Cerrito, Calif., it looked much like your average suburban parochial school: a nondescript squat building sporting a cross on one side, abutting 18,000 square feet of concrete. There was not a single tree anywhere on the property.
But that was before Golestan co-founder and executive director Yalda Modabbar unveiled her ambitious plans for the space. Now there are four brand-new sunlight-filled classrooms with massive sliding glass walls that open up to what once was an asphalt-slathered playground, an expanse of green with lots of trees, boulders and bales of hay for kids to play on. Between the classrooms and the playground are two tiers of planters – one at kids’ height filled with plants for them to work and play with, the other with flowers to attract hummingbirds. Connecting the greenery outside with the indoor learning space is exactly the point of it all, says Modabber. “When you’re inside, you feel like you’re outside, even on a rainy day.”
Golestan is one of a growing number of schools across the country that are ditching the old 1940s-era asphalt-slathered playground model in favor of trees, flowers and gardens. And the benefits are more than just aesthetic: A growing body of research indicates that having access to green space at school has a direct impact on mental health as well as academic success.
William Sullivan, professor and head of the landscape program at the University of Illinois, has spent much of his career studying the impact of green spaces on human beings. One recent project involved giving high school kids “mentally fatiguing” tests in one of three environments: a room with no windows, a room with windows but no vegetation, and a room with a view of vegetation. In the room with no windows, the students reported the highest stress and made the most errors on the tests, while kids in the room with the view of trees reported the lowest stress and made the fewest errors.
Sullivan is currently working on research that shows that exposure to green space is predictive of graduation rates, standardized test scores and even college attendance. “Having green exposure on school grounds is not a trivial thing in the slightest,” says Sullivan. “The success that a person has in high school puts them on a life course that’s hard to change from.”
The catch: Golestan is a nonprofit where students pay tuition to attend. How can their model work at a public school, where the student body is largely dependent on financial aid?
Hoover Elementary in West Oakland – just a few miles south but a million miles from Golestan, socio-economically speaking – is attempting to find out. It might be a cash-strapped inner-city school where most students qualify for free lunch, but it has devoted over 5,600 square feet of its property to growing fruit, vegetables, herbs, bushes and fruit trees, enough so that they will start supplying the West Oakland farmers market with fresh produce. The local homeless population are free to take whatever is ripe when they walk by.
“We’ve seen a lot of benefits, not just with healthy eating but also with a connection to nature, says Hoover Principal Ashley Martin. “Being in a trauma-saturated community, the garden really offers a space for kids to help them kind of calm down and regulate.”
All of this side-steps another critical feature of green schoolyards: their positive environmental impact. When rain hits concrete, it bounces off and can easily overwhelm sewer systems, leading to runoff that can cause flooding and erosion. Stormwater runoff also picks up and carries with it many different types of pollutants that are found on paved surfaces – fertilizer, motor oil, bacteria and so on. Green schoolyards absorb the rain, mitigating these effects while nourishing local plants and trees, something that could make a big difference in cities that regularly experience flooding exacerbated by climate change.
“I like to see schoolgrounds as a microcosm of the city [we] would like to see,” says Sharon Danks, founder and executive director of Green Schoolyards America, a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit that seeks to grow the green schoolyard movement. To her, schoolyards across America represent a vast resource that few communities have begun to tap: Despite its ubiquity, the exact amount of land public schools occupy is unknown, even to city planners. “Cities are essentially planning with gaping holes in their maps where all the schools are,” Danks says. In other words: If that land were developed in a responsible and sustainable way, we might be able to slow the devastating effects of climate change.
None of this is cheap, of course, but tapping existing climate funds, urban-greening grant programs, and even cap-and-trade money could help pay for greening concrete-slathered jungles. “We need to think about this as park planning and apply infrastructure-scale budgets that we would normally apply to a park or a stormwater project,” Danks says.
But how about in dense urban areas, like in New York City, where the schools often don’t have campuses to work with? Most New York City schools have expansive rooftops that are underutilized, says Vicki Sando, who teaches STEM classes at P.S.41 in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Sando was the project and fundraising lead for P.S.41’s green roof, one of the first green school roofs in the city, completed in 2012. “Not all schools are ideal candidates, but the ones that are see multiple benefits,” Sando says. “Our energy usage has gone down about 22 percent with the green roof on there, and the kids are so enthusiastic about going up there and reconnecting with nature in an urban environment.”
Modabber echoes Sando’s enthusiasm. “The younger the child, the more space they need,” she says. “These kids are growing up with a deep love of nature, and they are going to want to preserve it.”
MORE: Ask the Experts: How Can We Fix Early Childhood Education?
Can’t Flush This
Safe sex can be bad for the environment — if you don’t dispose of your condoms correctly.
It’s one of the larger problems for sewage plants around the world: lovers who toss their used condoms in a toilet instead of the trash. Condoms cause problems by clogging sewage drains around the world.
From London’s infamous “Johnnyberg” to an Austin, Texas, clog that led to a prostitution bust, the latex that protects you from STDs and unwanted pregnancies is costing taxpayers millions a year to unclog from pipes and sewers.
But condoms aren’t solely to blame for sewage backups and overflows. Many things clog sewers, which can lead not only to pricey repairs, but the resulting gunk can also overwhelm treatment plants and get washed out to our waterways and oceans.
Here’s a list of just a few things that experts say not to put in the toilet, along with some alternatives to just flushing it all away.
Grease
If you really want to be terrified of the sewer, don’t just look for Pennywise. Look up “fatberg” on Google.
This is your trigger warning.
“Fatbergs” are fairly common. A 2014 study found that 47 percent of the 36,000 sewage overflows in the U.S. occurred because of fat clogs in sewers. And it happens because the fat you pour down the drain mixes with calcium in the drain pipes and it all globs together like…a big sewer-clogging glob. Ultimately, that buildup can cost thousands of dollars to repair, not to mention that oil and grease from our sewer systems damages our beaches and oceans.
As an alternative: Throw that bacon grease in the waste bin. Or, if you use a lot of vegetable oil when you cook, you can turn your beater into a greaser.
Dental Floss
Typically, what goes in your mouth will end up in your toilet. But there’s a caveat to this rule: dental floss.
Dental floss is made of nylon or teflon and doesn’t biodegrade easily. Eventually, what it turns into is a big ol’ ball of yuck.
“When [floss gets] into the wastewater system [it ends] up balling up into these big clumps and getting the workings of our system stuck or broken,” Andrea Pook, spokeswoman for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, tells the Huffington Post.
As an alternative: Try biodegradable silk floss or a water flosser.
Tampons
Despite their small size, tampons don’t do well in sewage systems. Their absorbent qualities and the string attached to them makes it difficult to break down in sewage systems.
The best way to dispose of them is just to toss them in the garbage.
“It’s best to simply wrap a used tampon in toilet paper and toss it in the garbage, or, if you’re in a public washroom, place it in the waste receptacle for feminine hygiene products,” Playtex, a company that makes tampons, says on its website.
As an alternative: Try using a menstrual cup like the silicone Diva Cup, which can last up to 10 years.
Medicine
Wastewater treatment plants aren’t designed to filter out medicines. As a result, only half of the drugs people throw down the toilet are actually filtered out by sewage treatment.
In 2002, the US Geological Survey found that 80 percent of stream waters studied were contaminated to some degree with pharmaceuticals or hormones. In a more recent survey, 118 pharmaceuticals were found in 25 treatment plants across the states.
In the Great Lakes, six chemicals were detected frequently and had a low rate of removal in treated water, including an anti-seizure drug and an herbicide.
As an alternative: Stockpile your medicines and then turn them in on Oct. 27 during the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day (the website also has a handy collection site locator tool).
Contact lenses
Contacts might just be little bitty things, but when you figure that more than 45 million people wear them in the U.S. alone, and collectively throw away around 14 billion lenses annually, that adds up to a lot of plastic getting flushed down the john. Making matters worse, contact lenses — like most plastics — don’t biodegrade easily, and tend to break down into microparticles that float into the ocean and add to the 93,000 to 236,000 metric tons of microplastic current in our oceans.
As an alternative: Extended wear lenses…or just get glasses. If you do go disposable, TerraCycle and Bausch + Lomb have partnered to create a free recycling program for some lenses and packaging.
Five Apps for the Tech-Savvy Environmentalist
So you want to fix the environment? That’s a big job. Absent clear policy change from the powers-that-be, the onus is on all citizens to do their part and pitch in as much as they can. How much time and energy each one of us can devote to the cause varies, of course. Which is why we’ve rounded up five eco-friendly apps that will help put anyone, no matter their individual circumstances, on the path to sustainability.
SKEPTICAL SCIENCE
Here’s an alarming statistic: In a 2018 study, Yale researchers found that more than a quarter of Americans believe that global warming is naturally occurring (and, worse, 14 percent think that it’s not happening at all). If you happen to strike up a conversation with such a denier, the Skeptical Science app is your secret weapon. Run by a team of volunteers who have a wealth of combined expertise in climate science and environmental issues, the organization’s app lists common climate-denier arguments — such as “lack of consensus on who is causing climate change,” and “animals and plants can adapt” — next to true statements and then links those statements to science-based, peer-reviewed research that support them. Not only will you be able to fact-check the discussion in real-time, you’ll be armed with a wealth of knowledge and statistics that will either keep your heated banter going — or provide some big-picture food for thought that just might turn each skeptic you encounter into a climate-change believer.
DROPCOUNTR
Unless you live in a place where water conservation is mandatory — as was the case in California, for example — chances are you don’t give much thought to every drop you use throughout the day. That’s a mistake, even if droughts aren’t an issue where you are: A decrease in our water supply can lead to increased pollution from over-irrigation, and the destruction of pollution-filtering wetlands. What’s more, monitoring the amount of water you consume in your home can cut your monthly water usage by up to 9 percent, which can translate to serious utility savings and rebates. That’s where Dropcountr comes in: The free app partners with utility companies to track and analyze your home’s monthly water output, alerting you of leaks and usage by the gallon. The easy-to-understand graphs and charts also compare your household with others in the area, alongside data of what’s considered “efficient use” — hey, if a little guilt-tripping gets you to turn off the water when you brush your teeth, we’re game! While it’s only available in a handful of states — search by zip code to see if the app is available where you live — you can email your utility company to request it.
SEAFOOD WATCH
If you’re eager to add more fish to your diet but are concerned about the environmental impact of doing so, Seafood Watch is here to help. Developed by scientists at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, the app is a pocket guide to finding fish caught or raised in an environmentally sound way that protects the long-term health of the species — info that’s not always easy to come by when buying seafood (or dining at your favorite sushi restaurant). Search for sustainable fisheries near you by inputting your zip code, or look up specific types of fish by name. The latter produces a shockingly comprehensive list of fish by type, ocean location and catching method, along with colored fish icons that indicate your best option. Overwhelmed by the amount of choices? Research your favorites before going out, and you’ll have no need to worry about putting your waiter or fishmonger on the spot.
GOOD GUIDE
If you’re confused about whether there’s anything toxic in the products you use on your body or in your home, you aren’t alone. A quick trip to the FDA’s website underscores the problem: “Under U.S. law, FDA does not have the authority to require cosmetic manufacturers to submit their safety data to FDA,” it reads. “The burden is on FDA to prove that a particular product or ingredient is harmful when used as intended.” That leaves a loophole the size of the Kardashian empire for cosmetic and household-product manufacturers to walk through — and walk through it they do.
Needless to say, much of this has a direct impact on the physical environment. Common cleaning products like this one contain chemicals that persist in the environment and are toxic to many forms of life; microbeads from a vast array of products end up in our oceans, absorbing toxins as they enter our food chain.
Enter Good Guide and its product-rating system. The Good Guide team assesses personal care, cosmetic and household products — more than 75,000 to date and counting — and gives each product a score from zero to 10. Scores hinge on what a product contains and the degree of transparency from the company regarding those ingredients (for example, “fragrance” is about as specific as “natural” when it comes to describing what exactly is in that bar of soap you just bought).
The app is easy to use, and you may be surprised by what you discover. Procter & Gamble’s Magic Eraser, for instance, scores a 10 (the least toxic rating) while Little Twig Organic Baby Powder gets a big fat zero (meaning, run for the hills!). Speaking of babies, there’s a special “Baby & Kids” section, so that you can keep your kiddos clean — and safe.
OROECO
There’s been much hand-wringing over our carbon footprint here in the U.S., and there’s good reason for it. We are the biggest carbon polluter in history, ahead of the EU and even China, and our per capita fossil-fuel consumption still dwarfs every other country by comparison.
If you’re looking for a way to reduce, or just track, the size of your climate footprint, Oroeco is a bit like the MyFitnessPal of the eco-app space. Oroeco allows you to see how so many disparate aspects of your life contribute to the warming of our planet — even things you might not necessarily think much about, like the clothing you choose and the entertainment you consume. The app then turns that data into a game of sorts. Users can track performance, set goals and compete with friends to see who can hit the lowest carbon “score.”
In order to benefit from its full range of services, Oreoco requires a bit of a lift upfront — you need to input a variety of info, including your salary range; the average number of miles you fly per year; how much you eat; and the amount you spend on goods and services. But the results should present you with a pretty good idea of how you measure up to your peers and where you can shave off a few points to win the game. In the process, you’ll become a more responsible global citizen — and that’s a win for everyone.
Four Tips To Build an Eco-Friendly Garden
Gardens are good for the environment and, arguably, good for the soul. But you’re undercutting your good work if you’re still using, say, a gas-powered lawnmower or irrigating your lawn more than it needs.
Here are four ways to make gardening more eco-friendly.
USE A BARREL
Just think for a moment about all the water that hits your roof during a rainstorm. Now imagine all that water being put to use.
Using a rain barrel is a great way to capture much of that roof runoff.
Typical rain barrels can hold 40 to 90 gallons of water. All of that can be used to water plants or wash cars. It’s also great for your wallet, as you will be able to decrease your municipal water usage.
If you don’t know what size of rain barrel to buy, use this formula to help you calculate how much rainwater you can collect based on the square footage of your roof and the annual rainfall in your area.
GO NATIVE (WITH YOUR CHOICE OF PLANTS)
Pro-tip: Pine trees are pretty, “fir” sure (get it?). But they don’t belong anywhere near your Florida beach home.
Instead, use native plants when you build your garden. Drought-resistant plants native to your area means that you can water them less. “Going native” can save your water consumption by as much as 60 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In New Orleans, a program pays homeowners to replace pavement with native plants on their property, as part of a larger project to help mitigate flooding in neighborhoods where green space is limited.
Local plants also attract local fauna, which is great for pollination. For example, agave plants native to the American Southwest produce massive flower stalks that hummingbirds find irresistable.
GET SMART ON IRRIGATION
If you rely on irrigation to water your lawns and gardens, then you know the amount of water wasted when your lawn is irrigated the same day of a massive rainstorm.
But there are smart ways to irrigate your lawn without overwatering. It just takes a little advance planning.
Evapotranspiration relies on sensors to measure how much moisture is in the ground and irrigates based on the exact needs of your lawn.
But if investing in fancy sensors is not your thing, or you want a more DIY approach to setting your irrigation schedule, here are a few tips:
- Irrigate early in the morning or late at night to lessen evaporation
- Try a drip technique, in which you line your garden with a soaker hose that slowly drips water directly on the roots of your plants
- Capture gray water to reuse in your garden. You can even rig your home so that water from your washing machine or shower flows directly into your garden
DON’T TOSS THE SCRAPS
You know that entire plate of food you’re throwing away after Thanksgiving? Here’s the problem with that:
When we discard uneaten food and scraps, it goes directly into landfills. As it rots, it releases methane, which is almost 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Western Australia, for example, dumped nearly 700,000 tons of organic waste in 2012, each ton releasing about one ton of greenhouse gas, mostly in the form of methane. In America, we throw away way more than that — about 30 times more, in fact, with roughly 25.9 million tons of food waste filling American landfills each year, according to a 2009 report by the U.S. Agriculture Department.
That is food — or wood chips, or grass clippings, or leaves, or even t-shirts — that could easily be composted and made into fertilizer for your garden.
And composting also helps the soil in your garden. It can help clean up soil contaminated with pesticides, and it helps retain moisture so that you don’t need to water your plants so frequently.
New Orleans Floods With Heavy Rainstorms. Magnolias Could Be Part of the Solution
Louisiana weather in the summer is temperamental — and residents brace for the worst every year.
People who live in this swampy coastal state know that a light rain could easily turn into a torrential downpour, resulting in sheets of water that spill from rooftops and flood the streets or overflow estuaries that feed into larger lakes.
That’s exactly what happened in New Orleans earlier this summer, and last summer and the summer before last.
“If there’s a half inch of rain falling, my street is flooded,” says Ramiro Diaz, an urban architect who sits on the board of the city’s Zoning and Adjustments Commission. “It’s an intensity thing. For us, a regular rain here is like monsoon rains for people in California. We can get half an inch of rain in 15 minutes.”
The problem isn’t just that New Orleans is a wet city that sits on top of water tables, or that it’s surrounded by swampland and is also partly below sea level (and sinking even more). It also has a lot to do with the way the city looks: It’s completely gray.
Pavement in New Orleans is everywhere, especially in the suburbs. Those areas — some of the lowest-lying in the city — are where water is meant to drain from the higher elevation areas, such as the French Quarter. But the excess of pavement covering such neighborhoods has transformed permeable land into impenetrable surface. As a result, water that should flow to the suburbs at a pace slow enough for the city’s drains and pumps to manage it is moving too quickly. And there’s just too much of it.
But a city-backed initiative is helping city residents manage flooding on their properties. The project, Front Yard Initiative, reimburses homeowners to tear out pavement in their yards and replace it with rain gardens, local plants that can absorb large amounts of water and rain barrels. So far, the Front Yard Initiative has been adopted by 43 homeowners in three New Orleans neighborhoods, and city planners have argued that the project — if adopted by enough people — might help reduce flooding throughout the city.
A GRAY CITY
Vivek Shaw lives just off Broad Street, a main thoroughfare in the Mid-City neighborhood, north of the French Quarter. His street is standard-issue New Orleans suburb: shotgun homes and Creole cottages, many raised on stilts, lined up side-by-side. All of the landscape is paved.
“All this [pavement] contributes to flooding,” Shaw says, pointing to one home on his street that is paved all the way around its perimeter. Next to Shaw’s home, crates have been placed for residents to cross the sidewalk to their stoops when the street floods. In August of last year, Shaw’s street, St. Ann, had 22 inches of flooding due to a heavy rain.
St. Ann is designed like most of the streets in New Orleans: The road has a slight downward tilt so that rainwater can run to the catch basins on Broad Street. The slope is slight enough so that instead of rushing down, the water moves in a measured way to the main thoroughfare, where the city’s five massive turbines and 120 water pumps push water back out to Lake Pontchartrain and, eventually, the sea.
But concrete has made that process cumbersome. Plants, sod and general greenery could easily absorb thousands of gallons of water so that the pumps aren’t overwhelmed, but most of the natural flora is gone.
“It’s like trying to drain a bathtub into a pipe the size of a straw,” says Diaz. “The more we pave the city, the faster the water runs off to those drains. And the drains are undersized and overwhelmed with rainstorms.”
(It’s also worth noting that the city found the drain pipes clogged with, literally, tons of Mardi Gras beads.)
It’s unknown how much pavement actually covers New Orleans. The city has never had a GIS — a software approach to mapping geographic and architectural layers of a city — officially in place. Heavy construction of the city after WWII meant that the suburbs were booming in Orleans Parish, but that also meant draining away the water shelf and paving over the land.
Paving land in this part of the South was deliberate, in order to fend off disease — stagnant water and natural ditches in the ground are breeding grounds for mosquitos, says Diaz.
“Ditches were vectors for disease. Once we realized, for example, yellow fever was water-related, we got rid of the water everywhere,” says Diaz, whose architecture firm was key in creating an urban water plan proposal. “To get rid of mosquitos you have to annihilate everything.”
New Orleans is built on a foundation of wet clay. By paving over it indiscriminately, the clay is drying out and shrinking, a process called subsidence that leads to infrastructure nightmares like cracked roads and shattered pipes.
As a result, the city is falling ever deeper below sea level — and that’s making the situation even worse. A city that once did its best to keep the swamp away is now swimming in water.
TEAR IT UP
Walk through any garden party in New Orleans and you’re bound to encounter a whiff of honey and spice. It’s the telltale smell of swamp milkweed, pink bushels of flowers native to the South.
Swamp milkweed is one of dozens of plants in the area, including sweetbay magnolias and dwarf palmettos, that can absorb large amounts of water. They’re just a few of the plants that Front Yard Initiative recommends using when decorating water-absorbing lawns, says Felice Lavergne, a project manager for the Urban Conservancy.
“These plants practically live in water,” says Lavergne. “They have deep roots that take in the ground water which helps with absorption.”
Front Yard Initiative’s reimbursement levels for pavement removal are small, Lavergne admits, only $2.50 a square foot, up to a max of $1,250 per property. The cost of removing pavement is often three times that high — which doesn’t factor in landscape and gardening costs — but it’s an incentive for homeowners to take action in communities that suffer consistent flooding. (The program has reimbursed homeowners a total of $42,446 to date.)
So far, Front Yard has been able to clear over 25,000 square feet of pavement. That’s only half the square footage of a typical football field, but breaking it down by household, an average of 600 square feet of pavement has been removed from 43 homes.
One Broadmoor homeowner tore up 343 square feet of pavement around his home and replaced it with bioswales, gravel and underground water storage that holds 11,000 gallons of water — enough water to fill a small swimming pool. The home takes in water for the whole street.
And that makes a difference, says Lavergne.
“We can’t say that replacing pavement with a rain garden is going to stop flooding, but it absolutely alleviates it,” she says, adding that Front Yard Initiative’s collective yard-greening so far captures over 35,000 gallons of water.
It’s exactly what Shaw, the homeowner on St. Ann Street, did when he first moved in. He removed less than 100-square feet of concrete from his front yard and replaced it with a rain garden that holds 80 gallons of water.
“It’s small, but if everyone does it, we might not have as much flooding,” he says.
That’s not untrue, says Diaz. He and his team found that if everyone in New Orleans Parish had some form of water storage — even 30 gallons worth, or enough to fill a rain barrel — pumps wouldn’t be inundated with rainwater during heavy rains.
The Front Yard Initiative has received verbal support from the city, which has been under increasing pressure to build a more resilient New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After 12 years, the storm still wreaks havoc on city budgets that are geared towards rebuilding streets via FEMA grants that only permit streets to be rebuilt exactly as they were before the 2005 storm.
“We got all this money from FEMA to fix our streets, but if you [fix] a street back to what it was when it didn’t work, it doesn’t make much sense,” Diaz says.
City officials have struggled for years to find money for projects to revitalize roads and allow water to flow down them in more sustainable ways, and city councillors have turned to federal grants to fund more resilient landscape programs that resemble the Front Yard Initiative’s program.
In the Gentilly neighborhood, for example, $141 million in Housing and Urban Development grants will fund the creation of a massive rain garden which could hold up 1.23 million feet of water.
And Urban Conservancy, Front Yard Initiative’s parent organization, has partnered with Greenlight NOLA to incentivize homeowners to replace their pavement in conjunction with the resiliency project.
“This is a community effort,” says Lavergne. “In New Orleans, you know your neighbors, you care for your neighbors and hang out with them and know each other’s kids. By protecting your home in this really simple way, you’re protecting your neighbor.”
This Is How You Make Electric Vehicles More Accessible to Renters
Americans have now purchased more than 800,000 electric vehicles, counting both plug-in hybrids and all-electric models. That may sound like a lot of EVs, and it is a big jump from the less than 5,000 that were on the road in 2010. But this is still less than 1 percent of all U.S. registered vehicles, despite the recent availability of longer-range, more affordable EV models like the Chevrolet Bolt.
Policymakers nonetheless see EVs as having great potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other forms of pollution, and are supporting tax credits and other policies to encourage people to buy EVs. California, for example, aims to have 5 million of them on its roads by 2030.
But to meet ambitious goals like that, EVs will need to stop being a niche product and appeal to as many drivers as possible.
I am an energy economist working on transportation policy, and I’ve looked at newly available data to try to understand why people purchase EVs. It turns out that renting a home may be one of the biggest barriers.
A STRIKING DIFFERENCE
New federal data show that homeowners are more than three times more likely than renters to own an EV. And since 43 million U.S. households — 37 percent of all households — rent their homes, it is worth thinking hard about why this gap exists.
By analyzing the Transportation Department’s newly released 2017 National Household Travel Survey data, I found striking differences in EV ownership between homeowners and renters. In California, homeowners are three times more likely to own an EV than renters.
The gap is even wider for the rest of the U.S., where homeowners are six times more likely to own an EV than renters.
INCOME ISN’T EVERYTHING
You might be thinking that this gap is caused by income. It is true that EV ownership is higher for richer people, which is only natural since EVs cost more to buy than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles (although charging them is cheaper than filling a tank).
But I learned that homeowners are more likely than renters to own EVs, even when they have similar income levels. For example, among households earning between $75,000 and $100,000 per year, 1 in 130 homeowners owns an EV, compared to 1 in 370 renters.
PARKING AND CHARGING
The other big difference between homeowners and renters is having a place to park.
Most homeowners have a garage, a driveway or both. That makes charging extremely convenient for them because they can charge their vehicles at night.
It’s not so easy, however, for many renters. Renters are more likely to live in multi-unit buildings and parking spots may not be assigned, or there may not be any parking spots at all. The federal data doesn’t provide any information about parking availability, but this likely helps explain the disparity between homeowners and renter EV ownership rates.
There is also the related question of charging equipment.
For homeowners, it is relatively straightforward to invest in a 240-volt outlet, electric panel upgrades and other improvements to speed up charging. These investments can cost $1,000 or more, but are a good investment for a homeowner planning to stay put.
Making this investment is trickier for renters, however. They may not want to invest their own money in a property they don’t own and their landlords may be unwilling to let them do it in any case due to liability and other concerns.
This quandary is what economists call a landlord-tenant problem. In theory, a landlord could make investments like this, and then charge higher rent to recoup the cost. In practice, however, this can get complicated.
Even if the current tenant has an EV, the next tenant may not. And if future tenants don’t have EVs then they won’t need — or appreciate — having charging equipment handy. Several studies, including work by economist Erica Myers, show that renters tend not to value the energy-related investments their landlords make.
PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CHARGING
California policymakers are well aware of these challenges and that is a big reason why they are investing heavily in charging stations. The state is spending $2.5 billion to bring 250,000 charging stations statewide by 2025. Each of these stations will support several EVs, so this will make charging much easier for EV owners.
Much of this funding will cover the cost of building charging stations in communities with a lot of renters. The big utility Pacific Gas & Electric, for example, is making multifamily residences a high priority as it builds thousands of new charging stations across the state. As this charging infrastructure grows, the EV market is bound to expand as well.
I’m eager to see whether these investments will narrow the homeowner-renter gap.
While writing this article, I searched on the Zillow real estate website for rental listings in San Francisco and could find only four apartments that mentioned EV charging as an amenity.
This isn’t many compared to the more than 1,000 of the apartments on the market, but I have no doubt that there will be many more landlords giving their tenants a place to plug in their cars as more renters buy EVs in the near future.
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Lucas Davis is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
5 Small Ways You Can Reduce Your Plastic Consumption
It’s now in vogue to ditch plastic straws, with Starbucks and a handful of other retailers phasing out the hollow plastic columns in an effort to shrink ocean pollution — and for good reason. In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans throw out 33.3 million tons of plastic. Less than 10 percent of that ends up being recycled.
All of this trash has environmental ramifications. Plastic bottles, for example, take close to 450 years to fully decompose, which harms ground waters and soil.
But for all the hoopla surrounding them, plastic straws are a very tiny fraction of the problem. (According to Bloomberg, the real culprit polluting our oceans is discarded fishing nets and other fishing gear.) Even still, anti-straw activism is certainly a step in the right direction. And here are a few other pain-free ways to ply plastic from your life, both at the grocery store and at home.
JUST SAY NO TO SINGLE-USE BAGS
Getting rid of plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores has been a hot topic among state legislatures for the past few years, ever since California started charging customers for them in 2014. Since then, there’s been a decrease in plastic bag consumption across the state and as a result, a number of other cities have followed suit, with Washington, D.C., touting a 60 percent reduction in bag usage (though that number is contested).
For eco-conscious consumers, canvas tote bags are the holy grail of recycling accessories. Since they’re reusable, they’re obviously superior to single-use plastic bags, but do keep in mind that amassing a bunch of totes isn’t necessarily the best option for the environment, either. (Cotton takes more resources to produce and distribute than does conventional plastic bags.)
Your best bet? Tote bags made from recycled plastic, not cotton.
BYOCC (BRING YOUR OWN COFFEE CUP)
It’s good that big companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s are working toward eliminating plastic straws from their stores, but relying on companies to get rid of to-go cups has been more of an uphill battle.
An estimated 60 billion paper coffee cups end up in landfills every year because they’re not easily recyclable — and it takes over 20 years for a single cup to decompose.
An easy solution? simply bring your own thermos with you to your local coffee shop. (Bonus tip: Starbucks gives you a discount for doing so as well).
STOP IT WITH THE BOTTLED WATER ALREADY
Here are two sobering statistics that should scare you:
- Globally, humans buy almost 1 million plastic water bottles per minute.
- Ninety-one percent of all that plastic is not recycled — including those very bottles.
As anyone who’s had to pound the pavement during a sweltering summer knows, it’s all too easy to snag a bottle of water while on the go, and then just as quickly toss it away. What’s more, companies are profiting hand over fist by bottling and selling water. Even entertainers have caught on to the money-making potential of bottled water: Justin Timberlake is an investor in Bai Brands, which among other beverages sells antioxidant water, and 50 Cent made millions from his stake in Vitamin Water.
To correct for that, conscientious consumers have been snapping up reusable water bottles, and the market for them is expected to reach over $10 billion in less than six years.
While not enough studies have been conducted to determine the ecological impact of stocking reusable water bottles, anecdotally at least, there are benefits — both for the environment and your wallet.
A simple, one-time $20 purchase of a reusable water bottles means less plastic ends up in landfills or clogging up the ocean. It also means you can save some dough. If you’re like the average American, you buy about $5 worth of bottled water a week. Make the switch, and not only will you have paid off the price of your own bottle within a month, you’ll also save about $200 a year.
BUY IN BULK — AND USE YOUR OWN CONTAINER TO DO SO
Buying individually packaged foods is incredibly wasteful, but buying things in bulk — be it from a grocer that offers bulk buys or your local Costco — is incredibly helpful in reducing plastic waste.
It’s also advisable to bring your own containers to stores, as many grocers stock plastic bags for you to put your produce, nuts and other goods in, which obviously defeats the purpose.
One word of caution: According to a study by the University of Arizona, buying in bulk oftentimes results in enormous food waste, especially when it comes to perishable foods that could rot or go stale before you’ve had the chance to eat all of them. Instead, stick to bulk-buying items that can either be frozen or won’t go bad.
BE WARY OF MICROPLASTICS
Plastic bottles, cups and straws are straightforward examples that help illustrate the problem of the plastic ravaging our oceans. But another environmental menace are the microplastics — or tiny plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size — that lurk in common items like polyester clothing and personal care products like toothpaste and face scrubs.
These small pieces of plastic are so microscopic that they get flushed into sewage systems every time you wash clothes made with synthetic fibers or rinse off an exfoliating face wash. Eventually, the harmful particles reach the oceans, where they account for anywhere between 15 and 30 percent of marine plastic pollution.
In the U.S., the Microbead-Free Waters Act, signed in 2015, will eliminate the itsy-bitsy plastic pellets from all cosmetics and toothpastes by next year. A similar law was recently passed in the UK. These government actions help, of course, but it’s also worth your while to check out which companies are still manufacturing products with microbeads (see the list here), and which aren’t (that list is here).
Giving Coral Reefs New Life
Coral Vita is an environmental startup with a huge mission: to grow coral and then transplant it back into the ocean as a way to shore up dying reefs. Doing so also helps the communities, industries and nations that depend on healthy reefs for things like food, coastal protection and income.
Through a process called micro-fragmenting, Coral Vita breaks coral into tiny pieces, plants them on coral farms, and then watches as the coral fragments grow at an expedited pace — up to 40 times faster than they would naturally on the ocean floor.
Watch the video above to see how the team from Coral Vita is restoring our reefs, one piece at a time.