Morsbags are sustainable shopping bags, made from any spare cloth you have, like curtains or bed sheets. Each morsbag will save about 800 plastic bags, but with over 1 million plastic bags being used a minute globally, morsbags needs a lot more people to take on the project. Here is the link- www.morsbags.com
David and I went to Solar One by train today to have our interview with Chris Kennedy that we scheduled last Tuesday for Monday at around 5:15. We get there at 5:15 and guess what… Chris Kennedy had a doctor’s appointment. The other people at Solar One said that he wouldn’t be coming back after the appointment. So David had an excellent idea of sitting in Stuyvesant Cove park and doing homework I agreed and we got to do our homework in a beautiful “green” park. I intend to email Chris that we showed up but he wasn’t there. This is a lesson learned to call or email to confirm an appointment always. (I will have to schedule a real interview with Chris later in the week.)
Last week I emailed Phil the information of where to buy the new recycling bins. Phil then said that these were too expensive. I told Phil that these were the ones that Tracy bought last summer. Phil told me to tell Tracy to buy two of these new recycling bins. I spoke to Tracy and she said that she will by two of the new recycling bins by the end of the month so we can present them on the day of learning.
On Saturday, April 12th, Micki, Hannah and I went to Park Slope, Brooklyn to attend a truffle class hosted by Alisha, the co-owner and founder of Cocoavino. The class lasted for 2 hours (from 1-3).
On friday Ava, Cellie and I went to interview Mary Cleaver. She told us about her inspiration for serving organic food and all the pros/cons of using organic food. She also told us a lot about where she gets her food and how she has to be extra careful. -Sophia
We left my home at 12:15 but did not go straight to Eat-fresh. Since we had a mix-up with Sara B. we though that she was meeting us at LREI to check up on us. Apparently she was not so we quickly got back in the car and drove to the Manhattan Bridge were we crossed over to Brooklyn. The more eastern we went the buildings got shorter and the streets more green.
Soon we arrived to 370 5 Avenue and walked quickly into the building. We each paid 50 dollars and went to our stations to learn how to make a truffle. We learned four different ways to. Three were with fermented chocolate while one was with sealed chocolate. The group of three was made in this order; the first was a with honey and cream, the second was made with lavender and cream, and the last was with olive oil and salt. The four one, without fermented chocolate, was a chocolate mix, which is similar to the one we made so I will tell you the in-tire procedure. You take cream (or olive oil) and cook it until it bubbles. Then take it away from the heat and add lavender. You then let the mix sit for about another 20 minutes and then put the main ingredients gnash, and chocolate. The chocolate are huge chocolate bits, which melt, instantaneously in the warm cream. You then mix the chocolate and cream until it looks right smooth. Then you add the honey and stir once again followed by some water. You then pour the entire mix into a container and let it sit for half-hour at room temperature. To speed up the process you can put in the refrigerator for a few minutes. We then got cream truffles and olive oil truffles and rolled each into chocolate balls. These where then placed into coco-powder, which sticks all around the ball to create a seal. The olive oil mix is much harder to roll due to olives oil added into it. The Cream was much easier to control yet still hard in general.
At the work place we met some interesting people. One was Mr. McAfee who had built Get-Fresh and works in green construction and has hundreds of connections in the green community. We wrapped up and packed our truffles into tin cans, which I forgot, at the place. “!!!!!!!!!” We bought some food there and then left in Hannah’s mom’s car. She dropped each of us off at our houses and that was my day!
Got to eat fresh at 1 pm and made truffles till 2:50 pm
Amy, Maya PH and I interviewed the City Arts director for an hour on Wednesday.
12:00 – 1:00
brianna
Amy and I finally met up with Renee Schoonbeek, a representative of the city community board. She told us about what exactly she, and the other three people in the office do. Renee first told us that there are 10 neighborhood areas in manhattan that community boards take care of. Her zone consists of the top area of Hell’s Kitchen to somewhere around 23rd street and over several avenues. i saw how big of an area they took up and asked her if its hard to look after that many people and areas. she gad said that it wasn’t because they make sure to keep their contact with the community organised but not office like and buissnessy; people dont even need to schedule a meeting, they just have to show up. Renee went on to explaining how the company gets their communities opinions known to the NYC’s government before they make any new developments (ie: bars, restaurants, buildings). She said that the vote of the community is a democracy, if more are for something than against it, then her company would tell the city officials that the public suggests they should do whatever and then the city officials tell teh developers. So really, Renee’s company has no say in what happens, it’s just a suggestion. I didn’t really understand the point of the company if it’s a suggestion but she said that if their community area disagrees, then the develoers cannot proceed to build. Her company also gets suggestions and complaints from the members of their zone too. Her idea for Amy and I is to partner us up with one of the developers her company works with, One Million Trees NYC by Michael Bloomberg. It’s a lot easier to do an expose on this topic than the doors of hope one so this is what I’m deciding to do. Renee gave us three choices, the first one was to go out with some of the board members (they are volunteers that are a part of their zoned community) and to draw out areas on a map where we think trees could be planted; of corse there are things to consider when planning to plant a tree. I liked this option the most because it involves interacting with people who volunteer to do this every week and doesn’t involve public speaking or sitting in a meeting. The second option was to speak with local schools about tree planting, if they get a tree in front of the school, there should be some kids to learn how to take care of it until it turns into a full grown tree. The last option is to listen to a City Parks meeting about tree maintenance. Amy and I decided to do all three once. Renee was very nice and welcoming. This seems like it will be a great project to work farther on.
–BRIANNA
On Friday I went to Columbia for a Youth Forum about NYC’s plans to be more sustainable.
On Friday I went to the Learn green NYC Youth Forum at Columbia Teachers college. It was really really interesting. It started with a representative from mayor Bloomberg’s office talking to us about the mayors sustainability plan called Plan NYC 2030. He explained that by 2030, NYC will produce 30% less greenhouse emissions. Then he explained that by 2030 there will be 1 million more new yorkers than there are now and that Plan NYC aims to deal with the effects and how best to be prepared for them. Four girls from Parsons had made a short film about personal space and how population growth will affect that. Then everyone broke into groups on the floor with each group having a great big piece of paper and lots of markers and pens. We were then given 4 questions and they set it up so that we would all rotate into all the different groups. Basically the questions were about ideas for sustainability for NYC. There were kids and adults and everyone brainstormed together. Everyone wrote or drew their ideas onto the big pieces of papers. There were many representatives from many schools, but none had as many representatives as LREI. The representatives were Me, Nick O’Han, Kai, Celi, and Gabe. I met some cool people and learned many good ideas on how to be more sustainable. It was a great experience and by the way, they had amazing organic ginger cookies.
Yesterday, Ella, Calen, Niles, Robbie, Manny, and I walked over to the Center for Architecture to interview Grace. We were there from 3:25-4:40.
Brianna and I met with Rene at the school at 8:30am; she then took us to her work on 42nd street. We all arrived at her work on the 26th floor in her building at 9am. She was telling us how the work hours at her work are from 9am-5pm and that 4 people work in this part of the office they are known as the support members. We went the conference room and we talked about what people in her building do. She was telling us about how there are 59 community boards and 10 community boards in Manhattan and how each community board has about 50 people. And how the requirement is that you live in the area in order to be a member of the community that’s on the board. Rene was telling us how she does more then just organizes meetings to give people awareness of what’s happening in the area. She was telling us that sometimes people ask if they can do something and they are the people that have connections and that can ask several people if they can get the thing that they want passed. They reinforce the decisions that are made with other clients and have some say into what goes on in the community but not total say. Everything that they are planning to do they talk about in several different ways to get people aware. They post information on their website and they send out flyers to people in the community. The type of office that Rene works at is always open to anyone and there is no need to call or schedule an appointment ahead of time as long as you come on their open hours then they will listen to what you have to say. And if you want to tell them something but it’s not during their store hours then you can always email one of the four people that organize certain events and meeting in the office. Even though there are 4 main people either don’t always give their opinions. They mostly just look over what’s going on. The idea is to motivate the idea that people in the community want done. Sometimes it doesn’t always work out and the reason for that is sometime the law of NYC is what stops them or at the same times the thing that they argue about. During the time that we were in the meeting room with Rene we also met her boss named Bob at about 9:30. He was listening in on what we were discussing. Rene asked both Brianna and I what we were exactly doing in school and how they could help and if we had any ideas of what we could do during the time that we spent with her. We told her that we were in the process of working towards making our school more aware about being green so the whole project was to meet with a sustainability group around once a week and help out the environment by doing anything possible to help spread awareness and get active and do something in our community. Once we told Rene what we were doing she gave us some ideas that we could help and that it would still count towards our credit for the school project. She told us about the million-tree plan that mayor Bloomberg had. Which was to eventually get more trees all over the state of New York so that our streets could be greener. Rene said that Brianna and I could maybe help survey and figure out where we wanted the trees exactly keeping in mind the New York regulations that come with that. Rene was also suggesting that we could help even plant the trees with the other people involved with this project. Brianna and I both agreed that these were both perfect ideas and that we would be willing to do each of the thing she had suggested that we could do. She was delighted and couldn’t wait till we met up again to start it. After we discussed all of that it was about time to leave so we left the office with Rene at about 10ish and went back on the subway and back to the school. After that meeting I really felt like I now have a much better understanding about how this group can be a sustainability group. I felt good that we discussed it and began to think about ways of how we could get active. It was really good for me and I was happy that I went to that meeting. I thought it was boring at times but then remembered that eventually it would be helping out the environment so I felt better and more awake. Knowing that I would be helping out.
-Amy
Next Saturday at 10:00 Cameron, Aliza, Emma and I are going to set up for a special Earth Day event. It’s very exciting to be able to give many people a food survey as well as set up for something that people will go to. The Earth Day event is 8 hours! 8 HOURS! That’s the only thing that troubles me a lot. Otherwise, I’ve organized a interview with someone for WEACT and it will be the same day as the Earth Day event, April 19th.
Worked at a goat cheese stand from 10am-1pm
Amy, Brianna and I interviewed the City Arts director for an hour on Wednesday.
12:00 – 1:00
Maya PH
At 10am on Saturday, I went to the Greenmarket again. I met up with Sophie and Sam (Lili was sick) and we called Davy. After Davy had met us at the Information booth, he took me to work with another goat farmer named Elly. As we walked over, he told me that Elly lived in Pennsylvania and sold goat cheese, but that she had been having some financial difficulties recently. This made me think about how expensive it must be to run a farm, especially if you’re just one person. It takes a lot of courage and planning. When I got to the stand, it took only a moment for her to start talking. She was quite conversational the whole time, but what she was saying was really interesting. She talked about how she was trying to make her farm entirely self-sustainable using windmills, solar panels, and well water. She talked about all the problems with processed milk and meat, and about the large differences between farmed produce and grocery store bought things. She also told me about a 20 minute documentary she was in, and asked if I would like to borrow a copy. I did because a little earlier, I had asked her if I could interview her next Saturday. She had accepted, so I figured the least I could do was watch the video to get a better sense of what she was talking about. As usual, I left at 1pm that day after planning to interview her at 9am (!) the next Saturday.
On Wednesday, Brianna, Amy and I went to interview people from City Arts. We were only able to ask them 2 questions, because she ended up answering all of our other questions on our sheet, obviously without realizing it. Instead of using a tape recorder, we videotaped the interview. I thtought it was strange how one of the two people we interviewed took up the entire conversation, while the other sort-of hung around, watching. It seemed to me like she didn’t want to be interviewed. And when we asked her a question, she answered it fairly softly, without putting in much effort to be excited. Maybe that was just her personality.
Maya PH
I decided not to write a letter to the Kimberly Clark company because I could not write a whole journal post on how I wrote a letter.
I interviewed Lucy, my sister’s nanny, about malaria. She grew up in Honduras, where malaria was a big issue. My mom and I worked together to figure out how the tape recorder worked. When we finally figured it out, I sat down and called Lucy on speaker phone. The interview went for about 15- 20 minutes. I would say that it went well, but she may not have been the best person to interview because she has never gotten malaria, and she knows no one personally who got malaria or died of it. Also, she doesn’t remember that well from when she was little and she lived there. She did remember some things about malaria, though.
Lucy said that what she knew about malaria was that it was a very bad disease that gets started by a mosquito. It bites you, and you get very, very, sick and sometimes die. She said that she remembers it being a big problem when she was little, even though she wasn’t directly affected by it. She said that she knew a guy that worked in the sanitation department there. He would go into villages and talk to people about how they could prevent getting malaria. He would also go into peoples houses and spray their houses with insecticide so that the mosquitos would die if they came inside. I asked her how it was for her now in Honduras when she goes there for visits. She said that she and her son, Justin, have to take malaria pills in order to be safe. She said that she remembers her mom talking about it being a big problem now. I also asked her what she knows about the epidemic going around now. She said that she saw a big thing on the news about how it is a huge problem in Brazil.
That was what Lucy could think of or remember about malaria, and it was alot. She definitely helped my expose, even if someone else may have been able to help more. Interviewing helped the cause of defeating malaria because now, I know a little more about it, and when I tell others about the problem, I will be about to tell them more. The more people know, the more they will be inclined to do something about it. I think that next, I will either sell more stuff, or hand out flyers around the school talking about malaria and what the reader can do to help.
I interviewed Lucy, my sister’s nanny, about malaria because she grew up in Honduras.
We started the ‘doors’ project today. We brainstormed about what we (each person) was going to paint in their section of the door. It was quiet but very insperational. We will have a small amount of time to paint during middle school meeting tomorrow.
By Aliza Starfield Holmes
Today we started adding some of our drawings on to the door, but most of use either expanded our ideas or just pretended to work. You see New Orleans is a big topic, what defines New Orleans or what would explain what we are doing and why we are doing this. it was alot of fun, and there we so many different ideas to look at, so many possibilities. It is nice to think that this door will be put in the doorway of someones school, because it will repreasent that we care about the world and each other (cheesy I know).
I thought that this project i really cool and I am having difficulty finding sustaiablity things to do. if anyone has anything
I have an idea to present and attract more people to come to our station for later, maybe buy some grass fed beef an give it to whoever comes to our station. just an idea
my group and I have scheduled to go to Blue hill in the next week, I am also looking into the blue hill farm in upstate NY. I am looking at other backup sustainablity projects because it is hard to find a lot of sustainable food places in the area
Our group has contacted several people, most of whom did not call back. One of them did, and we set up a possible meeting on saturday of last week, but she never called back to confirm. Sarah and Leila have been really helpfull though, (thank you) and we now have many possibilities. We are probably going to the earth exhibit on sunday of next week, so we will finally have a visit to our cedit.
The door painting group has met three times now. We’ve made sketches and ideas for how we will paint the door, and eventually settled on sectioning the door, and having a different scene in each section. The sections are puzzle peices, and some of them already have the outlines of what will be painted in them. This door will be sent to New Orleans, and will be the new door for a school house there.
Deion, Jimmy, and I discovered a new organic restaurant last week called “Blue Hill.” They sell everything from organic meats to vegetables. Their farm is also only an hour away so we hope to head up there this weekend.
I have already given some information about Mdness for Malaria, but if you wish to know more check out the websites listed below;
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/malaria/overview.html?8qa&scp=1-spot&sq=malaria&st=nyt
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/raging-malaria.html
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/malaria-article.html
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=malaria&srchst=nyt
These websites will fill you in on how Malaria effects people, where it effects people, and who it effects.
Last Wednesday, we started on the project with our door. There are about ten of us and each of us is painting our own section about sustainability and hope. We hope to finish the project by April 23rd.
Last Wednesday, we started on the project with our door.
The fliers I created are looking good, in my opinion. There were a lot of edits that I had to do, and Rob e-mailed me the official Against Malaria Logo. Right now, the fliers have a blue and white background (an image I copied from the website and rotated to make fit; I want a uniform look between the site I’m advertising and the fliers), with the words “Help Fight Malaria” printed at a slight slant. In the middle, I have an image of Africa I edited to be light blue and look like a 3-D object. On top of this, I placed the official logo. Under that, the URL of the Against Malaria Website. On the back of the fliers, I put a description of Against Malaria.
As I said earlier, I hope to convince people to spread the word of Against Malaria. The people who directly recieve the fliers may not donate, but the people they tell might. On the website, I have seen videos of advertisements for this organization, and I am trying to achieve the same goal as those advertisements. (I was surprised to see a televised ad campaign; I didn’t think that Againt Malaria was that funded.)
45 minutes spent fixing up fliers according to Rob’s suggestions
On April 8th Deion and I visited the Co-Evolution exhibit at the AIANY Center For Architecture for an hour.
-Quinn
On Tuesday, April 8th Deion and I visited the AIANY Center For Architecture to look at the Co-Evolution exhibit. We learned about a new Shanghai SubCity that they are planning to build to become more sustainable. The SubCity is a urban island inside of big park. This brings people closer to nature and with the design of the SubCity, from anywhere in the city you will be in five minutes of a park or green space. This also goes for monorails, which they have placed in the densist part of the nine neighborhoods in the city, to greatly reduce the amount of cars. The city also has many cycling paths to encourage cycling and limit pollution caused be cars. This great “5 minute city” promotes walking and cycling as well as the use of public transportation. The buildings that are in the city are called “green mountains.” They are built so that everyone is able to have a terrace and the design of the buildings does many great things for the city. Another fascisnating thing about this city is the “breeze valleys”. The buildings were built to capture the wind coming off the river and other places. The breezes flow through the city to cool it down and then are captured by windmills that are disguised as street lights. This renewable energy is used to power many public facilities. Another renewable energy source they use are solar panels. In the neighborhood where there is the most sun, all houses have solar panels on the roofs. To encourage recycling the city implemented a plan that gives money for cash. People are able to give resource waste and in return get money. Another thing that really amazed me about this city was a fact that I saw that said “95% of the city can be used to bring back trees.” This meant that people are able to grow trees on their terraces and other places in the city. Unlike the rest of china, the SubCity has a very good water cleaning system. Their is a underground root system that is able to clean almost all of the waste water and this is helped by the great park around the city. The park around city also helps the city during its cold winters and hot summers. The earth is able to heat the city in the winter and cool it in the summer. The city also uses some of the earths renewable energy and buildings in the city are able to use 1/3 less energy than normal. I thought all of these things were very impressive and a small step to crack down on global warming in china.
-Quinn
While in spain, we witnessed that there were bike stands everywhere near the metro stations. We later found out that these bikes were for rent. It made it easier to get around without having to use a car. The cost was about 10 euros a year and you would have to pay more if u lost the bike (somehow) or didn’t check it in 30 minutes later. I think this connects to sustainability because it helps stop people from using cars and producing c02 gases. I believe we should try to establish a system for that here. There also red 😀
Deion Desir
A few weeks back, Jack, Jimmy and I all went to Applewood, a resturant in Brooklyn that serves only organic and grass fed food. We went and learned alot about organic food, sadly, it was some of the information we already know about. It was nice to find out that many resturants use organic food though. Also, some notes were lost for this meeting so i cannot inform you about everything. My apologies
Deion Desir
Today, I read an article about the big building boom in China. China has been building approximately 2 billion sq miles of land every year, which accounts for almost half the world’s annual building rate. All of this building is taking over more and more of the rural section of China and changing into more urban parts. There is also other negative effects of this building phenomenon. There would be more and more people coming into the urban section, thus, making more cars appear on the streets, causing more pollution for the world. They have study the car increase over time. from 1985 with 284,980, the have gotten to 17 million cars in 2005. This is a very important topic that i would love to learn more about! 😀
Deion Desir
Today, Quinn and I went to a sustainability exhibit on LaGuardia place. They were exhibiting how China is working on making the counry more sustainable. China is one of the leading countries in pollution and ozone destruction. 16 out of the 20 most polluted cities are in china. A new plan they have for sustainable living is making cities that have monorails and public transportation stations in a 5 min walking radius and prohibiting cars to stop pollution. There is much more information we found out about like more than 75% of rivers flowing through china are not suitable for drinking or fishing. This exhibit helped enlighten me and you should also check it out. You can check it out at www.aiany.org
I’ve wondered this for a bit: how cost/energy effective is it really to “go green”? For example, my dad told me about a woman who had a sort of well built 1,100 feet into the ground to use the natural heat of the Earth to heat her house/water. This provided her with much lower fees on the fuels normally required, however, it had other monetary problems. First was the obvious cost of drilling a hole 1,100 feet deep, next was the cost of the pumps used to bring the hot water up to her house, skyrocketing her electrical bill. In the end, she wasn’t sure if it was truly cheaper to heat her house in the sustainable way. Similarly, when the New York City government was contemplating whether or not to have an official recycling program, it seemed like a perfect, cost and energy saving plan, but there were many hidden drawbacks. There was of course the cost (both monetary and energy-related) of buying more bags and bins for recycling, and the costs of the water to wash out recyclable bottles and cans. It also requires different trucks, which have all sorts of costs (workers’ pay, fuel, production, etc.). Finally, they needed to build and run places to actually reuse the materials, which have even more costs than the trucks. More related to the energy than to money, I recently read an article published in a university newsletter (Link to PDF) by David Pimentel dealing with ethanol (which is extracted from corn) as a fuel for cars. He concluded, “Ethanol production is wasteful of fossil energy resources and does not increase energy security… about 71% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy contained in a gallon of ethanol” (5). Needless to say we’re improving, as in a more recent article he wrote that only 29% more energy is used (the previous article was written 10 years ago). In relation to that last statistic, I’d like to say that this is just me questioning the apparent perfection of the green movement, not me trying to oppose it. However, continuing on, he also stated (in the older article) that “Increasing ethanol production will increase degradation of vital agricultural land and water resources and will seriously contribute to the pollution of the environment” (5). This comes as a bit of a surprise but as a continuing theme that it may not be quite as green to be green. To tie this post in with my last, my involvement in the green architecture group has made me realize that our school, which has throughout the past few years become environmentally aware/zealous, isn’t all that much of a green building. This adds to the already overflowing list of synonyms for “green”, which includes “environmentally conscious” and “sustainable”, the word “pompous”. Once again, save for the last comment, this isn’t intended to directly oppose sustainability, but rather inquire and challenge those who know more than I do about it. Anyway, that’s just my 3.4 cents (the cost to make 2). –The Rob
On Friday the 4th (as well as on Tuesday the 1st, and the Tuesday before that), I have been working on my portion of decorating the door that is going to be shipped to New Orleans as a sign of hope from New York to New Orleans, and as a sign to keep going, and to proove art as a form of sustainability. We are creating this door to lift the spirits of those who suffered from Katrina, and to show everyone that we all care about what happened to them, and are willing and prepared to do something to make a change. We have divided the door into nine parts so that each group working on the project will be able to fill in a section with their own design. Two Tuesdays ago one of the art teachers halping us on this project (a man from New Orleans, who came here after Katrina to find a better life), showed us a film about the heritage of New Orleans, and how it is now, images of everything that was lost, and what different people are doing to help the situation. Our way of contributing is to create this door of hope. Our final creation is to be put into a show case, and I believe that hopefully, we will be talking about it to the public at some point. After finishing this one door, if we have enough time, our goal is to complete another, and so on, until we have touched the lives of many.
I met with Sophie and Hannah at 10:am in the Farmers market. As soon as we got there we were set off with certain farmers. I got hooked up with a man named Andy. Andy ran a syrup stand and was very well known with the people. He taught me about syrups and the way they were made and stuff like that. He served wide variety’s of maple items, from candy’s to sugar to butter. He had me work on the cash register, and I ran the shop whenever he left, which was quite often.
So far it has been very difficult to connect with our sutainability interviewees because of over crowded schudules, and their working habits. However, on April 12th my group members and i will be attending a truffle making class hosted by Alisha Lumea, the co-owner of Cocoavino. She will be teaching us her secrets on how to make dilectable truffles in a way that is helpful, and healthful for our environment. During the class we will only be using organic and locally-sourced ingrediants, as a way to proove that food can taste fantasic while remaining sustainable. Alisha also is going to speak to us more about her connection to sustainability throughout the course, and will be open to answering any questions that we have prepared. The class is from 1-3 pm in Park Slope, Brooklyne, and we are all greatly looking forward to it.
Hannah and I met at the Green market at 10:am. From there we met Davy, and he set us up with different farmers at the market. I met this man who owned a jam and honey stand. He taught me the ropes on the whole jam experience and I soon became an expert in the jam business. He had me organize the jam storage, and then I worked the cash register. I learned very much about the whole honey system as well, his wife and daughter made their own Jam. His work was very inspiring to me.
Last Friday Lilly, Henry, Jack G, David, and Gaia and I worked on the door that arrived sometime last week. Up until that point we had to start plotting out what we wanted to paint on the door that is inspirational to school children but also symbolizes that great things can come out of tragedies. What I am planning on painting is this watter drop that will have some famous New Orleans traits inside of it (music, Mardi Gras, food, etc), and then on the outside the drop there will be New York traits but not the usual touristic things (Empire state, big apple, taxis). I am going to do more personal icons in the city because I feel like it makes a greater connection that way. Also, while I was doing this, I realized that there is a lot of symbolism incorporated in the door. This made me feel like there is a hidden message in the door for the school who recieves the door that’s written in a creative way.
Today I reflected on how people, and myself included, can go green at home.
Today, Tuesday April 8th, I was not able to go to the Center of Architecture with my partner Quinn because I was sick and absent from school. Sometime before the April 30th cut off date I will go back alone and post about it at after. The post I am making now is about how I can change my life at home from what I have learned about green architecture. I was talking to my dad about what we can do at home and I suggested a green roof on top of our garage. He said he will definitely take it under consideration but in the mean time he has purchased many plants he has put around out driveway. Also when I learned how buying rugs in squares is sustainable because if there is a stain you can replace the individual square instead of taking the whole rug out and putting it back in. In part of the research I have recently done for my expose has been about how to go green at home but also be green. According to the Cincinnati Post some handy tips of going green at home are* A two-stroke, gasoline-powered lawnmower releases as many hydrocarbons into the atmosphere in 30 minutes as a car does in 90 minutes. Switch to an electric mower, which costs $8 to $10 a year to operate. * An LCD flat panel TV uses as little as a third of the electricity of conventional tube-based models, saving you on your power bill the equivalent of leaving a 50-watt bulb on all year. * If you feel woozy after painting the bedroom with latex-based enamel, choose a product low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) instead. New designer colors and improved quality make these safer paints equivalent to standard ones and they benefit your health as well as the planet’s. * Manufacturers of low-flow toilets use advanced computer modeling to deliver more flush power with less water, trimming around $90 from your annual water costs. * Like to linger in a hot shower? Stand under your shower guilt-free with a solar hot water system. A solar water heater cuts around 12 percent off the average household’s monthly electric bill. * Replacing old light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones can trim 5 percent from your monthly electricity bill. But this doesn’t mean you have to live beneath the ugly glow of low-end fluorescent bulbs. Go for the premium fluorescents that cast a pure white or buttery golden light across your interior. * Local recycling practices vary, but there are some universal no-nos. Don’t put plastic shopping bags, broken glass or food scraps in your bin. * Skip the pesticides and use nature’s method of bug-eradication: other animals. Install birdhouses to shelter feathered friends who dine on pesky beetles and grubs.
Here are just some of my thoughts on the sustainability project so far. One thing that I don’t like about this project is the deadlines. I think that some of the deadlines are hard to meet. Some of them just kind of spring up on you just before you are about to meet with the organization again. Then you can’t write about what happened that day until later. That won’t help you if you need to make a post that day. What are you supposed to do if the person you want to get in contact with doesn’t get in touch with you before the deadline? Ella had been trying for a while in order to get in touch with Grace so we could have the interview scheduled. We had just received a response from her today. Not much is happening within the group. We are only allowed to show up on the parents and children day. That day always is on a Saturday, which I am not very fond of. We just got out of school the day before and in order for me to make it to school I have to wake up at six. Saturday is usually the day I get to relax without doing anything and then one Saturday I don’t have that luxury because I have to get up. On the other hand though it is only one Saturday out of the month. I hope that we could get more hands on work while we are at the AIANY Center for Architecture. Most of the time while we are there we are handing out materials for the parents and the children. We aren’t learning that much about how sustainable buildings are better for the environment or what makes an ordinary building green. On the other hand even if it remains the same it is almost over and was a great experience.
Today right after my tutor I went to their shop to sit in on an intern class. It seems that the classes go from 1:oo to 6:00 so the class is very relaxed. I got to watch Laida the intern coordinater and teacher show them how to fix the gears on the bike. I found it very interesting and I can’t wait to sit in on another. The next thing I will be doing for the project is going to a thing they are having about getting ready for spring and info about biking. I think I will be able to get some good information.