You know composting is good. Perhaps you’re doing it yourself on a small scale, collecting the organic waste from your kitchen and turning it into rich soil for your garden. But what happens to that larger scale organic matter that sometimes passes through your life? Where does yard debris go after you put it on the curb?
The surprising answers to those questions led two young entrepreneurs—Tyler Miller, and Nau alum Pierce Louis—to start Dirt Hugger, a local composting company that creates sustainable economies by collecting, processing, and utilizing valuable organic nutrients locally. It turns out that without access to composting services, organic materials are mostly processed in unsustainable ways: they are dumped in landfills where they produce 40% of the nation’s methane gas emissions, burned in open air piles, or trucked long distances to urban processing centers.
Tyler and Pierce are in the running for the Myoo Create Beat Waste Startup Challenge: as one of ten finalists, they’re up for a $15,000 grant from Adventure Ecology, the folks behind the Plastiki expedition. For nurturing the idea that organic waste has real nutrient value and that communities are strengthened when they retain that value locally rather than trucking it out of town, they’ve got our vote. Whether in compost or clothing, we need more of this kind of closed-loop thinking.
It’s been twelve weeks since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up and began spewing oil into the gulf. Here, to put some perspective on the spill so far, are two great infographics on the spill, and what it’s costing to clean up.
Just more evidence that a picture can be worth a thousand words. Especially when that picture has numbers on it.
Check out CitID, an ongoing graphic design project aiming to foster geographical awareness through the creation of artistic logos and imagery. Their ambitious goal? Create a design for every city in the world.
With 161 countries still to be represented, there are lots of opportunities to contribute to the project. Have a special connection to a city in Belize? Nepal? Sweden? Make a submission! Even Canada is waiting for its first city to be represented.
But whether or not your creative talents lie in graphic design, it’s worth visiting the collection of existing submissions from around the US and abroad, including this one for our hometown of Portland, Oregon, by Matt Williams of uberkraaft. (Poster available at Society6).
Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in a series of updates from our 2009 Grant for Change grantees, Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele. While we compile the votes for the 2010 G4C, we checked in with the Seattle-based documentary team who are working to build eight new stories for their long-term project, Facing Climate Change.
It seems like we are spending a lot of time in windy places for our new Facing Climate Change stories. We recently visited 25,000 acres of abandoned farmland above the Snake River to learn about how and why it went from sagebrush to potatoes to wind farms in one generation. The agricultural development is called Bell Rapids and one farm owner told me he’s seen the wind blow sugar beets up out of the ground.
In 35 years the State of Idaho went from selling this land for around $1/acre, basically begging farmers to make the desert bloom, to buying the water rights back for almost $1,000/acre. What’s left is a sort of post-apocalyptic landscape of sheet metal barns with telephone numbers still scrawled on the doors, houses with boots under beds and paystubs in kitchens, four million pounds of dry steel pipe that used to carry Snake River water, and some enormous new wind turbines.
Benj and I worked long days, photographing at sunrise and sunset and interviewing farmers in between. We spent nights in the back of our truck up on the plateau, just us, the wheatgrass and wind. Except for the first night, when we woke up to find a pair of tiny headlights making their way across the empty space. As the vehicle got closer, the driver flipped on a spotlight and we knew someone had called the police. After a few minutes of questioning, a second officer arrived on the crime scene. Once we convinced them that we were taking pictures, not old farm equipment, they turned into the friendliest cops we’ve ever met.
We spent a lot of time chasing light down straight dusty roads laid out in a one-mile grid. (Bell Rapids Road becomes the 400 road. If you follow that to the 5600 road over to the 300 and up to the 5700, the light will inevitably be better back down the 400 to the 5500.) 25,000 acres is a lot of ground to cover — for us and for the Snake River water that once made these fields green.
We’ve posted several times about the MCH (micro-compact home), a 2.6-meter cube that offers living, dining, kitchen and bath space for two within its carefully appointed interior. So we were interested to see someone taking about the same amount of space to create a home you live OUT of.
For his thesis project at Cranbrook, Andrew Kline created a pre-fabricated living space that could be assembled within an existing space—say, a warehouse or loft— to create a kind of fold-out home.
“The unit folds (closed) and unfolds (open) to reveal different functions when needed: a wardrobe, bed, kitchen, and bathroom. When the unit is folded (closed) the private program requirements of a home are removed and the surrounding space or workspace can be utilized for public uses. For example: a yoga instructor could live in the same space he or she teaches in. These units, utilized in vacant buildings, can build communities in hollow urban areas.”
Love how this idea turns small space living on it’s head: you don’t have to be IN the small space, but a small space can provide all the trappings of home with efficient, clever design.
Today is the last day to make your voice heard by voting in the second annual Grant For Change. With over 120 great nominees to choose from, it’s a close race, and every vote counts. From media projects to architectural designs, electric vehicles to sustainable accessories, find your favorite from the scores of great ideas over at nau.com.
I have been an activist my whole life. Working at Nau is a dream come true because I truly feel like I am making a difference every day. The oil spill has really taken a toll on me and a lot of people around me. I have never felt so helpless. No amount of money or aid will even come close to fixing this. It has been incredibly difficult to stand by as this disaster unfolds.
Last weekend I decided to stop feeling helpless and take part in a ‘Hands Across the Sand’ event on the Oregon coast. There were more than 800 grassroots ‘Hands Across the Sand’ events that took place in communities across the country and around the world. I decided to go to my most favorite beach…..Short Sands. I joined hands with activists, surfers, children, and grandmothers and formed a symbolic line across the beach. The message was simple and powerful. No to offshore drilling, yes to clean energy. As we stood there hand in hand I couldn’t help but look into the waves and contemplate what it would be like for an oil spill to happen on this beach. How heartbreaking it would be.
The Thought Kitchen is our effort at collective inquiry and its power to affect change. Have you ever noticed how the party is always in the kitchen? There are more walls to lean on and people are energized by the proximity to food and drink. Well, welcome to our kitchen, where we hope to tap into everything we love about that feeling—community, vivacious exchange, food for thought.
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Tyler and Pierce are in the running for the Myoo Create Beat Waste Startup Challenge: as one of ten finalists, they’re up for a $15,000 grant from Adventure Ecology, the folks behind the Plastiki expedition. For nurturing the idea that organic waste has real nutrient value and that communities are strengthened when they retain that value locally rather than trucking it out of town, they’ve got our vote. Whether in compost or clothing, we need more of this kind of closed-loop thinking.
