Green Options

Photographers have long held a useful key to effecting change.

Think of Ansel Adams and his influence on early 20th Century government leaders in the United States; he helped demonstrate the value of nature and the need for national parks.

Think of the Farm Security Administration photography effort of the 1930s, led by Roy Stryker (photographers included: Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks).

Now, think of DOUBLEXPOSURE, and the work of two photographers who are pairing work that “brings the viewer into panoramas of glaciers once grand but now receding. The compelling comparisons put into stark view the fact of melting glaciers.”

With spring bringing out the gardener in many of us — veteran, rookie and in between — my household has been expanding our growing. Last year, we had a couple of small vegetable plots that maybe totalled 15-20 square feet. Plus, we created a wildflower and native grass section that stretches to a slim 40 square feet.
This year, we have turned nearly half of our backyard — tiny as it is — into a vegetable garden, adding 125 square feet, or so. I built a wooden-pallet compost bin. And our front yard — yes, tiny front yard — is quickly becoming garden space, too (more flowers, native grasses and such). We’ll soon have a rain barrel. I’ve torn up a 50-foot stretch of sidewalk, and will replace it with a more drainage-friendly, more attractive solution. My wife also has started dozens of vegetable seedlings, which she is giving away for others’ gardens.

The LivinginPeace Project combines travel, art and education into a sustainable business model that is self-sufficient, energy efficient, environmentally responsible and socially empowering.
The project includes a backpackers’ hostel (www.rongobackpackers.com), a motel complex (www.karameamotels.com), a gallery (www.globalgypsy.com), a community radio station, permaculture farm and eco-tourism adventures. It is run by a group of dedicated, enthusiastic, positive volunteers from all over the world.

The City of St. Louis has pulled the dozens of 300-gallon recycling dumpsters it had placed in alleyways last March out of commission. Jill Hamilton, the city’s recycling program manager, said the program was never intended to be permanent.
Rather, it was considered a pilot program, serving about 3,200 of the city’s 147,000 households, to see if the economics could make a full, permanent effort viable. The answer is: apparently not. Or, at least, not right now.

German designer Lars Behrendt’s treeless “tree house” tower known as the Lotto Turm is a trip down a memory lane of sorts. The tower employs 55 shipping containers stacked in a seemingly whimsical, childhood block-buidling style that creates the fun, treehouse feeling for residential and office spaces. There is a courtyard and a shipping-container swimming pool, too. The work is proposed for construction in the center of Stuttgart, Germany.

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The SolarBee Long-Distance Circulator (LDC) is a solar-powered water mixer. One unit is reported to be able to stir 35 acres of fresh water, improving its quality by creating flow. It also can be used in waste water lagoons.

SolarBee’s LDC also is intended for use in storm water ponds for the primary purpose of blue-green algae bloom control, and claims a number of industrial uses for reservoirs and tanks.

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The Tower Grove Farmers’ Market and Bazaar in St. Louis is not only a community center piece, but a regional one. And the group is candidly joining a nation-wide line of community-minded organizations who are in economic straits and need support.
Understanding that there are many worthy groups asking for assistance these days, the one that organizes the Tower Grove market is asking, in particular, for those who already value what it creates in the St. Louis region — shoppers and friends who stop by, even just twice a season — to consider stepping forward. The support can be monetary or otherwise.

Fifty hazardous waste sites in 28 states are to get $582 million in stimulus money, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced this week. The cash injection is a boon for clean-up efforts, according to the New York Times.
For around half of those sites, the money is helping continue clean-up efforts that have languished or ceased since last year, due to economics.

There’s been plenty of recent talk in the media about “recession gardens.” I’ve kind of thought that urban gardening was just a good, wholesome way of healthy living.
Here in St. Louis, Backdoor Harvest seems to agree. And that’s fantastic news for me — and novice gardeners like me — because I’ve got almost no idea what I’m doing when I start digging into my yard.
Lucky me, my wife, who knows a little more than I do about plunging seeds and such into our tiny backyard plot, enjoys doing the research to figure these things out. Even luckier for us, Backdoor Harvest is hanging its open-for-business shingle in the coming days, just to help urban growers, even ones as inexperienced as in the Williams household.

The Missouri Sewer District (MSD) reports success in its rain barrel sale, which ended April 3. I’d posted here at ecolocalizer about the sale last week.  

As a thoughtful follow-up, Debbie Johnson in the Public Information department for MSD left a comment for that initial posting, updating readers on the program’s status. Here is that information: