Humans have exhausted a year’s supply of natural resources in less than eight months, according to an analysis of the demands the world’s population are placing on the planet. — The Guardian
According to the Guardian article, the world's population currently consumes the equivalent of 1.6 planets a year – and, at the rate we're going, that will jump to two planets a year by 2030. But what does that mean, exactly?Earth Overshoot Day, or Ecological Debt Day, refers to the "date on... View full entry
Kakutani is the main farmer behind "Tokyo Salad," the Metro’s new farming enterprise, farming that takes place underneath the Tozai Line. [...]
Tokyo Metro started hydroponic farming this past January. They’re currently selling the lettuce varieties to a local Italian restaurant and The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel. Over the next couple years, they’re hoping to expand. Maybe they’ll start selling to grocery stores, and maybe Kakutani says, "we’ll make salads or smoothies.”
— pri.org
More innovations from Japan:Japan's largest treehouse is also a high-tech engineering featTurning Japan's golfing greens into solar farmsJapan's simple logic for putting toilets in elevators View full entry
"You have generations of people under the age of 35 … who are choosing to live car free and car-lite." – Westside Councilman Mike Bonin — L.A. Times
From the newly installed "protected" intersections in Austin, Texas and Davis, California to additional proposed bus lanes and bike paths in Los Angeles, car culture is becoming less of a given and more of an expensive, perhaps even less desirable, option. Cities across the U.S. are starting to... View full entry
[On August 10], the Los Angeles Shade Ball Cover Project rolled to a halt, rounding off years of work. With a shout of "shade balls away!" Los Angeles city officials overturned a row of sacks and sent 20,000 of the jet black objects cascading down into the Los Angeles Reservoir. [...]
Together, the ball shroud prevents damage from sunlight, dust, and errant birds, and keeps 300 million gallons of surface water from evaporating each year.
— atlasobscura.com
What's plastic, black, saves water and costs 36 cents each? Shade balls! The LA Mayor's Office's press release tells their origin story:Dr. Brian White, a now-retired LADWP biologist, was the first person to think of using shade balls for water quality. The idea came to him when he learned about... View full entry
So beginning today and running throughout the August recess, we're turning our Instagram account over to you. Just snap a photo – please do it safely! – of the worn-out infrastructure in your neck of the woods and share it with @USDOT using #ShowUsYourInfraWear. — transportation.gov
Public shaming has long been a tactic of the U.S. criminal justice system – there were the stocks of yore, the scarlet letters, and more recently, the tactics of felony court judge Ted Poe. Nowadays though, we tend to skip all the messiness of the public square and go straight to the internet to... View full entry
The drought in California has gone on so long, and is so severe, that it's beginning to change the way people are designing residential communities — in unexpected ways, and unexpected places. [...]
There will also be a system for treating and sending wastewater back into the aquifer underneath the city. [...]
Not everyone is convinced it will use less water. Phil Desatoff is with a local water district that is suing Reedley over the development's environmental review.
— npr.org
Got some design solutions up your sleeve that could help alleviate California's ongoing historic drought? Check out Archinect's recently launched Dry Futures ideas competition, and submit your entry by September 1st. Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to... View full entry
Inspired by the human body, Jonkers, who works at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, created self-healing concrete. He embeds the concrete with capsules of limestone-producing bacteria, either Bacillus pseudofirmus or Sporosarcina pasteurii, along with calcium lactate. When the concrete cracks, air and moisture trigger the bacteria to begin munching on the calcium lactate. They convert the calcium lactate to calcite, an ingredient in limestone, thus sealing off the cracks. — smithsonianmag.com
More concrete news:Celebrating concrete architecture in a mini "block party"Getty awards over $1.75 million to fix crappy concrete in "Important Modern Buildings"Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Concrete" Pinterest BoardCould this revolutionary new material replace concrete?China used more cement in... View full entry
The Golden State's nickname has taken on a grave new meaning. The agricultural and economic powerhouse of the country is in the midst of a historic drought pervading the whole U.S. Southwest, at once turning sprawling front lawns into golden-brown scratch pads and inciting Chinatown-style... View full entry
These days, while the almond orchards are kept a perfect green, the surrounding landscape is a dull brown, and the yards in front of most of the houses are little more than dirt and weeds. At least 25 families have seen their wells go dry in recent months. Many others are rationing what little water remains. Those lucky enough to be on the city’s system still have to strictly conserve to keep the town’s only well from going dry. — thenation.com
The Nation paints Fairmead – an agricultural town where many personal wells have dried up, pitting indigent residents further into poverty – as a cautionary tale for all those living in historic drought conditions.More on California's historic drought:Fog catchers: squeezing water out of... View full entry
Simply look up into the sky at a single cloud, on average that white pouf holds 8 million gallons of water — enough to sustain 100,000 people for a day. Yet the water we harvest has become so scarce, its cost is greater than the devices invented to catch and deliver it. [...]
How might we imagine new ways to collect water? How do we get it off my socks and into my coffee cup?
Fog catchers – contraptions that gather the moisture in our atmosphere for drinking water – have been used by humans and animals alike to survive in some of the driest places on earth. In Chile's Atacama desert, fog catchers have been in use for over half a century, and even are used to... View full entry
Santa Barbara City Council members on Tuesday unanimously approved spending $55 million to reactivate a mothballed desalination plant that could provide the city with nearly a third of its drinking water. [...]
“Desalination has been a last resort,” Mayor Helene Schneider told The Times Tuesday night after the vote. “The way the drought has continued these last four years, we are really getting at that last resort.”
More on the historic drought in the U.S. southwest:Gov. Brown issues order to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissionsCalifornia has about one year of water left30% of the US in DroughtRelocation or Adaptation: "We may have to migrate people out of California"Drought may force California to... View full entry
Completed in March of 2014, Kusukusu [...] is a marvelous feat of architecture, engineering and technology. Working with Hiroshi Nakamura of NAP Architects, the team came in and 3D-scanned hundreds of points on the tree. Based on that 3D data they then created a steel trellis that threaded through the tree, interlocking perfectly [...]. What’s amazing is that the treehouse in its entirety, never touches the tree. It’s completely self-standing so as to not harm the tree. — spoon-tamago.com
Here are a few more images of the stunner of a treehouse in Atami, Japan designed by master treehouse builder Takashi Kobayashi in collaboration with NAP Architects.To learn more and see the complete set of photos, head over to Spoon & Tamago.Photos by Koji Fujii/Nacasa & Partners... View full entry
Japan has been hungry for alternative energy ever since the 2011 Fukushima disaster made nuclear power an unattractive option in the country, and golf courses just happen to be perfectly suited for solar power — they're large open spaces that often get lots of sunlight.
Kyocera's first project, now under construction, is a 23 megawatt solar plant on a golf course in Kyoto prefecture. When it goes live in 2017, the plant will produce enough power for about 8,100 households.
— businessinsider.com
The California Water Commission, responding to a fourth year of drought, approved sharp new limits on the amount of water that can be used on landscapes surrounding newly constructed buildings, such as houses, businesses and schools.
The revised ordinance will limit grass to about 25% of a home's combined front, back and side yards in all new construction. [...]
Additionally, grass will be all but banned in landscapes of new commercial, industrial and institutional buildings.
— latimes.com
More on California's historic drought:The sudden drought gold rush for California landscapers may be overThe best lawn for California's drought may still be greenAs Californians let their lawns turn golden, water conservation targets were exceeded in MayCalifornia's desert resorts struggle to... View full entry
These have been boom times for companies that rip out lawns and replace them with drought-tolerant landscaping, but now their business might be drying up.
The Metropolitan Water District said Thursday it would no longer offer rebates to entice homeowners to get rid of their lawns because the agency ran out of money much sooner than it expected.
That is bad news for [...] landscape contractor in Los Angeles. Grass removal has become about 40 percent of his business, driven by the rebates.
— scpr.org
As a result of the sudden end of the government incentives, some Los Angeles landscape contractors, that had made turf removal their main business in the past months, began laying off staff. The LA Times reports: "Turf Terminators, which ballooned from a staff of three to more than 450 over the... View full entry
