Featured Sustainable Buisness

Keystone Associates

The sustainability movement is one that would mean very little without companies that actively support rethinking modern business paradigms. Keystone Associates is one such business that shows the initiative and ingenuity to improve both their company and their local community. Keystone Associates is an architecture company based out of Binghamton, New York that has taken great strides toward sustainable development. As students of the New Visions Sustainable Community Academy we were able to experience firsthand some of the conscientious thinking that Keystone Associates has put into their recent building designs. An energy-efficient/sustainable building that Keystone designed was the Boys and Girls Club in Binghamton, New York. This building was designed by LEED certified architect Kenneth Gay and uses insulated concrete forms or ICFs. Insulated concrete forms are giant foam blocks which once filled with concrete, take on a very high insulation value saving money/energy on heating and cooling. Keystone Associates won an award for its design through the Insulated Concrete Form Magazine. Keystone was recognized with honors at the World of Concrete expo in Las Vegas.

Below is a picture of the Boys and Girls Club .

Another green building designed by Keystone is a housing complex for homeless handicapped individuals. This building was funded by Community Portal -an associate of the Binghamton housing authority- and was developed on Lisle Avenue in Binghamton. The building utilizes several innovative designs. The first is a super effective hybrid insulation system. The ceiling is covered with 24’’ of Batt insulation, while the walls are insulated with 2 inches of spray foam and 4’’ of fiberglass insulation. The windows are also triple paned and are filled with argon gas to provide maximum insulation. Another sustainable design element on the Lisle Ave. apartment complex is solar panels which preheat the buildings water supply in order to lessen the natural gas consumption.
The newest building being designed by Keystone Associates is MaineSource in Ithaca, New York. The building was designed following guidelines set by The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is hoping to receive accreditation once completed. The guidelines set by LEED take into consideration 8 areas of quality several of which are location and planning, water efficiency, and materials and resources. Keystone designed MaineSource keeping all these prerequisites in mind. Once finished the building will be another innovative design by Keystone and a beautiful addition to Ithaca’s community.

Special thanks to Keystone Associates for letting the New Visions Sustainable Community Academy experience the many facets that go into planning and designing a building and congratulations to Keystone for being the first featured sustainable business.

Aquaponics in Your Home

What is Aquaponics?
Aquaponics is a system that creates a symbiotic relationship between plants and fish. The plants depend on the fish to make the water high in nitrogen and other nutrients and the fish rely on the plants to keep the water clean. Aquaponics is a fun and simple way to incorporate education and nutritional foods into your everyday life.













Why should I incorporate Aquaponics into my life?
• Healthy foods grown at your home
• Fun
• Educational
• Sustainable (we have harvested 90% of marine life in recent history)
• Standard fish farms can rear unhealthy fish in an unsanitary environment
   (Larger aquaponic systems can raise fish for consumption)
• Inexpensive
• Fresh foods available 24/7
• Easy
• Have a garden with no lawn
• Can grow food in the city













How do I build my Aquaponics system?
To get started you will need:
• A 30 gallon tote ( or size of your choosing)
• A submersible pump
• Drip tubing and top feed system
• Water
• Fish
• Pots (or plastic cups)
• Seeds of your choosing

1. Cut holes in the lid of the tote to hold the potters
2. Fill the tote with water
3. Connect the pump to the drip system
4. Add fish
5. Fill potters with vermiculite and perlite at a 1:1 ratio, and place potters in the lid
6. Transplant leafy vegetables and herbs into your potters
7. Place the drippers in each pot, and turn the pump on.

You now have a fully functional Aquaponics system! Enjoy the delicious outcome.

The Art of Vermicomposting

The Art of Vermicomposting
Vermicompost is an alternative way of decomposing your food waste and scraps using worms. One pound of worms can handle three pounds of material a week. The worms eat the organic material and excrete nutrient rich humus resulting in dark organic soil, perfect for gardening.













Why Vermicompost
• Like normal composting, vermicomposting keeps your food waste and scraps from entering the landfills as garbage
• save money on garbage pickup
• Controls what goes into your soil
• Educational
• Fun
• Produces worms for fishing
• Can compost all year around in cold climates



















Steps to a healthy vermicompost
• Find a small to medium sized bin (reuse plastic bin or old fish tanks)
• Poke air holes into bottom of container
• Fill bin ¾ full of bedding
   o For bedding use strips of newspaper and peat moss
   o Add water until bedding is moist throughout
• Place red worms on top of bedding and cover the bin
   o Worms can be found online or from a local vermicompost bin
• Bury the organic material
   o Avoid meats, dairy products and kitty litter
   o Cut food scraps into small pieces
   o Vegetables and greens are best
   o Bury the scraps on alternating sides of the bin
• When extracting the humus, sort out worms and insert them back into bin
• Feed worms about once a week
• Monitor moisture daily

Climate Change in a Nut Shell

Drivers of climate change
The main cause of climate change is the amount of green house gasses in the atmosphere. After the advent of the industrial revolution human activity has emitted huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.


(Figure shows how emissions increased as we entered the industrial revolution) (http://aie.org.au/AM/Images//lawdome.gif)

Global warming is a natural process and has been waxing and waning for millennia, however human activity is further catalyzing this change. CO2 or carbon dioxide is the primary cause for this warming because carbon dioxide is a green house gas, which means that it absorbs rays from the sun and readmits them as heat.
Carbon Dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas; there are many others such as water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide. Carbon Dioxide is our main concern because humans emit so much of it, primarily because our entire way of life depends on the burning of fossil fuels which emits carbon dioxide.

Natural Drivers
Some other drivers of climate change are volcanoes, meteoritic impacts, and variations in solar radiation. Volcanoes have long been releasing carbon dioxide, other gases and solid particles into the atmosphere. By emitting solids particles into the atmosphere, volcanoes increase the amount of reflected solar radiation, thus causing global cooling events.
Meteoritic impacts also have the same effect as volcanoes because upon impact massive amount of solid particles are suspended into the atmosphere. This climatic event is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Positive feedback loop
When ice melts over Antarctica, black rocks (basalt) are exposed and absorb more solar radiation than the reflective snow. As our climate warms, the ice melts quicker, which in turn causes the ice cap to melt faster. This positive feedback loop can also cause large amounts of sequestered amounts of methane. As this ice melts, methane is also released from the permafrost into the atmosphere. Methane is a more absorbent chemical than carbon dioxide, resulting in further warming. These positive feedback loops can make it difficult to understand the rate at which the Earth is heating.

Effect on ocean currents
The Gulf Stream and the mid Atlantic drift are the Earth’s solution to uneven heating. The Gulf Stream brings heat from the equator to the poles and cold water from the poles to the equator. There are actually palm trees in Iceland (which is on the Arctic Circle), because of this circulation.


(This figure shows the North Atlantic Circulation)
(http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Atlantic_conveyor.jpg)

North Atlantic Circulation is driven from density differences in the surface water. Cold, salty water in the far North Atlantic sink, this sinking water drives this circulation. As the ice caps melt, the influx of fresh water decreases the salinity (amount of salt in water) of the far North Atlantic. Because the water has less salt in it, its density decreases making the water less likely to sink. This causes a slower movement in the North Atlantic Current. This North Atlantic Circulation, aka the Great Conveyer Belt, is what stabilizes Europe’s climate. If this circulation shut down, Europe would suffer from a massive cooling episode, which could have catastrophic implications on agriculture.

Jordan Clifford

Compost! And What You Should Know About It

INTRODUCTION
Compost is a word that you hear being thrown around more and more. But what is it? Basically, composting is taking organic material such as plants and food scraps, putting them in a pile and letting nature take its course. Eventually you will get healthy, nutrient rich soil. But it’s a little more than that too.

With the environment in a sad state and the economy in ruins, people are starting to look to composting as a viable way to not only grow food cheaply, but also as a way to dispose of something that until now has always been thought of as “garbage.” Think about it. Most people use one or even two garbage cans a week. How much of that is leftover food? Instead of throwing away materials like corn husks and egg shells, try composting them. Your weekly waste will drop substantially. Many people that compost find that they no longer need garbage pickup on a weekly basis and can instead hand deliver a can or two once a month to the dump. This allows you to cut out the garbage pickup, which when added up over a period of time can be quite costly.

When you first look into composting it can be overwhelming. There’s a lot of information out there and if you have no experience, it’s hard to make heads or tails of it. Carbon and nitrogen ratios? Moisture content? Aeration? What does any of it mean? Many people give up there, while some will forego research and run headfirst into it only to experience a compost failure down the road. Composting isn’t as hard as it sounds. While some research is necessary, there’s no need to over complicate things.

THE GIST
Here’s composting in a nutshell. What makes your compost work is the bacteria that lives in it. Like any other organism, it needs a few things in order to survive. Food, water and air. The bacteria feed on the material in the compost, and just as people need a balance of nutrients, bacteria need two main types of food. The carbon and nitrogen ratio is what tells you what type of organic matter to add to your compost. You generally want around two parts of dry, brown material (carbon) for every one part of fresh, green material (nitrogen).

Water allows the bacteria to move around in the compost. Too little water means that your compost will take longer, and too much will cause it to smell. A handful should feel damp and spongy, but you shouldn’t be able to squeeze water out of it.

Your compost pile should be mixed and turned every few days. This will not only distribute moisture and prevent water pooling, it will also add air to the pile. Without air, the pile will start to smell and the composting process will slow.

THE SCIENCE
The carbon and nitrogen ratio is important. Organic material that is brown and dry has more carbon, while things that are green and wet have more nitrogen. The ideal ratio is around 25:1, that is, 25 parts carbon for every one part of nitrogen. So that means that if you want to compost twenty five pounds of dry leaves you need one pound of fresh grass? Well, no. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. Every type of organic material has a specific ratio. For example, fresh grass has a ratio of about 17:1, while dry leaves are around 30:1. If you’re into math, you can use this formula and feel secure in the knowledge that your compost is perfect:

%carbon = %nitrogen x carbon/nitrogen

Or you can use the preferred method and just eyeball it. As with just about everything in science there are several conflicting theories, but a general rule of thumb is to have two parts of brown material for every one part green material. If your compost starts to smell, it’s a sign that you have much nitrogen, which means you need to add some brown material. If the composting seems to be going slow, you may have too much carbon, which means green material should be added. To get the best results you should layer your compost, alternating between brown and green material.

Moisture content is next. This is just a measurement of how much water the compost is holding. The ideal moisture is around 50%. Just as with the carbon and nitrogen ratio there’s a formula you can try:

moisture content= ((wet weight-dry weight)/wet weight) x 100

When you squeeze a handful of compost it should feel damp and spongy, but no water should come out of it. Too much water can cause your compost to smell bad, while too little can significantly slow the process. Water often pools towards the bottom of the compost, so be sure to mix it frequently and distribute the moisture.

Aeration is the last major need of compost, and also the most simple. A proper compost pile has aerobic bacteria, which is bacteria that needs air to survive. If your compost doesn’t have enough air, the aerobic bacteria will be replaced with anaerobic varieties. Not only will the process slow to a crawl, your pile will also start to stink. Fortunately, all you need to do to prevent this is mix and turn your pile once every few days. When you turn your compost, be careful to use a shovel or pitchfork- healthy compost can reach temperatures of over 140˚ Fahrenheit.

CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE
Now that the science is out of the way, you can actually start the thing. Once you have it started, compost doesn’t need much maintenance. Even starting up doesn’t require much. Composting tends to be easiest when you keep it contained in a bin of some sort, but if aesthetics don’t matter it can also be kept in a free standing pile. If you do use a bin, you can use virtually anything. Your container should have vents in the sides to allow for air flow, and does best with an open bottom. Old pallets and fencing make excellent frames for your bin, and allow you to recycle material that would likely go unused otherwise. It’s recommended to have your compost pile be at least three feet by three feet. Though it may be daunting to start out that large, smaller piles are more sensitive to improper conditions and need more careful monitoring.

If your compost is working properly it should have an internal temperature of anywhere from 90˚f to 140˚f, and be so odorless you can keep it inside- though this is not recommended as it can be difficult to properly balance and can pose a fire hazard. Countless factors contribute to the speed of decomposition, but it can take anywhere between three to six months to be “finished.” Without maintenance, it may take as long as a year or two. The best way to get your compost rolling is to get some material out of an established composting bin. This introduces the bacteria and other organisms needed, and can speed up the process significantly.

Once your compost is finished, it should be dark and crumbly. A few large pieces of material are okay and can be added back to your pile to continue composting, but the majority of it should look like fine, healthy soil. First, rejoice! Then use your new fertilizer for whatever you like and revel in the knowledge that you’re saving both money and the environment.

Alexis Stoughton

Hydrofracking Overview

Many residents living above the coveted Marcellus Shale are leasing mineral rights to natural gas companies with hopes of rejuvenating local economies and solving the nation’s energy needs. Massive propaganda campaigns put forth by invested stakeholders sell hydrofracking as a lucrative method of clean energy. This could not be further from the truth.

Hydrofracking will initially infuse a local community with capital; however, these funds are not sustainable. Monetary infusion is short lived. When the gas is exhausted the gas companies have no other option then to relocate to areas where gas reservoirs are more abundant or accessible.

Jobs created by hydrofracking natural gas are near sighted and will slow the transition to alternative clean energy markets. This industry is the proverbial band aid to our Nations Energy Crises. Hydrofracking requires gas companies to inject millions of gallons of water, undisclosed toxic chemicals “trade secrets,” and sand into horizontal wells which can run up to 10,000 feet deep. As the fracturing fluid is pumped into the well it causes pressure to build until the Shale develops horizontal fractures. The fractures are propped open by the sand and chemicals; the pressure from the fracking-fluid is released causing the natural gas rise up the well. The remnants of the toxic chemicals in the fracking-fluid often stay in the ground. The fracking-fluid causes irreversible problems with ground water resulting in health issues in humans other animals and plants.

To see the effects of hydrofracking one can look to Dimock PA where tap water can ignite on fire & local watersheds are devastated by fracking-fluid spills resulting in fish kills. Residents that once saw gas leases as an easy way to earn income are now faced with long term health issues and have united in a lawsuit against Houston based Cabot Oil & Gas Company.

Hydrofracking Overview