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