Month: March 2009
Before Class Starts, part 1
Toilet Redux
Pittsburgh’s sewage system is more than 100 years old, and it cannot handle the amount of waste the city generates. Since the sewage system is combined with the city’s rainwater system, when it rains, the system overflows and raw sewage ends up in the rivers. Carnegie Mellon art student Joey Hays has been studying the city’s waste problems — and for his Masters thesis this month, he’s built a special toilet– the Gardez L’Eau — that could be a first step towards a better way of dealing with our waste.
Read more at Joey’s site for the Gardez L’Eau, or see it in action at CMU’s Miller Gallery through April 18.
Produced for Rustbelt Radio.
Kitchen Confession no. 1026
Sister Margaret & The Relics
Kids vs. Adults
Pittsburgh Polka All Stars: Jumping Joe Stanek
The Future of Rust Belt Transit
Abby Wilson – Transportation Future
If Barack Obama can make discussions of weatherization popular, why not debates about transportation too? The issue of transit may seem one that only a policy-wonk could love, but Abby Wilson — a native Pittsburgher and a leader of GLUE (the Great Lakes Urban Exchange) — wants to change that.
Within the year, Congress will begin to debate the transportation reauthorization bill, which will shape national transit policy in the coming years. Abby and GLUE want to see less funding for highways, and more for mass transit, cycle paths, and innovative road policies that will encourage urban development and social justice — as well as saving people money.
In the run up to this debate, GLUE is looking to collect people’s stories about transportation in the region. Around Pittsburgh, Abby sees a major rise in people cycling, walking, and using mass transit — and she reasons that if legislators see this human face of transportation issues, more sustainable + equitable policy can be pushed through.
For more about GLUE, visit their website here, where you can also contact Abby directly.
Green Jobs in Steel Country
- Rob Rogers in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The promise of green jobs proliferated on the presidential campaign trail and in the stimulus package. Now it’s come to Braddock, the quintessential Rust Belt town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Braddock’s been in the news lately, with its young tattooed mayor John Fetterman appearing on The Colbert Report & a long profile in The New York Times last month.
This burst of national attention comes after a rough past two decades. Since the steel industry petered out in the mid-1980s, no other industry has come into the town – and unemployment, drug use, and violent crime all remain high. A new program has started up in Braddock – the Mon Valley Environmental Innovative Training program (or MOVE IT) – to train area residents to be environmental technicians. The Pittsburgh area has plenty of post-industrial pollution problems, and MOVE IT aims to supply a new crop of ‘green workers’ to remediate brownfield sites.
The first group of MOVE IT trainees just graduated from the 9 week course – and what do they think now? Do they believe in the promise of green jobs? Do they care more about the environment? And are they optimistic about finding work in this economy?
Ep. 43: The Art of Compost Toilets + Green Roofs
Today, art with a bite of environmentalism.
Joey Hays is an artist, an environmentalist, and an expert on all things bathroom. For his show this month at Carnegie Mellon, he’s building a massive compost toilet in the university art gallery. It’s his masters thesis project – tying together Pittsburgh’s massive sewage problem, artistic design, innovations in sustainability, and bathroom humor. Joey talks about the idea for his Gardez-Leau, the research he’s done on toilets, bathroom and sewage, and what he expects the gallery-goers will do.
Bob Bingham teaches art at CMU, and his classes of students work on environmentally-minded projects – including a Green Roof atop the university’s Hamerschlag Hall. Bob’s also worked on the city’s Nine Mile Run Project, in which a slag heap on the outskirts of Pittsburgh was transformed into a residential community, with sustainable living principles at its core. Today he talks about building green roofs, dealing with rejection of his proposals, and starting conversations about new ways of life.
For more on environmental toilets, see the latest from Rose George at the NYTimes.
And for Hamerschlag’s Green Roof, you can see it at CMU’s site.
Another World 