CLOSE UP by Brian Rudnick

Philly Compost Trusts in Soil

It’s a company called Philly Compost. What they do is organic trash. So anything you can put in your mouth or anything that can compost, they take, they’ll put into a field, mix it with dirt and leaves and then resell it as compost. WHAT ARE YOU PICKING UP TODAY IN CHESTNUT HILL HERE? Today, Tavern on the Hill is a local restaurant. I’ll get two cans off of them, all their restaurant waste, lettuce heads, anything gone sour or leftover from a plate after a customer ate it … So this is the back of Tavern on the Hill. This is our logo, ‘In Soil We Trust’ WHAT DO THEY GOT IN THERE? Hopefully green bags. These green bags are compostable. There’s napkins, banana peels are great, carrots, paper. IT LOOKS LIKE THERE’S SOME CHICKEN BONES TOO. CAN YOU COMPOST THAT? Anything organic, anything that will break down is fine. We can’t take plastic, metal, Styrofoam.  WHO’S PAYING WHO TO TAKE THIS AWAY? There’s two advantages. One if I’m a restaurant and I say to my patrons “Hey, I’m reducing trash that’s going into a landfill by separating it out and composting it, that’s a benefit to the environment. The second thing is, now I’m reducing what I pay in my dumpster so my trash costs go down. DO THEY PAY YOU A FEE TO TAKE IT? They pay us, they do a monthly thing and then per can. AND IT’S LESS THAN PUTTING IN A DUMPSTER? Ideally, yes. And we pay to dump it and that guy’s making money when it’s dumped and when he sells the compost. Jason Hopler, Philly Compost.

Watch video here.

 

 

Tear it Down, Philly

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT BUSINESS IT WAS? It was a chicken store. A CHICKEN STORE? Yes. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SITTING LIKE THIS? I got to be about 50 so I’d have to say twenty-four, twenty-five years. WHERE’S THE OWNER, HOW COME HE’S NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH IT? Where’s the City, Why don’t they [unintelligible] You ask me about something the City- WHAT DO YOU THINK THE CITY SHOULD DO WITH THIS BUILDING? There’s only one answer, one explanation for it. That’s tear it down. Gary Burgin, on the 5800 block of Germantown. Watch video here.

Red Riding Hood kills Wolf? SCEE's Facts and Fables Outdoor Art Exhibit

Diminutive and softspoken artist Jeanne Jaffe spins the "Little Red Riding Hood" tale at the "Stories of the Natural World: Facts and Fables" outdoor art exhibition that just opened at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Little Red is represented by monstrous white knee-high legs and the wolf lies on his back with mouth agape atop a swirling blood-evoking satin-red band. They've reversed roles; Little Red represents human civilization that has committed crimes the natural world of the wolf. Watch video here.

Facts and Fables asks, "How do stories affect our understanding of nature?" Seven artists tackle this question. In the video below, new SCEE Executive Director  Mike Weilbacher welcomes the opening day visitors and Jenny Laden, associate director of the environmental art program guides us along the exhibit path. Laden  discusses the work of artist David Dempewolf ("Carelessness and Inattention Can Afford Us Any Remedy") Jeremy Beaudry talks about his book/writings in "NatureStudy: An Ambivalent Guide" and Susan Hagen talks about her carved wood, post-mounted "Oil Spill Animals"

Re Clamming Barnegat Bay

Martin Sedlacko, of Forked River, New Jersey volunteers with ReClam the Bay, an environmental organization with an educational focus that grows up seed clams and oysters until they are large enough to be transferred to protected reefs in Barnegat Bay.

The native oyster and clam populations died off substantially in the 1950s and ‘60s due to land development in the shore community and environs, Sedlacko explains. One significant factor is eutrophication; nitrogen (found in fertilizers, acid rain) from runoff contributes to excessive underwater plant growth. In the subsequent dieback and decomposition process, bacteria consumes the oxygen the shellfish depend on.

On Monday afternoons, volunteers gather at a shellfish station on Barnegat Bay off of 24th street in Seaside Heights, not far from the extensive Island Beach State Park on the south side of Long Beach Island. They clean the growing shellfish and introduce bay water into several tanks called “upwellers.” The juveniles feed on plankton in the water.

The Seaside Heights station is one of ten such locations on the bay that participate in the Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program, a partnership between Rutgers University/Ocean County Cooperative Extension and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Employees from Subaru of Cherry Hill complemented the regular volunteer contingent at the Seaside Heights station on a recent Monday afternoon. In the morning the employees had participated in a bay cleanup. According to one employee, Subaru partners with the Ocean Conservancy because this kind of volunteering is a good fit with its brand and the values held by its customers.

Watch video here

For more information about Barnegat Bay and restoration efforts visit

http://www.reclamthebay.org/

http://ocean.rcre.rutgers.edu/marine/bbsrp.html

http://www.savebarnegatbay.org

Road kill? Not toadlets being saved by Toad Detour

WHY ARE YOU MOVING THE TOADS ACROSS THE STREET? 

"So they don't keep keep running over and don't keep dying out. Because they're so small it takes them a while and they keep on getting run over by cars" Volunteer boy.

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"This week is the peak week for the toadlets to be migrating back to the woods. The toads are coming from the reservoir. That's where they were born a few months ago. The adults mated in the reservoir and this is the product of their experience. This is what would be called a reverse migration. The adults left [the reservoir] after they were done mating. And these are the babies migrating from the reservoir to the woods.The detour is set up each night from 7 to 9 pm. We have a permit for about a month." WHAT GROUP IS DOING THIS? "The toad detour. Last night we counted two thousand toadlets and there were also a few thousand that we didn't count They were all over the street. So you have to be very careful where you step."  Lisa Levinson, Toad Detour, on Port Royal Avenue and Hagys Mill Road in Roxborough, Phladelphia, near old Philadelphia Water Department reservoir. Levinson is a co-founder and the director of Public Eye: Artists for Animals, "teaching compassion for animals through the arts." Watch video here.

Statue of Liberty (Tax Services) dances ballet

Allison Allen knows how to make her own the dreary job luring in customers, costumed as the statue of Liberty outside the Liberty Tax Service on Ridge Avenue in Roxborough. She puts to use a decade of dance lessons, executing springy sneaker-propelled leaps and graceful turns for passersby. Liberty statute Jim Johnson was interviewed last year at this time. Watch video here.

Soil Kitchen tilts at windmills

Dan and his father, Chilean born Francisco Allende, read alternatingly in English and Spanish from Miguel Cervantes' "Don Quixote" in front of the legendary knight errant's statute at 2nd and Girard. Quixote was the inspiration for the "Soilkitchen" public art project coinciding with the Environmental Protection Agency's national brownfields conference in Philadelphia in April. At the street level gathering and exhibition space on the south side of Girard, Soil Kitchen lab assistants test samples of soil collected from around the city to assess the health of the soil for farming while volunteers dish out free soup. In the photo foreground, project artist Amy Franceschini takes a pause from taking photos to listen to the reading. Watch video here and visit http://soilkitchen.org

Nuclear faith, nuclear fears- workmates differ on energy alternatives

Workmates Stephen McShane and Jarek Heljak (seated on other side of table) of Northeast Philadelphia talk about the nuclear plant crisis in Japan and energy generation alternatives. McShane has a Japanese friend whose parents in Sendai were far west enough to have only lost power. He expressed grave concerns about water and food contamination and favors solar or wind energy. Heljak, who says his native Poland relies on coal and has no nuclear plants due to the expense, favors nuclear. Starbucks Coffee, Chestnut Hill. Watch video interview here.

Gasland comes to Philly - fracking for natural gas in the Delaware River watershed?

Punctuated by first hand accounts  of health problems caused by fouled air and water and scary stunts  by homeowners across the country setting their polluted tapwater on fire, the film “Gasland”, an Academy Award nominee,  documents the dirty production side of  what’s marketed as clean natural gas.

On Tuesday evening,  about seventy five people attended a showing  of the banjo-playing filmmaker Josh Fox’s movie at the Germantown Jewish Center, organized by the synagogue, Weavers Way, the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement and the Unitarian Society of Germantown.

Afterwards. a panel of scientists and directly affected individuals and activists from the Marcellus Shale region of upstate Pennsylvania described the adverse health and environmental  impacts of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (“fracking” in common parlance, “frac jobs” in industry terms). SEE PANELIST INFORMATION BELOW

It’s a process that injects water combined with several of some hundreds of available chemicals, many known toxins such as benzene,  at high pressure, to release the gas.  Developed by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Haliburton company, fracking was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water act by the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

Under newly elected  Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, it appears to be open season for the drilling of new wells in Pennsylvania which may extend into the watershed area which is the source of drinking water in Philadelphia. This is cause for serious local concern as expressed by Linda Cherkas, a Mount Airyite attending the filming  and the subject of a  Philadelphia city council forum the very same evening.

After the showing, attendees flocked to tables to sign letters urging President Obama, who voted for the 2005 Energy Act, to direct his representative on the Delaware River Basin Commission to vote against finalizing draft rules on gas drilling and urging the President to call a nationwide moratorium until an Environmental Protection Agency study is complete.

Watch video here.

This account makes use of critical analysis of the film and counter-allegations of its critics in the New York Times by Michael Soraghan of Greenwire athttp://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtruthing-academy-award-nominee-gasland-33228.html

Valentines Day roses - does love hurt?

[Alexandra Serfass, Robertson's Flowers greenhouse employee]

In the 2004 movie, “Maria Full of Grace,” a pregnant young woman trades the harsh conditions of a flower packing operation in Colombia to come to the United States with a friend as a “drug mule.” It doesn't turn out well.

The flower export business is big business. Large, drab greenhouses, like those in Ecuador where “Maria” was filmed, can stretch for miles. From my bus window, I knew the eerily transformed landscape would not be on any picture postcard I would be sending home to the U.S.

Beauty has its cost to both the environment and people, however, according to “The Secrets Behind Your Flowers,” a February 2011 Smithsonian Magazine report. Because it may take three gallons of water to grow just one rose bloom, groundwater supplies become depleted.  The low-paying work is tedious and straining. In traditional growing operations, workers are exposed to the dangerous pesticides and fungicides that keep insects from taking the slightest nibble from an otherwise picture-perfect flower.

Public outcry in recent years has led to the introduction of fair trade practices.  Nicole Serfass, flower buyer at Robertson’s Flowers greenhouses in Wyndmoor, showed off the Veriflora label on the roses they import from South America.  Veriflora is one of a handful of certifying organizations that try to ensure that their growers are using sustainable agricultural methods and providing equitable, healthy conditions for their workers.

At Robertson’s showcase Chestnut Hill store, Sandy Robertson says they source their flowers locally  from New Jersey,  domestically from Florida when they can and even sees growing customer interest in organically or sustainably grown flowers. Serfass has been asking their growers about organic but believes it’s not yet economically worth it for them to invest the years required for organic certification.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Donna Beardell of  Chestnut Hill asks,  exiting Robertson’s with a brilliant bunch of pink tinged roses, destined for her nieces competing in a gymnastics meet. On Valentines Day, she’s hoping she’ll be the recipient.

watch video here

[Sandy Robertson]

 

[Donna Beardell of Chestnut Hill]

[Nicole Serfass Robertson's Flowers greenhouse, Buyer]