Decay

Portland, OR

Local City Rankings Article

Waste Not, Rot Not

To most people, the rotten fruit that falls from neighborhood trees onto streets and sidewalks is a moldy nuisance. To Katy Kolker and Sarah Cogan, it became a call to action. During their walks around Portland a few years ago, the two women were struck by the amount of fruit decaying on the curbside at a time when many people in the area were going hungry. That wondered if there were a way to get neighborhood fruit into neighborhood bellies—and it turns out there is. “There are lots of tree owners who are more than happy to share their fruit,” says Kolker.

Boston, MA

Local City Rankings Article

Boston, MA: Taking In the Trash In Boston

Used to be you took out the trash. But if Boston officials have their way, the trash will soon be coming in—at least some of it, that is. City officials hope to use this trash to produce enough energy to power about 1,500 homes. It’s all part of an innovative new initiative to create an indoor composting center that would help slash green-house gas emissions from the decaying pile of discarded food and yard-cuttings that comprise Beantown’s outdoor, 6,000-ton composting program. The new facility would allow officials to separate out the high-energy components in the pile and feed them into an anaerobic digester, where they would be converted to methane gas. This biofuel would then be used to power a turbine that could generate 1.5 megawatts of power. Not bad for a pile of garbage! In Boston (and around the country) outdoor composti

City Rankings Article

Introduction: By Paul Hawken

For most of the 19th and 20th century, cities, despite the hardships and suffering experienced in ghettos, were seen as places where culture and intelligence concentrated and evolved. In the latter part of the 20th century, urban decay, environmental problems, and ethnic riots created a rush for the exits and rampant urban sprawl. Cities became more dangerous and inhuman. Post-war modernist planners and architects made matters worse by creating concrete monuments to themselves, hollowing out downtowns into commercial centers that felt like mausoleums at night...