new-york

New York State Bans Ivory

- Adam Clare

New York state has amended its existing ivory trade bans to make it harder for illegal ivory traders to practice their trade. This is good news as too many elephants are killed (or otherwise harmed) for their ivory which is used to make decorative objects or crushed to become a health product (which has no actual health benefits). Way to go New York!

The legislation amends the state’s environmental law to ban elephant ivory sales with only a few exceptions for antiques with small amounts of ivory, certain instruments made before 1975, and transfers for educational and scientific purposes or through the distribution of estates.
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New York is the number one importer of elephant ivory into the United States. This state legislation will enhance federal efforts to tighten the elephant ivory trade ban on a federal level. Large-scale poaching of elephants and trafficking in ivory presents enormous economic and security challenges across Africa and beyond. The illegal ivory trade both flourishes from and contributes to a climate of instability and lawlessness in many African elephant range states, in which humanitarian crimes have risen dramatically.

Read more.

Read more about how IFAW is ending the Ivory Trade.

Good Designs to Protect Against Flooding

- Adam Clare 4 Comments

The damage of Hurricane Sandy is still being fully realized and we won’t know the full cost of the damage for a little while. What we can do for know is to look into ways to lessen the damage the next time an anthropogenically influenced storm hits the city. The Atlantic has put together some previously thought-out plans for preparing New York City for flooding from ideas that are used elsewhere in the world.

As ocean levels rise this will be a more pressing issue for New Yorkers and other cities on coasts.

Here’s what I think will be the easiest for NYC to implement, but I haven’t been there for years so I could be way off.

2. Elevated infrastructure. There are very few buildings in the entire state of New York built at grade at elevations below sea level. But New York City has constructed one massive piece of infrastructure below that threshold: the subway system. As we saw this week, flooding can devastate an underground network of tunnels, train platforms and corridors. So how do you keep more of that water out? For one thing, elevating subway entrances would help. Bangkok, another low-lying city susceptible to rising tides, has built precisely these kinds of subway entrances. They’re raised a meter off the ground and include built-in floodgates.

See the rest of the ideas here.

Public Bike Share Coming to New York?

- Dan Harrison

It’s no secret that we here at Things Are Good like bikes and bike sharing (we may have even posted about it once or twice…), and now some more good news concerning bike sharing has come in. New York City is looking to set up North America’s largest bike sharing programme complete with 10 000 bikes! New York’s bike share will be funded through corporate sponsorship and will create around 200 jobs in the city. The bikes, which are the same as Bixi’s bicycles in Toronto and Montreal, will be manufactured in Canada by Cycles Devinci.

The rest of the article can be found at NPR.org.

From Landfill to Sustainable Power Plant

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Madison, New York, has a landfill that has been sitting and rotting and essentially not doing anything productive. That’s all about to change. A new pilot test of a Spectro PowerCap Exposed Geomembrane Solar Cover system – a sheet of something close to magic that will convert the mound of trash into a mound of solar power.

The eight-acre demonstration site features a three-ply membrane that serves as both the closure system for the decommissioned landfill and the platform for an integrated 40-kilowatt Uni-Solar thin-film photovoltaic array. The technology was developed as both a long-term and final landfill closure solution. The PV system is expected to offset nearly all of the power requirements of the Madison County ARC Recycling Facility on the site for 20 to 30 years

Read more at Earth Techling.

Microfinance in New York City

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Microfinance has been working very well in the developing world as a way to support people in creating better opportunities for themselves and their communities by providing a small amount of money for projects. People who would otherwise be rejected for a loan can qualify for a microloan and then use that money to start a business.

Now programs in New York City are helping people in poverty start small business to better themselves.

Fortunately, she found Project Enterprise. The $1,500 loan she received allowed her to get a license and purchase the equipment to start grooming pets in her apartment. With this increased offering of services, the income of Bridgette’s business more than doubled. She has already taken out a second loan to buy equipment to let her handle more pets, and is now planning for her third loan, to take the next step and expand into an actual storefront

Read more at the blog of the Grameen Foundation.

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