When most people dream of a garden, they picture lush lawns, shaded arbors, and plump vegetable patches. But for a group of students at the California College of the Arts, their vision of a garden began with the potholes at the intersection of Van Ness and Division Streets in San Francisco.
Pothole Gardens is a project intended to draw attention to the priorities of road repair in the city while greening particularly polluted urban spaces. The Gardens also present a challenge to vehicular traffic—will the driver swerve to preserve the greenery? Slow down to marvel? Or will he be oblivious to the intervention entirely?
It’s a small, inconvenient gesture that presents an alternate urban environment. On the project website the students critique the city’s expensive focus on constructing and maintaining asphalt roads which give priority to the individual car rather than other forms of transit. San Francisco has over 900 paved miles, half of which need some restoration on an annual basis. In the fiscal year of 2005, the Department of Public Works (DPW) filled 17,858 potholes at an average cost of $41.80 per pothole. The repairs required 2800 trips around the city and used around 4,000 tons of asphalt.
When the environmental costs of destructive asphalt mining and the litigation costs that result from pothole traffic accidents are accounted for, the whole enterprise of road paving seems massively consumptive and wasteful. If many of our roads could be reclaimed for healthier, greener purposes, could we change our car-centric vision?
You can join the project and spread the gardens around the city. Check this Google Map to find a pothole near you.
Do It Yourself Energy Audits: Simple Solutions to Reduce Your Utility Bill and Carbon Footprint
Many home owners spend hundreds of dollars to hire a professional energy auditor to conduct a thorough inspection of their home's energy efficiency and to recommend ways of improving it, which results in better energy usage, and provides health benefits and greater financial savings.
Part of the Green Guru Guides series of books, Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Audits offers complete details on assessing home energy efficiency. It describes simple no- and low-cost measures that can be implemented to identify problems, and that will dramatically increase livability, efficiency, and expendable income each and every year. Whether the reader is moving into a brand new or existing home, or is trying to make a current residence more energy efficient, the practical tips and projects in this book will make it easy to be green.
Marcal® Small Steps® Launches Consumer Movement; Shows Going Green in Paper Goods Means Real Environmental Benefits & Zero Sacrifice
Marcal® Small Steps® Launches Consumer Movement; Shows Going Green in Paper Goods Means Real Environmental Benefits & Zero Sacrifice
Recently I had the chance to speak with Lindsay Jacobs from Marcal Paper. The biggest point that she brought home was 98 vs 2. I said at first, "What?" Lindsay replied, "The next time you change that bathroom roll, think ninety-eight to two. While almost unthinkable for an environmentally awake nation, 98 percent of tissue products used in American homes comes from trees cut down just to make them."
Email
When most people dream of a garden, they picture lush lawns, shaded arbors, and plump vegetable patches. But for a group of students at the California College of the Arts, their vision of a garden began with the potholes at the intersection of Van Ness and Division Streets in San Francisco.
