SideWalkTalk article on Medium While vacuum waste collection is still rare compared to curbside pickup, its adoption may be on the rise. Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen, is installing one of the world’s largest vacuum waste systems, with nearly 5 miles of underground pipe. In 2018, Singapore changed its development requirements so any project of 500 apartments or more must […]
Streetsblog March 11 post “City pedestrians navigate around piles of trash and recycling that take up significant sidewalk space,” Garcia said. “It is time to make smarter, more efficient choices when it comes to the way New Yorkers set out refuse and recycling for collection in the public right of way. Thursday’s announcement is the […]
Clare Miflin’s article in the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment Newsletter is inspired by Michael Pollan’s seven word maxim for healthy eating: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Build less: reuse and repurpose existing buildings; right-size the building; consider sharing spaces within a district. For more people: design and program a building so that most […]
Benjamin Miller’s in depth article in Environmental Law in New York explains how the design of the commercial waste zoning system can be crafted to maximize benefits for the environment, businesses and haulers.
District-scale solutions are often the most effective way of achieving zero waste and improving the quality of the public realm. In this session the team that led the development of the Zero Waste Design Guidelines share best practice strategies and case studies for waste management from e-waste to food waste. Learn the multiple benefits from […]
Read Cole Rosengren’s deep dive into Who comes out on top if New York passes commercial waste zones? incorporating history and policy ideas from Benjamin Miller.
The Center for Zero Waste Design has been awarded a grant by the Hong Kong Design Trust for its project Zero Waste Design Guidelines for High Density Cities. This will take the Guidelines to Hong Kong and Singapore, for panel discussions and thinktanks, and we will return to the Center for Architecture to present the […]
Benjamin Miller outlines modifications to the commercial waste system to address critical problems and aid the implementation of strategies outlined in the Zero Waste Design Guidelines. An integrated system design could solve multiple issues with the current system, including transfer station siting, increasing processing capacity, improving collection infrastructure and operations, incentivizing waste diversion and reducing […]
Taking a cue from the Zero Waste Design Guidelines, the NYC Departments of Sanitation and Transportation issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) for “creative solutions for containerized refuse and recycling.” The RFEI is as an important step towards designing the built environment to meet the city’s zero waste goals and address the significant environmental […]
City resident and co-founder of Help Delhi Breathe, Reecha Upadhyay, tells us how she rallied tens of thousands of voters to pass legislation that will help cap air pollution killing millions every year. She discusses biomimicry with Clare Miflin, who shares her epiphany that nature doesn’t create any waste and that perhaps our misuse of […]