Home & Community-Scale

Green Homes

March 7, 2022 Twenty years ago, living in ways that protect the environment and conserve for future generations was called a “lifestyle choice.” Times have changed. Today, knowing the cause-and-effect of lifestyle on global climate change, living in ways that protect the environment and conserve for future generations is a moral imperative. It is the right…

Green New Deal Superstudio Submission

July 16, 2021 We have submitted the Greenway idea and illustrations of it to the Green New Deal Superstudio, a national initiative by the Landscape Architecture Foundation to encourage designs to implement the goals of the Green New Deal. Our submission is in visual form above, or you can download a higher-res PDF here. Over…

Greenway

Greenway (Animated by Lily Ericsson) There is a world in which humans integrate into the water-nutrient cycle. Welcome to Greenway, an achievable, sustainable vision from Earle Barnhart and Hilde Maingay. Greenway is a vision of an ecological neighborhood, where basic needs – food, water, shelter, transport, communications – are provided in ecologically sustainable ways with…

In a natural ecosystem, nutrients cycle continuously, as minerals move from soil to plants to animals to decomposers, and back again to the soil. In our society, however, most nutrients are not recycled back to agricultural or natural ecosystems to continue sustainable biological cycles. Instead, the nutrients in food wastes and human wastes become pollutants in groundwater, streams , ponds, rivers, and the ocean.

A population of 6 billion cannot continuously waste all the nutrients in its food supply and hope to keep supplying food for a projected population of 10 billion. What is needed instead are systems that safely recycle “waste” nutrients back into productive agriculture. A sustainable society requires a sustainable agriculture: below, we offer two scenarios on how this can be achieved at the home and community levels.

Home-Scale Nutrient Recycling

Pause and continue the slideshow using the buttons on the bottom of the image.

Build a compost in 2 minutes (and reduce your carbon footprint)

This Greenway Compost Box system is easy to make, easy to use, easy to move and will reduce your carbon footprint in multiple ways. Waste organic material is added at the top and slowly sinks down as it decomposes. Finished compost is removed from openings at the bottom. These compost boxes efficiently recycle waste organic materials, produce compost and at the same time prepare and improve soil underneath for future garden beds. Locust tree logs are the best material for these compost boxes because they last longer than any other hard wood.