The Unsustainable Nature of Our Linear System
We live in a world of constant production, consumption, and disposal. Resources flow in and out of our cities in an exploitative and unsustainable linear model. New York City, a victim of its own success, now grapples with the effects of climate change it produces. The headlines are frightening – rising temperatures, vulnerable coasts, plastic oceans, and fragile food networks threaten our quality of life, with historically marginalized communities experiencing the greatest burdens.
But the future doesn’t have to be bleak. The path to a net-zero city is circularity, and New York City needs a system redesign. Circular urban models, which reuse and repurpose materials, food, energy, and water resources, have already been successfully adopted in cities and corporations around the globe. These profitable models demonstrate how a life-cycle and systems-view can reduce resource extraction, minimize harmful pollution, and create green jobs while restoring environmental assets.
Today, our city operates in a very linear, very leaky system. Raw materials are extracted from finite resources, processed into a product, and then disposed of into our waste stream, often after a single use. This model reinforces an inequitable distribution of profits and burdens, with tremendous global impact. The constant extraction, processing, and waste produces a host of environmental and human injustices, resulting in the dramatic reshaping of our planet due to global climate change.
This linear economy pervades New York City’s most salient urban systems, including food, energy, and water. Our city systematically produces massive amounts of waste from these streams each day. As a society, we have normalized the concepts of waste and constant resource extraction and production. At the same time, waste has disparate geographic impacts – for example, NYC has no landfills or incinerators, so that which is not recycled is discarded outside of city borders.
Waste is the product of a design flaw and a culture in crisis. We are not experiencing a crisis of resources, but of how we think of and use them. We already have what we need. The circular economic model offers an alternative to this “take, make, waste” system. The circular economic model is regenerative and restorative by design, keeping resources in use at their highest value for as long as possible. This model builds upon three core principles: i) design out waste and pollution, ii) keep products and materials in use for as long as possible, and iii) regenerate our natural systems to improve the environment.
Opportunities in the Inner Long Island Sound
For New York City, the Inner Long Island Sound is where we start. No place in New York City demonstrates the ill effects and missed opportunities of our wasteful linear model better than the Inner Long Island Sound. Spanning three boroughs, five islands, and the waterways where the East River and its tributaries meet the Long Island Sound, the Inner Long Island Sound has for decades been the dumping ground for unwanted leaks of the region’s urban systems.
Multiple wastewater-treatment facilities, power plants, jails, noxious industries, combined sewer overflows, and waste-transfer stations are located within the area, highlighting the “back-of-house” mentality that has been taken towards this region for far too long. Furthermore, the surrounding communities, which are among the lowest income in the city, suffer from the physical pollution and other industry externalities created by the systems at play. In the South Bronx alone, rates of asthma, poverty, and unemployment are the worst in the city.
With the closing of Rikers Island Correctional Center, the City has an historic opportunity to close the loop on these siloed and polluting industries across the islands, water, and banks of three New York City boroughs to restore ecologies and affected communities. By taking a systems view, designing with a focus on restoration and regeneration, and prioritizing inclusive and equitable economic development at every step, investment in the Inner Long Island Sound can promote innovation and growth citywide.
Circular Innovations for the Inner Long Island Sound
The potential demonstrated at the Inner Long Island Sound is just the start for the novel yet replicable and scalable models of urban circularity that New York City can embed in urban investments across the five boroughs. Let’s explore a few of these innovative ideas:
Rikers Island Food Innovation Hub
Rikers Island could be the catalyst for food production and innovation to supply the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, which in turn could provide food scraps to drive efficiency at wastewater resource recovery facilities. These facilities could then provide biogas and compost back into the production cycle. By completing the food cycle and keeping the production, consumption, and waste recovery as proximate to the source as possible, we increase the economic and environmental value to the neighboring communities.
Inner Long Island Sound Water District
Currently an energy and resource sink, the Inner Long Island Sound Water District will be an energy-independent, resilient working waterfront. With 1 billion gallons of water consumed by NYC each day and 13 billion gallons discarded into our oceans each day, we have what we need to reduce consumption from our freshwater reservoirs. Water Resource Recovery Facilities currently discard wastewater into our nearby oceans, though it is safe for use for secondary functions such as toilet flushing, irrigation, laundry, and washdown. Providing infrastructure to upcycle this current waste would allow up to a 78% reduction of upstream consumption. Separating storm and wastewater will also help us preserve our precious water supply and reduce pollution of our nearby waterways.
Astoria Waste to Energy District
Breaking down silos and harnessing energy from sites across the Inner Long Island Sound creates a more equitable infrastructure. Harnessing thermal energy from both the wastewater treatment plants and year-round refrigeration at Hunts Point could provide district heating and cooling systems for neighboring communities. Using anaerobic digesters with high solid contents to produce biogas could feed nearby electrical plants and transportation. Thermal energy waste from these plants could then be fed back to digesters and nearby communities through the use of electrical heat pumps. Even nearby waterways, which have the strongest currents in and around NY, could be used to supply renewable energy.
The infrastructure in our city was built on ancient principles. It is time for a redesign. We must look to the future and redefine the timeframe for change. To achieve these goals, we must focus our energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Redesigning systems within the Inner Long Island Sound shows how pairing capital investments with a reach across jurisdictional silos can unlock exponential opportunities to repurpose, reduce demand for, and restore precious resource streams.
Towards a Net-Positive City
Further, it demonstrates how progressive social policies like reducing incarcerated populations can have a positive physical and economic effect on such environmental concerns, providing employment opportunities and opening 413 acres of land for programs in New York City’s green economy. The potential demonstrated at the Inner Long Island Sound is just the start for the novel yet replicable and scalable models of urban circularity that New York City can embed in urban investments across the five boroughs.
Each of us in our everyday work shaping this city must strive to work across disciplines, adopt a systems view, design with an ecologically and socially restorative mindset, and approach each project as a way to innovate the model. Doing so will bring us closer to a net-zero – nay, net-positive – New York City.
This is an exciting time for New York City. By harnessing the power of circularity and embracing innovative solutions like those proposed for the Inner Long Island Sound, we can transform our city into a shining example of sustainable, equitable, and resilient urban development. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work – the future of our city, and our planet, depends on it. If you’re curious to learn more about how Alpha Wastewater can help your community move towards a circular economy, I encourage you to explore their website and reach out.