TOPIC

Trash

Cleaning Up?

Remediation as Grassroots Biorepair: Smiling Hogshead Ranch

Cleaning Up?

Remediation as Neighborhood and Ecological Regeneration: Shirley Chisholm State Park

Cleaning Up?

Remediation as Reparative Justice: Renewable Rikers

Maintaining Decomposure

Grassroots groups have kept organic waste collection alive in neighborhoods across New York City during a most difficult year. For community composters, the stakes of an equitable waste system stretch far beyond the pile.

Wastestreaming

Following the trail of New York City’s municipal solid waste from curbside pickup to sites far beyond its borders, two artists document a system that benefits from low visibility as it dramatically extends the city’s footprint.

Castaways of Jamaica Bay

By way of natural disaster and human folly, a staggering amount of marine debris litters the waters and shores of an important estuary habitat. Meet the volunteers trying to salvage the situation.

Freshkills: Reorientation

Our inaugural Urban Wild Writer in Residence reports from the four mounds of the future Freshkills Park.

Shelf Life

Do You Remember How It Was?

Residents recall a decade of upheaval in the East New York Oral History Project.

People Movers

Haul Together

With New York City on the verge of reorganizing the private sanitation industry, union organizer Allan Henry connects the dots between street safety, worker rights, and environmental impacts.

The Location of Justice: Systems

The Happy Prison

Where do the street trees come from, and where does the compost go? Rikers Island was the city’s growing outpost for years. But does “greening” the prison always improve things for prisoners?