The United States Naval Construction Battalions or the Seabees have completed work on a low-impact 98-slot parking lot for NAS Jacksonville Building 919, the headquarters of Commander, Navy Region Southeast, in Jacksonville, Mississippi. The new parking lot uses permeable paving to absorb storm runoff, and it will be illuminated with LED lights.
Instead of using your usual chemicals and cleaners to disinfect toilets, the Mumbai International Airport (Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport) has enlisted the help of bacteria and various microorganisms to clean 200 toilets, urinals, and a total of 4,000 square meters of surface area in Terminal 2. Flush a toilet and green chemical is released instead of water; water is used only when the toilets are being cleaned manually. As a result, the airport is saving 100,000 liters of water a day.
Urbanization was once a major goal of many cities around the world–until everyone saw the havoc that it wreaks on the environment and how dense and crowded urban areas become. And then there’s the fact that resources become pretty scarce in cities, leaving urban dwellers reliant on far-flung rural agricultural areas for food. Living green and bringing nature back to cities are now the key goals, and different cities and organizations are now working to figure out how best to create a more sustainable way of life.
IKEA’s Space10 recently collaborated with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum to create The Growroom, an indoor garden designed to have the capacity to grow enough food to feed a neighborhood. The Growroom is a multi-tiered structure that actually doesn’t take up too much space, which means that it not only helps people grow food locally, but it also takes into consideration the space constraints in many residential buildings in cities.
The best part about The Growroom is that you can build it yourself. The design is open source, and the instructions are available here, while the cutting files can be downloaded here.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these organic-cotton, Made in the U.S.A. hoodies, and 100% of the profits from the launch, will be deposited on a quarterly basis into a community foundation to be accessed by residents in two under-resourced neighborhoods: Riverside in Wilmington, DE, and Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia.
Livehood is available at Gilt.