Good Ideas

ON LAND. Each day residents of New York City churn out 23,000 tons of garbage. Each day garbage men burn it in incinerators located around the city or dump it as landfill in swamps and other areas within the city's five boroughs. But incineration adds to New York's air pollution, and landfill areas are rapidly vanishing. What to do with the daily mountain of garbage? Treat it, answers a company called Ecology, Inc., and then sell the end product.

Ecology, Inc.'s $2,000,000 Brooklyn plant is grinding up about 150 tons of garbage per day. Ferrous metals are removed by magnets. The remaining refuse is aerated in a special "digester," which decomposes it while also killing bacteria and smells. The addition of phosphates, nitrates and potash to the mix produces a high-yield fertilizer, which is being sold commercially within a 200-mile radius of the city. Of course, the company's capacity is too small to make more than a dent in New York's huge mound of garbage. And if all the trash in the city were treated this way, it would produce more fertilizer than the area really needs. But the company plans to expand operations, perhaps to 1,000 tons a day, and make and market other things--such as wallboard and artificial lumber--from garbage.

AT SEA. As tankers get bigger and bigger, the number of ports they can enter gets smaller and smaller. There are only about 20 commercial harbors in the world deep enough to serve the Nisseki Maru, a new Japanese behemoth that stretches 1,139 ft. long, carries almost 3,000,000 bbl. of crude oil and draws 89 ft. of water. Such monster tankers --each representing a potentially catastrophic oil spill--pump their cargoes into oil depots at the deep ports. Then smaller vessels take the oil to final destinations along the coast.

Recognizing the inefficiency of this "transshipment," a New York entrepreneur named Robert P. Davis has come up with a better plan. His Energy Corp. of America has spent $200,000 to design an enormous shallow-draft ship, which he calls the "ecology tanker." If built as planned, it will look almost roly-poly--890 ft. long, 170 ft. wide, but drawing only 39 ft. fully loaded. At this draft, it can slide easily into most major ports, while still carrying 800,000 bbl. of oil. Much more maneuverable in narrow channels than the monster tankers (thanks to powerful "thruster" propellers set at right angles to its bow and stern), the ship will include several safeguards against oil leaks. One drawback: it will cost at least 8% more to build than a conventional tanker of the same capacity.

ON HIGH. "I doubt," Architect Paul Rudolph once complained, "that an ode has ever been written to a flat-topped building in the sunset." But in a recent issue of the AIA Journal, Landscape Architect Lynn M.F. Harriss points out that these rooftops comprise hundreds of acres of usable open space in the cities' most congested areas. Now a wasteland of tar studded with water tanks and elevator hoists, they could be made into green public parks in the sky.

The bleak flat areas can be sodded and planted. A building's watertank system could be extended to serve a pool or fountain, and elevator equipment could become a glassed-in display "for those who like to see the wheels go round." Harriss admits that such an urban transformation would take a little imagination and a lot of money. But the roof gardens would not only be a pleasant place to eat lunch; their greenery would also "exhale" oxygen, and so help to improve air quality.

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