New York City discards some one billion gallons of treated grey water every day into the Hudson River estuary.

food waste can easily be converted back into energy employing clean state-of-the-art incineration technologies, and wastewater can be converted back into drinking water.

John Todd, the venerable systems ecologist best known for his work on environmental remediation. In 1969 Todd founded the New Alchemy Institute and began to design microecosystems, self-contained plant communities inside greenhouses. Using them as small-scale prototypes for larger real-world projects, he revolutionized how we approach solving

pharmaceuticals extracted from higher plants, and the production of biofuels from algae and higher plants.

our current food production and distribution system does deliver edible calories to the people at an affordable “price.” But its toll on both the environment and its consumers is astonishing.

Bamboo in various diameters could also serve the purpose quite well, and since it’s one of the toughest natural materials we know of,

Things like green roofing, urban forestry, and wetland and estuary restoration are all important parts of the solution to those environmental challenges—and they provide great jobs for people who often have difficulty getting a job.

saving huge amounts of fossil fuel now used to refrigerate and ship produce from all over the world.

We could even generate energy from incinerating human feces if we so desired.