When you hear the word “playground,” eco-friendly may not come to mind. Playgrounds are designed for children to play freely and exert energy. They serve as community hubs for locals to gather and exchange commonalities. In addition to the allotted recess time, playgrounds also provide schools with the chance to offer outdoor teaching lessons. 

Schools and parks are continuing to prioritize sustainability efforts as more people learn about the impact of certain actions on the planet. As a result, these institutions are considering how to pay it forward and making greener choices. Playgrounds can play a part in a sustainability initiative, providing an opportunity to further concentrate on protecting the earth while also functioning as a play area for kids. Here are three ways schools and parks are reducing their environmental footprint with eco-friendly playgrounds. 

1. Utilizing Sustainable Materials

One way that schools and parks are thinking about Mother Earth first is by using sustainable materials in their infrastructure. Today’s playgrounds can be built with eco-friendly materials, many of which are recyclable or natural materials. For instance, surfacing can be from rubber mulch made from tires. This soft surfacing is splinter-free and will help brace accidental falls and tumbles too. Bamboo — a renewable resource — can be used in various playground structures as well as fencing. 

In terms of playground equipment, many pieces can be made using recycled plastic or recycled wood. Recycled plastic often looks like traditional plastic; it’s just made from leftover materials that could have ended up in a landfill. Wood can be highly durable and long-lasting, especially when treated correctly. It can be used as wood chips for ground cover or bolted together to build new equipment or make seats for picnic areas. 

One of the main concerns with using sustainable materials is that it won’t look like a modernized playground. This couldn’t be farther from the truth! Many of these recycled, sustainable materials can be painted and purchased in fun and vibrant colors. You may just be surprised to see the possibilities. And upon first glance, many visitors may not even realize that the playground is eco-friendly in the first place. 

2. Adding Natural Elements

A playground in the middle of an open field is nice, but it can be more attractive with landscaping around it. Incorporating natural elements into the playground and surrounding areas can beautify the space and promote a sense of calm and well-being. Seeing a butterfly land on a nearby plant or watching a tiny bud pop open into a pretty flower are awe-inspiring moments that will delight children. It also promotes a sense of connection to nature.

When thinking about which natural elements to add, look at your space first and consider what your guests would like most. For instance, a few larger trees can provide shade for standing adults watching the children play. Adding a row of low bushes around the perimeter of the playground can help create a natural barrier from the play area to the park. Logs and stumps can also be used to help designate play zones. 

When bringing in these plants and other natural elements, be sure to consider biodiversity as well. Native plants and trees will attract local wildlife while also holding true to the area’s needs. There’s a reason that certain plants survive better in different parts of the world. A palm tree isn’t going to thrive in snowy Vermont, after all! It may be helpful to conduct some research or hire a professional botanist or horticulturist to design the space. Doing so will help ensure that the area is landscaped with the area’s needs in mind.

3. Reducing Waste 

Lastly, schools and parks that are focused on sustainability should also consider ways to reduce waste within the play area. Solar-powered lighting is an option to keep the playground well-lit without using up any electricity. These devices can be purchased at hardware stores or big box retailers and placed around the area. They are often triggered by low lighting, meaning just as the sky is turning dusk and children are being called back inside, the lights will go on. Solar panels are more of an expense, but can be particularly beneficial to school yards when large areas need to remain lit throughout the night. 

Another way to reduce waste is to focus on recycling and composting. Having clearly labeled bins for recycling and compost bins in handy spots around the playground can deter guests from throwing garbage in the trash can. For example, if there is a nearby picnic bench, be sure to place both containers near it. Of course, this type of system requires some education as well. Look for bins that designate what can be recycled and what can be composted. 

Schools can add composting to their curriculum and education so children know the benefits of throwing scraps of food into the bin as opposed to chucking it in the garbage. Science teachers can even do an outdoor lesson on where the compost goes and how it turns the soil into nutrient-rich food for the plants. Small steps can make a big impact when it comes to reducing overall waste and protecting the planet.

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Playgrounds have long acted as social hubs for both adults and children. They bring people from all walks of life together, and they promote health in many ways. Now, however, they are advancing into the future as the environment demands. More citizens are insisting their parks are clean, green, sustainable spaces. And of course, eco-friendly playgrounds have a huge role to play in this movement. Here are the top ways in which these playgrounds are reshaping community green spaces for the better. 

They Act as Outdoor Classrooms

Children are struggling to learn more now than ever. More children are diagnosed with learning disabilities, and many others find it difficult to sit still. Much of the reason for that has to do with being stuck inside a classroom. For thousands of years, human children ran and played in their early years. It makes sense that they would learn better in spaces that encourage this kind of movement regularly. 

One of the most obvious ways in which these eco-friendly playgrounds transform green spaces is by acting as learning hubs. Because the playground equipment is typically made from recycled rubber, plastic, and wood, it integrates well into the natural environment. There, children can learn about the ways their playgrounds are good for the earth and what recycling looks like in real-time. And they can run, jump, and play all the while. 

Sustainable Materials Minimize Costs

The next, and perhaps most obvious way eco-friendly playgrounds impact community spaces is through cost savings. Many cities are on tight budgets and are even under-resourced. They can barely make ends meet when it comes to roads, streetlights, and emergency services. They’re unlikely to be able to spring for a brand new, state of the art playground plus the surrounding park trails, plants, and water features. 

An eco-friendly playground goes a long way toward saving the city money. This is obviously also true for schools and churches that want to create new play spaces for the kids. The equipment can come in at a lower cost because the materials have been repurposed. They’re also usually cheaper to maintain because the equipment is designed to last in a natural environment over time. Thus, the entire green space ends up being a good investment for the community. 

Energy Efficient Materials Reduce the Carbon Footprint

Sadly, landfills and trash have become overwhelming on the planet to the point of microplastics running through virtually every space. This includes in our water and even in our bodies. There are islands of floating trash in virtually every ocean, and humans continue to buy and dispose of items every day. The best move municipalities can make is to encourage citizens to reduce, reuse, and recycle, And the best way to do that is by example. 

That’s where recycled materials for playgrounds come in. When eco-friendly playgrounds are made from recycled tires, old wood, bamboo, and hemp, the spaces have a much lower carbon footprint. They last much longer, manufacturing them doesn’t harm the environment, and even when they do end up outliving their purpose, they can be recycled and reused again for a new product. The carbon footprint of a playground like this is incredibly low. 

Eco-Friendly Practices Conserve Natural Resources

The cost of a playground is only one way in which it impacts the community. It also has a lasting effect on the surrounding environment. Maintaining the park’s lights after dark is a hefty cost. Running water to splash pads and restrooms also takes its toll on natural resources. Oh, and the plants need to be watered regularly as well. While most communities have long considered playgrounds and parks worth the drain on the environment, there’s no defying their carbon footprint. 

Until now. Eco-friendly playgrounds can provide myriad solutions to stressed resources. Cities can install sun shades that act as surfaces for solar panels. Any energy used to run the entire park can be provided by those panels. The Parks and Recreation Department can also practice rainwater harvesting and recycling. That way, splash pads, fountains, and features never waste water. And the sprinkler system can run on harvested and stored rainwater to water drought-resistant plants when necessary. 

Increased Interaction with Nature Promotes Health

Finally, the entire purpose of these eco-friendly playgrounds is to be green. If there’s anything Americans need more of, it’s time in green space. People in the United States of all ages are more stressed out, more depressed, and more anxious than ever. It’s no coincidence that those same citizens spend less time outside, less time exercising, and less time in social settings than ever before. 

These playgrounds encourage people to spend more time in nature. Kids can get ample exercise scaling wooden structures, building forts, rolling in the grass, and climbing trees. Meanwhile, parents can walk around a pond, play pickleball on a court, or just relax on a bench while their kids play. And those without kids can meet new friends, have a picnic date, and more. All of these activities and more promote mental, physical, and emotional health of everyone involved. 

In the end, eco-friendly playgrounds are an ideal answer to the problems of climate change and exhausted resources. They both reduce their cities’ carbon footprint and save the cities money, and promote the health and well-being of the members of the community who visit.  And as a bonus, they offer an opportunity for kids of all ages to start learning about the important role of environmental stewardship. They’re heartwarming, welcoming spaces that serve the greater good.

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The Irish philosopher George Berkely, best known for his theory of immaterialism, once famously mused, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

What about AI-generated trees? Probably wouldn’t make a sound, but critical nonetheless for things like conservation efforts to adapt our urban forests to climate change. To that end, scientists from MIT CSAIL, Google, and Purdue University’s novel “Tree-D Fusion” system merges AI and tree-growth models with Google’s Auto Arborist data to create accurate, 3D urban trees.

The project produced the first-ever large-scale database of 600,000 environmentally aware, simulation-ready tree models across North America. This helps urban planners understand where they can build more green lungs.  Cities like Toronto get a 17.5% green canopy, while Tel Aviv gets a 17%.

“We’re bridging decades of forestry science with modern AI capabilities,” says Sara Beery, MIT EECS Assistant Professor and MIT CSAIL Principal Investigator, a co-author on a new paper about Tree-D Fusion. “This allows us to not just identify trees in cities, but to predict how they’ll grow and impact their surroundings over time. We’re not ignoring the past 30 years of work in understanding how to build these 3D synthetic models, instead, we’re using AI to make this existing knowledge more useful across a broader set of individual trees in cities around North America, and eventually the globe.”

Tree-D Fusion builds on previous urban forest monitoring efforts that used Google Street View data, but branches it forward by generating complete 3D models from single images. While earlier attempts at tree modeling were limited to specific neighborhoods, or struggled with accuracy at scale, Tree-D Fusion can create detailed models that include typically hidden features, such as the back side of trees that aren’t visible in street-view photos.

AI trees and implications for making cities cooler, safer, better maintained

The technology’s practical applications extend far beyond mere observation.

City planners could use Tree-D Fusion to one day peer into the future, anticipating where growing branches might tangle with power lines, or identifying neighborhoods where strategic tree placement could maximize cooling effects and air quality improvements. They can map how trees might respond to climate change or stop catastrophic flooding. These predictive capabilities, the team says, could change urban forest management from reactive maintenance to proactive planning.

“This high level of specificity in tree simulation has broad applications in forestry, where species and genera vary in growth, ecological roles, and climate resilience,” says Jan Stejskal, Assistant Professor at Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, who wasn’t involved in the research. “Also, it enables city planners to simulate how urban forests affect air quality, shade, and biodiversity, helping optimize tree planting for urban cooling, carbon sequestration, and habitat creation, ultimately fostering more sustainable cities.”

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (and many other places) 

The researchers took a hybrid approach to their method, using deep learning to create a 3D envelope of each tree’s shape, then using traditional procedural models to simulate realistic branch and leaf patterns based on the tree’s genus. This combo helped the model predict how trees would grow under different environmental conditions and climate scenarios such as different possible local temperatures and varying access to groundwater.

Now, as cities worldwide grapple with rising temperatures, the research offers a new window into the future of urban forests. In a collaboration with MIT’s Senseable City Lab, the Purdue University and Google team is embarking on a global study that reimagines trees as living climate shields. Their digital modeling system captures the intricate dance of shade patterns throughout the seasons, revealing how strategic urban forestry could hopefully change sweltering city blocks into more naturally cooled neighborhoods.

“Every time a street mapping vehicle passes through a city now, we’re not just taking snapshots — we’re watching these urban forests evolve in real-time,” says Beery. “This continuous monitoring creates a living digital forest that mirrors its physical counterpart, offering cities a powerful lens to observe how environmental stresses shape tree health and growth patterns across their urban landscape.”

AI-based tree modeling has emerged as an ally in the quest for environmental justice: By mapping urban tree canopy in unprecedented detail, a sister project from the Google AI for Nature team has helped uncover disparities in green space access across different socioeconomic areas. “We’re not just studying urban forests — we’re trying to cultivate more equity,” says Beery. The team is now working closely with ecologists and tree health experts to refine these models, ensuring that as cities expand their green canopies, the benefits branch out to all residents equally.

While Tree-D fusion marks some major “growth” in the field, trees can be uniquely challenging for computer vision systems. Unlike the rigid structures of buildings or vehicles that current 3D modeling techniques handle well, trees are nature’s shape-shifters — swaying in the wind, interweaving branches with neighbors, and constantly changing their form as they grow. The Tree-D fusion models are “simulation ready” in that they can estimate the shape of the trees in the future, depending on the environmental conditions.

“What makes this work exciting is how it pushes us to rethink fundamental assumptions in computer vision,” says Beery. “While 3D scene understanding techniques like photogrammetry or NERF excel at capturing static objects, trees demand new approaches that can account for their dynamic nature, where even a gentle breeze can dramatically alter their structure from moment to moment.”

The team’s approach of creating rough structural envelopes that approximate each tree’s form has proven remarkably effective, but certain issues remain unsolved. Perhaps the most vexing is the “entangled tree problem”, when neighboring trees grow into each other, their intertwined branches create a puzzle that no current AI system can fully unravel.

The scientists see their dataset as a springboard for future innovations in computer vision, and they’re already exploring applications beyond street view imagery, looking to extend their approach to platforms like iNaturalist and wildlife camera traps.

“This marks just the beginning for Tree-D Fusion,” says Jae Joong Lee, a Purdue University PhD student who developed, implemented and deployed the Tree-D-Fusion algorithm. “Together with my collaborators, I envision expanding the platform’s capabilities to a planetary scale. Our goal is to use AI-driven insights in service of natural ecosystems – supporting biodiversity, promoting global sustainability, and ultimately, benefiting the health of our entire planet.”

::Treepedia

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City dwellers are now enjoying the pleasure and personal benefits of growing their own garden produce, which is often very expensive when purchased at local supermarkets and green grocers. Urban farmers who lack experience in growing their own veggies are receiving assistance from urban farming organizations, such as one called Urban Farming, a Michigan based NGO, which is making a big impact on turning American and other urban communities into active participants in the global urban farming food chain.

Urban Farming has helped establish local community farming projects in American urban locations such as Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and St Louis. Besides giving local residents the opportunity to participate in growing their own garden produce, Urban Farming is also helping to bring people together into a stronger sense of working together as a community. Part of the produce grown in these community farming projects is given to local food banks for distribution to needy people.

In water and land scarce parts of the Middle East, urban farming is coming into its own. A good example is taking place in Cario Egypt (photo), where a number of urban farming projects are turning rooftops into blooming urban gardens.

Cairo suffers from a combination of extreme population density, combined with a chronic lack of available vegetable produce. Local urban organizations such as the Egyptian Food Sovereignty Project, has established successful urban farming projects in this city of more than 12 million people.

Another M.E. urban farming example is taking place in the West Bank, where Palestinian refugees are now growing vegetable produce in rooftop gardens in a Bethlehem refugee camp. It all goes to show that successful urban gardening projects are possible virtually anywhere. All it takes is a bit of available space and a willingness to be involved in helping to green the planet.

Read more on urban farming projects:

Chicago’s urban farming produces fresh veggies all year, 24/7

Brooklyn’s Gotham Greens builds world’s largest rooftop urban garden

Sow much good farmer a CNN hero for spreading her seeds at the urban farm

Photo of urban farming in the city by Alternet.org

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When former US Vice President Al Gore warned about the consequences of global warming and climate change and was both applauded and condemned for his efforts, there were still more deniers than believers that our modern civilization was causing this two sided phenomenon.

Since 2007, When Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway,  the unpleasant realities of both global warming and climate change have been advancing more rapidly than anyone could have imagined. This has resulted in the UN issuing a report in 2014; saying that in regards to climate change, the “worst is yet to come”, due to Mankind’s abuse of the natural environment.

In addition to the serious combined effects that global warming and climate change have had on world weather patterns, increasing world temperatures have caused the earth’s polar ice caps to melt at rates never experienced in our planet’s recorded history.

This has resulted in steadily rising sea levels that are now threatening a large number of coastel cities. These include cities in the United States like Miami Florida, Charleston South Carolina; and also large parts of the New York City metropolitan coastal areas. A February 23 article in the New York Times covered the problems and misery that people are facing in the aforementioend cities due to rising sea levels causing flooding and severe ecological damage to lawns and other vegitation and polluting local water supplies.

According to the article, greenhouse gas emissions, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, “have caused the oceans to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome.”

The coastal flooding that has resulted from these rising sea levels is making life so miserable for people living in coastal cities that flooding by sea water is becomming commonplace; even when off-shore storms are not the blame.

In the words of Benjamin Strauss, author of a study of the effects of rising sea water on coastal communities that was released on Monday, February 22:

“I think we need a new way to think about most coastal flooding. It’s not the tide. It’s not the wind. It’s us. That’s true for most of the coastal floods we now experience.”

Us. We, the members of the planet’s most intelligent and now most numerous species of warm-blooded animals inhabiting it, are now considered the blame. There should be no more denying that human caused greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in these rising sea levels that are also causing problems in the Mediterranean region as well.

This also includes many parts of the Middle East, especially the Arabian Gulf. Whether one lives in Venice, Italy; Beirut, Lebanon; Alexandria, Egypt; Tel Aviv, Israel, or Dubai, UAE,  the combined effects of rising temperatures and sea levels are being increasingly experienced.

Oceanography experts now say the situation of rising levels “will then grow far worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely requiring the abandonment of many coastal cities.”

This in itself would be disastrous since some of the world’s most populous cities include Hong Kong, New York City and Tokyo, Japan. Yet, despite world oil prices plunging to recent record lows, oil is still being pumped out of the ground in near-record amounts; or flooded out by methods such as fracking, that is also polluting underground fresh water supplies.

In the recent COP 21 Climate Change Conference, held last December in Paris, 195 countries adopted the first ever, legally binding global climate deal that strives to keep annual rising world temperatures to under 2 degrees Celsius.

The problem regarding this agreement is that it is only scheduled to take effect in the year 2020. By then, four years from now, the continuing affects of fossil fuel caused global warming may already have caused many coastal areas to suffer irreversable damage so severe that partial or even total abandonment may be the only viable option.

Read more on effects of global warming and climate change in the Middle East and elsewhere:
Climate change “worst” is yet to come, UN report warns today
Saudi agriculture to be hit hard by climate change
Should Al Gore profit from global warming? Should any of us?

Photo of Florida coastal flooding by ireport.cnn.com

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Smart phone developers aren’t just devising novel ways to deliver information about composting and how to save energy (like 5 green apps that can save the planet). They are helping us run our homes. 

Developers and startup companies are now unlocking the power of phones as mini computers and call centers to run solar systems. See Nova Lumos – a company that charges a per use fee to run and own solar panels in Africa.

The latest from Israel is a company called GreenIQ that pairs a smart phone with a home owner’s irrigation system.

For $200 and $35 shipping and handling, this smart system can operate your garden by Wifi even when you are on a trip to Helsinki.

Linking with available data, GreenIQ “knows” the outdoor humidity, chances of rain, and time of sunset, so that when you irrigate your plants and trees, or water your grass, you do so only when the water is really needed.

“The GreenIQ has no sensors. It gets all the weather information from the internet via WiFi. The weather data comes from the weather station nearest to your home,” Odi Dahan, GreenIQ founder and CEO tells Green Prophet.

Countries like Finland have been thinking about creating smart cities for years already. Israelis too have been coming up with great ideas, the problem is getting them implemented. GreenIQ however is ready to ship.

It does two things: it not only saves water, but the smart system, according to the company, can save you power by helping you turn off the garden lights. That is, if you aren’t already using solar power lights to light your way.

This is a good solution for home owners in suburbia who want their systems on autopower. Or for people who live in hot countries and travel a lot.

This is a problem we have when we leave the house for a month at a time. Since there is no smart system for feeding and walking the dog, or taking care of our chickens, we ask someone to come over to help.

We already have a sensor at home that turns our outdoor safety lights on come dusk, and I prefer to water my garden by hand. It’s actually the better part of my day when I do that.

But if you need to go on autopilot (I am thinking apartment landlords, or office buildings), GreenIQ could be the solution for you.

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Dating back to the 400’s, the farms are located beside the ancient walls encircling Istanbul’s historic core, writes Jennifer Hattam, who we have interviewed in the past about her work with the popular eco-blog Treehugger.

“Though the people working there change, these gardens have been part of the urban landscape of Istanbul for arguably longer than [the 6th-century basilica] Hagia Sophia itself,” Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, a lecturer in architectural history at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, told Hattam.

He added that they are fundamental to the city’s identity and should be preserved as such.

Unlike Gezi Park, one of the few remaining green spaces in the heart of the city, these gardens are slated to be replaced with an urban park (instead of another shopping mall.)

It will have an artificial river, playgrounds, cafes and water fountains. Sounds kind of nice, right?

For one mother, it sounds like heaven. At last there’s a chance her children will know something other than concrete. But the farmers have nowhere else to go.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, where we’ll go if our land gets destroyed as well. We don’t have anything else,” one woman told Jennifer. She and her husband eek out a meager living selling their small selection of crops at the Istabul wholesale market.

Hattam raises some interesting points about urban planning, which is becoming increasingly arbitrary and capricious in Turkey, perhaps reflecting the current government.

When a handful of people protested the Gezi Park project, local authorities responded with tear gas and water cannons, prompting thousands of people in cities across the country to pour out into the streets, along with their baggage of pent up anti-government anger.

The Yedikule neighborhood, which erupted in angry shouting last week at a press conference, is concerned about attracting a similar outcome.

For the full scoop, head over to The Atlantic Cities, and be sure to stop by TheTurkishLife to learn more about Jennifer Hattam.

Image of Turkish walls via Shutterstock

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When we think of treehuggers, and people who advocate treeplanting, we think 80s hippie, or Julia Butterfly Hill, the gal who lived in a tree for 2.5 years to fight against deforestation. Or the old-fashioned model of the Jewish National Fund to plant trees everywhere in Israel. But in a new move, a United Nations body urges cities of the world (and the people who live in them – that’s us!) to start planting trees to mitigate climate change. There are a lot of benefits, as many of us know, to trees in the urban space. And the UN organization report will highlight what and how.

According to a new report released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations, more focused policies and investments aimed at protecting and managing forest and trees in and around cities are needed to strengthen urban livelihoods and improve city environments, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized.

This was the message offered today on the occasion of World Habitat Day.

As an increasing share of the world’s population now lives in cities and their surroundings, the report calls on countries to pay more attention to managing and protecting urban and peri-urban forests.

In addition to improving the quality of urban environments, forests in cities can also mitigate severe weather impacts by shielding buildings from strong winds and flooding and can help cities save energy by acting as a buffer from hot weather.

Once they grow deep enough, trees in parched areas can thrive by themselves in most cases.

“The accelerating rate of natural disturbances affecting cities such as storms, droughts, floods and landslides reminds us that resilience to disasters is of critical importance and that trees play an important role in protecting city environments,” said FAO Assistant Director-General for Forestry Eduardo Rojas-Briales.

“Good practices in urban and peri-urban forestry can contribute to building a resilient city in terms of mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change.”

A no brainer for environmentalists

Urban forests also improve the well-being and health conditions of citizens by cooling the environment, particularly in arid zones. That means less air conditioning.

“Trees and forests in cities provide urban dwellers with much needed recreational and ecological values, and during the International Year of Forests we have seen many examples of community activities in cities from tree plantings to nature hikes,” said Ms. Jan McAlpine, Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat. “These ‘green belts’ also serve as valuable habitats for birds and small animals and create an oasis of biological diversity in urban environments.”

Additionally, urban trees afford vital ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and carbon storage, and can serve as a source of alternative energy.

Urban agriculture and agroforestry, home gardens, and the harvesting of non-wood forest products like mushrooms can supplement household food supplies, but are not common practices, globally. Some cities, like Toronto, have started to see locavores scavenging for food products from the city trees and green spaces.

Urban forests can also serve as a living laboratory for environmental education in urban settings helping to bridge the gap between urbanized populations and forests.

“Often unclear responsibilities for different parts of the urban forests, lack of policies and legislation, as well as lack of comprehensive information, hamper successful integrated approaches to urban forestry,” said Cecil Konijnendijk, Deputy Coordinator of a research group on urban forestry initiated by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).

How can you start sowing seed bombs?

The guidelines, which set to be published in July 2012, will give a comprehensive review of good practices and highlight significant initiatives taken around the world in order to contribute to improved policy development and decision making.

Image of green space in Istanbul via argenberg

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It’s really quite common to see the entire tops of trees lobbed off, and sitting by the side of the road in Tel Aviv, and other cities in Israel. It makes one sad, especially since it’s often done in the summer time, when the foliage is perfect for providing much needed shade. I always thought it was a throwback from the settlement days, when people lived in the Kibbutz and were eager to get back to nature by pruning it. Perhaps over enthusiastically. Turns out there is a very good reason for the tree-trimming madness in Israel, and it’s about money: Bribes, scandals, the Jewish National Fund, and the tree-trimming mobsters are in it together.

According to a news report today in the Haaretz/International Herald Tribune (no link), that Israeli tree-trimmers are part of a cartel, a mob that excessively trims trees to collect steep fines.

Backed by bribes to the Jewish National Fund staff, the Israel Electric Company and the Israel Defense Forces, the tree-trimming mafia have taken in dozens of millions of dollars for their pruning services, most of which was unnecessary. Working together, several companies competing for the services bid on what they offer as inflated tenders – artificially high so the bar for services would be very expensive.

These services include pruning under electric wires. Splitting all the work and income between the companies, these companies are suspected of bribing officials on the inside so they could better prepare their bids and earn excessively high amounts of fees for their services.

In a story in Haaretz just two weeks ago, city residents in Tel Aviv complained about the over-use of tree-pruning sheers:

“They destroyed 80 percent of each tree – it’s unbelievable,” one local said. “We sat with the municipality in endless meetings and talked about how it’s necessary to monitor the people who do the pruning. That didn’t happen with the last pruning.”

A hotline for the trees

Is this a reason to privatize services supposed to be handed by the government?

The government has now provided a hotline if you suspect someone is over-trimming public trees, or who are cutting them down or neglecting them. Call in Israel 03 948 5816 or email trees@moag.gov.il.

Image via state-library-australia

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Che Guevara had his motorcycle and they had their bicycles: Revolutionaries on wheels went from all corners of Cairo to Tahrir Square to demand a better future for their country. They got there faster than most, as traffic was a killer and the metro station on Tahrir square was no longer operative. Once there, they voiced their demands for freedom and dignity. The people demanded the removal of the regime and the regime obliged.

On the 12th of February the revolution showed a new even more beautiful face, overnight it metamorphosed into a green revolution. People cleaned Tahrir square, separating waste at source and sweeping every grain of dust on the pavement. Afterwards, they started repairing and painting the sidewalks and fences.

Seeing thousands of people brooms and paint brushes in hand in Tahrir Square on the 12th of February brought tears to my eyes. Egyptians were finally reclaiming their streets and concerned with the beautification of their surroundings. I asked myself, why would that be? Is it a new born sense of ownership? Is it the hope that was born with the revolution? I even contemplated other potential changes, will the revolution impact cycling?

The old regime which was a bit tight on agglomerations and under the emergency law police kept their eyes on large gatherings. Egyptian cyclists occasionally riding in groups of 100 to 150 were harassed. Ride leaders were interrogated as to the nature of activities (and whether the rides were demonstrations of some sort) and requested to issue permits for events gathering a large number of people.

Now that the right to peaceful demonstration has been granted (or rather snatched from the claws of the regime) and at a time when we expect the lifting of the emergency laws, can we hope for a change? Can we expect thousands of cyclists to fill the very same square that called for democracy to in turn call for a bicycle friendly city?

Will Cairo that kept the whole world glued to television and computer screens in the past weeks be the next Critical Mass city?

Critical Mass is a bicycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world. The ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco. The inspiration behind the ride was to create social space via the bicycle. The purpose of Critical Mass is not usually formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets on bikes, although for some bigger scale events there is an activist group formed around it, organizing the rides and communicating the desires and problems of the cyclists to the city council.

Critical Mass rides have been perceived as protest activities. A 2006 New Yorker magazine article described Critical Mass’ activity in New York City as “monthly political-protest rides”, and characterized Critical Mass as a part of a social movement; and the UK e-zine Urban75, which advertises as well as publishes photographs of the Critical Mass event in London, describes this as “the monthly protest by cyclists reclaiming the streets of London.”

More on greening Cairo:
Keep It Clean Cairo
Tap Into Solar Energy at MENASOL
Get A Ride With Egypt Car Poolers

Inji El Abd is the co-founder of the Green Arm (a platform and incubator for environmental initiatives in Egypt) and the Cycling for Change movement (whose mission is to make Cairo a bicycle friendly city).

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