Seaweed Farming And Wetlands In A Box: How Governors Island Has Become A Climate Lab
Entrepreneurs are testing ideas and products that aim to advance solutions to the climate crisis, which you can see in action this weekend.
Yazmeen Abdel works to construct a floating garden on Governors Island as part of the RETI Center's project to bring marshland back to New York City, July 11, 2024. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/THE CITY
JULY 12, 2024
A seaweed nursery. In-sink wastewater treatment. Man-made floating marshes.
Those are just some of the concepts taking physical shape in a real-world laboratory: Governors Island.
Throughout the island, entrepreneurs and nonprofits are testing initiatives and products aiming to advance solutions to the climate crisis, which will have special demonstrations open to the public this weekend
It’s part of a program spearheaded by the Trust for Governors Island to support innovations that focus on water: cleaning it, conserving it, making use of it as a resource and fostering habitats within it.
Six initiatives received $10,000 grants and access to a shared pool of $100,000 to jumpstart projects, as well as space on the island to install the equipment needed to pilot the ideas.
They run the gamut from air quality monitoring efforts by community group South Bronx Unite, carbon dioxide removal from a company called Vycarb and a vertical hydroponic farm in a shipping container, managed by the nonprofit GrowNYC.
Barry Rothstein of GrowNYC shows hydroponically grown kale inside a Governors Island shipping container, July 11, 2024. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/THE CITY
Using Governors Island’s waterfront, parkland and facilities as a lab enables the inventors to see their ideas in action to tweak and ultimately scale the projects.
Taken together, the projects represent a “much more optimistic vision for how a city can look when it’s truly sustainable and truly resilient,” said Trust President and CEO Clare Newman on Thursday, the island’s first climate demonstration day.
The public can check out the projects and chat with the people behind them during a free, science fair-like event on Saturday.
Cleaner Greywater
Among the projects that marked their debut on the island is a miniature wastewater treatment system from Cycleau. Visitors who approach an outdoor sink on the Parade Ground may notice a silver box beneath, and those who use a bathroom closer to Yankee Pier might see a blue box under the sink, too. These boxes filter and clean the greywater as it comes out of the drain, before it hits the city sewer system.
Cycleau founder Noemi Florea shows off the miniature water treatment systems installed beneath a Governors Island bathroom sink, July 11, 2024. Credit: Samantha Maldonado/THE CITY
The city’s sewers handle both stormwater and wastewater, so when it rains significantly, untreated water — from sinks, laundry and toilets — can’t make it to the treatment plants, and instead flows directly into the ocean, rivers and creeks.
“We found that if we can actually treat wastewater where it’s being generated below the sinks, showers and laundry units, we can effectively reduce the amount of pollutants that ultimately end up overflowing into every time it rains,” said Noemi Florea, founder of Cycleau.
If every residential bathroom in the city installed a Cylceau unit, it’d lead to a nearly 50% reduction of the wastewater that enters water bodies, according to estimates by Shambhavi Gupta, a graduate student at Columbia University analyzing the technology’s impact as part of an internship for Cycleau.
Ideally, Florea said, “individual homeowners purchase and collectively participate in this wastewater treatment, or the property developer.”