Backyard Utopias
Backyard Utopias is a network of endeavors rooted in local community engagement and environmental activism. The network promotes the exchange of aid, knowledge, and products among disparate initiatives that share common goals of environmental stewardship, mutual aid and sustainable production within the urban landscape.
3 SPECIFIC BACKYARD UTOPIA PROJECTS:
Restoring and remediating soil: We want to make Brooklyn backyards into places where kids can create, experiment and explore and where plants and food can grow. In order to do this we need to restore and remediate the soil with phytoremediation and biochar.
Testing the potential of cleaning polluted waterways: Floating gardens in the Gowanus: We are colonizing the Gowanus canal with floating gardens and biochar with the knowledge and understanding that plant growth will bring ecological benefit in this highly polluted environment.
Filtering Rainwater to create drinking water: The church yard: We are making biochar in the Koko yard next to the church. The biochar making process is carbon negative and the biochar can be used in all kinds of ways. We are using biochar to clean the environment and stimulate plant growth in all our Backyard utopias. In the church yard we are building a rainwater collector and filtering the water through biochar to make a drinking water source.
AMBASSADOR CARTS:
Open Source’s children’s Program KoKo NYC teamed up with Dilly Dally Projects to further our mission to elevate NYC kids voices to be heard as advocates for our environment.
What are Ambassador Carts? They are mobile display carts made by young New Yorkers out of reclaimed materials. The carts will be distributed around Brooklyn as a showcase of the kid’s creations and experiments with biochar and the use in remediating soil and water in our Backyard Utopias.
What is KoKo’s and Dilly Dally’s specific project? KoKo NYC and Dilly Dally Projects – a group of architects/designers focused on education and experimentation – come together to invest in the common mission: TRASH IS TREASURE! Our programming focuses on biochar – the carbon-sequestering byproduct of pyrolysis – as a means of connecting waste management, climate change mitigation, water- and soil remediation, at a localized urban level.
What is Backyard Utopia? Backyard Utopias is a network of islands of community based, local, sustainable production within the urban landscape. The network includes private and public spaces where we exchange knowledge, ideas and products with a shared vision to replace large scale systems of production with local networks with a shared priority to be inclusive, zero waste and carbon negative.
Related Project: Tinker Think Tank
THE GREEN NEW DEAL 2021: