Planning Pool

Catawba County and University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) are collaborating on an eco-industrial park on the Blackburn Landfill in North Carolina.

Experiments are slated to start in a few months to test the site’’s integrated systems. The facility, named Catawba EcoComplex, hosts a number of facilities where the idea of “waste = food” reigns. In other words, wastes from some processes become feedstock for others.

Right now, the complex hosts a landfill, a landfill gas-to-energy facility, a lumber processor, a pallet manufacturer, sunflower and canola biofuels farms, and a cooperative farm. Catawba County is hoping to add a biosolids processing facility, a greywater processing system, waste-powered steam facility, plastics recycling facility, and an algae research center. The County also forsees developing a smart-grid education center, brick manufacturing, industrial composting, a greenhouse, anaerobic digester, and … Continue Reading

First of all I’d like to apologize to our Thai readers for taking liberties with the Thai language, subjecting it to puerile puns such as the one in the title of this post. More generally, I’d like to apologize to everyone else for subjecting you to potty humour. As a visitor to PlanningPool you, Dear Reader, deserve better than this.

But not in this post. It’s late. And I’m sometimes terribly immature.

In my defense, the title is at least somewhat relevant. Koh Phi Phi is a small resort island a queazy hour-and-a-half by boat from the southeastern Thai city of Phuket. After a bout of mildly academic work in Singapore, a fine city that could one day serve as a convincing substitute for “The Village” in a Southeast Asian version of The Prisoner, I found myself on vacation here. And … Continue Reading