For as long as societies have produced trash, they has sought to jettison said trash into whatever water is most convenient, polluting lakes, creeks, and rivers along the way. PRESENT Architecture wants to harness this impulse in order to construct Green Loop, a series of composting islands along the coasts of Manhattan and the city’s other boroughs. Each topped by a public park, the floating facilities would offer a more productive and cost-effective means of processing the city’s large quantities of organic waste.

The proposal is motivated in part by the great costs New York incurs in transporting the over 14 million tons of trash it produces each year. With organic products accounting for about a third of that amount, PRESENT sees an opportunity to cut into this expenditure by depositing the waste in a more local manner. This approach would also help to reduce the amount of traffic, noise pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions generated by trash’s traditional interstate journey.

The network proposed by the firm would service each of the five boroughs, composting trash to generate nutrient-rich soil. Each of the ten proposed plants would be to be capped by 12 acres of parkland, populated by green space and public gardens that one would presume would make use of the nutritious dirt produced below.