This Saturday, June 4th (1-5PM)Go Green! Brooklyn Festival is taking over McCarren Park with a FREE celebration of the North Brooklyn Community and local environmental programs. Park-goers can engage with and learn about sustainability initiatives while sampling local food, participating in live-action art projects, music performances, and more!
Stevie Van Horn, Conflict Palm Oil free/Trash free/Plastic free at Homecoming
“I love the trees in Greenpoint!” says Stevie Han Horn, 28, who moved to Brooklyn from Colorado in 2012. “Part of it makes me feel as though I’m in a small town. There are a few roads in Greenpoint that make me feel so smitten because the trees funnel the street making it extra dreamy.”
Nature lover? Sure. But when I learned that Stevie lived “trash free”, that seemed a little too hippy dippy for me. Yes, even by my standards! At first I didn’t believe her, like, is it even possible to live trash free? What does that even mean? Continue reading →
Find out how to keep Greenpoint green for Earth Day this week.
On a global scale, this year’s Earth Day marks a significant point in climate-change combat as world leaders including President Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping, gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to sign the Paris Climate Agreement, attempting to keep global temperatures rising above 2 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Thanks, guys!
And while historic world-wide initiatives are being considered, here are some ways we can get in on the action in our own neighborhood.
TODAY from 4pm-6PM you can join the NYC Eco-Schools and Greenpoint Eco-Schools in the Brooklyn Sustainability Coordinator Gathering, specifically celebrating the sustainability initiatives with Greenpoint’s teachers, students, parents and schools. This is a FREE gathering open to formal and non-formal educators across NYC and members of the Greenpoint community.
Calling all educators: Celebrate Greenpoint TODAY at 4PM.
2. Grab your crew, your posse, your family, or just your lonesome and head to Transmitter Park for Greenpoint’s INSTAMEET, co-hosted by Greenpointers and Edoardo Monti on FRIDAY April 22nd at 6:30PM. This is part of the WorldWide Instameet’s #LifeOnEarth celebration.
3. If hashtags aren’t really your thing, trot over to Newton Creek for an Earth Day Nature Walk, and learn about the the city’s wastewater treatment in one of the most infamously polluted industrial waterways in the US, all the while enjoying the inspired sculptures of artist George Trakas.Meet at the big picnic tables on the Whale Creek side at 6:30pm this FRIDAY.
4. Learn how you can help green Greenpoint through GCEF’s30+ environmental projects on Saturday, April 30th from 10am-noon at The Warsaw on Driggs Avenue. They’re looking for neighbors just like you to make things happen.
As Pope Francis alights upon our city, the New York Times turns its attention to Greenpoint’s own St. Anthony Church, where graffiti, theft, and abuse of holy water bely the sometimes less savory side of embracing the destitute.
Progress for Newtown Creek’s new Kosciuszko Bridge are right on track. Where public development projects are concerned, no news is certainly newsworthy.
New York’s first Polish Dual Language Program has landed at PS34. On the agenda: preserving the neighborhood’s cultural heritage, preparing kids to succeed in English, and raising a class of high-achieving wunderkind. Continue reading →
Do you care about keeping good jobs in Greenpoint and helping local businesses to be more environmentally sustainable?
Vote for the Greenpoint Environmental Business Stewardship Project!
This project will raise the quality of life in Greenpoint by working with local businesses to prevent pollution; protect workers from exposure to chemicals; cut back on waste, water, and energy use; improve the health of the community; and grow local businesses.
Green Businesses = Healthy Communities
We have an opportunity to win a grant from the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund, but we need your help!
There are three opportunities to vote!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Polish & Slavic Center 177 Kent St.
Noon – 2:30 pm or 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Polish National Home “Warsaw”
261 Driggs Ave.
10:30 am – 3:00 pm
Visit the “community preferencing” section of www.gcefund.org
You can vote for more than one project!
Check out these great proposals as well: Greenpoint Eco-Schools: Creating a Legacy of Sustainability and Curb Your Litter: Greenpoint.
The city is catching on that we need to get more sustainable in terms of our infrastructure. One way is to green private residences in ways that helps capture and redirect rainwater that would otherwise overwhelm the sewer system and cause CSOs (which is when raw sewage is released into our waterways.) Yeah – it’s totally a nasty affair and should be avoided!
NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced $6 million in grant funding is available for green infrastructure projects like rain gardens, blue roofs, green roofs, and porous pavement that manage stormwater runoff from private property. Private property owners in all five boroughs of New York City are eligible to apply. Continue reading →
Did you know that parties and events generate the second largest amount of waste in the USA, just behind the construction industry? That’s a bummer. But, before you cancel your Super Bowl party on Sunday- we’d like to introduce you to Susty Party, a Greenpoint-based company that creates responsibly made, eco-friendly party tableware. The folks at Susty Party are committed to sustainability and put together these helpful tips on how to make your next party an eco-chic affair.
Now you can have your chips and dip them, too!
3 Ways To Green Your Party
1. Choose reusable tableware if possible, but when quantity/location/price make disposable goods your best bet, be sure to pick compostable products. Rather than adding to the landfill with styrofoam or plastic plates, cups, and bowls, choose alternatives that can return to the earth instead. Susty Party makes compostable party supplies that don’t sacrifice style.
Sporty Super Bowl Snack Ideas on Susty Party Blog
2. Even if you do your part and pick reusable or compostable products, make sure to provide a way for guests to label their cups. If it’s a small, classy affair, consider something as simple as colored washi tape around the stem of wine glasses. For larger parties with compostable products, provide markers for easy name-tagging. Less cup use = less resource use.
3. Clearly label your waste bins. Be sure to have containers for trash, recycling, and compost. To eliminate confusion for your guests, make signs that clearly inform which bins are for what! Download free signs here.
The NYC Department of Parks & Rec is making it easy to recycle your x-mas tree into wood chips this year with MULCHFEST. Bring your tree to a local park on 1/11 or 1/12 from 10am-2pm, and take home your own bag of mulch to use in your backyard (or as a winter bed for your baby street tree). The donated mulch will be used to nourish plants across the city.
Trees can be dropped off at McGolrick, and McCarren, but if you want that mulch gift bag, head to McCarren, where your tree will be converted to wood chips right in front of your eyes. MAGIC.
If you can’t make it (or just cannot lug your huge-ass tree all the way to a park), put it on the curb for pickup anytime between now and 1/15. Just make sure to take off all the decorations first. Tinsel and lights are pretty, but not super compostable.
More than 26,000 trees were recycled last year. That’s like a small forest, right?
If the title of this post didn’t turn you away, rejoice, dear reader! Poop isn’t just a funny word, it’s also useful…for science.
Right in our own backyard, Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is turning the organic waste from thousands of New Yorkers into natural gas. Ok, jokester, we don’t mean that kind of gas. We’re talking about renewable natural gas that National Grid will use to heat spaces like your own apartment. Continue reading →
We bought over 1000 white christmas lights to decorate our Holiday Market and we hope to use them for a long time. When they finally die and we recycle them, they may end up in Shijiao, China, the “Christmas Light Recycling Capital of the World.” This interesting video by Adam Minter, of the blog Shanghai Scrap, shows how the process works in order to recover valuable components like copper and insulation. In the USA this insulation would end up in a landfill, but in China it is reused as slipper soles.
Vote for the Greenpoint Environmental Business Stewardship Project!
