Promoting sustainable living in our Brooklyn neighborhood and beyond.
Tonight is the final workshop meeting of Imagine Flatbush 2030, the community visioning project created by Municipal Arts Society and Flatbush Development Corporation to “assist in creating neighborhood sustainability goals and tools to measure progress toward consensus-based goals”. As this stage of the project comes […]
Rebecca’s container gardening demonstration Last Sunday’s event, “Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” was a huge success! The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee assembled a stellar program of speakers and demonstrations on topics including Container Gardening, Urban Composting, Street Trees, Permaculture and more. Mela and […]
Sustainable Flatbush has just endorsed a new report on NYC energy policy and climate change response from Sierra Club NYC Group. The report praises PlaNYC while declaring that we need to go much further in order to address the increasing pace of climate change along with energy volatility:
Government sustainability initiatives may have greater success when framed as responses to energy volatility than to climate change. In the short term, expanding capacity margins through energy conservation will make the City more resilient to volatility, while expediting PlaNYC initiatives. In the long term, we need to push discussion far past PlaNYC’s current goals, and start building a post-petroleum economy now.
The good news is that a national project to make clean energy cheap can restore domestic manufacturing, create millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced, and stimulate the economy, while improving our quality of life and mitigating climate change. New York City’s leadership can help make such policy actions a reality, while ensuring a better future for our citizens. What’s the next step for New York City?
Here’s a link to the summary version (the whole report is 50 pages long!).
Here’s some great news for fans of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and fresh locally produced food in general: Amantai Farm CSA is coming to Flatbush! Shayna Lewis, last year’s market manager at the Cortelyou Rd. farmers’ market, is working with one of the farmers from […]
Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia and a legendary figure in the Livable Streets movement, speaks here with transit activists Commuters United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE). If you care about our city’s future and particularly the mobility of low-income New Yorkers, have a look.
Lots of interesting local developments occurred during my two-week foray into the world of Carnaval in Brazil (still catching up!), and here’s one of my favorites: NYC is seeing the light on addressing the Combined Sewer Overflow problem – where even a minor rainfall can send sewage into our waterways and beaches – through progressive and sustainable practices. The City Council passed legislation to create a Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan, and it looks like they’ve been listening to the right people (as opposed to following the Department of Environmental Protection’s more expensive and less effective end-of-pipe plans designed to deal with sewer overflow after it occurs). Environmental organization Riverkeeper has previously presented a report showing that the most cost-efficient way to mitigate excess stormwater is by capturing it at the source through simple infrastructure such as parks, trees, green roofs and rainwater collection systems. How great is it when the least expensive solution to a problem also provides significant quality-of-life benefits?
“This local law is good for the City’s environment and makes sound economic sense,” said Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper’s Chief Investigator. “By regarding stormwater as a resource for irrigating the landscape, we not only improve water quality, but also capture all the added economic benefits of green infrastructure, including cooler streets, reduced energy costs (by reducing building cooling needs), cleaner air, sequestration and reduction of global warming pollution, flood mitigation, and more livable communities.”
Follow the link below to read the complete press release…
(more…)
Ever wondered why New York State, and New York City in particular, are so far behind other parts of the country (and even the region!) when it comes to actual numbers of installed renewable energy systems (especially solar panels)? I’ve received some inquiries on this […]
Oil vs. Pashmina, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush. One Soho scarf vendor’s take on Peak Oil.
Yesterday New York’s City Council voted in favor of implementing what would be one of the most stringent electronics recycling laws in the country. According to the New York Times, the bill would
impose a $100 fine on anyone who throws an old computer, printer or other electronic gadget into the trash. Recycling the electronic waste will become mandatory, and manufacturers will be required to take back their own products as well as those made by companies that have gone out of business.
The voting majority was enough to override an expected veto from Mayor Bloomberg, who supports e-waste recycling in principle but believes that holding manufacturers accountable for customers’ behavior is unconstitutional. Be that as it may, I can’t think of a better motivational tool to get manufacturers to redesign their products using less toxic materials…
Check out the whole Times article here.
The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Commitee is spearheading this great free community event: On Sunday, February 24, residents and other members of the greater Flatbush community can learn what they can do to beautify and improve the environment of their neighborhood. “Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You […]
