Promoting sustainable living in our Brooklyn neighborhood and beyond.
If you can’t make it next Tuesday (or even if you can) there’s a petition you can sign to support this cause: The NYC Recycling Action Committee, formed by two NYC teachers, aims to help get recycling programs in every public and private NYC school. […]
This comes from Educating Tomorrow, a group that “seeks to build a dynamic community connecting NYC K-12 teachers, administrators, students in teaching, and organizations serving children and schools”. Calling All NYC School Recycling Supporters! City Hall wants to hear from us! And we NEED YOUR […]
Last night was the first meeting to brainstorm and plan for the new Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. A group of 20+ people met at P.S. 217 to share their ideas of what they’d like this neighborhood resource to become. In addition to growing vegetables and fruits and flowers, what many of us expressed was the desire for a place where we can meet our neighbors, form ties to our community, and enjoy a peaceful outdoor environment. New York City has many examples of gardens that serve as hubs of neighborhood cultural and social interaction as well as providing beautiful green spaces (and in some cases food as well). Clearly there is a longing for such a place here in Flatbush, and our goal is to create one.
East 4th Street Community Garden, Kensington, Brooklyn, photo by Flatbush Gardener
Campus Road Garden at Brooklyn College
East Village community garden, Manhattan
There was also talk of composting, rainwater harvesting, permaculture, urban agriculture, and many of the other sustainability concepts that I for one have been hoping for a location to demonstrate and educate the community about (myself included!). It’s great to learn that other folks in the neighborhood share the same goals.
A tour of the site is scheduled for this Sunday afternoon… stay tuned for details.
Tour de Brooklyn 2008 starting line The Fourth Annual Tour de Brooklyn was, once again, a great success. I’ve ridden in all of them and because the route changes each year, the TdB offers a wonderful opportunity to see parts of Brooklyn that may not […]
I’ve received a number of inquiries lately from folks wondering where to recycle CFL bulbs locally (the bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, and shouldn’t be thrown out with the trash). This Wednesday the answer is at Brooklyn Green Drinks, hosted by Center for the Urban Environment at their beautiful new home, a showplace for green building practices.
Here are the details, courtesy of the Green Drinks website:
Join us for BKLYN Green Drinks @ The (Brooklyn) Center for the Urban Environment located on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. Celebrate their exciting and innovative new headquarters as they become LEED-Certified Gold for Commercial Interiors by the US Green Building Council, the first of its kind in Brooklyn!
Founded in 1978, Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment is dedicated to educating individuals about the built and natural environments of New York City. Creators of the Green Brooklyn conference and the Sustainable Business Network, the Center is a local leader in the field whose commitment to strengthening public education and developing more sustainable communities is rooted in the belief that creating a healthy and livable environment requires instilling an appreciation for and an understanding of the built and natural environments. Their wide range of programs address the needs of the city’s underserved communities with a diverse menu of hands-on educational offerings that develop an understanding of the interdependency of urban life with the local ecosystem, improving academic performance and instruction, and fostering environmental stewardship.
The folks at BCUE want to announce that they are also accepting
recycling on the premises that night:
• Alkaline batteries
• Inkjet/laser cartridges
• Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (CFLs)
• Technotrash, meaning: All forms of electronic media and their cases: diskettes, zip disks, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs et al, video
tape (i.e. VHS), audio tape, game cartridges, DAT, DLT, Beta or Digibeta, and virtually all other type of computer tapes.
• Hard drives, Zip and Jazz drives, jump drives, etc.
• All forms of printer cartridges including both inkjet and toner.
• All types of pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cables, and headset accessories
• All types of rechargeable batteries and their chargers
• All of the cords, cables, boards, chips, etc. attached to or removed from a computer.
WHERE:
Center for the Urban Environment, 168 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (btw 2nd and 3rd Aves)
F train to 4th Ave or R train to 9th Street. Walk over 2 blocks north to 7th Street and 1 avenue west to 3rd Avenue
WHEN:
Wed 5/21, 7 pm – 9 pm
Cash bar (proceeds to benefit CUE)
Still thirsty? Bar Tano located at 457 3rd Ave and 9th Street will be open until 12 am.
(… Now, if we could only find a permanent place to recycle our CFLs…)
The folks who’ve been bringing organic food to our neighborhood since 1976 are holding the official celebration of their large and beautiful new store tomorrow! Here’s the details: All are invited to the grand opening celebration to mark Flatbush Food Coop’s move into our newly […]
This is a community-organized, family-friendly, leisurely neighborhood bike ride, happening next Saturday morning. A great opportunity to see the architecture and sights in Bedford Stuyvesant, one of Brooklyn’s most beautiful and historic brownstone neighborhoods. Bed-Stuy Blog has the news: To celebrate Bike Month, Bedford-Stuyvesant will […]
Sustainable Transportation tidbits from this weekend:
Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gear
Four-dollar-a-gallon gas is good for business — if you run a bike shop. Commuters around the country are dusting off their old two-wheelers — or buying new ones — to cope with rising fuel prices, bicycle dealers say.
Hey, if the Parisians can do it, why not New Yorkers? Look how much fun they’re having!
Paris Bike Culture – Cycling Sociably, originally uploaded by [Zakkaliciousness].
And, on a similar note:
Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit
Michael Brewer, an accountant who had always driven the 36-mile trip to downtown Houston from the suburb of West Belford, said he had been thinking about switching to the bus for the last two years. The final straw came when he put $100 of gas into his Pontiac over four days a couple of weeks ago.
“Finally I was ready to trade my independence for the savings,” he said while waiting for a bus.
His *independence*… wow!! Personally, I love the independence of letting someone ELSE do the driving while I read, listen to podcasts, look out the window…
Our neighbors to the north at Hawthorne Street blog in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens (part of Flatbush? You decide…) have been discussing the horrifically dangerous entrance to Prospect Park at Ocean and Parkside Avenues for some months now, and have formed a local Livable Streets group called […]
