sustainableflatbush.org

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.

P1000961, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush.

P1000960, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush.

Public Recycling bins for Paper (Papel), Glass (Vidro), Metal (um, Metal), and Plastic (Plastico). These bins were not around when I was here in for Carnaval in 2005; I haven’t poked my head in (yet!) to see how much they are being used.

P1010105, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush.

Lixo (trash) Organico and Lixo Inorganico dancing together. Anyone know what SESC stands for?

Okay, so I’ve been a rather bad blogger for a week or two, but I have a really good excuse: I’m in Recife, Brazil for Carnaval!

Needless to say it’s crazy here (in a good way), but I have a few photos to post that are relevant to the sustainability discusssion… here they come!

Last weekend was a big one for Reuse and Recycling here in Brooklyn!

2008’s first Saturday Greenmarket in Grand Army Plaza began a series of textile recycling events called “Second Chance Saturdays” (acceptable donations include used clothing, shoes, boots, hats, jackets, towels, bedding, and linens). These collections will continue at the Greenmarket every Saturday until March 29th; details from Council on the Environment are here .

“We are thrilled to be expanding this very successful clothing collection program to Brooklyn,” said David Hurd, OROE (Office of Recycling Outreach and Education) Director. “Some 193,000 tons of clothing and textiles that could be recycled end up in the landfill each year. By bringing these materials to the Greenmarket on your way to shop, New Yorkers help save these valuable commodities.”

Greenmarket Textile Recycling photo by Gowanus Lounge

Saturday and Sunday were Mulchfest days at Prospect Park and many other locations, where Brooklynites brought their Christmas trees to get chipped into mulch for gardens. I was fortunate enough to ride by on my bike and savor the lovely evergreen scent while enjoying a cup of hot chocolate, served up by our own Gardening Committee co-chair, Flatbush Gardener (aka Santa), who covers the event here. Apparently this is the first year the city has had two drop-off locations in Prospect Park (previously the only one has been at the Prospect Park West and Third Street entrance); the new Park Circle location, which is much more accessible for residents of Flatbush, Kensington, and other neighborhoods south of the park, collected 784 trees. This success speaks to the importance of providing convenient locations for recycling opportunities, particularly in New York City, where many people don’t own cars but are very creative at coming up with short-distance transport options.

Mulchfest photo by Flatbush Gardener

Back in the neighborhood, Sustainable Flatbush held our own Post-Holiday Electronics Recycling Event . As with the Christmas tree drop-off, we feel that providing a convenient location is key to local participation. 50+ visitors and three cargo vans filled with “electrojunk” (a new term coined by 3R Committee chair Mark Levy, host of the event) seem to prove our point. We delivered our goods to Lower East Side Ecology Center’s massive year-end e-waste collection at Union Square. Look for a repeat of this event every few months, due to popular demand.

Printer Recycling photo by Flatbush Gardener

2007 was the first fully operation year for Sustainable Flatbush, and I must say we accomplished a lot. Starting with our Kickoff Meeting on March 16th at Vox Pop Cafe/Bookstore, the goal was to find people in the neighborhood who wanted to work on sustainability issues locally. To my amazement, 25 people braved a blizzard to attend this event, and we had a great discussion where some common interests and goals were defined. (Full disclosure: to boost attendance I scheduled this event one week after my birthday and combined it with a party… but at least half the people there were new faces to me!)

Park(ing) Day on Cortelyou Road (story below!). Photo by Keka

For our second event we celebrated Bike Month with a program of Streetfilms (curated by yours truly) and a guest appearance by their creator Clarence Eckerson. In keeping with our theme of overcoming weather challenges, Clarence’s flight from the West Coast was delayed by severe rains and while waiting for him we conducted a discussion on Congestion Pricing with Livable Streets luminaries Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives and Aaron Naparstek of Streetsblog. Clarence’s honorarium was a vegan cupcake.

Event #3, an Urban Permaculture Lecture with former Flatbush residents Wilton Duckworth and Joan Ewing of Green Phoenix, packed Vox Pop with permaculture enthusiasts who exchanged ideas on how to apply this sustainable design practice to city living.

Then we worked with Lower East Side Ecology Center to create the first e-waste recycling event south of Prospect Park: Cortelyou Road Electronics Recycling diverted a truck full of discarded technology (and its accompanying toxins) from the landfill. Many thanks to Christina Datz-Romero for her pioneering work to make New York City more sustainable through LESEC’s recycling and composting programs, and for helping me stake out the perfect spot to park the big red dumpster.

In July we teamed up with the Green Edge Collective for Event #4, Eating Sustainably: a meetup and discussion on Sustainable Food. The Green Edge ladies, known for their Eco-Eatery tours and Supper Club community potlucks, kept the discussion lively as topics ranged from healthy food shopping to plastic bags to the environmental implications of consumption. Lots of food for thought (ouch).

I spent most of August on the West Coast, playing music, visiting family, and touring Oregon’s Willamette Valley by bicycle with a group of sustainability-minded vegans. Who knew quinoa was such a useful grain?

We started Autumn off right by participating in the neighborhood’s biggest street festival, the Flatbush Frolic, with a table full of materials promoting recycling. Eve Martinez from the Department of Sanitation’s NYC WasteLess program brought her full compliment of recycling stickers, brochures, posters, and fridge magnets. (What’s a street fair without fridge magnets?) We got to know our neighbors and I scored my new favorite T-shirt.

On September 21st Park(ing) Day was celebrated all over New York City, the U.S., and Planet Earth… including right here in Flatbush. We occupied a parking space and created a park for the day, complete with real grass, trees, a bench, art supplies, live music… and lots of people, especially kids! (See photo above.) Naturally Streetfilms covered this event, and Cortelyou Road Park is featured in their piece… check it out! This event’s special thanks go to Lindsey Lusher of Transportation Alternatives, who coordinated resources and information for almost two dozen sites all over NYC, and especially to Keka Marzagão, without whom Cortelyou Road Park simply would not have been possible! In addition to providing every possible form of support (moral, creative, physical), Keka insisted that we have real grass, which provided endless wonderment and joy to everyone who visited our park.

Okay, so in October we recuperated. By November we were ready to kick off a whole new level of activities with our Town Hall Meeting. 25 people attended (our magic number, perhaps!), and six committees were established, each with specific goals and projects. We are now holding monthly meetings where newcomers can get involved and committees report on their plans. 2008 already looks exciting, with the R3 Committee’s Post-Holiday Electronics Recycling Event coming up this weekend, the Gardening Committee planning a Spring event in conjunction with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Livable Streets Committee working on a Transportation Conference with Center for the Study of Brooklyn and Transportation Alternatives.

That’s the news for 2007. Much much more to come…

Special Thanks (in order of appearance):
Keka Marzagão (website/logo design, photos, VJ, chief co-instigator)
Jeff Duneman (DJ Drummerman, groove provider for Events #1-3)
Sander Hicks and the staff of Vox Pop
Cacao Arcoverde and Ileana Santamaria (musical magic for Event #3)
Susan Siegel and everyone at Flatbush Development Corporation
Clarence Eckerson and all at Streetfilms
Christina Datz-Romero (Lower East Side Ecology Center)
Carolyn Gilles and the Green Edge Collaborative
Lindsey Lusher (Transportation Alternatives)
Eve Martinez (NYC Department of Sanitation)
Mark Levy (host of Sustainable Flatbush Mothership)
Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener)
Eli Kramer (Brooklyn Junction blog)
Gretchen Maneval (Center for the Study of Brooklyn)
Cycleliciousness blog (inspiration for a bike-friendly NYC)
The Flatbush community for supporting our green future
Brooklyn bloggers for setting high standards of journalism, neighborhood pride, and humor
YOU… for reading

Next Sustainable Flatbush monthly meeting:
Monday January 7th, 7pm
462 Marlborough Road (between Ditmas and Dorchester)

Our regular meetings on the first Monday of every month are for newcomers and committee members alike. We will report on projects in progress and plan for future activities. Everyone is welcome!

Are you expecting a new iPod or DVD player or computer from Santa? Don’t throw the old one in the garbage — save it for Sustainable Flatbush’s Post-Holiday E-Waste Recycling event! If the stars align correctly, we will make some local pickups with a cargo bike!

Sustainable Flatbush Cortelyou Road E-Waste Recycling Event, Summer 2007

WHEN:
Saturday January 5th and Sunday January 6th, from 1 until 5pm

WHY:
Discarded computers and electronics are toxic hazardous waste! Keep your unwanted electronics out of the landfill by bringing them to this neighborhood e-waste recycling event.

WHERE:
462 Marlborough Road, Flatbush, Brooklyn (map here)

WHAT:
We will accept working and non-working:
• Computers (laptop & desktop) and Monitors
• Servers, mainframes
• Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers
• Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.)
• Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, etc.)
• Components (hard drives, CD Roms, circuit boards, power supplies, etc,)
• TVs,VCR & DVD Players
• Audio visual devices
• Radios/Stereos
• Cell Phones, pagers
• PDAs,Telecommunication (phones, answering machines, etc.)
• Media (floppies, cd’s, zips, VHS tapes)**

• please note: we cannot accept small household appliances
such as microwaves and toasters
**Gets sent to www.greendisk.com - if you have a lot of media please go to the website, pay a small fee, download an address label and send it directly to them.

All materials collected will be recycled via Lower East Side Ecology Center’s partnership with BuildItGreen. Additional information about e-waste recycling is available here.

This event is co-sponsored by Lower East Side Ecology Center and Flatbush Development Corporation.

Back in May I wrote my first post about the unsustainability of bottled water, and it has been gratifying to see the growing attention being focused on this issue over the last few months. Today the Bottled Water Story continues, with this very informative article from Earth Policy about efforts around the world to move citizens and city governments away from bottled water and back to the tap. Recommended reading! Here’s a taste:

Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed quaint a few decades ago, when water in bottles was a rarity. Now such endeavors are needed to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani.

Issues at stake here range from the huge trash problem created by plastic water bottles (recycling rates tend to be very low, especially in states — including NY — where there is no bottle deposit on non-carbonated beverages), to the amount of petroleum used in the creation of those bottles and transporting them around the globe, to the threat to funding of municipal water systems — which in some cases has resulted in their privatization.

I would venture to say that there is also a social justice issue involved when the public has been led to believe that a product will be healthier for themselves and their families at such an astronomical cost difference compared to an equal or better product they can already access for free. Here in NYC we are blessed with excellent tap water, and even using a filter system only adds a few dollars a year to the cost. It has been a great step to see bottled water promoted in schools instead of sodas, but an even better step would be for every child to have their own reusable water bottle. Sounds crazy? To see how one NYC teacher (and parent) did it, check out Brooklyn’s own Urban Botany blog. Who says one person can’t make a difference?

The time has come to take back the tap. As individuals and as a society, we can find better uses for the many dollars we would save by doing so:

With more than 1 billion people around the globe still lacking access to a safe and reliable source of water, the $100 billion the world spends on bottled water every year could certainly be put to better use creating and maintaining safe public water infrastructure everywhere.

So… maybe an excellent holiday gift would be a reusable water bottle, eh?

Next Sustainable Flatbush monthly meeting:
Monday December 3rd, 7pm
462 Marlborough Road (between Ditmas and Dorchester)

Committees will report on their activities and plans, including:

R3 Committee
Post-Holiday Electronics Recycling Event
January 5 and 6, 2008

Livable Streets Committee
Central Brooklyn Transportation Conference
to be held at Brooklyn College, early February 2008

Gardening Committee
Neighborhood Gardening Event
in collaboration with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
location TBA, late February 2008