sustainableflatbush.org

One big source of trash for those of us who shop online and mail order is excessive packing materials. Some companies are worse offenders than others, and hopefully this instance cited on Organic Picks is not the norm:

photo: Organic Picks
Yes, the small Pyrex bowl on the left is the purchased item!
As the post points out, [...]

According to this NY Times article, Seattle is leading the nation when it comes to recycling. It is among a growing number of cities, particularly on the West Coast, who do curbside collection of food scraps mixed with yard waste; this mixture is delivered to a high-tech composting facility, Cedar Grove Organics, and two months [...]

Trash is no trivial issue. Last month I attended a conference at Baruch College called A Panel On Long-Term, Sustainable Solutions For Managing New York’s Refuse, sponsored by State Senator Liz Kreuger; this discussion explored many angles of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra. One that came up repeatedly was the importance of composting — and [...]

“What I Did On My Summer Vacation” really was life-changing. It was exhilarating to face the physical challenges of long-distance cycling, camping, and eating vegan food (hehehe!) each day. It was inspiring to see concrete examples of sustainable living, and this made me more determined to move my own life in this direction, here at [...]

We interrupt the “What-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation” essay to give a brief report on this week’s activities back in Brooklyn…
The 30th Annual Flatbush Frolic street fair took place last Sunday on Cortelyou Road. Sustainable Flatbush was out promoting recycling and biking, and I acquired my new favorite T-shirt:

photos by Keka
Thanks to Eve Martinez from NYC Department of Sanitation [...]

Check out tomorrow’s
indie designer/fashion/recycling event
from the crafty folks at etsy!
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What is Trashion? Well, as you might guess, it’s fashion, accessories, art, and crafts made from trash and upcycled and recycled materials. You can check out the philosophy and some of the work of these artists here.

What will be going on? Well, well, at the Trashion [...]

Carolyn Gilles is a co-founder of the GreenEdge Collaborative, an event planner, and an organic chef. In this post she challenges herself and all of us to take some steps toward making our own lives more sustainable:
Be Mindfully Competitive with Yourself!
As some of you know, for the past 2+ years I’ve been studying and keeping [...]

NY Times’ City Room blog continues its Q&A series with experts on various urban planning issues (the first was with recently-appointed Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan). For the garbage/recycling geeks among us (I include myself here), this is a very interesting read.
And if we are going to think that expansively about how we might use [...]

Many thanks to all who supported last weekend’s Electronics Recycling Event on Cortelyou Road. We diverted a truckful of electronics devices from the landfill and made some friends along the way!

Thanks especially to everyone at Lower East Side Ecology Center for making the event possible, and to Flatbush Development Corporation for their promotion and support. [...]

This article in Fast Company magazine, “Message In A Bottle” by Charles Fishman, brings the bottled water discussion to another level. While I highly recommend reading the entire article, here are a few selected bits:
• Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We–a generation raised on tap water and water [...]