Sunset Park, Brooklyn (photo by Barry Yanowitz)

The name “Solid Waste Advisory Board” might evoke images of a room full of important-looking people, conversing in abstract and political language that would be lost on, or irrelevant to, the average New Yorker. At least, that’s what I was half-expecting. What greeted me instead was a room full of interesting and diverse people ranging from a retired science teacher to a graduate student to members of various community groups, talking candidly about issues that affect all Brooklynites. I quickly learned that, although it was a small meeting, the Brooklyn SWAB is a group of and for the people of Brooklyn, open to any and all interested residents. They make recommendations directly to the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, chaired by councilwoman Letitia James, so I really encourage anyone interested in the fate of solid waste in Brooklyn to come to next month’s meeting. I learned a lot and every attendee has the opportunity to voice their opinion and ask questions.

Last Monday, the main subject was the plan to build a new glass/metal/plastic recycling facility at Brooklyn Pier in Sunset Park, a site which is currently an empty paved lot. Tom Outerbridge, the General Manager of Sims municipal recycling entity, came to the meeting to give an informal presentation on the plans of the company, as well as answer the many questions and concerns posed by members of the Board. Sims is working with the Economic Development Corporation, and has a long-term contract with New York City, which also includes existing facilities in Long Island City, the Bronx and Jersey City. He really enlightened me on many aspects of recycling in New York that I had never thought about (and some that I had).  Focusing on efficiency, he stressed that building this facility would reduce the number of miles that recycling trucks would drive by 240,000 per year because currently, most of Brooklyn’s recycling is being driven to Queens for processing.

He also highlighted some unique aspects of the project which include easy pedestrian access to the site, a recycling education center to be used by elementary school classes, and the attempts to hire employees locally within Sunset Park. He also stressed a more general problem, which is contamination and sorting; even deciding what is “recyclable” is tricky, Outerbridge explained to us, because certain types of plastic,  in small enough quantities, have no market and the facility has no place to ship those materials to. He said that if they could collect and sort more substantial amounts of those plastics, then they would be able to sell them to companies who re-process them into usable material. If you’re confused, take comfort in knowing that I am too, and I think it’s fair to say that many of us at the meeting were slightly unsure about what the bottom line is. This highlights one of the most important aspects about recycling, which is the need for more outreach and education on the community level, so that every New Yorker has a clear idea of how to sort their trash and recyclables. And, the more that we all know about the ins and outs of recycling, the more we can make informed opinions and put pressure on the city to improve our recycling infrastructure.

This brings me to the other part of the meeting, which was to discuss a set of eleven new bills which will amend LL 19, the city’s comprehensive residential recycling law. These bills span from expanding the types of plastic to be recycled, to increasing the responsibility of the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education, to changing the enforcement and fines associated with improper recycling. Members of SWAB will be attending and testifying at upcoming hearings on the legislation, and the bills are expected to pass at some point this summer. These are meant to make recycling easier for residents, but more action may be necessary. For example, one attendee at the meeting pointed out that the Department of Sanitation has exactly one employee in charge of managing recycling in apartment buildings throughout the city, a tremendous job. Many people at the meeting seemed in agreement that there should be many more people with the same job, since apartment buildings may represent one of the biggest challenges in recycling outreach and education. Apparently, more money will be directed towards outreach in the near future.

Going to this meeting heartened me because it showed me that there are people in all corners of Brooklyn who are interested in informing themselves about solid waste in their city and in doing what they can to advance the cause of reducing our waste stream. It’s up to organizations like ours to educate our community and to come up with creative new ways to complement the actions the Department of Sanitation is already taking.

**If you’re interested in attending future meetings of the Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board, contact Ken Diamondstone at (718) 522-5437 or Nancy Walby at (718) 258 2701.

Recycled Art Project (photo by Keka)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Brooklyn Center of the Performing Arts Earth Day celebration on April 11th! The event was so crowded and energized, it was a great way to kick off the Earth Day festivities going on all spring!

There were representatives from the following organizations: Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Garbage of Eden Designs; Sustainable Flatbush; the ArtLab of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership Program; Seeds, Soil & Sunshine; The New York City Fire Department; the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation; Tova Ackerman’s Puppetry In Practice; Campus Road Garden; Puppeteer Ronny Wasserstrom; Teaching Artist Susan Marinoff; The Bar Mitzvah Project.

At 3 o’clock the doors opened from the auditorium where families had enjoyed a performance by the Dirty Sock Fun Time Band. As families were let out into the sunny (although windy!) spring air you could feel how awakened everyone was as they walked around all the tables asking for more information at every stop.

We had the privilege of working with a lot of children at our table, because we were making colorful flowers out of used plastic bottles as part of our Zero Waste Initiative. The parents and guardians seemed to enjoy the idea as much as the crafty children. Hopefully we inspired them to go home and keep thinking differently about products they have bought before they thrown them into the garbage destined for one of our already-overflowing landfills.

Seeds, Soil and Sunshine (photo by Keka)

Later in the day we walked around to meet the other participants and see what their organizations were all about. Madeline Nelson and Maikel Carder from Seeds, Soil, & Sunshine got me excited about growing my own food in my windowsill that I will plant in my parents’ garden during the summer. As I looked at the tiny, budding plant that I had just transplanted I asked Madeline with amazement, “So this will be an eggplant by the fall? Like I can eat it?” And with a big smile on her face she answered, warmly, “Yeah!” Growing my own food is such an empowering prospect, I want my windowsill full of edible greens! Not only will I know where they came from and that no pesticides were used to grow them, but the impact on the earth will be even smaller since the food will only be transported a few feet!

I was especially excited by Stephanie Huffaker from Garbage of Eden with the necklaces and headbands made out of used plastic bags. How eye-opening! It’s amazing that so much of what we throw in the garbage can be completely redesigned and rethought! Think creative, think innovation, think “What else can I use this for?”!

Thanks everyone who joined us for this day of inspiration and fun! I hope you learned something useful during the few hours we shared with one another, and that you’re just as excited as I am to make some small changes in our lives that will have significant impacts on our planet. I hope to see you at upcoming events! Enjoy the warmer spring air and sunshine:)

Sustainable Flatbush, Flatbush Food Co-op, and Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Association present a special Earth Day film screening of NO IMPACT MAN.

This movie is all about taking a new look at the way we impact our environment. Colin Beavan sets out to experience life without any automated transportation, electricity, no more non-local food and overall to make as little impact as possible for one year. No problem right? That is, until his wife who has completely different ideals from that of Beavan and their daughter is brought into the fray. How will this family cope with the new way of living? How will they be tested and what will they find out along the way?

As for me, after doing a little bit of research what I found interesting was the fact that the family had to give up a lot for that one year. I haven’t seen the movie yet so I would like to see what kind of strain it put on their relationship. All the struggles they endured and how they overcame, as well as learning from them what I can do to make less of an impact on environmental degradation. Isn’t that interesting? Shouldn’t all of us give this a thought and come see what this family has accomplished?

COME SEE AND FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF!

Flatbush Food Film Forum presents a special Earth Day film screening of NO IMPACT MAN
sponsored by Sustainable Flatbush, Flatbush Food Co-op, and Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Association

WHEN: Wednesday, April 21st at 7pm
WHERE: Prospect Park Temple Isaac, 1419 Dorchester Road (entrance on Marlborough)

Free popcorn provided by Flatbush Food Co-op! Kosher snacks available for purchase

While we were getting ready for our second annual Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are Event, we had to decide what would make our space look like Sustainable Flatbush was coming through without creating a lot of waste.

Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. (Clean Air Council)  We wanted to reduce that amount of waste, not add to it by buying brand new decorations! New York City already throws away enough garbage every day to fill the Empire State Building! (Clean Air Council)  How could we add to that in good conscience with our Zero Waste Initiative begging people to divert usable resources from the waste stream?

Flowers from Recycled Bottles (photo by Keka)

Keka had a great idea! We would use materials that people would have sent to landfills or recycling centers and instead, we would turn them into art.  During our arts & crafts party at Vox Pop, we cut water bottles into flowers, cut used paper into flowers, and even learned how to fold origami! One person’s garbage is another person’s reusable decorations!

After we had a bunch of flowers cut, we got to paint, sew paper flowers together, and talk about how great we hoped the event would be.  Our flowers were made with love and they filled the room with an air of DIY as all of the attendees and talented tablers discussed the upcoming gardening season.

Making Decorations at Brooklyn College (photo by Keka)

Thanks so much to everyone who helped and attended the event!!

Sustainable Flatbush is proud to be part of Project LeafDrop: “a volunteer-run, neighborhood-based coalition of gardeners and greening partners who are harvesting residential leaves for compost this fall.” The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden, a project of our Urban Gardens and Farms Initiative, will hold leaf collections on Sunday November 8th and Saturday November 21st from 11am til 1pm, and there will be a shredder on hand to create leaf mulch “while you wait.” So bring your fall leaves to 1550 Albemarle Road (at Buckingham Road) and be part of the movement for less garbage and more gardens!

Here’s a little background:
Until 2007, the NYC Department of Sanitation collected leaves in the fall and brought them to a municipal composting site in Staten Island; this compost was made available to urban gardeners at pickup sites throughout the city in the spring. However, in 2008 the Department of Sanitation discontinued this program and New York City’s leaves were carted to landfills along with the rest of our garbage, where they represent both a major addition (20,000 TONS) to the city’s waste management burden and a missed opportunity to create free, high-quality gardening fertilizer for NYC residents and community gardens.

photo by Flatbush Gardener

Last fall one pioneering Brooklyn community garden, the 6/15 Garden in Park Slope, conducted its own leaf collection and was overwhelmed with leaves from literally all over the borough (apparently some were even brought by subway!).

Several weeks ago Sustainable Flatbush participated in the brainstorming meeting that created Project LeafDrop. With 6/15’s experience to draw from, representatives from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Compost Project, Earth Matter, East New York Farms, and several community gardens created a blueprint for how to collect and compost leaves locally all over the city.

More information about the project and leaf collection locations is available at the coalition’s website NYCLeaves, and also at the blog of our own Flatbush Gardener, where he includes a map of all the sites in Brooklyn. The leaves will be composted at community gardens for use onsite.

(Note: Flatbush Daffodil Project 2009, originally scheduled for November 7th, 8th, 14th and 15th, will now take place on the 14th and 15th only.)

Due to budget cuts, in 2008 New York City discontinued both its autumn leaf-collecting project and free compost pickups in the springtime. This was a big step backwards for the city, from the standpoint of both urban gardening and Zero Waste advocates: huge quantities of leaves (potentially soil amendments) are once again being sent to landfills.

The good news is that a group of Brooklyn compost advocates are meeting this Saturday to come up with a community-led initiative for collecting leaves to create compost and mulch for urban gardens! Read on for more info (the message quoted below has been making the rounds in community gardening circles).

Greetings,

Please join your fellow community gardeners and our friends from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a brainstorming session that will focus on how we can expand and improve community leaf collection and recycling this fall.

As you know, the City will not be collecting leaves separately from regular trash, again, this fall. That means that it’s up to us to find ways to take this rich source of garden nutrients out of the waste stream and bring it into our gardens, where it will do the most good. Building on a very successful leaf collection and recycling project that was implemented at 6/15 Green garden last year, we hope to coordinate a Brooklyn-wide project that will enable local community gardens to be collection points for bagged leaves from their neighbors for use in the community gardens….and possibly even distributed back to the community in the future.

This is truly a win/win for everyone. Gardens will benefit from the addition of wonderful leaves that they can use as mulch or make into “brown gold” compost and residents will be able to recycle their leaves knowing that they will not be wasted clogging up our landfills. Please join us for our first planning meeting to get the ball rolling. We’ll be brainstorming on the basic strategies of how we can work together, coordinate dates and collection methods, create a unified press release and outreach and the ways we can avoid duplication and confusion of efforts. We really need your voice and your ideas right from the start!

Feel free to forward this information to any community gardens or other folks you think would like to be part of this project.

Date: Saturday, October 3, 2009
Time: 12:00 Noon
Location: Ozzies’ Coffee 249 5th Ave. Bet Carroll & Garfield Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 768-6868
Subways: M. R to Union St Buses: B63 along Fifth Ave B37 & B103 along Third Avenue B71 along Union St.

We’re looking forward to a lively discussion. If you can’t make it to this meeting and want to be kept informed about upcoming meetings, please RSVP to this email or contact me directly and I’ll put you on the email list: Jessica Katz bklyn.nighthawk[at]gmail.com 718-788-8287

Best wishes, Jess — Jessica Katz Brooklyn, NY ************************************************************

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” “To forget to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” – Mahatma Ghandi

Related links:

NYC Department of Sanitation Leaf Composting page
Brooklyn Botanic Garden “What is Composting?” page

Don’t throw it away! Bring it to the

FLATBUSH FREEMEET

sponsored by Sustainable Flatbush and Freecycle™ New York City

WHEN
Saturday, May 9, 2009
From 11AM – 3PM

WHERE
P.S. 217 Playground
1100 Newkirk Avenue
(at Coney Island Avenue)
Flatbush, Brooklyn

Directions: Q train to Newkirk Ave, F to 18th Ave, or B68 bus to Coney Island Avenue and Newkirk.

WHY
Help reduce waste and keep our environment clean by finding new homes for your old stuff, and getting some things you can use in the process. Leftovers will be donated or recycled to every extent possible.

WHAT
Bring unwanted clothing, housewares and other reusable items to share* OR simply bring a tote bag to fill. Bring friends and family too!

Everything at the FreeMeet is FREE!

Got wire hangers? Bring ‘em to the FreeMeet so we can hang clothes and recycle the hangers afterwards.

* No furniture or heavy items, please. Bring portable items only and log on to http://www.Freecycle.org to give away furniture and other heavy stuff. More info on FreeMeet guidelines available here.

________________________________________

Spring Cleaning? Don’t Throw It Away—-Bring it to the Freecycle™ NYC FreeMeet!

Freecycle New York City celebrates spring and reaching 40,000+ members with TWO FreeMeets:

Saturday, April 18, 2009, 12pm-3pm
JJ Byrne Park (dead end on 4th Street b/t 5th Ave and the Old Stone House in the park)
Park Slope, Brooklyn

WHY: New Yorkers discard some 12,000 tons of waste each day, much of which is exported to landfills and incinerators in other states. Here’s your chance to help reduce waste and keep our environment clean by finding new homes for your old stuff, and getting some things you can use in the process. Leftovers will be donated or recycled to every extent possible.

WHAT TO BRING: Bring unwanted clothing, housewares and other reusable items* to share or simply bring a tote bag to fill. Bring friends and family too!

Got wire hangers? Bring ‘em to the FreeMeet so we can hang clothes and
recycle the hangers afterwards.

Love the idea but you’re already booked this Saturday? How about 2 weeks from now, right here in Flatbush?
Come to the FreeMeet on–

Saturday, May 9, 2009, 12pm-3pm
P.S. 217 Playground (1100 Newkirk Avenue at Coney Island Avenue)
Flatbush, Brooklyn

MORE INFO: www.RecycleThisNYC.org/freemeet

*please bring portable items only and log on to www.Freecycle.org to give away furniture and other heavy stuff.

Governor Paterson and the New York State Legislature did a very green thing earlier this month.

State leaders updated the state’s most successful recycling program, our bottle deposit law, to include bottled waters.

Expanding New York’s bottle deposit law will remove billions of bottles from the waste stream, as well as our natural areas and parks, roadways and waters. It will also return most unclaimed deposits to New York State rather than bottlers and beverage giants.

Visit www.eany.org to learn more about Environmental Advocates of New York.

Environmental Advocates of New York’s email list and website are great resources for staying informed on environmental issues specific to New York State, and to participate in their online campaigns. You can sign up here to receive email updates from them.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile know that New York State’s Bigger Better Bottle Bill is a piece of long-unpassed legislation that we’ve been rooting for. (See here and here and here…) Although the article quoted below refers to a “watered-down” version of the bill, this would still be a vast improvement over our current situation.

If you are unfamiliar with the BBBB, the idea is to offer cash deposits on containers of non-carbonated beverages such as bottled water, iced tea, and sports drinks (unknown entities when the Returnable Container Act was last revised in the early ’80s). This would improve recycling compliance, keep millions of plastic bottles out of the waste stream, and raise money for NY State environmental projects. Beverage industry lobbyists have successfully fought the BBBB’s passage for years, but it looks like we may be on the verge of a breakthrough:

Al Stirpe: NY’s Bigger Better Bottle Bill poised to pass
by Delen Goldberg / The Post-Standard
Friday March 27, 2009, 4:29 PM

Budget news is looking good for the environment and its advocates.

Assemblyman Al Stirpe, D-North Syracuse, said today that the
Legislature appears poised to include a Bigger Better Bottle Bill in
next year’s budget and restore funding to the state’s Environmental
Protection Fund, a permanent pot dedicated to paying for Earth-
friendly initiatives.

“That’s good news,” Stirpe said.

The Bigger Better Bottle Bill being discussed is a watered-down
version of previous proposals. If approved, it is likely to impose a
nickel deposit only on water bottles, rather than on all noncarbonated
beverage containers.
Unredeemed deposits would be split, with 80 percent going to state
cleanup programs and 20 percent going to distributors, Stirpe said.
The bill also would require big box stores and drug stores to install
reverse vending machines to collect bottle redemptions.

Lawmakers also appear to have come to an agreement about restoring
funding to the EPF.

Gov. David Paterson suggested cutting the fund from $255 million to
$205 million. But Stirpe said lawmakers have bumped the fund back up
to $222 million.

They also eliminated several new line items the governor had attached
to the EPF, so funding actually increased by about $35 million, Stirpe
said.

As Coquille of Educating Tomorrow points out, this could mean more money for green school initiatives, amongst other good things.