We are super-excited to partner with The Cookbook Project to create a free and healthy meal for the  whole community — that means YOU!

Enjoy a delicious FREE vegetarian meal prepared by community chefs and Alissa Bilfield of The Cookbook Project, along with lively conversation about local food systems, food waste and composting, and the environmental, health, and budget benefits of eating a plant-based diet.

We will provide a cost-per-plate breakdown to illustrate that tasty, healthy meals can also be affordable! Come for an opportunity to share, learn, and build relationships around sustainable living in our community.

WHAT: Sustainable Flatbush’s Community Meal: Healthy Eating on a Budget
WHEN: Saturday, January 28th, 12-2pm
WHERE: Flatbush Reformed Church
890 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY [map]

Also – we are asking for donations of soup bowls for the church’s food program, which currently uses disposable styrofoam bowls.  If you can spare a reusable soup bowl, please bring one to donate!

(photo by Jason Reif)

Please bring:

• fruit and vegetable scraps
• coffee grounds and tea bags
• egg shells (with no egg residue)
• bread and grains
• fresh leaves, flowers, green plants and garden trimmings
• shredded newspaper or brown paper
• manure and bedding from horse, hamster, rabbits or guinea pig
• food soiled paper towels / napkins

Please DO NOT bring:

• meat or fish scraps
• fats, grease or oil
• cheese or dairy products
• non-compostable materials such as Plastic, Metals or Glass
• pesticide-treated plants, grass clippings, deceased or pest-infested plants
• dog and cat waste

TIPS:

* You can save your food scraps in the refrigerator or freezer to bring to the garden; freezing will kill any food flies and bugs often found on the skin or shell of most fruits and vegetables, and the added moisture helps in the compost decomposition process.

* Carrying your food scraps in a reusable (and rinsable) container means no yucky plastic bag to get rid of at the garden!

* Please shred or chop materials into small pieces (no bigger than your pinkie finger). The smaller the materials, the easier and quicker they will decompose.

* If you are unable to chop your scraps beforehand, tools will be on-site to chop the materials before we put them in the compost bin.

Winter Compost open hours will be hosted at the Flatbush Reformed Church on the following dates:

Saturdays January 7th and 21st, and February 4th, from 11am until 1pm
Please check our calendar to confirm Saturday composting schedule.

* Please DO NOT leave compost around the bins or by the gate. Compost will only be accepted during open hours!

See you at the compost site!

WHEN:
Saturdays January 7th, February 4th
(Composting on January 21st is CANCELLED)
11am – 1pm

WHERE:
The Flatbush Reformed Church
East 21st and Kenmore Terrace side (map).  

Check our calendar regularly for schedule updates, changes or cancellations.

See What to Compost to get you started. Turn your kitchen waste into rich soil for the upcoming gardening season!

Composting at the Flatbush Reformed Church

Potluck Feast! (photo by Keka Marzagao)

Come to Sustainable Flatbush’s first annual Buy Nothing Day Community Meal on Black Friday (November 25) 2011!

Buy Nothing Day offers an alternative to the consumerist excess of Black Friday: a chance to unshop, unspend, and unwind. Bring a dish to share, or bring ingredients (Thanksgiving leftovers are great) and join the communal cooking fun! Meet your neighbors and join Sustainable Flatbush as we build a local sharing economy.

The idea is to create a space where people can come together to enjoy a healthy free meal, get to know each other, and exchange ideas on how we as a community can become more engaged in the transformation to a society that is more equal and sustainable. To plug out of the mainstream for a day, abandon the tradition of Black Friday that comes with excessive consumerism, and discuss real alternatives.

Hope to see you there!
WHAT:
Sustainable Flatbush first annual Buy Nothing Day Community Meal!

WHEN:
Friday November 25th from 6 until 8pm

WHERE:
All Souls Bethlehem Church
566 East 7th Street (between Cortelyou Road and Ditmas Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY
(map)

In 2008, due to budget cuts, the NYC Department of Sanitation discontinued its program to collect fall leaves for composting, instead taking them to landfills as garbage. A group of community gardeners felt that this was both an outrage and an opportunity, as anyone who composts knows that leaves are a valuable resource and shouldn’t be wasted! Residential leaves 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.

In 2009 a citywide coalition called NYC Leaves was formed to keep fall leaves out of the waste stream by composting them at local community gardens through a program called Project LeafDrop. Locations to “recycle” leaves can be found all over the city. So don’t put your leaves on the curb where they’ll become trash; bring them to the nearest Project LeafDrop site, where the gardeners will thank you for your gift!

Sustainable Flatbush joined the NYC Leaves coalition in 2009, and since then we’ve diverted many tons of leaves from the landfill. Join us for Project LeafDrop 2011 at our new community garden project, the Church Avenue Communal Garden, located at the historic Flatbush Reformed Church! Our Community Composting program at the garden is growing, so we need your leaves!

Fun with leaves at the Church Avenue Communal Garden

We’ll accept leaves brought by neighbors and collect leaves from the church property, run as many as possible through a shredder, and store these carbon-rich “browns” for our winter compost collections.

WHAT: Project LeafDrop at the Church Avenue Communal Garden
WHERE: East 21st Street at Kenmore Terrace, Brooklyn (map)
WHEN: Saturday November 19th from 11am until 2pm

We welcome volunteers for this project!

Project LeafDrop is a great opportunity to get your hands dirty at the garden and learn more about compost, gardening, and urban soil remediation. If you’d like to volunteer, contact us at volunteer@sustainableflatbush.org or 718-208-0575.

Here are some additional Project LeafDrop sites in Kensington, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and Windsor Terrace:

Compost for Brooklyn
Newkirk Avenue at East 8th Street
Sunday November 20th
2-5pm

East 4th Street Community Garden
East 4th Street between Caton Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway
every Saturday and Sunday through November 20th
10am-12pm

High School for Public Service Youth Farm
600 Kingston between Rutland Road and Winthrop Street
Saturday November 19th
11am-4pm

Prospect Farm
Prospect Avenue below the Seeley Street Bridge
Saturdays through December 3rd
11am-1pm

“The planet has been stuck for too long with governments doing nothing about the biggest problem we’ve ever faced: the climate crisis,” said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the international climate campaign coordinating Moving Planet. “This is the day when people will get the earth moving, rolling towards the solutions we need.”

For this global day of climate action Sustainable Flatbush will focus on local solutions, by providing opportunities to learn and participate in a more sustainable future right here in our own neighborhood!

WHAT:
Moving Planet Sustainable Flatbush

WHERE:
Church Avenue Communal Garden at the Flatbush Reformed Church
East 21st Street and Kenmore Terrace, Brooklyn (map)

WHEN:
Saturday, September 24th 2011, 11am – 3pm

This event will take place rain or shine! If it’s raining hard we will keep the outdoor portions very brief and move inside the church house building (located in the center of the property).

Come join us, as we:

Kady and the composters (photo by Jocelyn Cohen)

Bump up the Compost!
Jump into hands-on education with Master Composter Kady Ferguson. We’ll collect and shred leaves (“browns”) for our 3-bin system, harvest finished compost, and add mulch to the garden beds. Learn how YOU can compost at home or here at our community compost site!

WHY COMPOST? Composting reduces waste by recycling organic matter that would otherwise be  considered garbage (food scraps, yard trimmings, etc.) into a nutrient-rich soil amendment through natural decomposition. That means fewer methane-producing landfills, fewer pollution-spewing garbage trucks, and more locally-generated rich fertilizer for NYC community gardens!

Blue Wood Aster (photo by Flatbush Gardener)

Go Native… native plants, that is!

Chris Kreussling (aka Flatbush Gardener) will lead a tour of our native plant garden, explain the benefits of gardening with native species, and teach us how to identify native plants (and distinguish them from weeds).

WHY NATIVE PLANTS? Native plants provide food and shelter for birds, butterflies, and other desirable wildlife, even in urban settings. Native plants save water and energy (including your energy!). Because they have adapted to local conditions, once established they are hardy and require no additional watering or maintenance. That means no need for fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides!

SunBike! (photo by Keka Marzagão)

Show Renewable Energy in Action with the SunBike!

The Sustainable Flatbush SunBike is a mobile off-grid solar energy system that travels around on a cargo bike. We use it to provide power for outdoor events and activities – from street fairs to garden work days! The SunBike shows that clean, renewable energy can be a reality right now.

WHY SOLAR?
Renewable energy sources are a crucial tool in the fight against climate change. In New York City, solar could potentially provide 49.7% of the current estimated daytime peak demand and about 14% of the city’s total annual electricity use (NY Times). That means a significant reduction in NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions!

Spring Celebration potluck (photo by Keka Marzagã

Finish the day with a Potluck lunch!
Bring something tasty to share. Potlucks are a great way to meet your neighbors and build a resilient community.

WHY A POTLUCK?
It’s fun!

We will also have a photo and graphic display including information about 350.org and Sustainable Flatbush’s work, and an exhibit of climate-themed photos by Diane Lent.

About 350.org
350.org is an international climate campaign named after the safe upper concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million. Right now, the atmosphere contains 392 ppm of CO2. Scientists say immediate action is necessary to address the crisis.

Every year since 2007, we’ve  transformed the same parking space on the corner of Cortelyou and Argyle Roads in Brooklyn into a public park (with real grass!) and day-long festival on Park(ing) Day. Park(ing) Day is an annual international event where citizens, artists and activists around the world collaborate to temporarily transform parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: public places for a day.

This year Sustainable Flatbush will celebrate our success in turning the vision of PARK(ing) Day into a year-round reality! We’ve created a partnership with the newly-formed group Friends of Cortelyou Library and NYC Department of Transportation to install benches and planters in front of the library so it can serve as a permanent public space for relaxation, reflection and friendship. Park(ing) Day 2011 will feature activities for all ages including a puppet show, live music, art projects, a writing workshop, and even a hula hooping class! We’ll present information about our projects in the neighborhood and interactive workshops on how to live more sustainably in the city, with topics such as composting, gardening with native plants, renewable energy with the SunBike (before it heads off to Maker Faire for the weekend!) and more!

Playing cards at Cortelyou Road Park, 2010 (photo by Keka Marzagão)

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat. For four years we’ve brought this discussion to the heart of Brooklyn by creating Cortelyou Road Park in front of the Cortelyou Library. The library’s plaza had no seating or other amenities, but since 2007 our temporary park has spilled into the plaza and transformed it into a vibrant urban oasis on Park(ing) Day.

Park(ing) Day is an opportunity to create a community gathering place, and to make a statement about how we utilize public space. In our neighborhood, despite all the beautiful homes and lawns and gardens, the amount of publicly accessible green space per person is much lower than the city average*. On Park(ing) Day we take 160 square feet of concrete that would normally be occupied by one automobile, and transform it into something magical that is enjoyed by hundreds of people, a place where neighbors can interact and build community.

Stop by on Friday September 16th to celebrate the newly revitalized Cortelyou Library Plaza with us!

• Check here for the day’s events schedule.
• If you’d like to volunteer for this event, please email us or call 718-208-0575.

Puppet show at Park(ing) Day 2010 (photo by Keka Marzagão)

WHAT:

Park(ing) Day 2011

WHEN:

Friday, September 16th, from 8am to 6pm

WHERE:

in front of the Cortelyou Library, corner of Cortelyou and Argyle Roads

If you have questions about this event, please email info@sustainableflatbush.org or call 718-208-0575

* Source: Municipal Arts Society’s Imagine Flatbush 2030 report

These first three pictures are from my first event with Sustainable Flatbush.  Here we are introducing the kids in our gardening program at the Church Avenue Communal Garden to the site.  We had them draw pictures about what they would want to see in their ideal garden, and we all had a pretty good time envisioning the future garden and we also had some kids in the media department filming!  I picked these three pictures because apart from being appealing visually, they show the energy and spirit of the kids putting their time and effort into the garden.

The next two pictures are my favorites from our first composting day at the Church Avenue garden.  That day we started building the compost bin and getting leaves together for compost.  The reason I chose the first picture is because I love love love when kids come to help.  They make everything more fun and these girls were no exception! I’m also likin’ the pose.  The reason I chose the second picture is because it’s one of my only pictures of Keka and Anne at work! They really work so hard to put all of these different projects together and this is a good picture of them in action!

The next three pictures are from a day at the garden where the kids decorated planters that were designed by fellow intern Lou Wright.  It was a lot of mess but a lot of fun and I especially liked this detailed football field painted bin.

art

This picture is one of my favorites from National Grid Earth Day because this girl is pretty adorable and interested in our picture album.  It makes me hopeful when I see kids getting interested in sustainable practices at a young age.

This last picture is at the Plant Swap, where there were all kinds of plants to get and this guy got a pretty cool looking one!

These events show how easy it is to bring people together while making a difference environmentally, and making a difference in our future by getting kids involved.  I hope all of you can get involved at some point!

~Sarita Jaccard

Making smoothies with solar power at the Cortelyou Greenmarket

You’ll have another chance this Sunday, August 7, to get to know our SunBike, the mobile solar-electric unit that Sustainable Flatbush built to take clean energy to the streets.  Our Solar Team will be on hand to blend up some sun-powered pesto with ingredients from local farmers.

We think solar power and food vending are a great combination for New York City.  There’s no need for noisy generators blowing fumes on the sidewalk when quiet, clean solar will do just fine.  Come see how it works this Sunday!

Solar Team members Joel Acosta and Sam Tesfaye at Seeding the City Skillshare

Last Saturday, July 30th, the Solar Team led a workshop on how to solarize a toy at Seeding the City, a sustainability skillshare held at the beautiful and historic Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights. The event was produced by The Laundromat Project and New York Foundation for the Arts‘ Immigrant Artists Project. It was a perfect day for solar energy, and a wonderful time was had by all!

SunBike Build: Making Connections from Sustainable Flatbush Media on Vimeo.

We built the SunBike to show what renewable energy can do right now, encourage people to adopt renewable energy, and study renewable energy systems in-depth.

This summer, the SunBike will be a visible presence on the streets of Flatbush, at block parties, community gardens, solar-powered film screenings, outdoor dance parties and much more, showing that we don’t have to wait to meet our need for energy with clean, renewable resources.

To find out how to bring the SunBike to your event or learn more about our Solar Team educational opportunities, write to the SF Energy Solutions Initiative.

Until Sunday, check out this video of me and our technical advisor Gregory Rodlico, showing a little bit of how the SunBike works.

Video Credits:
Camera & Editing: Jocelyn Cohen
Sound Mix: Anne Pope
Titles: Keka Marzagão
Music: Free Royalty Free Music by DanoSongs.com
SunBike Builders: Jocelyn Cohen and Gregory Rodlico
Solar Team: Kimberly White and Joel Acosta

The SunBike is made possible with the generous support of ConEd