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

Joel working on the SunBike

My name is Joel Acosta, I am 28 years old and live in Brooklyn, NY. Since I was 7 years old, I have constantly been fascinated in the region of engineering, mechanical and electrical affairs. Growing up I used to take stuff apart just to see how they look in the inside and then eventually put it back together, my way. After migrating to the U.S. from Dominican Republic in 1994, I always tried to sustain myself drowned in these sphere. After a while, I figured that, as humble of a person I was, I continuously wanted to stayed involved in electrical and mechanical stuff.

After Junior High School, I attended a Vocational School, where I graduated with an electrical, residential technician diploma. Having that on my resume, I later became interested in perusing a career in the environmental ground. I am now attending Brooklyn College, with a Major on Environmental Studies. Now I have many goals in my mind in which my past experiences have guided me to conduct and assemble all those skills into my ultimate aspiration. With that being said, I nevertheless keep in touch with my professors from Brooklyn College. They send me emails about different events that are going on in the neighborhood, and that’s how I got involved in this new project where we’re trying to build a SunBike with the organization called Sustainable Flatbush. The SunBike project is run by Energy Solutions Project Manager, Jocelyn Cohen. I consider this to be a very interesting development in which I am planning to keep myself focused for a long time.

So searching for an internship opportunity in my interests online, I’ve found Sustainable Flatbush, a community organization in Brooklyn and Anne Pope, the director of the organization, responded to my inquiries right away. I was impressed by the church garden restoration and solar bike projects that were going on. In addition, I was amazed by the events and the amounts of learning that always takes place as said by Anne. And hopefully I will get a lot of experience from this volunteer internship.

While everyone at the conference was vocally pro-clean energy, what seemed to divide us and create tension was what we were against. I spent most of my time with the group raising awareness of hydrofracture gas drilling, and we saw great results. That being said, we were surprised at how many attendees of this conference – involved, like-minded students – had no idea what hydrofracking was. They were involved in anti-coal action. Or they were involved in anti-nuclear action. Or they were only in DC and at PowerShift for a march to protest the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Or they were anti-capitalist. Or they were anti-government. Or they were anti-biomass. We were all a little too wrapped up in our own crusades to talk about what we agreed on.

The most poignant phrasing of this issue – of why it’s important – came from Josh Fox, director of Gasland. During Saturday’s plenary, he took the stage to remind the audience to beware of resource-extraction companies who would try to paint a picture in which anti-coal activists and anti-gas activists are enemies, not allies. That they would try to use our divisions to break us down, to make us believe that we were weaker and more beleaguered than we actually are. And that we can’t let them do that.

While we all have our particular focuses, PowerShift inspired me as an individual to look more closely into that issue – the idea that small differences in our community can be drawn as yawning chasms of disagreement by our opponents to make us appear petty, or ill-organized, or unprepared. As in every other situation we face today, sowers of discord will create false disagreements and conflicts to deflect attention away from their own wrongdoing, and we cannot let that happen. I met a lot of very good people at the conference, and I think we did good work, and that we have  more good work to do. I hope that we can remember just how much we’re on the same team.

Grass-fed cattle at Grazin' Angus Acres

I learned many things but most importantly: cows as herbivores evolved to eat and digest grass – not corn.  Eating grass as they evolved to do, cows produce less greenhouse gases, and is way more efficient than conventional meat production.  While grass-fed beef is environmentally sustainable, but it’s not yet financially sustainable for independent farmers who do it.  On day one, we watched a documentary called “Green Beef” that highlighted the scientific and culinary importance of sustainably produced cattle. On day two, I learned that conscious beef is expensive to produce but does not have lucrative results for the chief executives. Dan told me that the farmers spend all summer and early autumn preparing for the winter months when fresh food for the cattle and his family are both in short supply. I get to purchase great meat like other New Yorkers at local Greenmarkets. That’s lessening our carbon footprint, and helping Dan and Susan Gibson meet their bottom line, but it’s not enough.

Now the foundation is laid, and we know what we need to do in order to ensure both the environmental and financial sustainability of our agricultural system:  

Carnivores, eat grass-fed beef!

Thank you Dan and Susan Gibson for your generous hospitality and warmth.

Greening Flatbush 2011 – held this past Sunday, February 27th – was a huge success! Thank you to everyone who came out and to everyone at the workshop tables.  We had an amazing turn out, over 100 participants!

After much time and effort put into decorating and preparing our room at the Flatbush YMCA, we were able to sit back and enjoy all the great knowledgeable people who came to do workshops! From learning how to grow our own mushrooms, planting using plastic bottles, learning about urban farms in the area, the new garden to be opened on Church Avenue, sprouting our own seeds, how to make the best use of trees in our area, and the oh-so-popular Earth Dumplings,  it was a day packed with exciting info.  Attendees enjoyed a great raffle and snacks and a fun time was had by all.

If you missed out we hope to see you next year and once again thanks to everyone involved!

Click here for more photos from this year’s Greening Flatbush!

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Planting Experimental Tree Plots in Marine Park

My name is Lou Wright, and I’m incredibly excited to be working with Sustainable Flatbush on their projects at the Church Street Communal Garden. As a gardener, a composter, an urban forester, and a Flatbush resident, I hope that I can bring skill and enthusiasm to the work we’ll be doing in the upcoming months. I suppose, then, that this is where I should say a little bit about myself.

I am a Junior in the Environmental Studies and Sustainable Design program at The New School, where my work focuses on urban ecology and architectural design as well as the fields of wetland restoration and urban forestry. I have worked in the Union Square Native Plants garden and am a certified Citizen Pruner thanks to Trees New York. I  also helped run and maintain a very large community garden when I was interning at a conservation lobby in Anchorage, Alaska. I’m an active cyclist, and I love hiking, fishing, heavy metal and trees.

So that’s about the score. I look forward to meeting everybody and helping my community out by doing something I love – getting my hands dirty and growin’ stuff.

climbing a tree (photo by alexa haas)

I guess I should tell you all a little bit about myself. Growing up, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Starting college, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I decided to settle on cinema studies because hey, who doesn’t like a good movie and who doesn’t want to learn about movies at NYU. As I started taking cinema studies classes, it didn’t feel like a match, I didn’t feel like I could make the difference I wanted to make in the world with this major. One night in a room with a bunch of friends, hangin’ out and livin’ life, a commercial for a Toyota hybrid came on. I don’t know what came over me but I watched that commercial and thought, environmentalism… I need to be part of this movement. Who knew a random Toyota commercial would set me off but the very next day I was at my advisor’s office switching my major. I started to think back to my childhood, to the way I cared so much about animals, which stemmed off into me caring about their habitats. I started getting upset by zoos and the detrimental environments we’ve caused for so many living things. By high school I was vice president of the environmental club (dork?) and it was FUN.

As I thought back on all this, it all started to make sense that this was the change I could be passionate about participating in. In college I studied abroad in Shanghai, and learned even more about a global environmental movement, one not only in the first world country I live in today but in a third world and ever-growing nation like China. As the years go on I am more and more fascinated and excited about the changes happening in our world and I hope to learn even more through being part of a grassroots organization for the first time. Wish me luck!

New project: Support our composting efforts on ioby!

Compost Kids (photo by Elisabeth Deogracias)

We recently launched a project on ioby – an online microphilanthropy initiative for NYC environmental projects – to raise funds to build a 3-bin compost system at our new communal garden on Church Avenue. The compost bins will provide nutrient-rich fertilizer for the garden while engaging residents in discussions on waste reduction as part of the garden’s community activities. We are actively seeking supporters for this project as compost is a key component of a zero waste initiative, especially in a community garden–so help us realize this goal and pledge a donation right now, right HERE!

No Impact Man Film Poster

April 15th 2010: Earth Day Film screening of No Impact Man

In order to educate and promote a less wasteful lifestyle, Sustainable Flatbush co-sponsored, with Flatbush Food Co-op, and Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Association, a screening of Colin Beavan’s self-assigned challenge to live for a year creating as little impact on the environment as possible. Addressing issues of consumption, transportation, and electricity, Beavan documents his struggles and successes to live as efficiently as possible.

April 11 2010: National Grid Earth Day Celebration

We kicked off Earth Week celebrations by partnering with Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts and Brooklyn College Community Partnership to produce the 2010 National Grid Earth Day Celebration, bringing together the following organizations, artists, and performers: Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Garbage of Eden Designs; the ArtLab of the Brooklyn College Community Partnership; Seeds, Soil & Sunshine (seed starting workshop); Plant Secrets (children’s gardening); New York City Fire Department; New York City Department of Parks & Recreation; Nydia “Liberty” Mata; Tova Ackerman’s Puppetry In Practice; Campus Road Garden at Brooklyn College; Puppeteer Ronny Wasserstrom; Teaching Artist Susan Marinoff; and the Bar Mitzvah Project (selling reusable bags to benefit the Rainforest Alliance).

Our main demonstration, aligned with the Zero Waste initiative, was creating colorful flowers out of used plastic bottles with children. This project encouraged kids and parents to think more creatively about how to divert waste from the landfills and more generally about rethinking the potential of disposable items.

National Grid Earth Day (photo by Rick Berube)

Support Our Work!

If you like what our Zero Waste Initiative is doing, help us continue showing Brooklynites how to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost! You can make a secure, tax-deductible donation to Sustainable Flatbush HERE!

Fast "Food"

The purpose of the event was to address the environmental and food injustices that plague our city and impede it from realizing its true equitable potential. We were there to not only realize the racial and economic disparities in health care (and, by extension, our food system), but we were there to elicit change – to empower ourselves with the ammunition of knowledge to change the system in solidarity with disadvantaged New Yorkers.

Every eloquent speaker further equipped us with the tools we needed to collectively dismantle New York City’s incompetent food system that is allegedly “subsidizing diabetes.” The minister invoked the fundamental principles of the Summit by praying for “the dismantling of the unjust societies that we enjoy which lead to the marginalization of poor people in economically disadvantaged communities.” The singer employed the egalitarian theme of the summit in songs that denounce environmental, economical, racial, and social inequities that results in the unequal stratification of wealth, power, and access to healthy affordable food.

Real Food

There was also a dynamic spoken word by Christopher Cero about building a just city in which we work in solidarity to build a food system that is healthy, accessible, and affordable. Cero says that this is the standard by NYC’s brilliance and magnificence will be evaluated. This spoken word entitled “Just a City” was a remarkable transition for the intuitive oration on food inequality in NYC by the former pastor of The Riverside Church in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

This summit served to unite people that are forced to dance with food inequality by economic disadvantages and people protected from marginalization by food security.

Lila Watson said, “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together.” The inherent inequalities in NYC’s food system cannot be fixed by people who are not connected with the significance of ensuring food justice. I do not wish to deter anyone from drafting legislation to help the people marginalized by all sorts of inequality, but if there is not solidarity amongst the “haves and have nots” attempting to elicit change then the food justice movement might be in vain.