A Pop-Up Greenmarket at JetBlue's T5 at JFK Airport

October 24, 2013
Posted in Greenmarket | Tagged jetblue, pop-up greenmarket

GrowNYC is proud to announce that we'll be partnering with JetBlue on a pop-up Greenmarket in T5 at JFK Airport on October 29th, 30th, & 31st.

From the press release:

From October 29 - 31, 2013, travelers will be able to experience the Greenmarket at T5 and take a taste of New York home with them. The market will include education stations, a harvest-themed photo booth, a bike blender for people-powered cooking demonstrations, a composting pile with live worms, and a recycling game. The T5 Greenmarket will also include an array of goods all made from products grown locally in New York State. Products include baked goods, pies, grains, honey, jam, maple syrup, fruit, pickles, tomato sauce, wine, as well as Greenmarket Wheat Beer and Hard Cider.

"GrowNYC has been connecting upstate farmers with New York City shoppers for nearly four decades; by offering the best that New York state has to offer from its rich fields and orchards," said Marcel Van Ooyen, Executive Director of GrowNYC. "Our Greenmarkets ensure that all New Yorkers have access to fresh, healthy food; now, JetBlue customers will be able to take a taste of the State with them when they pass through T5 on their way out of town. We hope they’ll share the bounty our state has to offer with others far and wide."

NYC Residential Organics Collection is Growing!

October 16, 2013
Posted in Recycling | Tagged recycling, organics, compost

Morningside Gardens Composts

(Residents at the Morningside Gardens cooperative celebrate their new compost program)

Organics make up almost 30% of NYC's residential and institutional waste stream. This includes yard waste, food scraps, compostable paper (tissues, napkins, soiled paper, paper plates, etc.), and other materials suitable for industrial-scale composting.

By collecting this material, NYC can reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and incinerators, reducing expensive export costs and greenhouse gas emissions, all while generating a valuable material that can be used as fertilizer in NYC parks and gardens.

In May of 2013, the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) began a bold, new initiative to provide curbside collection of organics. The Program started in Westerleigh, Staten Island and this fall has expanded to include communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island, with further expansion in the spring of 2014.        

Wondering how you can participate? 

The City provided bins and participation instructions to buildings with 1-9 units included in the pilot areas. DSNY is also recruiting large apartment buildings—on the west side of Manhattan, in parts of Brooklyn, and on Staten Island—to participate in the program. GrowNYC is assisting with this effort, and we can help your building with the signup process, and to prepare your tenants and staff to participate. 

Take Morningside Gardens, who joined the DSNY Organics Collection Program in June, for example. Prior to the program’s implementation, many of the residents dropped off food scraps at GrownNYC’s Columbia Greenmarket and a group of residents formed a Compost Club.  GrowNYC worked with club members, property management, and the co-op board to help the 980-unit complex create a plan to establish organics collection to be serviced by DSNY.  GrowNYC provided hands-on assistance in creating a suite of educational materials and training to ensure that staff and residents were well-informed about the program, which included mailers detailing the program, attendance at a series of public meetings, and signage in every trash room.

With the addition of this initiative, Morningside Gardens now diverts 39% of all waste from landfills through recycling and composting, compared to an average diversion rate of 14% for their community district as a whole.  Overall improvement of waste separation and storage has also reduced the presence of rats on the property. To highlight the success of the program at Morningside Gardens, Mayor Bloomberg chose the site as the location to announce the expansion of the DSNY Organics Collection Program and to launch the “Recycle Everything” advertising campaign in July of 2013.

Does your apartment building want to take recycling to the next level? 

Get more information on Organics Collection in Large Residential Buildings and contact GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education to get started. 

 

 

A Day in the Life: Recycling Champions Coordinator Julia Goldstein

October 11, 2013

GrowNYC's School Recycling Champions program works with schools in all five boroughs to help them achieve and exceed the NYC recycling standards. They work to inform and empower the key participants in a school by providing hands-on education through materials, workshops, assemblies, and on-site demonstrations.

Recycling Champions has five outreach coordinators, each of whom works in a particular borough. Below, Manhattan Outreach Coordinator Julia Goldstein takes us through a typical day in her life as a Recycling Champion.

What I love about being a Recycling Champions coordinator is how much creativity and dedication the principals, teachers, custodians, kitchen staff, recycling coordinators, parents, and above all the students, all over the city bring to making their school environment more sustainable.

Let me give you some examples from a typical day:

The first stop of the day is my office, where I pick up materials for workshops I’m doing on the new Organics Food Scraps Collection program at Chelsea Prep (281 9th Avenue in Chelsea). I make sure to grab a coffee from Laughing Man on the way to the C train.

In the 2013-2014 school year, over 300 schools in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Brooklyn are participating in the Organics Collection Program, a joint initiative between the NYC Departments of Education and Sanitation. The goal is to collect the organic material from school cafeterias and kitchens to reduce the waste NYC sends to landfills. Organic Food Scraps Collection includes: meat, fish, dairy, vegetables, fruit, grains, baked goods and all soiled food service paper products.

I chat with the school’s Fireman, Ed Pierre, who has been working hard to get the new Organics signs up in the cafeteria

On Saturday I’ll go to another workshop at Chelsea Prep that includes parents, and we’ll use this, a trivia game created by RCP’s Thaddeus Copeland. The Trivia Game is one of several tools we use to engage the students in participatory learning. A student spins the wheel and depending on which icon they land on, they are asked a recycling-related trivia question

I hop back on the C to 110th Street to my second stop: Wadleigh Secondary School for the Visual & Performing Arts (215 W 114th Street in Morningside Heights).

I touch base with Al Spechar, the Custodial Engineer, who shows me a new system he is trying for separating the curbside recycling – he has painted green lines around where the paper recycling goes, and hung a mixed paper and cardboard recycling decal. Great idea! It makes it easier for the Sanitation workers if it’s always in the same place, and it makes it easy to check to make sure each type of recycling has been put out.

I jump back on the C train to 86th Street and go on to my next stop: Louis D. Brandeis High School (145 W 84 Street in the Upper West Side).  I check in with Helena Fisher, the SchoolFood Manager , to see how the Food Scraps Toter bins are working for them. We talk about how frequently they need new bags – the students are catching on to the Food Scraps Organics program faster than we had hoped!

I board the cross town bus and grab a seat and work on email. I spend so much time on public transportation it feels like my second office.

My next stop: Robert F. Wagner Middle School (220 E 76th Street in the Upper East Side). I meet with the 6th grade cafeteria recycling monitors, who make the fantastic recycling station work every day. They bring both knowledge and tact to the job of reminding their peers of the recycling rules.

I take the 4/5 back downtown to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall for my final stop of the day: Murry Bergtraum High School (411 Pearl Street in the Financial District). The sustainability coordinator, Bob Menning, walks with me through the school. Bob takes his role seriously and his energetic and talented Green Team students, like Elena Tsoy, bring creative flair to the task -- they’ve hung signs throughout the cafeteria and school reminding classmates and faculty/staff of best recycling practices.

That’s my last visit and all that’s left is to convince my fellow rush-hour passengers on the 4/5 train to make room for me and my Santa-sized bag. To their credit, being New Yorkers, they hardly give it a second glance.

Union Square Autumn Night Market Friday, October 18

October 9, 2013

 
Union Square Autumn Night Market
Union Square Greenmarket - north end of Union Square Park [map]
Friday, October 18th, 4 - 8 p.m.
 
Celebrate the fall harvest and Cider Week with Greenmarket
 
On Friday, October 18th, the Union Square Greenmarket will host the Union Square Autumn Night Market, a celebration of the fall harvest which will feature farm fresh produce, meats, and cheeses, and a curated roster of restaurants serving prepared foods.
 
Along with all of the delicious food served that evening, there will be programming for families, live music by Jazz Foundation of America, as well as a bar featuring New York State wine, Brooklyn Brewery's Greenmarket Wheat and hard cider for Cider Week
 
All of your favorite Friday Greenmarket farmers will be in attendance, along with these restaurants selling individual dishes, desserts and beverages:
 
 
This event is free and open to the public and hosted in collaboration with the Union Square Partnership.

The Educated Eater Re-cap: Regional Farming in a Changing Climate

October 8, 2013
Posted in Greenmarket | Tagged educated eater

In case you weren’t able to make it to New School last week for our Educated Eater panel discussion, Regional Farming in a Changing Climate, a video of the event is available below. Farmer Keith Stewart of Keith’s Farm, Sonali McDermaid of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Beatriz Beckford, New School faculty member, joined GrowNYC’s FARMroots director Challey Comer to talk about the impacts of the changing climate on regional agriculture, here in the northeast, globally, and how these changes effect our food security as city residents.

"Winners and losers, start to develop globally," said McDermaid, of farmers who are already being severly impacted by climate change. "A rethinking of how we define our markets is in order. Farmers need options. When you don't have options, you can't compete. And when you can't compete, you become disadvantaged in the global market."

"We do things that are insurance against these large scale climate events. Organic farmers grow diversified crops, so we don't have all of our eggs in one basket," noted Stewart. He also said, "We need to take farm preservation seriously. I think the city needs to start thinking not just about its water shed, but about its food shed."

Watch their full conversation below, and join us for the next Educated Eater on November 7, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at The International Culinary Center. We’ll be discussing the future of dairy farming in the Northeast.

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