Fighting Food and Clothing Waste - 15 Million Pounds and Counting!

December 15, 2017

15 Million Lbs 2017

(click photo to view slideshow)

As the curtain closes on 2017, we mark TWO milestones for GrowNYC’s zero waste programs.   We are thrilled to announce; thanks to YOU we have collected more than 10 million pounds of food scraps at our Greenmarkets!

There’s more! YOU have helped keep 5 million pounds of clothing and textiles from going to landfills by dropping them at collection sites hosted by GrowNYC. 

Thanks to your participation that’s 7,500 tons of material repurposed to build soil, create renewable energy, or live a second life as usable clothing, rags, or recycled fiber products!   

What started as 6 Greenmarkets in 2011 has grown to 42 food scrap drop-off locations at GrowNYC’s Greenmarkets, Youthmarkets, and Fresh Food Box sites throughout the City! Not to mention the 18 new Compost On-The-Go locations near mass transit in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.  Hats off to you and your fellow dedicated New Yorkers who save, store, and transport their scraps each week. 

New Yorkers are equally dedicated to style, and demand for clothing collections continues.  What began as “Material Mondays” at Union Square Greenmarket is now a network of 27 markets accepting clothing each week through our partner, Wearable Collections.  Every shirt, suit, and pair of shoes collected helps chip away at the 193,000 tons of textile waste New Yorkers send to landfill each year – 5 MILLION POUNDS AND COUNTING!

Food scraps and textiles comprise nearly one-quarter of NYC’s residential discards.  Thanks to you, these efforts are one successful component of getting NYC to zero waste.     

Find a clothing collection or food scrap drop-off near you. 

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GrowNYC’s zero waste programs are funded by the NYC Department of Sanitation.

Clothing Recycling Gets Legs in Chinatown Co-op

January 8, 2015
Posted in Recycling | Tagged recycling, recycle, textiles, clothing

The weekend before Thanksgiving, residents in one Chinatown complex took time to “unstuff”—closets and drawers, that is—bringing 2,500 pounds of unwanted clothing to a special collection in their building. 

In 2012 GrowNYC hosted an Earth Day textile collection as part of a larger community event in Chinatown, attracting residents from the nearby Confucius Plaza Apartments, who asked for more convenient opportunities to recycle unwanted clothing, shoes, linens and other textiles.  With the help of our Manhattan Recycling Outreach Coordinator, the co-op held the first of what is now a bi-annual collection at the 762-unit apartment complex.  GrowNYC advised management on the logistics of setting up a collection, connected them Wearable Collections (who also collects materials from Greenmarkets) and provided outreach and education assistance, from promoting the collection to educating residents about recycling with the help of bilingual volunteers.  In the past two years the building has hosted six events and collected over 6.5 tons of material that will be reused or recycled into new products. Plans are underway to establish more frequent collections as resident demand for this service shows no sign of slowing, and building staff appreciate the lighter loads they must manage when taking out the trash. 

Want to recycle textiles in your apartment building?  Check out refashioNYC to see if you are eligible for a free collection bin, contact Wearable Collections about in-building programs or find a Greenmarket drop-off site near you.   

Recycling at Greenmarkets as Bountiful as the Produce

June 5, 2014

GrowNYC Greenmarkets are opening for the season throughout the city, bringing with them not only a bounty of fresh regional products, but also expanding weekly opportunities for New Yorkers to recycle textiles and compost food scraps. 

In 2007, GrowNYC’s newly-created Office of Recycling Outreach and Education began testing a program to collect clothing and textiles at Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets.  Tax-deductible donations of textiles such as Sustainability Center at Greenmarketclothing, shoes and towels are collected and later sorted for reuse, or recycled into new products such as wiping rags and insulation. We quickly discovered New Yorkers’ dedication to living sustainably and have met their demand for more recycling--36 Greenmarkets now offer this service, with 10 new locations starting up this spring and summer.    

Since 2011, GrowNYC has worked to complement existing Greenmarket food scrap collections run by BIG!Compost and the Lower East Side Ecology Center, to meet the growing chorus of Greenmarket shoppers wishing to bring back trimmings from their weekly market haul.  Today, in partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation and community partners, 38 Greenmarkets host food scrap drop-offs at least once a week.  Material collected is transported to one of several local sites in the five boroughs where it is transformed into compost, a fertile soil amendment for use in urban farming and gardening programs.

GrowNYC has collected more than 2.7 million pounds of textiles and 2.85 million pounds of food scraps at dozens of Greenmarket collection sites throughout the city.  Together, food scraps and textiles comprise 23% of NYC’s waste, making efforts like these critical to reducing the big apple’s environmental footprint. 

Find a list of Greenmarkets accepting food scraps at www.grownyc.org/compost and a list of textile collection sites at www.grownyc.org/clothing, or call 212-788-7964.

Textile Recycling at Confucius Plaza a Success

August 28, 2012
Posted in Recycling | Tagged textiles

On Sunday, August 12th the GrowNYC crew had their second textile recycling event at Confucius Plaza in as many months. OROE volunteers Nga Yan and Shi Chao came out to lend a hand in diverting over 2,250 lbs from the landfills, bringing the total to over 3 tons of materials in just two days! We’d like to give a special thanks and congratulations to the management and residents of Confucius Plaza for their partnership and enthusiasm. Here's to another successful foray in community supported recycling! GrowNYC currently offers weekly textile collection at 19 Greenmarkets. If you are interested in hosting a one-time textile collection in your community, please contact us at (212) 788-7964.

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