In recognition of Indigenous Peoples Month, we're highlighting those who inspire us every day to learn more about Indigenous foodways and environmental practices. 

Learn more: 

• Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm
  Vincent Mann of the Ramapough Lenape people spoke at the 2019 Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference. You can read his remarks and the backstory of the tribe's struggles in New Jersey, as well as a recent story highlighting the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm which he founded.
   

• Iroquois White Corn Project
  The Iroquois White Corn Project puts the aspirations of the Haudenosaunee people at the heart of the project; by passing on cultural wisdom to future generations; ensuring healthy, culturally appropriate food is produced sustainably; and contributing to the health and well-being of the community.
   

• I-Collective 
  The I-Collective is a group of indigenous chefs, activists, herbalists, and knowledge keepers who work to create new dialogue that preserves historical indigenous traditions and promotes community resiliency. Their multimedia cookbook A Gathering Basket was released this year.
   

• Gather Film 
  A film about the movement of Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide. Available for streaming. 
   

• NDN Collective
  NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, NDN Collective is creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms. Required Reading: Climate Action and Indigenous Solutions is a roadmap, published by NDN Collective, that hones in on why Indigenous peoples must lead through the heart of the climate crisis. 

Why Bring Your Own Bags? 

Single-use plastic bags are environmentally harmful.

• Even when properly disposed of, because of their weight and aerodynamic properties, plastic bags often become litter, clogging storm drains and waterways.

• New Yorkers use 9.37 billion carryout bags per year, the vast majority of which are not recycled.

• Plastic bags account for over 1,700 tons of residential garbage per week in NYC on average.

Plastic bags cost the public money. 

• Each year, New York City pays an estimated $12.5 million to transport 91,000 tons of plastic bags to landfills in other states.

• Shopping bags jam expensive machinery at recycling plants and contaminate the recycling stream, increasing costs.

Tips for a Plastic Purge!

1. Bring your own reusable totes, produce bags, and containers (great for fish and delicate produce) while shopping at Greenmarkets.

2. Say ‘no thank you’ if you are offered a plastic bag, or ask for a paper bag.

3. Carry a few extra reusable bags with you at all times. 

4. If you forget to BYOB, you can purchase reusable tote bags and produce bags at most Greenmarket Market Information tents. 

5. Collect your food scraps in resuable containers before dropping off at a food scrap collection location. 

6. Go #foamfree and quit using styrofoam for good. Learn more here. 

Instagram Contest on the @unsqgreenmarket Account!

We invite our followers to participate in a Plastic Cleanse social media contest! We know that single use bags are environmentally harmful. In NYC alone, they generate about 1700 tons of residential garbage on a weekly basis. We’re here to encourage you to make a difference and join our annual Plastic Cleanse. Show us how you shop plastic-free at the Greenmarket!

Photos can be taken at market or at home, we want to see how you avoid using plastic while shopping.  Two winners will receive a gift card to a restaurant that supports the Greenmarket and will be regrammed by the @unsqgreenmarket accounts.

Contest rules:

• Take a photo and post it to your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook account of your plastic-free shopping supplies before heading to market, a plastic-free interaction at market, or of your plastic-free market haul after shopping.

• Tag @unsqgreenmarket and hashtag #GMKTnyc #PlasticCleanse to enter

• Dates to enter are 4/3 - 4/30/18.

• GrowNYC and Greenmarket staff, volunteers, farm staff, or farmers, or family members are not eligible to win.

• Open to NYC residents. Contest ends at 11:59:59 PM ET on 4/30/18.

• On 5/1/18, GrowNYC will pick 2 winners at random to receive a gift card to a local restaurant that shops at the Greenmarket.

Learn more about GrowNYC’s sustainability efforts: 
www.grownyc.org

#plasticcleanse

In honor of National Food Day on October 24th, GrowNYC’s third annual Big Apple Crunch is taking over the city once more. Big Apple Crunch is a city-wide celebration of healthy eating, achieved the best way we know how - by crunching into apples, all over the Big Apple! Join us and our partner, Record Setter, as we aim to set the world record for “The Most Participants to Bite into an Apple in One Day.”

Looking Back

In 2013, we saw 1 million people (yes, you read that right!) participate in the Big Apple Crunch. Businesses, schools, organizations and individuals came together to take part in the “crunch heard ‘round the world.”

This Time Around

We’re a month away from the 2014 Big Apple Crunch, and more than 11,000 individuals have already registered to Crunch on October 24. We’re happy to say the Crunch has expanded all the way to Temple, Texas this year! In anticipation, groups are sharing their photos of apples and tagging #BigAppleCrunch.  
 

Ways to Be A Part of #BigAppleCrunch 2014

• Find A Crunch: There are Crunches happening all over the city. Eight of our Greenmarkets and Youthmarkets will be hosting Crunches. Visit bigapplecrunch.org to find one near you.
   
• Host Your Own Crunch:
  
  Step 1: Register! Let us know how many people you’ll be Crunching with (if you’re not sure, that’s fine - we will follow up with you after Oct. 24).
  
  Step 2: Tell your friends! Ask your friends, family, students and co-workers to join you for Big Apple Crunch 2014!
  
  Step 3: Get your apples! You can purchase locally grown apples at your local Greenmarket or Youthmarket. You can also place an order with GrowNYC Wholesale for a bulk delivery and pick up your order at a Youthmarket.
  
  Step 4: Crunch! Anytime during the day on October 24th. Don’t forget to take photos and tag #BigAppleCrunch when posting on social media!
   
• Crunch Solo: crunch into an apple and take a selfie. Every person counts! Don’t forget to register and hashtag #BigAppleCrunch!
   
• Become a Partner: As a partner, we encourage you to spread the word and engage in setting the world record with us by not only hosting your own Crunch but also urging others to do the same via outreach. You will be credited on our website and recognized on social media for your help in furthering the success of this big day!
   
• Become a Sponsor: Click here to learn about the benefits of becoming a Big Apple Crunch 2014 sponsor.

Wherever you Crunch, make sure to register, so we can count you.  Every crunch counts!   For more information, please reach out to Ben Gordon at bgordon@grownyc.org

Happy Crunching!

This year’s Super Bowl is being touted as the “greenest ever”.  Out-green the Meadowlands with these tips for your own Super Bowl party!
 

• Pick up local veggies, pickles, bread and other treats at your neighborhood Greenmarket.  Don’t forget kale, the official vegetable of Superbowl 48!  Find menu ideas here. 

• Save food scraps and paper napkins for composting at one of our Greenmarkets, or let guests know they can include meat and dairy if you participate in NYC’s Curbside Organics Program. 

• Set up recycling bins for bottles, cans, salsa jars, hummus tubs, pizza boxes and more.

• If you only watch the game, commercials or half-time show, take some of that down time to find items for next week's Stop ‘N’ Swap (or give them as impromptu party favors)!

Since 2011, GrowNYC has worked to expand food scrap collections at Greenmarket. In partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation, the program has grown to 30 markets, averaging 100,000 pounds a month diverted from disposal and used locally for renewable energy or fertile compost for urban farms, gardens and more.

To date more than 2 million pounds of food scraps have been dropped at market, which would fill enough of our collection boxes to create a stack taller than Mount Everest! But the impact is even greater: every apple core deposited in a compost bin has been a vote for increased composting citywide, which has come to fruition with the Department of Sanitation’s new Organics Collection Program. Keep on composting!

Read the complete press release here.

(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. 

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.

The Big Apple Crunch is an attempt to set the world record for the "Most Participants in an Apple-Crunching Event." This event will take place on FOOD DAY - October 24, 2013. New Yorkers can participate by finding a crunch near you: at any of GrowNYC's Greenmarket Farmers' Markets or another location near you or by hosting a crunch yourself! We want it to be the crunch heard 'round the world!

Please pledge to take a bite with us at 12pm or at any time during the day that works for you. RecordSetter.com - a New York City based organization tracking new world records - will be tracking our progress towards having the "Most Participants in an Apple-Crunching Event!"

Register your team at bigapplecrunch.com

GrowNYC is proud to support Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership in expanding recycling in NYC with the launch of "Recycle Everything."

In 2006, the City created GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education to assist their ambitious goals to divert more waste from disposal. Whether promoting textile, e-waste, and increased plastics recycling or working with the Department of Sanitation to establish organics recycling programs like those happening at Morningside Gardens (where this week’s press conference took place), GrowNYC is thrilled to be a component of the City’s efforts. The "Recycle Everything" ad campaign launched and the expansion of the City’s organic food waste recycling program shows how far New York has come in managing the 11,000 tons of waste generated every day. Together, these initiatives will help double our recycling rate by 2017 and reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills.

GrowNYC was proud to help establish the Morningside Heights organics collection and will promote the City’s Recycle Everything campaign in its education outreach across the five boroughs.

New York News

GrowNYC formed a partnership with Wagner Middle School in Manhattan called Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools, funded by NYC Council Member Jessica Lappin. Under one roof, we are providing support from five GrowNYC programs: Learn It Grow It Eat It, Grow to Learn School Gardens, Greenmarket Youth Education, Recycling Champions and Environmental Education. For an entire year, GrowNYC staff is educating young people about how to lead lives that improve their personal health and that of the environment around them; so that eating, growing, learning and going green become second nature.

On the recycling front, we recently helped Wagner launch a school-wide cafeteria recycling program – 1,200 students in grades 6-8 sorted everything from trays to milk cartons, placing them in their proper containers with help from dozens of student volunteers and Green Team members. 1,200 students recycling milk cartons for one year will save 31 trees!

To keep it fun, grades are competing to see who can reduce their overall waste – on a weekly basis, the amount of waste will be calculated and the winning grade announced on Fridays. At the end of every month, the grade that has reduced waste and recycled the most will receive special “Out-Lunch” privileges. Wagner has averaged a daily reduction of 9 bags of garbage or 17%, while generating an extra bag of recyclables.

The contest, designed by the Green Team, was the culmination of an outreach campaign they undertook to educate their classmates. Working with their advisor, teacher and sustainability coordinator Jessica Gordon, students created posters, morning announcements, and a PowerPoint. The success of the program could not have been possible without the support and help of Wagner’s administration and staff.