Think Spring and Sharpen Your Gardening Skills

Sustainable Flatbush is hosting...

GREENING FLATBUSH 2011
Spring is just around the corner!

Join us for a fun-filled & information-packed afternoon. Meet your neighbors and get your hands dirty. Come out for demonstrations and hands-on workshops on a variety of gardening and urban agriculture topics, including:

* gardening for kids
* starting seeds indoors
* growing mushrooms in your apartment
* vertical gardening
* composting with worms indoors
* how to join the Flatbush Farm Share CSA
* how to care for street trees
… and much more!

We will also have an information table featuring sustainability education opportunities specifically for youth.

Snacks and coffee will be available. Bring your own mug (BYOM)!

Sunday, February 27, 2011
2:00pm – 5:00 pm
Flatbush YMCA, 2nd floor activity room
1401 Flatbush Avenue (at Rogers Avenue)

$5 suggested donation. Space is limited, please pre-register HERE

Design Your Own Gowanus

Connections: The Gowanus Lowline is design ideas competition for the Gowanus Canal area in Brooklyn, NY organized by Gowanus by Design (GbD) and sponsored by the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation. It invites open speculation on the value of urban development of post-industrial lands, and the possibility of dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that either passively or actively engages with the Canal and the surrounding watershed.

One of GbD’s goals is to generate a discourse about urban issues that are currently relevant to the local community. The competition is designed to generate a spectrum of possible solutions and the jury will look for designers to explore their own design sensibilities while tackling complex urban challenges specific to the canal.

GbD is proud to present an internationally renowned jury of industry professionals and experts in the areas of architecture, sustainable design, landscape design and community development:

Julie Bargmann, Founding Principal, D.I.R.T. Studio
David J. Lewis, Principal, LTL Architects
Gregg Pasquarelli, Founding Principal, SHoP Architects
Richard Plunz, Director, Urban Design Lab, Columbia GSAPP
Andrew Simons, Chairman, Gowanus Canal Conservancy
Joel Towers, Dean, Parsons The New School of Design

Our organization proposes a new strategy going forward for the development of the Gowanus area, showcasing different options for the canal and including the many voices of canal stakeholders. GbD will propose projects that speculate upon the potential for what the canal can be and will track the coordination of clean-up and development efforts between the many city agencies whose decisions impact those of us who live and work near the canal.

learn more.

Citywide School Garden Initiative Launches

Growtolearn.org is now the place to go if you're part of a NYC school interested in establishing, maintaining and programming a school garden. Spearheaded by GrowNYC and the Mayor's Fund along with several other partners, the initiative serves as a one-stop shop, making it easier for schools to get the info they need. Check it out!

E-Waste Recycling: Get It While It's Cold

Electronics Recycling Collections
Responsibly recycle unwanted or broken electronics at one of these upcoming events (no appliances such as microwaves or refrigerators). Find a list of acceptable materials here. Sponsored by the Lower East Side Ecology Center.

MANHATTAN

Tekserve: Saturday, January 15, 10am-4pm
119 West 23rd St. b/t 6th & 7th Aves

BROOKLYN

Prospect Park: Sunday, January 16, 10am-4pm
Prospect Park West and 3rd Street

Ft. Greene: Saturday, January 22, 10am-4pm
Fulton Street b/t S. Portland Ave & S. Oxford St

The Vote is In on Your Xmas Tree

Real Trees are better for the environment (even when you cut them down and prop them up in your living room) than the fake stuff. We figured, but hear it from the Times.

Read all about it.

Think Outside of the Gift Box this Holiday Season

This particular poster is for Mercy Corps (and came from GOOD), but you get the idea. Support a cause of your loved one. Do so much with your holiday generosity.

Belize Bans Trawling

It's not Brooklyn-centric, but the state of our oceans is one of particular concern to us Green Team members and we all play a part. Every time we order shrimp at a restaurant or at the counter at our overpriced market, we are supporting (usually) the destruction of our oceans. It sounds dramatic, but it's true. Here's some good news though from our friends at Oceana:

All forms of trawling in Belize have been banned in the country’s waters including its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) when Fisheries Minister Rene Montero signed the Statutory Instrument effecting this legislative change today.

The ban, effective December 31, 2010, is a historic decision by Prime Minister Dean Barrow’s administration, which has been making these environmentally friendly decisions on the heel of the threat from UNESCO that it would strip the Belize Barrier Reef System of its World Heritage Site status.

Trawling can be compared to deforestation. It’s a destructive fishing practice where weighted nets are drug across the seafloor, destroying everything in their path - turning vibrant seafloor ecosystems to rubble in an instant and leaving baby fish with nowhere to call home. The reef system which lies in Belizian waters is the largest in the Western Hemisphere (second largest in the world) and is one of the U.N.’s World Heritage Sites.

Here's what you can do: not eat seafood, only eat seafood you get at the farmers market, ask how it was caught, and stop eating things that are trawled (that's the worst).

Whole Foods

Well, Whole Foods is set to open in Gowanus at the end of 2012. Based on urging from passionate Brooklynites, they've made several changes to make the store more friendly and green.

Read all about it.

Local Shopping Ideas from Brad Lander

Here are a few ideas for shopping local this holiday season: Start locally: Before you head online or to a mall, think about how much you can get from neighborhood stores. Think especially about the people in your life who love Brooklyn, and how much they'll appreciate a gift that helps make it stronger.

From Brooklyn Green Team: plus, when you support small family owned businesses, it's easier to make suggestions to them on how to green thier operations rather than submit to a "contact form" on a corporation's website -- right...AND by keeping those businesses thriving you prevent 50 nail salons from descending in your hood.

IShopBrooklyn.com: Check out Borough President Marty Markowitz' "I Shop Brooklyn" website for neighborhood shopping ideas.

Small Business Saturday, tomorrow, November 27th: Tomorrow is the first national "small business Saturday." http://www.facebook.com/SmallBusinessSaturday.

Join the 3/50 project: Pick three local businesses you'd most like to support, and commit to spend $50 per month at them. http://www.the350project.net/.

Share your favorite local shopping stories and ideas with us: Email me at lander@council.nyc.gov with your favorite stores and stories -- especially of those local businesses who are great employers & neighbors -- and we'll share some of them with others on our blog. You can also check out the web sites of our local BIDs and merchants associations:

-- Park Slope 5th Avenue BID, http://www.parkslopefifthavenuebid.com/
-- Kensington Area Merchant & Residents Association, http://karmabrooklyn.blogspot.com/

-- Court Street Merchants Association, http://www.courtstreetmerchants.org/

-- Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association, http://www.atlanticavenuebkny.com/

-- Park Slope Chamber of Commerce, www.shopseventh.com

-- Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, http://www.ibrooklyn.com/

Thanks Brad!

Film Biz Recycling comes to Gowanus!

Film Biz Recycling (FBR), a non-profit that seeks to re-use, recycle, redistribute and re-purpose items from NYC’s film, television and commercial productions, is moving its warehouse from its present location in Long Island City to Gowanus, Brooklyn.

To welcome them to the neighborhood, GreenEdge NYC is inviting you to a Sneak Preview Holiday Sale at their new home. Film Biz Recycling has offered to unpack their treasures from those great holiday commercials and TV Specials so you can grab those cool, colorful, Christmas decorations directly from the sets – you’ll find mini-trees, lights, ornaments, candles, wrapping paper and more! In addition, there will be an assortment of one-of-a kind gift items perfect for the people on your gift list – jewelry, frames, art, mirrors, junktiques, decor, vintage and modern. So if you’ve begun shopping—or are at least shopping for ideas—this is the place for everyone on your list - even the hard to shop for types.

What’s more, you can pick up what you like at half the price of retail stores and you’re helping Film Biz Recycling keep these “as-seen-on-TV” props out of the local landfill.

WHEN: Thursday, December 9th 4:00-8:00pm
WHERE: 540 President Street -- between Third and Fourth Avenues. (Home of the Brooklyn Creative League where we host our Supper Clubs.).
WHAT TO BRING: Your holiday shopping lists, your family and friends. Children welcome - stroller parking available.

BK Vintage

Brooklyn Based, a great blog and sender of emails, sent one last week about vintage shops in Brooklyn. Many were ones we didn't include in our eblast so check them out.

New Challenge Launches!

We're going old-school (is 3 years old school?) and digging in our closets to bring back our

No New Clothing Challenge!*

Join us in going vintage, thrift, recycled, hand-me-down or eco-friendly. Every single action has an impact in some way somewhere on this planet. Because of globalization, we are often disconnected from the impact of our everyday choices. For example, our new fall shirt might be made with cotton that requires 1/3 lb of chemicals to produce and manufactured in a pollution-emitting factory far away. Let's make a positive impact and equal the balance. Support local shops owned by locals that dig out wearable treasures from the past and present. This will make you more stylish because five other people aren't wearing it to work. Unleash your inner fashionista, while helping the planet.

Worried about bedbugs? Us too. Throw your clothes in a dryer right away to kill them off OR you could put them in the freezer for 2 weeks (really)!

More compelling reasons to do it:
The average American throws away about 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per year.
10% of all agricultural chemicals and 25% of insecticides in the U.S. are used to grow cotton.

The 12 to 15 percent of people who shopped at consignment and thrift stores in 2006 saved 2.5 billion pounds of clothes from re-entering the waste stream.

The manufacturing of nylon emits nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a carbon footprint 310 times that of carbon dioxide.

According to the USDA, in one year alone over 50 million pounds of pesticides were used on U.S. cotton fields. Pesticide and fertilizer use on cotton has been linked to ground and surface water contamination, and the pollution of drinking water.

In California, cotton ranks third in the state for total number of pesticide-related illness. Fish and wildlife and also impacted, with pesticides causing migration die-offs and diminished reproductive capacity.

For those of you living in the New York City area, we've attached a list of vintage and second-hand clothing stores in our area.

Resources:
Brooklyn is Vintage Store Mecca. Here are a few we know and like:
Beacons Closet (Park Slope + Williamsburg)
Buffalo Exchange (Williamsburg)
Black Bear (Park Slope South/Windsor Terrace):
BK Flea (Fort Greene)
Mesihmar (Park Slope)
1 of a find NYC (Prospect Heights)
Almost New (Park Slope)

There are also clothing swaps:
Brooklyn Clothing Exchange
S.W.A.P.P.
Five Boroughs Clothing Swap

Want to host a Clothing Swap? Rachel Avalon lays out the fundamentals in this video.

If you would like to join the Challenge, email brooklyngreen@gmail.com and say, "Yes! I'm ready to join the No New Clothing Challenge !"

*Challenge does not apply to underwear or environmentally friendly clothing. We think it's only fair.