Upcoming E-Waste Recycling Events in Brooklyn

To celebrate Earth Month the Lower East Side Ecology Center is offering chances to recycle your electronics in all five boroughs. Here are the upcoming recycling events in Brooklyn.

April 09, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Poly Prep Country Day School, 9216 Seventh Ave., Bay Ridge

April 10, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sephardic Community Center, 1901 Ocean Parkway, Sheepshead Bay

April 30, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., PS 29 Schoolyard, Baltic St between Henry St and Clinton St, Cobble Hill

The Ecology Center will accept e-waste for free from residents and small businesses (under 50 employees). Bring your working or non-working electronics to the collection events to have them recycled responsibly. Acceptable materials are:

•    Computers (laptops and desktops, servers, mainframes)

•    Monitors

•    Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers

•    Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.)

•    Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, etc.)

•    Components (hard drives, CD-ROMs, circuit boards, power supplies, etc.)

•    TVs, VCRs and DVD Players

•    Audio-visual equipment

•    Cell phones, pagers, PDAs

•    Telecommunication (phones, answering machines, etc.)

The Lower East Side Ecology Center does not accept home appliances such as microwaves, refrigerators or air conditioners.       

These events are sponsored by Panasonic, Toshiba, ConEdison, and MRM.

More information here.

Tug of War at Sunday's Food Co-op Potluck in Bay Ridge

More than 60 people attended the Bay Ridge Food Co-op Potluck Picnic last Sunday, marking the first year of the co-op’s membership drive. Intended to raise awareness of this September's "New York State Locavore Challenge," the picnic was held at Shore Road and 79th Street. Those in attendance brought food made of all locally sourced ingredients.

Photo courtesy of the Bay Ridge Food Co-op

Sunday: Local Food Potluck in Bay Ridge

This Sunday, August 1, the Bay Ridge Food Co-op will celebrate its first "birthday" (in quotations because it's not exactly started yet) with a potluck picnic of local food from noon to 4 p.m. at Shore Road and 79th Street. Intended to raise awareness of this September's “New York State Locavore Challenge,” the picnic will feature a kids’ balloon toss, tug-of-war, and a kickball game, among other activities.

Attendees can bring food that uses locally-sourced ingredients wherever possible — and that can last several hours in the heat.

Senator Golden Honors Bay Ridge Food Co-op Coordinators

Last Thursday at the Bay Ridge Manor, Senator Marty Golden recognized residents of the neighborhood who performed exceptional community services in 2009. Among the honorees were David Marangio (right) and Larry Benner (middle), pictured here with Sen. Golden (left), coordinators of the Bay Ridge Food Co-op. They have been working tirelessly to start the co-op, which as of right now does not yet have a location. To learn more about the Bay Ridge Food Co-op — or food co-ops in general — visit their web site, follow their Twitter feed, or check them out on Facebook. 

Photo by Marc Hibsher

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Bay Ridge Leads Brooklyn in Recycling

Out of all the Brooklyn neighborhoods, Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights are leading the borough in terms of recycling. Three out of every five of the area’s residences and businesses recycle paper, plastic, glass and metal — a fact that garnered the areas the Department of Sanitation’s highest rating. Read Eagle writer Harold Egeln's report here.

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First Bay Ridge 'Green' Festival

Last week's Third Avenue Festival in Bay Ridge was the 36th annual, but the first ever with a green theme. About a dozen booth entered themselves into a "Green Pioneer" contest, the winners of which will be announced at the 16th Annual Third Avenue Pioneers and Civic Awards Reception on October 26 at Café Remy.

Pictured here are the three "Green Judges" at the Festival: Home Reporter arts columnist Liz Gassimi (second from left), Bay Ridge Courier Marketing Director Jeanne Eisenhardt (second from right) and myself (right), with Festival Chairman Chuck Otey (left).

Stay tuned for details on the festival entrants with photos, and also for the winners!

Photo by Giancarlo Annese

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Green Theme for Upcoming Third Ave. Festival in Bay Ridge

The Third Avenue Festival, a Bay Ridge tradition in its 36th year, will have an eco-spin this year. It's the first "Green" Festival, and it will take place on Sunday, October 4, from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. along Third Avenue in Bay Ridge from 69th Street to 95th Street.

Vendors will be encouraged to enter green displays and attractions into a contest, and I'll be there as one of the judges.

Attractions already lined up are solar-powered hot tubs, thanks to Super-Roofer’s Bill Boshell, and solar-run cellphones, as well as energy-generating bicycles outside Mike Kaspar’s Tri & Runs at 81st Street.

The Green Pioneer Award will be announced at the 16th Annual Pioneers Champagne Cocktail Reception at the Café Remy on October 26.

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'Recycle, Reused, Rescued' Art Show in Bay Ridge

Gallery 364 owner and founder Georgine Benvenuto has opened a new art show with the theme, "Recycle, Reused, Rescued," in which artists submitted worked made from recycled and reclaimed materials. Pictured here is "American Flag," by Michael Esposito, made of hundreds of small Americana items from toy plastic trucks to figurines and everyday items.

For more information and photos by Eagle reporter Harold Egeln, who attended the show's opening, click here.

Photo by Harold Egeln

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New Building for Poly Prep's Lower School 'Blends Old and New'

Addition Earns LEED Silver Certification, Awarded by Landmarks

Poly Prep Country Day School just became something for not only Brooklyn to brag about, but also New York State.

Poly — which has its middle and upper schools on its campus in Bay Ridge — recently built an addition to its lower school in Park Slope, earning the school a LEED silver certification and making it the first LEED-certified school in New York City and the first LEED-certified primary school in New York State. The expansion was also given a Lucy G. Moses Preservation award by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

The lower school occupies the Hulbert Mansion at 50 Prospect Park West, which was built in 1882 as a double townhouse. Since the ’20s, the building was occupied by the Ethical Culture School, then the Woodward Park School. Poly Prep took over in 1995.

The new addition, completed in 2008, was undertaken to provide Poly’s Lower School with more classroom space and exercise rooms. It was designed by architects Platt Byard Dovell White.

Since Poly already had instilled green values in their students and a green curriculum throughout their schools, they decided to take on the addition to make it as eco-friendly as possible.

Green features of the expansion — built on a lot next to the original Hulbert Mansion — include a 31 percent reduction in water use, 308.4 tons of construction waste that were diverted from a landfill, and sealants, paints and carpet systems that are 100 percent low-VOC (volatile organic compound).

Each green feature gave Poly’s Lower School a certain number of LEED points. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a building rating system overseen by the U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the addition 34 LEED points, earning it a silver status.

It was also important for Poly to preserve the building’s historic features. “Historic preservation really is ecologically responsible,” said spokesperson Malcolm Farley.

The Landmarks Conservancy gave Poly Prep Lower school the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award because of this commitment to preserving the historic character of the original building, as well as the neighborhood surrounding it.

While the addition is contemporary, the materials and colors used in it complement the Hulbert Mansion and the Park Slope Historic District.

Poly Prep Headmaster David Harman accepted the award at a ceremony that took place Monday night in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

“We’re thrilled to be the only school, the only educational facility that’s being honored tonight,” Harman told the Eagle.

He emphasized Poly’s commitment and leadership in the area of environmental responsibility. Indeed, children in the school as young as 4 learn about and study the environment.

Launa Schweizer, head of the lower school, said the students love learning about the environment. Her own children attend the lower school, and she said, “They’re always telling me about turning the lights off and not wasting water.”

About the new building, Schweizer said, “We’re very proud of it — the ability of the architects to blend the old and the new is really wonderful.”

The Lower School’s receipt of this award continues a Poly tradition. Two alumni are previous winners, and a Poly parent was the architect of another project to receive an award on Monday.

Photo courtesy of Poly Prep Country Day School

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Greenway Pedals Forward

Almost 100 people packed into Speak Low Cocktail Lounge here on Monday night to acknowledge the tireless efforts of the three founders of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI) and those who have supported them for the past five years.

It’s BGI’s five-year anniversary, but its founders, Meg Fellerath, Brian McCormick and Milton Puryear (pictured above with Independence Community Foundation (ICF) Executive Director Marilyn Gelber), have been advocating for the Greenway for much longer.

“Myself and Milton have been working on the Greenway since 1998,” McCormick told the Eagle in December. “We were the chair and co-chair of an organization called the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway Task Force. Meg joined us about a couple of years later.”

The three of them incorporated as the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative in 2004. They envisioned the 14-mile off-road path, spanning from Greenpoint all the way down to Bay Ridge, to be multi-use and have different components. According to BGI’s plan, the path will be between 20 and 30 feet wide in total, encompassing a 4- to 8-foot landscaped buffer between it and the street, a 10- to 12-foot bike bath, and a 6- to 10-foot pedestrian path.

Because the route travels through many different neighborhoods and community boards, the first step was to enlist the support of these community boards and their officials.

The magnitude of the project required that it be split into pieces. The first piece was “the middle section, Community Boards 2 and 6 — the Brooklyn Navy Yard through Red Hook,” as Puryear described it. Next, they tackled the area in Community Board 1, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, and started setting up design guidelines.

“One of the purposes of the design guidelines was to try to come up with a scheme that would let you know that you were on the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway no matter where you were on it,” he continued. “But that also allowed each neighborhood to have a different feel in design quality. Unlike Hudson River Park, which is fairly uniform in terms of the Greenway design, we envisioned the Brooklyn Waterfront to really look good and feel different in different neighborhoods.”

Puryear told the Eagle that the next step for BGI would be to work with the city to develop what he called a “master plan for the whole 14 miles of the Greenway.” And now, this step is slowly approaching a reality.

BGI announced at the party that “the NYC Department of Transportation has committed to a producing a master plan for the entire 14-mile Greenway route — a major project milestone,” said McCormick. “This work will begin later this year.”

Also announced on Monday night were two more partnerships: one with the Horticultural Society of New York to launch a green-collar mentoring program along the Greenway route, and another with the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation to offer historic bicycle tours of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the fall.

Upcoming events include the seventh annual Greenway Bike Tour, on May 2, and as usual, BGI will continue its monthly Greenway cleanups, which take place on a stretch of Columbia Street along the waterfront that was paved last summer. McCormick has called it the “non-designed interim Greenway,” and BGI has assumed responsibility for its upkeep.

“If people are going to use it and think it’s the Greenway, we need to do our part,” Fellerath said. The monthly cleanups along the street generate interest, build the community and “establish our presence on the Greenway.”

The next cleanup will be this Saturday, April 4. For more information or to RSVP, e-mail bmccormick@brooklyngreenway.org. To register for the 10-mile Greenway Bike Tour, send full name and contact information to ride2009@brooklyngreenway.org.

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Famed Environmentalist Visits Bay Ridge AARP

By day, Michael Allegretti works with such well-known political figures as Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But last week, he took the time to speak to the AARP chapter in his hometown of Bay Ridge.

Allegretti works at The Climate Group, an international organization that deals “with the issue of climate change in a common-sense way that leads to economic growth,” he explained. As the head of government relations, he works with some of the biggest companies in the world to start “public and private initiatives that come up with climate solutions always with an eye toward economic growth.”

Recently, Allegretti and The Climate Group went to Michigan — a state that he says is “reeling” — to discuss how existing industries (particularly the auto industry) and new industries can work together to “lift themselves up.

“We’re bringing hope to some folks that don’t have any,” he said.

He also meets with small-business leaders and union workers and students, “demonstrating how to save money, but also about how to create jobs, jobs that can be seeded in Brooklyn, Staten Island and other parts of New York City.

“There are white-collar and blue-collar jobs to be created, and if we have a candid look at the numbers, we see that many of these jobs can be created right here. From carbon traders who will work in the city’s financial services firms, to building tradesmen who will work retrofitting buildings to greener specks, New York City has a competitive advantage in the new energy economy, but it needs to be developed,” he explained. “Through a combination of market innovation and better public policies, we can see these jobs start to take hold in our city.”

But in Bay Ridge, Allegretti approached discussion in a different way. He spoke to the approximately 80 people in the Shore Hill Community Room, “communicating a message focused on saving money through simple adjustments to one’s daily life.”

While many people talk about climate change in scary ways that often overwhelm and sometimes are misconstrued, Allegretti said he “depoliticizes” the issues and puts them “in a language that people can understand.

“For some audiences it’s about saving money, and for some it’s about saving the planet,” he said, adding that for others, it’s both. He spoke to his audience about using energy-saving appliance, eating locally when possible, and using reusable bags to shop with. “Let’s not be wasteful,” he said.

But he urged listeners to “use as much as you need,” and “was so impressed by the level of knowledge,” he encountered, saying that the questions and dialogue were very smart and addressed topics that even he hadn’t planned on speaking about.

“It was just a great group,” he said. “I love Bay Ridge.”

In his own life, Allegretti carpools to work at The Climate Group, where printing is always double-sided, no paper kitchen products are used and they even offset their travel.

Photo courtesy of The Climate Group

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