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.

Green Dry Cleaner in DUMBO, Cobble Hill

Recently I met with Ken Kinzer (above), a dry cleaner who has locations on Front Street in DUMBO and Court Street in Cobble Hill. After telling me about GreenEarth Cleaning, one of the methods he uses to dry clean — the other is wet cleaning, which simulates hand washing — I told him about a memory I have from when I was younger and got a sweater back from the cleaners. I smelled it, wanting to snuggle into my nice clean sweater, but I was immediately confronted by the most horrific chemical smell.

The smell was most likely perchloroethlyene (perc), a technically organic compound used by most dry cleaners. It's also a carcinogen. Kinzer's method, GreenEarth Cleaning uses silicone to clean clothes and it doesn't leave a smell.

“It’s safe for the clothes, it’s safe for the customer, it’s safe for the environment,” he said.

Read my story about Kinzer and his dry cleaning plants here.

Wylie Dufresne at the Farm City Fair in Cobble Hill

Pictured here, celebrity chef Wylie Dufresne — executive chef of Manhattan eatery wd~50 — prepares a poached egg during the Farm City Fair inside the Invisible Dog Art Center in Cobble Hill. Though I'm not a fan of eggs that aren't cooked through (yes, I know, I should have sucked it up and ate an egg that Wylie Dufresne made), I was told it "tasted like runny yolk but it wasn't runny," and was delicious.

A take on the traditional county fair, Farm City took place yesterday inside the center and along part of Bergen Street. Brooklynites sampled produce from bk farmyards, Added Value, and several small-batch artisanal food purveyors. Children watched a clown make balloon animals and danced to music from Asphalt Orchestra.

Various workshops throughout the day included one on foraging with Leda Meredith and one on rooftop farming with sub-irrigated planter systems. There was also a Brooklyn Food Experiments cook-off on the third floor of the Invisible Dog.

Farm City Fair was part of Crossing the Line, the fall festival of the French Institute Alliance Française, and kicked off a three-weekend celebration of urban agriculture called Where Are You Growing?

Coming Up: Farm City Fair

On Sunday, September 12, the Invisible Dog Art Center and Crossing the Line will present Farm City Fair curated by Derek Denckla. The fair is a celebration of art and food grown in Brooklyn and will be held at the Invisible Dog at 51 Bergen Street and along Bergen Street.

Some activities throughout the day: 

• Brooklyn farms such as Added Value, Rooftop Farms, and bk farmyards will sell their produce and explain its provenance.

• GreenThumb will host a premium "Blue Ribbon Contest" for gardeners to show off their produce and reveal the range of possibilities for home growing in the city.

• Brooklyn Food Coalition will present a day-long series of workshops on how to make or grow food at home, from canning to under-counter compost.

• Greenpoint Food Market will curate the best of Brooklyn’s small-batch vendors, including Anarchy in a Jar preserves and Brooklyn Kombucha.

• The Food Experiments, created by Theodore Peck and Nick Suarez, will select competitive chefs to respond to their Brooklyn roots, using one or more ingredients grown or made in Brooklyn in a cook-off.

• A bar of Brooklyn brews, wines, and cocktails, from Brooklyn Brewery, Six Points Brewery, Red Hook Wines, Brooklyn Oenology, Kings County Distillery and others.

• Chefs from The Meat Hook, Marlowe & Sons, Ted & Honey, Egg and others will serve up eats made in Brooklyn in collaboration with urban farms.

Participants:

• Asphalt Orchestra, a Brooklyn-based 12-piece next-generation avant-garde marching band, will open the event and perform between 11a.m. and noon.

• Andrew Casner, compost painter, will demonstrate his acclaimed, agrarian work — the community process of developing a viable compost with an acid-etched canvas underneath created as a natural by-product.

• Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy, a Brooklyn-based artist, will present Ça pousse! (It’s growing!), human form sculptures made from material such as wheatgrass that change as they grow.

• Miwa Koizumi, Brooklyn-based ice cream maker of “NY Flavors,” will create a geographically inspired new ice cream flavor based on Bergen Street and the festival.

• Tattfoo Tan, the urban farming visionary artist, will launch his new bike-based S.O.S mobile Classroom, as the next installment in his two-year long public art project entitled S.O.S–Sustainable Organic Stewardship.

• Wylie Dufresne, renowned chef of wd-50, will create a new downloadable recipe based on re-imagining local ingredients, to be sampled at the Fair.

• Christina Kelly, Brooklyn-based artist meditates on loss and possibility growing blue corn in monumental street planters in a public art project called, Maize Field, located where Lenape Indians planted in the 1600s.

Electronics Recycling in Cobble Hill

This Sunday, April 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Lower East Side Ecology Center and the Cobble Hill Association will host an electronics recycling day at the P.S. 29 schoolyard, on Baltic Street between Clinton and Henry streets. Recycle unwanted or broken electronics: computers, printers, scanners, fax machines, copiers, network devices, keyboards, mice, cables, hard drives, CD-ROMs, circuit boards, power supplies, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, audio-visual equipment, cell phones, pagers, PDAs, handheld and desktop phones, and answering machines. Home appliances such as microwaves or refrigerators will not be accepted.

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Planting Trees on Atlantic Ave

The Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association and the Teen Tree Corps of Project ReGeneration teamed up in a beautification project of two blocks on Atlantic Avenue: one block between Bond and Hoyt streets, and another between Court and Clinton streets. This photo shows Teddy Francis, program director of Project ReGeneration, with Curtis Cruz and Trish Holt.

Photo courtesy of Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association

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