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Where: Outside of the Coop except during inclement weather when collection will be held inside the Coop Times: 2nd Wednesday of the month 3:45-6pm 4th Saturday of the month 1:45-4pm (Please try to come at least 15 minutes before the end of the shift.) New expanded plastic collection for Coop members only!  Please be ready to show your membership card.  New items collected: Plastic bags/wrapping/packaging from most Coop items (both food and non food items.) Plastic roll bags distributed by the Coop. Thin plastic film wrapping from items such as cheese, meat, toilet paper, tea boxes etc.  NO foil backed packaging is accepted at the moment. The regular TerraCycle collection is still available to Coop and non-Coop members! Ongoing community collection items: Toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, any brand and size. Baby food pouches and caps, any brand Energy bar wrappers (any brand but only energy bars) Brita and other similar water filters Plastic food storage zip loc bags, cl...

More Recycling Opportunities Starting Wednesday July 8th! The vote is in and members at the May GM unanimously voted to create workshifts to collect a variety of hard to recycle packaging in partnership with TerraCycle. We will start collections in July. The 2nd Wednesday of the month (JULY 8th) and 4th Saturday of the month (JULY 25th). Collections will be open to members and non-members. These will be our regular collection days to start: W ednesdays 4 to 6pm Saturdays 2 to 4 pm.    Please see below for details of what we are collecting. Looking forward to your participation. Questions or interested in changing your current workshift to a Terracycle workshift on Wednesday?  Please contact ecokvetch@yahoo.com . PSFC—TerraCycle Recycling Collections When: 2nd Wednesday of the month 4 to 6pm, 4th Saturday of the month 2 to 4pm Where: Outside in front of the Coop (weather permitting - otherwise, inside during inclement weather) What to bring: Toothpaste tubes, any bran...

At an Earth Day tabling event outside the Park Slope Food Coop, the PSFC Environmental Committee asks fellow coop members to share their shopping practices in the effort to minimize the use of plastic roll bags.

The vote to approve our  Proposal  to Reduce Plastic Roll Bag Use  has been scheduled for this Tuesday's February 25th General Meeting at the  Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School . Check out the Environmental Committee's new  video presentation , which examines why reducing our plastic footprint is so important for our community and our planet. Download our General Meeting Handouts for more information. Proposal Overview  (PDF) Why this Proposal?  (PDF) Hope to see you there!

"A short comedic film, inspired by The Artist, about a woman learning to shop without disposable plastic bags. Created by the Environmental Committee of the Park Slope Food Coop,  one of the oldest and largest active food co-ops in the United States, in an attempt to educate Coop members about the ills of plastic bag overuse/consumption and how easy it is to shop without them. The Environmental Committee is currently introducing a proposal to reduce plastic bag use at the Coop."

The Environmental Committee is co-sponsoring an great event on Monday June 24 at 7 PM at the Greenwood Baptist Church! Please join City Council Member Brad Lander, the Green Party of Brooklyn, Sierra Club, NRDC, No Impact Project, Citizens Committee for New York City, Sane Energy, NYC Friends of Clearwater, PlasticBagLaws.org and BagItNYC for an informative evening to learn about the massive environmental impact that single-use plastic bags have in NYC, and the NYC campaign to do something about it. This free event will take place at: Greenwood Baptist Church in Park Slope461 6th Street at the corner of 7th Avenue Speakers will include: Council Member Brad Lander, who will be introducing legislation on plastic bags Jennie Romer, who spear headed successful efforts in California to ban / restrict single use plastic bags and will discuss the various possible approaches (ban, fee, tax, etc) Colin Beavan (No Impact Man) Carl Arnold from the NY Green Party and the Sierra Club Peter Kostmaye...

Did you see Yuko Uchikawa's member contribution on page 5 of the the May 30th Gazette? We were so happy to see Yuko and her family sharing their tips for shopping with reusable bags! Please share your "recipes for a healthy planet" too!

Thanks to Earth911 for this history of recycling infographic. Read the accompanying article to find out more fascinating details.

When: December 08, 2012 | 10:00am - 4:00pm This event will be held rain or shine . Where: P.S. 321 located at 180 7th Ave. between 1st & 2nd Streets, Brooklyn, NY 11215 See a list of acceptable materials for recycling. Electronics are accepted from households, not-for-profit organizations, and small businesses (less than 50 employees, please call ahead). We do not accept home appliances such as microwaves, refrigerators, or air conditioners.

If you're looking to do some hurrican repairs or more general building/remodeling, consider Build It Green as a source of materials. Build It Green! NYC, is New York City's only non-profit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials. Their warehouse has everything from panel doors to high end refrigerators and shutters to movie props. Their mission is to keep these materials out of the landfill, while offering deep discounts on their resale. The have over 75 tons of materials on sale at half or below their new prices such as doors, flooring, sinks, bathtubs and toilets, lighting, windows, trim, moulding,cabinets, furniture and much, much more... Gowanus Center Temporarily CLOSED due to storm damage You can volunteer at BIG!NYC-Gowanus for Hurricane Sandy Clean-Up, This Thursday & Saturday from 10am to 5pm! 69 9th St. Brooklyn, NY 718-725-8925 gowanus@bignyc.org Astoria Center OPEN 3-17 26th Ave. Queens, NY 718-777-0132 astoria@bignyc.org Open Every Day: ...

We’re always curious about how other food coops work. One of our committee members recently visited the People’s Food Coop in Ann Arbor, Michigan and took some photos. Established in 1971, the People’s Food Coop (PFC) is almost as old as our own PSFC. The idea for the co-op actually began as a graduate student project. Two students started a buying club as a way for low-income people to get fresh, healthy food. They brought food from the Eastern Market in Detroit and divided it into bags costing $5/week. In 1975 a second PFC location opened, followed by the opening of Wildflour Baking Collective, People’s Produce Co-op, and the Ann Arbor Tofu Collective in 1976, and the People’s Herb and Spice Co-op in summer of 1978, all on the same block. Later these various factions consolidated and grew to an over 6,500 member co-op. We were especially interested in how the PFC handled bulk items, as that is the most ecological and economical way to sell food. The PFC has a system which allows me...

Earth911.com explains how you can reduce your use of aluminum foil and plastic wrap with replaceable options. For instance, did you know you could use a reusable parchment baking mat to bake cookies? Or a reusable mesh crisper for to cook on your oven rack? Or a thermal food wrap to keep cooked food warm and cover? These and other ideas are detailed in their great feature . Why reduce your use of foil and plastic wrap in the first place? In short, because we use a whole lot if it, and it's often difficult to recycle. More than 1.3 billion pounds of aluminum foil is produced in the U.S annually. If that doesn't make your head spin, we also use enough plastic wrap every year to shrink-wrap the entire state of Texas. Aluminum foil is technically 100 percent recyclable. The trouble is that once it's used, your foil is often too soiled with food residue to be recycled without compromising quality - making cutting back on foil when possible even more important. Like foil, ...

People have been asking about upcoming electronics recycling events in the area. We have a list of upcoming events in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Visit the Lower East Side Ecology Center website for additional locations in the 5 boroughs as well as a list of electronics that are accepted for recycling. These events are held rain or shine. Saturday, October 6 | 10:00am - 4:00pm Smith Street between President Street and Union Street, Brooklyn Sunday October 07 | 10:00am - 4:00pm 8th Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, Brooklyn Saturday, October 13 | 10:00am - 4:00pm 119 W 23rd Street between 6th & 7th Avenues, Chelsea, Manhattan Saturday, October 20 | 10:00am - 4:00pm Cortelyou Road (between Rugby and Marlborough Roads), Brooklyn Sunday October 21 | 10:00am - 4:00pm PS 29, Baltic Street between Henry Street and Clinton Street, Brooklyn

I wish I had come up with this great title, but I didn't. It's actually from an article on Mother Nature Network , which caught my eye, because I am interested in living ecologically as well as inexpensively and was glad to see an article about those aims often being one and the same. You can read their six basic tips for yourself (and I'm sure Coop readers will be able to come up with many more), but I want to discuss one in particular, #4: Ditch the Disposables . It makes sense that anything you use once and then throw away would not be a sustainable choice, yet how many of us think of it as a poor economic choice as well? We'll list a few disposables we can do without and invite readers to add more suggestions of their own: Paper plates, plastic knives and forks : Even if you don't use these at home, you may be seeing them in the workplace. If so, can you convince the powers-that-be at you place of work to ditch the disposables and stock up with some reusable ...

Date : Saturday, September 20 Time : 10am-4pm, rain or shine Location : Brooklyn Ave. between St. Marks Ave. & Prospect Place in Bedford Stuyvesant—See map Directions : Take the C train to Kingston-Throops Ave., walk 6 blocks south and 1 avenue east or take the B43 bus to Brooklyn Ave.and St. Marks Ave. According to the EPA, electronic waste contributes 70% of the toxins (such as lead, mercury, cadmium, phosphros and flame-retardants) found in lnadfills.  Recycling your ele ctronics waste decreases energy and water use, reduces pollution and keeps haqardous chemicals out of our air and water. Acceptable items include: Computers (laptops & desktops, servers, mainframes) Monitors Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.) Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, cords, chargers, etc.) Tablets and E-readers Components (hard drives, CD-ROMs, circuit boards, power supplies, etc.) TVs, VCRs, DVRs, & DVD Players Digital Conv...

From Earth911.org : Smoothie chain Jamba Juice announced last month that it plans to phase out its use of polystyrene cups by 2013, a decision that may have been influenced by the efforts of a 10-year-old girl. When Carlsbad, Calif. fifth-grader Mia Hansen stopped by Jamba Juice for summertime refreshment, she noticed that every smoothie was being delivered to customers in a polystyrene cup. With 752 locations throughout the U.S., Canada, Philippines, South Korea and the Bahamas and sales totaling $263 million in 2010, that’s a whole lot of polystyrene entering the waste cycle every day. So she decided to do something about it. Hansen went to Change.org and started a petition to end Jamba Juice’s use of polystyrene in all aspects of the business. “I'm 10 years old and when I was at Jamba Juice a couple of weeks ago, I ordered a smoothie and they gave it to me in a Styrofoam cup! The person behind me ordered yogurt and they gave her yogurt in a Styrofoam container, too,” Hansen ...

According to Ecocycle.org, Americans use 500 million straws each day —enough disposable straws to fill over 46,400 large school buses per year. In February 2011, Milo (then 9 years old) founded the Be Straw-Free project , to work together with members of the straw industry, restaurants and other businesses, schools, environmental groups and concerned citizens to reduce the use and waste of disposable plastic straws. There are reusable options, such as the stainless steels straws sold by Reusit.This is something we can all try —it will make a difference!

From Earth911.com : Here's an idea NYC students, parents and teachers might want to try: Earlier this year, elementary school students and thousands of online supporters petitioned Crayola to start a 'take back' program to recycle the company's markers . Last month, rival art supply manufacturer Dixon Ticonderoga answered the call and started a marker recycling program of its own. It's an unexpected result of a campaign that started in May at San Rafael, Calif.'s Sun Valley Elementary School. As they worked with school art supplies, students at the school noticed that, as markers run dry, they’re simply tossed into the garbage bin. The students, along with the help of school volunteer and award-winning children’s book author Land Wilson, decided to launch a Change.org petition to ask Crayola to start a “take back” recycling program, since markers can’t simply be tossed in the recycling bin as-is. So far, over 82,000 people have signed the online petition. W...

Sometimes you just need a cup of coffee or iced tea while out and about. But you can do it in a more sustainable way by using a reusable coffee cup. Fact: Americans throw away about 25 billion foam coffee cups a year. Many places will pour your coffee or ice drink into a reusable container if you ask. Smartplanet , Reusit and Starbucks make reusable coffee containers. Many of these products are BPA-free and therefore healthier to use. You can have your coffee on the go and be sustainable too!