Toolkit Featured: Featured

by Peter Aronson

There are several ways to think about composting your food scraps. One way is to realize that by doing so, you are actually – honestly, truly – reducing your carbon footprint and helping fight climate change. 

Another angle is that it’s a fun family project that can include the kids and also help the environment – and probably raise a few nostrils along the way. The rotting banana peels, egg shells, leftover spaghetti and rotten tomatoes, mixed and moldering in a plastic container in your kitchen, can produce quite a mighty stink. But a mighty, worthy stink it is.

Because, and this is a third way to look at composting: By doing so, you’ll realize how much food you are wasting. It is staggering how much food we buy and never eat. Staggering how much food our country produces that ends up being tossed into landfills, where it contributes mightily to climate change  .That’s because we cooked too much food and had to throw away leftovers, or because the crackers or the cereal or whatever went stale in the back of the cabinet or because those hidden vegetables or fruit rotted in the fridge.

More than one third of all food produced in the United States is wasted – as in, never eaten, according to a 2021 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the ripple-down impact of this shortfall is truly devastating for our society, in multiple ways.

Not only is the food wasted never eaten in a world where there are hungry people everywhere, but the waste is having a devastating impact on our environment. Worldwide, food loss and waste represent eight percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, according to that EPA report. This figure is derived from all the tangential waste associated with food- the wasted water and fertilizer used to produce the food, the wasted packaging used to pack the food, the wasted transportation used to transport the food and the greenhouse gasses (methane) produced when the food rots in the landfill. 

According to studies, food scraps in a landfill produce 20 times the amount of methane as composted food scraps. And methane is quite dangerous. It accounts for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, which is bad enough – but it is 25 times as destructive as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the EPA. 

No wonder, then, that experts say we need to stop wasting food. According to the EPA report, 492 to 1,032 pounds of food is wasted per person per year in the United States. Digest those numbers for a second: 492 to 1,032 pounds a year, per person, per year, of wasted food – equal to 35 percent of the U.S. food supply.   

As we try to break old habits and reduce our waste, we are fortunate that New York City has been rolling out more composting programs in recent months. In October, Mayor Adams and the NYC Department of Sanitation began in Queens the largest curbside composting program in the country. The program, available to everyone in the county of more than two million people, has been hailed as a huge success. More than 12.7 million pounds of organic waste has been collected in three months, far outpacing the 2.1 million pounds of waste collected in seven districts in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, where residents need to opt-in and go through multiple steps to participate. 

The NYLCV calls on the Mayor to expand this program citywide.

And in the past few weeks, organized composting has arrived in upper Manhattan in the way of 45 Smart Compost bins placed on street corners. The orange metal containers, located in Morningside Heights, Central Harlem, East Harlem, West Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, have a scanning link on the front and invite you to download the NYC Compost App with your phone in order to open the bins to dispose of waste. Accepted items include all food scraps – fruits, vegetables, meat, bones, dairy, etc. – and food-soiled paper and plants.

Again, composting can be a fun project for a family. Find a container in your house that has a sealed top and daily place your banana peels, apple cores, chicken bones, leftover or uneatable anythings (oatmeal, bread crust, egg shells, rotten tomatoes, etc.) and place them in a sealed container and periodically make a  trip to the composting bin.

“Since starting to compost I have become so much more aware of our food waste,” said Emily Russo, a Morningside Heights resident, who now makes daily trips to the composting bin on Broadway and 112th Street. “It feels truly empowering to bring our food scraps down the street and deposit it in the compost bin as part of a daily routine. And it has significantly lessened the garbage we dispose of. This feels like such a win-win!”   

And, an eye opener. It makes you sadly conscious of the food you waste, and how you can take steps to change a bad habit and help the environment. 

As New York City ramps up its composting programs, the city has organized dozens of food-scrap drop-off points throughout the five boroughs. A map of the locations can be found here. 

Fortunately, more and more communities around the country are focusing on the importance of composting. The New York Times recently wrote about a community in the Columbus, Ohio, area. 

These programs can’t come soon enough, as The Times also reported recently that in 2022, U.S. carbon emissions grew 1.3 percent from the previous year, even as renewable energy surpassed coal power for the first time in more than six decades.

With carbon emissions rising  and signs of climate change all around us, that makes sensible, sustainable food purchasing and composting all the more essential.

The period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day is full of holiday cheer, but it also marks the time when we generate the most waste: 25% more than during any other time of the year. Unsurprisingly, much of this waste comes from gift wrapping. With just a little extra thought, you can help make a huge impact in reducing waste. Check out this week’s Green Tips to learn how to gift wrap the eco way!

Simple is Better

One easy way to cut down on waste is to avoid over-wrapping your gifts. Your recipient will appreciate simply wrapped gifts just as much as intricately wrapped ones; the gift itself doesn’t change, after all. Here are a few tips:

• Ditch the bows and ribbons.
• Avoid using metallic and foil wrapping paper, as these cannot be recycled. 
• Address the gift (i.e. To: Sally / From: Doug) directly on the packaging instead of using a sticker or name tag.

Upcycling is Okay

Rather than buy new wrapping materials, you can make your own by upcycling other items which would otherwise go to waste. The best part about these wrapping materials is that they cost you nothing!

• Read the newspaper? Why not give it a second life as wrapping paper! It looks especially festive when the paper is colored in. Recruit a youngin’ to help!
• Decorate paper bags from stores or deliveries. Better yet, use this DIY stamp roller.
• An old shipping or shoe box can be a great way to package a gift.
• Use an old sweater to wrap a wine bottle.
• Make tins from old paint cans.
• Upcycle empty candle containers by removing the wax. You can then glue unused wrapping paper to their sides, creating a festive jar. Great for holiday cookies!
• Reuse wrapping paper. From envelopes to shipping insulation, the potential uses are endless.

Consider Wrapping Paper Alternatives

Wrapping paper is inherently wasteful. Most of the time it gets ripped through and discarded. However, there are many alternatives that can be used over and over again.

• Package gifts in paper bags stuffed with tissue paper. These materials can be reused to wrap other gifts later.
• Use the manufacturer’s packaging. Did your package ship in a box? Use it! Did you buy your gift in person? Don’t be afraid to use the retailer’s bag! You can even decorate the box or bag yourself for some heartfelt homemade gift packaging.
• Replace that bow with a fallen conifer branch or pinecone.

If none of these ideas work for you, get creative! Any homemade gift wrap will be appreciated as thoughtful, and don’t be afraid to tell the recipients of your gifts why your gift wrap is different and how they can cut down on the waste.

Thank you for reading this week’s Green Tips! We hope you have a safe and happy holiday season!

 

In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are offering tips on how best to shop for family and friends, while also giving back to the environment.

A good way to do this, as we move collectively towards a more sustainable and equitable future, is to consider the carbon footprint of whatever you are thinking of buying.

For example, if you want to buy someone a beautiful sweater made in Italy, think about the cost to the environment of shipping that sweater thousands of miles. Shipping by truck, train, plane and/or ship produces carbon emissions; as a general rule, the further the trip, the more carbon emissions are produced and released into our atmosphere.

You can do this simple exercise with any present, whether it’s clothing, a house gift, specialty food or the latest gadget. The cost of shipping products and food accounts for approximately 15 percent of all carbon pollution in America, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Keeping that in mind, here are our shopping tips for this holiday season:

1. Buy local. This will reduce or eliminate much of the carbon footprint caused by shipping, and it will also support your local merchants. You can also use reusable shopping bags to reduce waste! Read more here about why it’s important to shop locally;
2. Avoid large, big-box stores. Most of their products are made overseas, often in Asia, and they travel many thousands of miles to their destinations. Also, these stores often use hard-plastic shell wrapping. We want to curtail their use;
3. Gift an experience: Instead of buying things, buy someone a wonderful experience, like tickets to a show, a concert or a sporting event;
4. Buy someone a membership to a gym or a museum or subscription to a magazine;
5. Make a charitable gift in someone’s name;
6. Try making something yourself. Buy local ingredients in your neighborhood and bake something delicious. Knit a scarf. Everyone loves fresh baked goodies or homemade gifts;
7. If you do buy or make a gift, use sustainable wrapping paper, such as old newspaper or recycled paper … or no paper at all;
8. If you receive a gift that is replacing something only mildly or gently used (clothing) or something that can be refurbished (electronics), think about donating the old item to charity. Remember, old electronics can be recycled, for parts or the actual device.    
9. If you do buy a gift, think of shopping at your local thrift store. You’ll be amazed at the beautiful clothing and jewelry you can find by “thrifting”;
10. If you prefer not to thrift, then think about shopping for ethically-sourced, fair-trade products, whether online or in a store. Some online options:  

Clothes

• Pact – organic, carbon neutral, Fair Trade Certified
• Vermont Flannel – GOTS Certified Organic Cotton, made in USA
• Harvest and Mill – grown and sewn in USA, 100% organic cotton, carbon neutral

Beauty Products 

• 100% Pure – nontoxic, cruelty free, vegan, eco-friendly packaging and shipping
• Clover by Clove and Hallow – cruelty free, vegan, Certified Net Plastic Neutral, child labor free supply chain
• Booda Organics – organic, non-gmo, vegan, cruelty free, Fair Trade Certified
• Nourish Organic – certified by the USDA National Organic Program, cruelty free, Fair Trade Certified

Chocolate + coffee 

• Equal Exchange – coffee and chocolate, Fair Trade Certified
• Alter Eco – chocolate, Fair Trade Certified, regenerative agriculture, organic, carbon neutral
• Theo – chocolate, Fair Trade Certified
• Higher Ground – coffee, Fair Trade Certified, organic

 

We hope these suggestions help. We wish everyone a peaceful, healthy and wonderfully sustainable holiday season!