By Cathy Taylor

Huguenot Memorial Church went zero waste last month, which means the entire building is now recycling, reusing or composting all discarded items, from apple cores to plates, cups to paper towels.

The initiative also includes the Huguenot Nursery School and Spotlight Gymnastics, which operate out of Huguenot. “It only made sense if it was the whole campus and the whole facility,” said Lynne Dintrone, a member of Huguenot’s Building and Grounds Committee.

The Committee voted in favor of the move in early January. The organization officially shifted to zero waste on April 25 at Huguenot Cabaret, an annual fundraiser for the church’s mission work that is one of its most well-attended events of the year, drawing almost 240 people.

For Cabaret, Dintrone ordered cups that looked like plastic but were actually compostable, used the church’s reusable dishware and utensils, and strategically placed blue bins for recycling of glass and paper and green bins for cups and food scraps. A humorous sketch during the show instructed attendees on how to dispose of everything.

A successful zero waste dinner last fall for Huguenot’s youth group helped move the larger initiative forward. Associate Pastor Jacob Bolton realized then that if the church could go zero waste for a small event it could do so on a larger scale.

Huguenot received extensive guidance from Michelle Sterling and Ron Schulhof of Scarsdale, the duo who started the food scrap recycling program there and also helped make Westchester Reform Temple the first zero-waste house of worship in the county. “They were phenomenal,” Bolton said. “They held our hands through this entire thing.”

Along with giving frequent consultations, the two did a full walk-through of Huguenot’s 35,000-square-foot building to figure out how zero waste could work for a facility that size.

The biggest challenge was implementing food composting, which is not offered by garbage services in either Pelham Village or Pelham Manor. The church contracted with CRP Sanitation, which transports the material to a composting facility in Ulster County. The topsoil produced is then sold throughout the Hudson Valley.

The decision to go full-out zero waste was years in the making. In 2012, the church launched its Sustainable Huguenot campaign by converting the entire building to a geothermal heating and cooling system and later buying a refurbished organ when the old one needed to be replaced.

Also in 2012, youth group members learned how to perform an eco-audit, sorting through trash and figuring out what could be recycled, composted, and so forth; the group also performed audits for houses of worship throughout Pelham.

But the idea of becoming a zero-waste facility sprouted anew last September when Bolton and just-hired Pastor Paul Seelman attended a zero-waste event for the Hudson River Presbytery, which guides 79 regional Presbyterian congregations.

Seeleman gave the green light to move forward on a dream Bolton had held for a long time. For Huguenot, this is a major step forward in living out its faith in caring for the earth.

(Disclosure: The author is an active member of Huguenot Church.)

By Cathy Taylor

This year’s Earth Day, on Sunday, April 22, is focusing on a theme familiar to readers of EcoWise: ending plastic pollution. In fact, Earth Day organizers want it gone by 2020, which, not coincidentally, is the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day.

That’s not a lot of time to rid the world of a scourge that’s poisoning our environment. So we’d like to take this column to urge local educators to incorporate lessons about it into Climate Education Week, which begins on Monday, April 16 and ends on Earth Day. Earthday.org has interactive educational toolkits for elementary school, middle school and high school, but if you can’t work plastic pollution into the curriculum that week, the lessons can be helpful at any time.

First, let’s discuss why there is such urgency about plastic – and specifically single-use plastics, such as straws and plastic bags.

Even though some plastic is recyclable, plastic pollution has become a global crisis because it doesn’t degrade and much of it makes its way – eternally — into the environment. Once there, it poisons and injures animals, particularly in the oceans; disrupts human hormones; litters our landscapes, and clogs landfills. According to a story last month in The New York Times, the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, “is four to 16 times bigger than previously thought, occupying an area roughly four times the size of California and comprising an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of rubbish.” The vast majority of it is plastic, from hard hats to water bottles.

Here are some of the suggestions for educators at earthday.org. (Check out the site to figure out what is age appropriate.)

1. Have your class list all of the plastics they use, and then have students brainstorm a about ways of shortening the list.
2. Take a quick field trip to one of the neighborhood storm drains to illustrate how plastic travels down them and ends in waterways.
3. Watch a short film, such as the PBS video featuring Jean-Michel Cousteau’s trip to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or a National Geographic video that discusses the connection between plastic pollution and the foods that we eat.
4. Hold a low-waste lunch day.
5. Test the recycling IQ of your students – before and after they’ve learned more about plastic pollution.
6. Teach the class about composting, which is a great jumping off point for discussing decomposition and the nutrient cycle.
7. Focus a lesson on microplastics, which are what larger plastics become when they break down in our oceans.

There are also plenty of resources at the site if you’d like to help your family end plastic pollution, such as a calculator for adding up your household’s plastic pollution, and suggestions for alternatives. Let’s all celebrate the earth on April 22 — and every day, for that matter.

Discounted solar energy is finally coming to the Town of Pelham through the Solarize Westchester program. The deadline for homeowners to sign a solar contract is June 4.

The model takes advantage of economies of scale in individual municipalities to bring down the installation cost of solar for interested residents and commercial property owners.

“[Solarize Pelham] is a way to be more responsible to our planet, our community, and each other,” said Town Supervisor Pete DiPaola.

Since it began operation in 2015, Solarize Westchester has conducted 11 Solarize campaigns in 20 Westchester municipalities, resulting in 500 solar installations. It is currently rolling out new efforts in Pelham and Croton, among other communities. “The municipalities we worked with have been very positive about the program,” said Nina Orville, principal of Abundant Efficiency, a sustainable consulting company that administers the overall program and coordinates between municipalities and solar contractors.

The selection of Pelham as a new Solarize market followed an extensive vetting process. Pelham first had to submit an application to Sustainable Westchester, which looks for a number of attributes, including whether the population is big enough to qualify for discount.

According to Pelham resident Lindsay Preftakes, who served as team lead on Solarize Pelham, “We also had to show that we had support through dedicated community members to run the campaign and civic organizations such as EcoPel.”

Village of Pelham Trustee and EcoPel liaison Ariel Spira-Cohen coordinated the municipal application process between Pelham and Sustainable Westchester. Pelham residents Kevin Healy and Maryann Joyce worked with former Pelhamite and EcoPel board member Christian Privat to initiate the application process last year.

Sustainable Westchester also promotes the opportunity to participate in Solarize Westchester with its municipal members and issues the requests for proposal to solar installers. Additionally, solar installers are pre-screened by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). Pelham chose Ross Solar, a ConEdison Solutions Company, for the Solarize Pelham campaign, which has been the contractor for 21 other Solarize campaigns.

How big are the potential savings? Excluding the long-term reduction in energy costs, once the estimated 20 percent group discount is applied, along with a mix of rebates and tax credits, the price of a solar installation can drop by as much as two-thirds off the average market price of $28,000. Payment plans are also available through Ross.

An initial kickoff workshop was held on March 7, organized by the Solarize Pelham team with a presentation will by Ross. Other forums are being planned, including one focused on commercial property owners. While homeowners have until June 4 to sign a solar contract, commercial property owners can register for site visits until June 4 and wait until October to sign a contract.

For more information, go to https://www.solarizewestchester.com/pelham/.

 

 

The recent decision by the Village of Pelham to return to weekly from biweekly recycling pickup – after residents asked for the change in the new garbage contract – is just one indication that most households in the broader Town of Pelham dutifully recycle their plastic, paper and metal.

Recycling is to be encouraged. But next time you’re hauling out your bin full of plastic bottles, you might take a moment to think about things differently. How? By figuring out how to lessen both garbage and recycling – by buying items that have minimal packaging, using refillable water bottles instead of buying the kind that can eventually be recycled, or refusing a straw with your soda.

If that sounds like a big ask, you could first focus just on reducing use of plastic, particularly single-use items. (And if you’re buying items like ketchup and detergent for the house, buy them in bulk; it cuts down on packaging.)

Why single out plastic? Because even after it’s recycled, it never really goes away. Virtually all of the plastic that has ever been made is still on the planet in some fashion. A plastic bottle takes over 400 years to decompose — a plastic straw about 200 years.

The fact is that is the United Nations has termed plastic pollution “a planetary crisis” and there’s no sign – yet — that demand for plastic is slowing down. Some 311 millions tons of plastic is produced each year, and that amount is supposed to quadruple by 2050, according to the European Environmental Bureau. Especially given that everyday items such as plastic bags and straws can’t easily be recycled, this is not a problem that can be handled solely by recycling.

And, unfortunately, there’s an even bigger issue on the horizon: whether items that are meant to be recycled will actually end up being recycled. A December story from Bloomberg News detailed a change in policy in China that is having global implications for the recycling business. The country – the biggest buyer of the world’s waste – is getting much more finicky about what recycling it will accept. The story explains: “The country is trying to curb rampant pollution with new restrictions on waste imports and shutting old industrial plants, including mills that process foreign scrap into reusable raw materials.”

While it’s unclear right now how or if this change will affect the much smaller world of Pelham recycling, the best way to adjust to an ever-changing landscape is simple: don’t just recycle, but refuse, reduce, reuse — and then recycle.

 

One of EcoPel’s bedrock goals is to raise the environmental consciousness of local government officials in support of policies that promote a greener, cleaner Pelham.

Recently, the Village of Pelham has moved steps closer to that goal as its Board of Trustees explores the creation of a sustainability advisory board (SAB). Such a body would develop programs and recommend policies that contribute to the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the Village.

“A sustainability board can provide more than green window dressing,” said VOP Trustee Ariel Spira-Cohen, who is spearheading the effort with Trustee Xaira Ferrara. “Municipalities that meet a number of environmental goals can receive grants for their efforts, in addition to enhancing their towns going forward.”

Though still in the exploratory stages, the board would potentially be made up of six members appointed by the mayor with trustee approval, along with a liaison from the Village government. Sustainability members might come from like-minded civic organizations such as EcoPel.

Generally speaking, sustainability boards provide non-binding advice and expertise. For instance, while residents may express interest in food-scrap composting, to put that into practice requires a relationship with local governing bodies. “We have a great civic organization here, EcoPel, but we don’t currently have a sustainability committee that is very aligned or integrated into village government like some of the other Westchester municipalities,” Spira-Cohen said.

For an example of how a sustainability advisory board might work, EcoWise reached out to Steve Wolk, chairman of the Town of New Castle SAB. In recent years, it has helped establish a town-wide plastic bag ban and coordinated a shift from dual stream recycling – which requires that paper products be sorted separately from other recyclables — to single-stream recycling, which is more efficient.

Spira-Cohen said the idea of a Pelham SAB has come up for a number of reasons, including a desire by the trustees to modernize the tree committee that is currently part of the Village code. (The duties of the tree committee are largely carried out by the Village’s private contractor.) “An SAB is more beneficial than one-off initiatives,” she noted, “because it focuses on a long-term working relationship towards a set of goals.”

Pelham Manor isn’t currently discussing the creation of a formal advisory board, according to Manor Trustee Michelle DeLillo. But she noted that the Village is serious about sustainability, as evidenced by its robust recycling and waste management program that includes electronics recycling and curbside collection for leaf composting. It is also a member, as is the Village and the Town of Pelham, in Sustainable Westchester.

Interest in sustainability and environmentally-friendly policy is growing in Westchester, and an SAB can serve as a crucial linchpin, connecting the ideas and desires of citizens to improve their communities with the municipalities that can help enact them.

Village of Pelham residents interested in serving on the proposed SAB can contact  ariel.spiracohen@pelhamgov.com or xaira.ferrara@pelhamgov.com.

 

 

 

When it comes to pollution, the plastic straw is an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be.

In fact, the humble straw creates big environmental problems. As the students involved with Pelham Eliminates Plastics noted at their October launch event at The Picture House, people in the U.S. alone use 500 million straws per day. (Source: Be Straw Free.) If such plastic habits don’t change soon, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Straws are one of the plastic products PEP is targeting in Pelham. “They’re bad for the environment, and they hurt all the wildlife,” said Russ Eustace, a sixth grader at Pelham Middle School who is a member of PEP.

Several local businesses have attempted to tackle the plastic straw problem by testing out paper versions. Unfortunately, that’s not yet a great solution.

Clay Bushong, an owner of Cantina Lobos on Wolfs Lane, said his restaurant has tried three different types of paper straws. In addition to costing more than the plastic variety, paper straws were not a big hit with customers, as they tended to disintegrate in the drinks.

Lisa Neubardt, owner of the Bakery at Four Corners, said she, too, has not found a viable alternative. “If there was a product that was economically feasible and sustainable, I would use it,” she said. The bakery does try to conserve in other ways, such as by not handing out too many napkins, she added.

If you must have a straw and want to avoid plastic, you could always carry around your own, made of a recyclable material such as bamboo, glass, or metal. But the easiest thing to do, whether ordering a drink from a restaurant or takeout counter, is to just say no to the plastic straw. As Russ Eustace said, “They’re really unnecessary.” Think about it.