Whoops, so much for posting up the meeting notes every week — sorry about that, folks.  

This year has gotten off to a great start for Sustainable Silver, with three new leaders, two upcoming events, and a whole lot of excitement.  Keep reading for information on:

1) Upcoming events — City Biking workshop 10/27 8pm; East New York Farms volunteer day 11/7
2) New meeting times — Thursdays at 5pm in the student lounge
3) New leaders
4) Staying in the loop/contact information

1) We’re very excited about our two fast-approaching fall events:

On Tuesday, October 27 at 8:00pm we’ll be hosting a City Biking workshop in the Parlor of the School of Social Work.  The workshop will cover everything you need to know about biking in New York City, from choosing the right lock to riding safely to fun rides to take on the weekends.  Plus, refreshments will be served! Please RSVP by emailing us at ssw.sustainability@nyu.edu with “Bike Workshop” in the subject line.  

Then, on Saturday, November 7, we’ll be taking a volunteer trip out to East New York Farms, and urban farm and community-based organization in, guess where, East New York.  We’ll have a chance to get our hands dirty on their farm, check out their farmers’ market, and learn about their awesome community organizing and youth empowerment work.  Please RSVP by emailing us at ssw.sustainability@nyu.edu with “East New York Farms” in the subject line.  

2) New Meeting Times

We’re now going to be meeting every other Thursday at 5:00pm in the School of Social Work Student lounge, with more meetings as needed.  Our meetings for the remainder of the fall semester will be held on: 
10/22, 11/5, 11/19, 12/3, and 12/17.

3) New leaders

We now have three new graduate leaders, Leanne Bazzetta, Ali Hartstein, and Jessica Margulies — yay! They are awesome! Jenny and Shane are also still involved, of course.  

4) Staying in the loop

The email address for our group is ssw.sustainability@nyu.edu — use this to contact us about anything at all, and to be added to our mailing list if you’re not already!  Also, join our Facebook group for events and to communicate with other Sustainable Silver members.

Finally, we’ve mentioned before the NYU Green Arch Initiative, a Google group that we highly recommend anyone join who wants to stay updated about different sustainability happenings at NYU and in the city.  

Hello Sustainable Silver! Thanks to everyone who came to our first meeting of the semester, held last Monday, 9/21. Here’s a brief overview of what we talked about, and a couple of other notes:

1) Bicycling Workshop

Leanne, one of our new members, expressed interest in spearheading a bicycling workshop for SSSW students on city biking safety, fun trips, bike repair, etc.  She’s looking into some different community groups to partner with, and we’ll talk more about this at our next meeting.  

2) Volunteering at East NY Farms

It seemed like getting involved with community gardens was a huge priority for a lot of our new members, so we’re going to go out to East New York Farms at some point this fall for one of their volunteer days!  Shane is spearheading this, and while nothing is set in stone yet, tentatively put aside either October 17 or November 7.

3) Setting up a Books through Bars Collection box

Books Through Bars is an organization that sends quality books to prisoners.  They used to have a collection box at NYU, but it would fill up too quickly and there was no one around to sort the books and take them over to Books through Bars.  That’s where Sustainable Silver comes in — we’re hoping to partner with the GSA and Books Through Bars to set up a collection box  in the School of Social Work, and have members of our group take it over to their library in Brooklyn when it fills up.  

4) Gardening workshops in Spring

Sustainable Silver seems to be a club of garden enthusiasts — winter hasn’t even come but we’re already looking forward to spring.  Leanne had the idea of holding a gardening workshop or a series of gardening workshops in February and/or March to set the School of Social Work off container gardening as soon as the ground turns soft.  We think that between her and Jenny, we should be able to pull off something great.

5) Collaborating with local schools on environmental education

Hayley, a new member (from the undergrad program!) had the great idea of partnering with local schools to teach the students there about the environment.  She’s going to look into similar programs, and talk to us more about the idea next meeting.  

NOTES:

1) America’s Greenest Campus Competition

NYU is participating in the America’s Greenest Campus competition, and the school with the most participants signed up will win $5000.  Help NYU win by signing up here, and for extra points log-on and pledge to reduce your carbon footprint.  

2) Timing

We had originally planned to hold our meetings on Monday nights, but it sounds like this timing is difficult for some people. If you are interested in attending our meetings, please fill out this Doodle poll.

Hope to see you at our next meeting — Monday, September 28, at 7:30pm in the Parlor!

Beginning Tuesday, April 15, the School of Social Work will be switching to a single-stream only recycling system. This means that all recyclables will go together in one bin, and all garbage in another — no more searching madly for a bottle bin when paper bins abound! Single-stream recycling has been shown to reduce waste significantly, and we hope that this transition combined with increased availability of recycling bins will improve our waste stream and reduce our environmental footprint.  Keep your eyes out for your new bins, and please do remember that you can recycle more than you might imagine — cans, bottles, plastic containers, foil, cardboard packaging, coffee sleeves, etc.  Check out the signs for more information!

We are very proud of our co-leader, Jenny Applegate, who has recently won the School of Social Work’s Innovation in Social Work Practice Student Award for an awesome research proposal she wrote on the social benefits of community gardens.  In Jenny’s paper, she examined how community gardens have been shown to lessen violent crime, improve health outcomes, and facilitate social participation in neighborhoods. She proposed a five-year, longitudinal study comparing neighborhoods with and without community gardens in the city of Newark, New Jersey.

Jenny’s research would not only be an incredible resource for the urban agriculture, food security, and environmental justice movements, it would also highlight important and potentially powerful but as yet unexplored area of focus for the social work profession.  We are so happy that NYU’s School of Social Work is recognizing the important connection between the environment and social welfare by giving Jenny this award!

Itching to get your hands covered in soil and your knees stained with dirt? Well, here’s your chance! On Sunday, May 3, from 12-5pm Sustainable Silver will be planting a vegetable garden at Shane’s house in Queens.  While this may sound like a bit of a Tom Sawyer-like ruse to get you to help us plant, a) you only have to come if you love gardening and wish you had a place to do it in the big city, b) we’ll feed you sandwiches and lemonade, and c) you’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor at awesome Sustainable Silver events throughout the fall, and you’ll know exactly how locally-grown and sustainable it is.  So come play your part in the Urban Agriculture movement that’s revitalizing America’s cities.  Please RSVP to sustainablesilver@gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone who came out last week for The Trouble with Tomatoes! For those of you who couldn’t make it, we watched two movies, one about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers which organizes for workers’ rights in Southwest Florida, and another about environmental justice in the South Bronx.  The latter, Shame on You, was a youth-created documentary, and we had a lively panel discussion following the screenings with three of its producers, as well as Sarah Pappas and Anna Smukowski.

One of the most interesting parts of the discussion came when the three Shame on You youth producers were telling us about their continued work with the Educational Video Center, the organization that coordinated the production of the documentary.  One of them, Anna, is presently working on a documentary about adolescent depression in communities of color.  When asked about her motivation for making a movie about that issue, she very frankly responded that she found it to be more important and have a larger social impact than a movie like Shame on You, because “if someone sees a movie like that, it can change their life right then,” whereas a movie like Shame on You, which deals with an issue that is broader and less directly felt, “they might recycle for a few weeks but it doesn’t really change much.”  We talked about how different approaches are needed to address different sorts of social problems: with something like depression, information can make all the difference int he world, and a movie might very well make a significant difference in someone’s life.  However, with an issue like environmental degradation and its disproportionate impact on marginalized populations, a movie can only be one small part of a multifaceted approach to changing consumption habits and empowering community members to become activists.  I asked Anna what she thought needed to go along with awareness in order for change to actually happen on this issue; she pointed first to the fact that locally-grown, sustainably- and ethically-produced food is sometimes far more expensive than, say, McDonalds — especially in low-income communities.  She also highlighted the fact that it’s not that people don’t know how to make healthy, nutritious food, they simply do not have time.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make this event a success!!

Last semester, Sustainable Silver approached the Department Chairs Commitee in the School of Social Work in order to begin a discussion about the creation of an elective in Social Work and Environmental Justice.  The Department Chairs Committee was very receptive, and asked us to create a formal elective proposal. We did, and they have suggested that we make it a one-credit, ten-hour mini-course next fall in order to gauge student interest, which we are very excited about! Problem is, we need to find someone to teach it.  If any readers of this blog have any ideas of people or organizations to contact, please do pass them on to Shane at shanecraryross@gmail.com, or below in the comments!

Here’s the proposal:

On Wednesday, February 18, Sustainable Silver held a fun event — a do-it-yourself craft night. We used plastic bags to make fabric and yarn, which we began to turn into bags, coasters, and many other things!

Here are some photos from the event — there are more on my Flickr if you’re interested .

If you’d like to learn how to turn plastic bags into beautiful things yourself, check out this tutorial for yarn, and this one for fabric!

Sustainable Silver DIY Craft Night!

Ever wondered what to do with all those pesky plastic grocery bags lying around? New York City will be passing a law requiring grocery stores to collect them for recycling this coming September, but until then, come learn how to turn them into bags, rugs, wallets, coasters, and more!  We’ll be making yarn and fabric out of plastic grocery bags, and letting our creativity take us from there — and eating delicious food besides.  Join us in the Lounge on Wednesday, February 18 at 7pm.  Hope to see you there!

Ever wondered what the connections between the trees in Washington Square Park and your stress levels were? For last two hectic weeks of the semester, Sustainable Silver, the NYU School of Social Work’s greening initiative, is holding an environMental health awareness campaign, focused on giving our fellow students a chance to think about the psychological effects of green spaces, and helping them alleviate their own stress by providing them with ideas about where to find some leaves in the City.

Check out the campaign’s page here!