Looking forward to a happy holiday season with friends and family? You can also help make it a good one for our environment with these green tips for during and after the holidays, courtesy of the Park Slope Civic Council’s Sustainability Committee.
Gifts
Patronize our fine Park Slope shops. When you buy, look for gifts that are not overpackaged, and that were made or grown locally. Consider making your own gifts — knit, crochet, bake, make preserves. Give a membership, make a donation, or plant a tree in the name of a friend or loved one (such as through the Prospect Park Alliance). Or give a gift of your time — help a friend start a garden.
Gift Wrap
Reuse old maps, sheet music, scarves, reusable tins, leftover fabric, magazine pages, or comics pages for wrapping.
Christmas Trees
Use LED string lights on your Christmas tree. Consider decorations such as old jewelry, greeting cards, ribbon; string popcorn, cranberries, pretzels, buttons, or pinecones. Don’t forget to hold on to your tree until after the season for the annual Mulchfest (details below).
Greeting Cards
Cut off the message section from last year’s cards, punch a hole in the front, and use them as festive gift tags.
Holiday Parties
Rent or borrow glassware, plateware, and flatware rather than using the disposable kind.
After the Holidays
Recycle unwanted fruit and vegetable leftovers, tea bags, and eggshells at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket’s GrowNYC Compost collection site, Saturdays, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
MulchFest!
Don’t throw away your Christmas tree! Instead, bring it to Prospect Park’s Third Street entrance or the Park Circle entrance at Parkside Avenue and Prospect Park Southwest on Saturday, Jan. 7, or Sunday, Jan. 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Your tree will be turned into environment-friendly ground cover. You can even take home some free mulch for your own yard or garden.
MulchFest is cosponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance and 1-800 Mr. Rubbish.
While you wait for your mulch at the Third Street entrance, you can
- enjoy hot chocolate, cookies, and spicy cinnamon tea, all served by the Civic Council.
- purchase a Civic Council “No Plastic Bags” tote for $1 to carry your mulch back home.
- become a Civic Council member (and get the tote free!)
Can’t make it? If you live in the area bounded by Union Street, Sixth Avenue, 15th Street, and Prospect Park West, you can leave your tree at either end of your block before 11 a.m. on both days; volunteers from 1-800 Mr. Rubbish will pick it up.
We need your help to make this event a success, including helping to gather trees and transport them to the park! To volunteer, e-mail the Civic Council’s Sustainability Committee, sustainable@parkslopeciviccouncil.org.
Park Slope Food Coop members can also get work credit by helping with MulchFest for the entire day (four hours). You must contact the Food Coop’s Membership Office to sign up for this credit.
Next meeting
Get active in the Sustainability Committee’s efforts to help the local environment. Our next meeting is Monday, Dec. 19, e-mail sustainable@parkslopeciviccouncil.org for location.
Happy Holidays!
from the December 2011 Civic News