Park Slope Food Coop's Environmental Committee

03/13/2020

Hey PSFC Members! Catskill Mountain Keeper needs our assistance. Thank you.

Thanks to the dedicated efforts of citizens statewide, Governor Cuomo established a regulatory ban on fracking in New York in 2015. Now we have the opportunity to make this critically important environmental policy a state law. Senator Metzger and Assemblymember Englebright have introduced a bill to...

03/01/2020

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/28/arts/design/ny-plastic-bag-ban.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR2FPtlze75int7FO1ubCfJXNkj8uqrs2fRPZ7_Ed-cFfmaXP8m6kkTR6DI

With a new state ban going into effect, we bid farewell to the purple flower, the smiley face and the THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU designs that have adorned city life for decades.

02/21/2020

Email the Center for Environmental Quality Chairwoman Neumayr and Chuck Schumer, New York's Senior Senator. Your email will be part of the public record opposing the proposal to eviscerate NEPA, and will show the administration that we the people demand a voice in major projects that put our communities at risk.

The Trump Administration is trying to gut the nation\'s hallmark environmnetal law: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of proposed projects and actions before making a decision. And it\'s the people\'s law--it\'s our tool....

01/23/2020

Monday February 3, 2020 - Comment Deadline to DEC on NYS Plastic Bag Ban

New York State's long-awaited ban on single-use plastic carryout bags begins on March 1, 2020.

However, the proposed rules and regulations drafted by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) contain a number of problems that would threaten the law's ability to reduce single-use plastic bag pollution.

The most glaring of these problems is that the draft regulations would allow stores to hand out, free of charge, even THICKER plastic carryout bags (10 mils or more).

If allowed to stand, we are pretty sure that most consumers will not use these thicker plastic bags as reusable bags - the thicker bags will simply end up in all the same problematic places their thinner counterparts currently do - tree tops, gutters, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, landfills and incinerators.

Now we need your help to flood DEC with comments to convince the DEC to fix this and other issues before the public comment period ends on Monday February 3, 2020.

Please send your comment via Email: To [email protected] and please write “Comments on Proposed Part 351” in the subject line of the email.

In your email, please tell DEC that in order to ensure the law's ability to reduce single-use plastic bag pollution, DEC needs to remove from its draft regulations any reference to thickness of the plastic such as "less than 10 mils in thickness" or "minimum thickness of 10 mils" in its definition of film plastic and reusable bag. The New York State's ban on single-use plastic carryout bags must apply to all plastic carryout bags regardless of the bag's thickness. Moreover, the ban on single-use plastic carryout bags used to carry out food should also apply to grocery stores, supermarkets, convenience stores or food marts that sell prepared food.

Thank you very much for your help in sending comment to DEC to ensure that our hard fought plastic bag ban has a chance to succeed in reducing New York State's single-use plastic bag pollution.

If you can, you may also wish to attend a public hearing to be held by DEC:

Date: 1/27/2020
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: NYS DEC, 625 Broadway, Public Assembly Room 129A/B, Albany, NY 12233

Thank you for all you do!

The United for Action Team

01/22/2020

Hey NY'ers!

Almost a third of the food we eat every day relies on pollinators, mostly bees, but also birds, butterflies, bats, beetles, moths, and flies. Bees and other pollinators are vital to stable and plentiful food supplies, a healthy environment, and a strong economy. But populations of New York State hon...

10/30/2019

The PSFC voted tonight to continue our sponsorship of two monthly recycling collections with our partner TerraCycle, for those otherwise hard-to-recycle items like toothbrushes, soft plastic bags, and Brita filters.

10/29/2019

Access to clean water is a global human rights issue and will be at a crisis level in some places soon as they hit Day 0.

Who owns the water?

How does buying bottled water play into the hands of water privatization?

If the water is bottled in plastic, that creates a second problem.

Read on:

Creek beds are bone dry and once-gushing springs are reduced to trickles as fights play out around the nation over control of nation’s freshwater supply

10/28/2019

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental

The long read: It’s the miracle ingredient in everything from biscuits to shampoo. But our dependence on palm oil has devastating consequences. Is it too late to break the habit?

09/04/2019

From last April but relevant!

How to shop, cook and eat in a warming world.

07/31/2019

The Plastics Lobby lost 2 big members.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying group.

07/12/2019

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/16-companies-rethinking-packaging

These consumer goods companies are embracing packaging innovation.