Tag: Recycling

Don’t Dispose, DONATE.

IT’S MOVE OUT TIME!

If you live in a residence hall, this is the time to pack up and start your summer (after exams are over, of course). Most of the time, students have far too much stuff to pack and take home especially when so many of us have to fly home. Even if you don’t want to get rid of your stuff, in the midst of your end of the year stress, you might just throw things out because it’s easier than arranging for storage. Fortunately, donating your unwanted items can be just as easy as throwing them in the trash. Here are some things to think about so you can minimize how much you throw away in your move out. Read more

New York City Teens Advocate for Environmental Sustainability

 On Tuesday, February 21, thirty-two students, representing twelve different high schools throughout New York City, gathered at New York University. The students spanned the city geographically and expressed interests in a variety of topics from art to mathematics. But despite their diverse backgrounds and interests, they came together over one shared goal: to advocate for sustainability.

Over the past six months, I have had the honor and privilege of developing, organizing, and directing the Teen Advocates for Sustainability Corps (TASC, pronounced “task”) Summit. The TASC Summit is a three-day environmental advocacy conference for New York City high school students. The program is a joint effort of NYU Steinhardt’s Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education and the NYU Office of Sustainability’s Green Grants program, which offers funding to projects that advance sustainability at NYU. Read more

201 7 Sustainability Summit: Best Practices of Urban Environmentalism

by Opheli Garcia Lawler

©NYU Photo Bureau: Creighton

How can one be an environmentally conscious in a city that seems so at odds with nature?  The 2017 Sustainability Summit focused on answering this question by providing speakers, workshops, and and discussion centered around environmentalism in New York City. The Keynote speaker, Erika Lindsey, Senior Policy Advisor for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, focused her presentation on the historical context of environmentalism in New York, and explained connections between race, poverty, and the negative effects of an urban environment. Perhaps the most compelling part of her presentation was when she connected the dots between poorer neighborhoods and the high levels of pollutants in the air and water in those neighborhoods. Read more

Sustainability in Sydney: First Impressions

My taxi rolled up to the curb a few buildings away from 83 Quay in Haymarket, Sydney Australia. Still disoriented from the 13 hour and 45 minute flight from SFO, the damp 95 degree heat and the dizzying ride on the left side of the road, I walked into the Urbanest Student Accommodation— an apartment style building for students from US universities like NYU studying abroad as well as students studying at nearby Sydney universities. I was greeted by a very friendly combination of Urbanest and NYU Sydney staff… and all the disposable plastic water bottles my heart desired. Although my reusable NYUGREeN water bottle had only a sip of warm water left in it, I resisted the urge to take the chilled plastic bottles I was offered each time it became obvious that the foreign heat was taking a toll on me.

Plastic and waste

bins at Bondi beachWhen I finally got up to my room, I found that there was yet another plastic water bottle sitting on my desk.The mop bucket was the best I could do without a real recycling bin in the kitchen. There was no information about recycling in the building or any signs indicating nearby bins. I found out shortly after that there is in fact a recycling bin in the building, but without any encouragement from the staff or general information about recycling in the building along with the single waste bin in each kitchen, it seems unlikely that recycling is regular behavior at Urbanest. At the Science House, where classes are held, there are clearly marked trash and recycling bins in the Student Center, however, they aren’t advertised during orientation. Read more

Eager Environmentalism in a Concrete Jungle: An EcoRep Reflection on NYUnplugged

by Natasha Rubright

The New Jersey Pinelands was the country’s first National Reserve, and my hometown is right on the edge of it. The difference between a National Park and a National Reserve is not necessarily in value, but in use; a Reserve can be used for commercial purposes as long as those purposes are responsible and do not harm the biosphere. This difference is clear to the people in my town. Our elementary schools take trips down roads covered in packed sand to cranberry bogs run by Ocean Spray, not 27 miles from the Jersey Shore. There my classmates and I picked our own cranberries and learned about the pockets of fresh water called aquifers that fill up the bogs. Talk to any third grader at Milton H Allen Elementary School and they’ll be able to tell you about how the ocean used to cover our town and left it covered in sand and blueberry bushes. People call us Pinies; these woods are part of who we are. Read more