Upper Green Side

Support Your Local Thrift Shops

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The Upper East Side has many thrift shops that support good causes and serve as a great way for used items to find a new home. They are a great way to get rid of unwanted clutter in your apartment - like clothing, books, kitchen goods, working electronics, etc. In return you get to write off the fair market value for those items. It’s also a place to find great deals if you’re in the market for the same items.

Housing Works, which has a thrift shop located on 77th between Second and Third Avenue, raises money to provide services and advocate for the 30,000 New Yorkers living with HIV that live in homeless shelters, on the street or in otherwise inadequate housing conditions. Below is a list of other thift shops in our area. Call ahead to find out what they accept and what their hours are.

Feel a Breeze? Weatherize Your Windows!

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As Winter finally reaches us here New York, many people are only for the first time feeling the cold air whip into their apartment through all the little leaks and cracks in their windows. If you have major points where air is coming through your windows, you should call your building’s super or maintenance person to see if they will come seal them up. You might remind them that sealing this up is a good way for them to save money on the building heating.

But many of us find that building supers are not as responsive to these requests as one might hope. And many times the leaks are small enough that they are easily fixed by the application of some tape, weatherstrips and plastic covers. Thankfully, there are many simple and inexpensive ways to seal up these cracks to help keep your apartment warm.

First find where all your leaks are and make a note of how many windows need to be weather stripped. If you want to be really exact, measure out the widths and lengths of your windows and add them up to make sure you buy enough supplies.

Then go to your neighborhood hardware store and ask about “weather stripping”. This will include soft cushioning tape to put at the top and bottom of your windows to provide a more tight, snug seal at those points and “cold weather tape” that is clear tape to seal up small leaks around the edges of your windows.

To provide even more complete protection across your whole window, there are a variety of clear film shrink wraps that can help prevent drafts and increase the insulation effect of your windows significantly. With these you just apply the double sided tape to the edges of your windows and then put the plastic wrapping around the edges, cut off the excess and then use a blow-dryer to seal the plastic to the window. When Spring comes and you are ready to open your windows again, the wrapping easily peels off.

You can purchase all of these supplies at your local hardware store for less than $20. Your apartment will be better insulated to keep you warm and you will be doing your part to save energy and reduce fossil fuel consumption.

Get Involved in Your Local Community Board

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Let me be upfront, if you care about environmental issues and want to get involved at the grassroots level, now is the time, and Community Boards are the place. APPLY NOW (Manhattan Community Board Application)

Community Boards are often overlooked as a place to have a real impact on environmental policy. Many environmental activists focus on state or city level legislative or adminstrative bodies, businesses or important leaders and get a lot of good done on a variety of issues. However many times all this work falls short of connecting some of the larger environmental issues like Global Warming or Resource Depletion to the neighborhood or community level. As a result, local community boards or low level government bodies don’t necessarily make the connection between parking rules or zoning/building regulations to environmental issues like reducing automobile dependency or increasing the energy efficiency of major local development projects.

Here in New York, community boards serve a vital function of representing their neighborhood to city officials, developers, local businesses as well as providing a forum to discuss a wide range of public policy topics. Community Boards can pass resolutions (non binding) that have a strong influence on elected officials in an area and can also influence how money is spent by government agencies in that area. They are the true grassroots of New York politics. And they need a continuous supply of fresh members to keep them connected to the changing neighborhoods they represent.

Here in Manhattan, Borough President Scott Stringer is making a strong push toward reforming Community Boards to be more representative of their local communities and act on important issues of the day, like a rational transportation policy that prioritizes pedestrians and bicycle safety over automobile usage.

Next Week, Borough President Stringer is organizing an information session to encourage more people in Manhattan to apply for Community Board membership. Please bring a resume and you can apply on the spot. Here are the details of the information session:

Monday January 22nd, 6-8pm
Berkeley College, 12 E. 41st Street (between 5th and Madison),
Manhattan
Room B-202

It’s co-sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer,
Transportation Alternatives, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, NYPIRG’s
Straphangers Campaign, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Citizens for
NYC

And features presentations by:
*  Manhattan Borough President’s Office - What Is a Community Board and
How Can You Get on One?
*  Transportation Alternatives, Paul Steely White, Executive Director -
Local Advocacy for Healthier, Greener, More Efficient Streets
*  WE ACT, Peggy M. Shepard, Executive Director (invited)

APPLY NOW 

Tips for Saving Energy (and Money) Doing Laundry

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Doing laundry in the city is a common chore that people have to do. Sure you can wear some items a few times before washing, but there’s no two ways about it: dirty clothes need to be washed. And there are amazingly simple ways to dramatically reduce your energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The most important suggestion if you are in the market for new laundry machines is to look for the energy star label!

Below you can read everyday tips to save energy, save money and do your part for the environment, while still getting your clothes clean.

Continue reading Tips for Saving Energy (and Money) Doing Laundry…

Electronics Recycling: Sunday January 7th, Union Square

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Electronic Waste Recycling Drop-Off Event - 4th annual ‘After the Holidays’ event at Union Square Park - North Plaza 17th St & Broadway - Sunday, January 7th, 2007, 8am to 4pm

The Lower East Side Ecology Center is collecting electronic waste. This is important because while electronic waste represents less than 1% of our waste stream, it represents 70% of the toxic waste. Here’s a list of items that you are allowed to bring:
Working and non-working:Computers (laptop & desktop), Servers, mainframes, Monitors, Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers, Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.), Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, etc.), Components (hard drives, CD Roms, circuit boards, power supplies, etc,)
TVs,VCR & DVD Players
Audio visual devices
Radios/Stereos
Cell Phones, pagers
PDAs,Telecommunication (phones, answering machines, etc.)
Media (floppies, cd’s, zips, VHS tapes)

This Weekend: Mulchfest 2007

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It’s hard to believe that just 12 years ago most discarded Christmas trees simply went into the normal trash piles and on to landfills. But today, the Parks and Sanitation Departments have teamed up to create “Mulchfest”, where people can bring their old Christmas trees and convert it into woodchips that can be used in gardens, parks or tree beds around the city. Last year, 156,000 Christmas trees were collected and recycled by the City - 8,800 trees through MulchFest.

“Mulchfest provides New Yorkers with the opportunity to complete the lifecycle of holiday trees,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “This program recycles thousands of trees and wreaths and turns them into something useful that contributes to New York’s urban environment.”

Wood chip mulch helps to moderate soil temperatures, retain moisture and prevents weed growth while adding nutrients to the soil.

This weekend, Upper East Side Residents can bring their trees on January 6 and 7, 2007 from 10:00am to 2:00pm to Central Park has a chipping location at E. 106th Street and Fifth Avenue. Carl Schurz Park will offer drop-off service at 86th Street and East End.

Upper West Side residents can drop off their trees at 63rd & 81st Streets and Central Park West  or several locations along Riverside Drive - 79th, 89th, 97th, 106th Street.

See the Manhattan Page of the Mulchfest schedule at the Parks Department website for more details.

Streetscape Aesthetics vs. Pedestrian Safety

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A sacrifice we were willing to make: Until 1922, much of Park Avenue was, in fact, a park. Looking north on Park Ave at about 50th Street. That’s Saint Bartholomew’s Church on the right.

Streetsblog has posted my reaction to the Community Board meeting on Tuesday night I attended to propose the installation of basic pedestrian protections on the Park Avenue medians. As reported in this morning’s New York Sun, the idea was rejected for a variety of reasons. “Longtime neighborhood residents,” the Sun reports, “said they hated to sacrifice the aesthetics of a landmark city street for a safety issue they felt was no big concern.

While I certainly don’t expect Park Avenue’s median to be restored to its verdant, pre-1922 width any time soon, the photo above illustrates the absurdity of pitting streetscape aesthetics against pedestrian safety. Clearly, Park Avenue was once a whole lot more beautiful and a whole lot more safe than it is today as a roaring six-lane parkway. As we’ve written before, there are lots of ways to make a street safer for pedestrians. Even bollards, the most basic and functional of pedestrian safety measures don’t have to be ugly.
Read my whole article here.