Volunteer for Earth Day New York!

Earth Day New York is looking for eco-minded volunteers to help out with the festivities in Times Square and Grand Central Terminal over April 21, 22, 23, 2012.

Make an impact, meet tons of people, and have fun doing it! Sign up here.

RePlayGround will host an eco-crafty table outside of Grand Central Terminal, where we'll teach you to make your own recycling project to take with you. Be sure to drop by and ReMake with us! For more details, see our event calendar.

Green for Queens Earth Day Fair!

RePlayGround is spreading eco-crafty fun all over the city, and our next stop is the Green for Queens Earth Day Fair! Great for kids and adults, this fair will include sustainable food tastings, reptiles and more from the Wildlife Children's Theater, a discussion with Anne Lappe on her book Diet for a Hot Planet, cooking for kids, live music, and of course, recycling craft projects brought to you by RePlayGround! So be sure to stop by for your own free project to make and take, and much more!

When: Sunday, May 15, 2011 1-4PM

Where: Central Queens YM & YWHA 67-09 108th Street, Forest Hills NY

Website: click here!

See you there for some trash-tastic fun!

From table to table (with a few stops in between)

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that I kind of like to compost.
On a recent sunny Saturday, I worked on my compost pile sifting through decayed veggie peels and other food matter. That's the payment - one afternoon's worth of work once a year in exchange for being able to use drop off compost on Wednesday or Saturdays. And not only did I walk away with a large (recycled) yogurt container filled with what is considered "black gold", but also a better understanding of how food breaks down.

Seeing the compost get dumped from "cooking" for a few weeks and transferring it to a larger bin, you see the recognizable pieces in the mix. Corn cobs are still pretty much corn cobs and coconut shells are of the more determined to stay coconuts, but it's pretty amazing how most of the rest of it - orange peels, carrot tops, egg shells - all break down and start looking like dirt again.

I do work at a company that got its start in compost. In worm poop to be exact. But I'm in the design department and don't experiment much over with the lawn and garden crew other than eat lunch once in a while with them and use the fertilizer myself. So seeing the whole compost process was really helpful. And will make me way more diligent in removing stickers, rubberbands, and other foreign objects before piling it in my compost. I'm usually pretty good, but when sifting at the pile they're all still there, so better to remove 'em beforehand.

Post-compost on that sunny afternoon, I took my newly sifted black gold and planted a few containers of herbs (In upcycled containers of course! You can read the how-to in my upcoming book called ReMake It! In stores March 2011). The basil, pictured above, is sprouting already and I can't wait until it grows large enough to use it on the last of the season's tomatoes. Who knows what that dirt used to be - maybe at one time it was tomatoes and basil? I think the new plant feels right at home.

Plain and simple microwave popcorn

I love popcorn. It's always been one of my favorite snacks, ever since I'd come home from school and make a big bowlful in my family's air popper. Now I'm a grownup. I don't have an air popper, and sometimes the stovetop just feels like too much effort. And microwave popcorn is just kinda disgusting - and not so great for the environment besides. Even if you disregard the studies potentially linking the inner coating of the packaging with cancer, and even if you don't mind the nasty artificial taste (and smell that won't leave the room for days), think about all that packaging. One cardboard box (which, admittedly, can be recycled or turned into a nifty wallet), three plastic wrappers (which can't), and three wax-and-plastic-coated paper bags (which also can't), for just three bowls of popcorn? No thanks.

So what's the answer? Simple. You can make fantastic microwave popcorn at home with nothing but loose popcorn, a brown paper lunchbag, and a piece of tape. Really. I love telling people this because they are always shocked that there is not a special magic trick involved.

Your standard brown lunchbag (sold in big packs of 50 or so, for cheap) is the perfect size. Use about 1/3 cup of popcorn to fill the bag (and a bowl that will make at least two bellies very happy). Fold it over once to prevent escaping kernels, tape it shut, and go ahead and pop. After you're finished, put in a bowl and season as desired. (I like a mix of melted butter and olive oil with a little salt. Cumin, paprika or smoked paprika are also favorites.)



Usually, the "popcorn" setting on your microwave works just fine, but you might want to keep an eye on it the first few times and adjust the timing accordingly. It's also smart to shake the bag somewhere in the middle of cooking. Other than that, this method takes no more effort than regular microwave popcorn, but you've just eliminated lots of waste and some icky fake butter from your world! It's a delicious, simple, and relatively eco-friendly snack.

To boost the eco-friendly factor even further, buy organic popcorn (it's worth the extra money - tastier and pops better), and rescue brown bags from takeout orders and re-use them in the microwave. I personally don't recommend re-using the bags after they've been microwaved once (the second batch never seems to pop quite right), but you can compost or recycle the brown bags at the end of their (extended) lives.

Happy popping!

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse: Newspaper

Another Rethink - Refuse - Reuse, this time for all you gardeners out there.

Mulch is great. Mulch helps keep down moisture - reducing the need for watering. Mulch suppresses weeds - reducing the need for weeding and/or herbicides. You can mulch your garden with a myriad of natural and artificial materials, many of them extremely eco-friendly and available at a shop near you.

But what's eco-friendlier than not buying new stuff in the first place? It's temptingly easy to spend your energy shopping for the "greenest" solution to a problem, but it's even greener to use what you already have. Before you head to the garden center for a big bag of shredded mulch bark, take a look at that stack of old newspapers.



Shredded newspaper is fantastic at keeping moisture in and weeds at bay. It's more realistic for those of us with smaller gardens, and it's not the most decorative option, but it works wonders in vegetable gardens and around newly-established plants that need lots of water and TLC. Newspaper mulch is recommended by many gardeners, including the folks at Organic Gardening. Shredded or torn, it makes a nice airy mulch around plants. Or, if you're trying to eradicate stubborn weeds, put down a few layers of intact newspaper as a barrier.

Most newspapers today are printed with soy ink, but if you're unsure about what your local paper uses, don't hesitate to ask. (And if they're still using petroleum-based inks, encourage them to switch!)

Compost piles have no dress code

friend: "Whatcha doin' tomorrow night?"

me: "Going to a fundraiser for my compost pile. Wanna come?"

friend: "Um" {brief pause} "Sure!"

me: "Cool. It starts at 6:30 and it's at Urban Rustic."

friend: "I'll be coming right after work. What should I wear?"

me: "It's a compost pile. I think just about anything goes."

going organic made easy

The New York Times had a recent article about what to buy to make the biggest organic impact on your diet. Buying organic produce is usually more expensive, so when price is an issue the following five items are a good rule of thumb to buy organic:
1. Milk
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut butter
4. Ketchup
5. Apples

The potatoes are what surprised me the most. As a kid, my dad planted a lot of these and I saw them grow in our backyard. While they sometimes did get potato beetles, he didn't use pesticide on them because the potatoes underground weren't harmed unless the plant was majorly under potato beetle attack.
Apples, on the other hand, make a lot of sense. My usual rule of thumb is to buy organic fruit when you're eating the peel or it doesn't have a peel - like apples, peaches, blueberries, etc. You can peel the outer layer away on bananas and oranges.
The Times article was based on Dr Greene's (isn't that an appropriate name?) book called Raising Baby Green and he dives deeper into organic food and what to purchase. My favorite item on the list? Bonus item - organic wine. Who says buying organic can't be fun?

eating healthy is trendy

Last week the NY Times had a survey where people could post their big extravagences in life. It was great to see so many people making good food - like shopping at Whole Foods, farmers' markets, organic - a priority. Food makes me happy. Good food makes me happier!

yay summer! yay tomatoes!

One of my favorite things about summer are the fresh vegetables. And there's nothing can compare to homegrown tomatoes.
I recently planted a few tomato plants of my own in my lovely backyard in Brooklyn. It makes me happy to look out my window and see my very own tomato plants basking in the sunshine. And to keep the tomatoes company I added a few pepper plants, basil, cilantro and red freckled lettuce. And that's about all that my mini-backyard garden could fit. By the end of summer I'll have my own salad that I picked myself. Now I just have to figure out how to grow olive oil and some balsamic vinegar.