SLOWFASHIONFFFARS & SJC present another chance to donate and volunteer! Your gently used shoes go to charity and top donors can enroll and win tickets to our upcoming fundraiser TBA! Details below: 
SJC+ART AND SLOWFASHION/FFFARS IS HOT OFF A FABULOUS EARTH DAY WEEKEND @LIBERTY STATE PARK FOR #HUDSONEARTHDAY AND THE PEACE COMMUNITY GARDEN @SAINT PAUL'S LUTHERAN CHURCH AND NOW AT HISTORIC JERSEY CITY HARSIMUS COVE CEMETERY FOR THE ANNUAL MOTHER EARTH FESTIVAL AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE BABY GOATS!
SLOW FASHION: The Race To Recycle Foot Gear!
Footwear Drive Fundraiser To Benefit Ecuador Earthquake Relief
When: Saturday April 30th, 2016, 12 NOON-4 PM Where:The Historic Jersey City & Harsimus Cemetery’s annual 'Mother Earth Festival' A Celebration of Earth and Arbor Day + the arrival of the Baby Goats!
Here’s your chance to CLEAN OUT & RECYCLE your unwanted footwear! While keeping this waste stream from going to landfills. Bring footwear you wish to donate with you to Sustainable JC’s table and check out all the cool projects they are working on, sign-up to volunteer with us and enter a free raffle to win a Rain Barrel!
Spread the word amongst family and friends - bring their footwear too! The more footwear we collect, the more money we raise. Donated footwear will find their way to those who need them globally, with financial proceeds going to Ecuador Earthquake Relief and toward assisting others in need!
ACCEPTABLE Footwear: All types of men's, women's and children's: athletic sneakers, shoes, and footwear. Footwear MUST be paired using rubber bands or shoelaces.
NOT ACCEPTABLE Footwear: Any footwear that is damaged, has holes or tears, singles shoes of any type, rubber flip flops, slippers, roller blades, roller skates, ice skates, ski boots or mud-covered footwear
YOU GIVE US YOUR GENTLY USED FOOTWEAR WE GIFT YOU WITH SUSTAINABLE SWAG! TOP DONORS ENROLL WITH EVELYN VON GIZYCKI ON SITE FOR A CHANCE TO WIN TICKETS TO OUR UPCOMING FUNDRAISER TBA!
Questions and for more information contact Evelyn von Gizycki at 646-522-4549 or http://press@sustainablejc.org.
Follow us on social media platforms to connect with and check back here as well for re-caps and event photos: @sustainablejc AND www.facebook.com/SLOWFASHIONFFFARS This is not tax deductible or a charitable solicitation; footwear drive cannot supply donation receipts to participants. Your footwear is collected and sold to footweardrive.com. Every step we take helps us to divert waste away from landfills!
As a river City impacted by exteme weather events, plus our Mayor's commitment to lower our carbon footprint (ignore the Nerdwallet claim as is a form of greenwashing), we have an opportunity to ratchet up more Green Infrastructure (GI) in Jersey City - this will help mitigate climate change impacts and create a higher quality of life in line with social and environmental priorities expressed by our community. As SJC continues our educational outreach on this front, e.g., our Certificate Program In Urban Sustainability, which will highlight Green Infrastructure opportunities related to Building activity + our upcoming GI demonstration projects, the City of Jersey City is undergoing a review of opportunities to integrate Green Infrastructure into New Construction, Redevelopment Projects, and Streetscapes across the City. This is amazing news and SJC feels that our advocacy efforts, and sometimes nudgy approach, has paid off. The groundswell of interest in bringing Nature into the City, to help carry the load, not only makes common sense, but makes financial sense.
Integrating GI approaches to our Master Planning activities, will not only mitigate current and future costs of managing stormwater (think property taxes that are intended to pay for needed infrastructure builds and rebuilds), but will pay us all back with quality of life dividends, e.g., air quality (that same Nerdwallet survey cited JC near the bottom of those cities surveyed in this category). Also, seems like a synergistic bonus to the City's investment in their rightfully inspired 'Culture of Health' initiative.
Gaining the partnership of the Developer community to GREEN THEIR PROJECTS, in compliance with industry best practices, will accelerate our goal to become one of America's best cities and on a practical front, will transform the resiliency of our City, should another super storm hit - tick, tock. We need incentives on this front and while the NJ DEP might be offering municipal financial support to those who take the initiative to implement GI, Jersey City also needs to come up with local incentives to make this happen. What about a GREEN SCORE, that is mapped to Abatements ? Developers get rewarded for integrating greener, energy efficient building and green infrastructure attributes into their designs - or else they are not eligible for higher level Abatement awards - this is probably contentious :-) but other cities are doing it.
Lastly, IF our Economic Development Strategic Plan is to deliver on Social & Environmental Priorities, expressed by an array of community stakeholders, then certainly the opportunity to job train for Greener Building Retrofits (we have a built-in inventory, of old and now new construction, that do not meet industry best practices), GI service sector and other Green Economy Jobs, can be low hanging fruit for the Mayor's Innovation Team. They are working really hard to connect the dots and deliver on new programs and activities that stimulate economic growth for JC - is it that Green Infrastructure is hiding in plain sight (old joke) ?
With a focus on revitalizing our commercial districts, let's not only think about marketing models and incentives that empower small businesses (both important), but let's ALSO consider the opportunity to create some synergistic returns on our investment in these footprints - yes build, yes bring in new business investment AND yes, let us create greener corridors to live and work in Jersey City. These are NOT mutually exclusive goals.
We've already published lots about what's going on in our region - Philly, Camden, Hoboken, NYC, etal. Here's what's going on in Europe -
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056166/madrid-is-covering-itself-in-plants-to-help-fight-rising-temperatures
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/france-green-roofs-law-solar-panels-20150819
Hello Folks,
Passing along a note from colleague Claudia Joseph here, founder of the New York Permaculture Exchange (NYPE). She has orchestrated beneficial bridges across historic landmark / park / government / school / community constituents toward a COMMONS installation - purposeful and useful landscape, built and open space, offering highest and best use for greatest number of people.
Permaculture is more than just good gardening. It is a lifelong approach to analysis, actions and social structures that results in better relationships, more functional systems and a clearer understanding of everything necessary for human communities to thrive. – CJ
SJC is very excited about our partnership with NYPE and excited at the prospect of more local JC practicioners hitting the streets as a result of this program. We're very supportive of Permaculture Education - for adults and for our kids - as we believe it is an opportunity to help people understand the complexities of their immediate & broader worlds, through a very accessible and inspiring lens :-)
Claudia Joseph will one of the appreciated Instructors in SJC's Certificate Program in Urban Sustainability, starting at the end of February 2016 - stay tuned.
30% Discount For Course Outlined Below Is Being Offered To SJC Members.
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Note from Claudia Joseph -
Dear Permaculture Enthusiasts,
Are you interested in knowing more about Climate Change and how to respond? Want to grow food, learn to forage and explore culinary and medicinal herb use? How about organic gardening, improving soil, and urban compost systems? Want to learn about GMO's and how you can save your own seeds? Or explore energy solutions and every day actions that help? This course offers a toolbox of techniques that can be applied on any scale - from window box to farm & forest. 12 Saturday sessions takes you from dormancy through the spring planting season. 10 hours of field training and ongoing opportunities to garden.
If money is what is stopping your learning, talk with us about payment plans and trade possibilities. Give yourself or someone you love a life-long gift of knowledge.
PERMACULTURE DESIGN CERTIFICATE winter-spring 2016, in Brooklyn, NY Jan 9, Jan 23, Jan 30, February 6, Feb 20, March 5, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, May 14, May 21 at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture and the Old Stone House.
Claudia Joseph, lead instructor (also teaches Organic Gardening Techniques at NYBG) Nationally recognized Guest Instructors: Jude Hobbs, Jono Neiger, Tattfoo Tan Fabulous local teachers Claudia Keel, Wendy Brawer, Craig Desmond
Course Fee: $1,200, partial scholarships through BSEC are available. We want to empower as many people as possible to take positive steps in the coming year.
Contact: permie@earthlink.net
For information visit: www.permaculture-
Register: http://
This 12-part Permaculture Design Certificate course teaches basic skills such as site mapping, observation, and assessment, as well as group process and effective communications. The course will include contemporary urban examples for responding to climate change, improving city environments, food systems, energy solutions, bioregional organizing, utilizing the public commons, group governance, and cooperative systems. These skills can be applied professionally and personally in combination with many related livelihoods and practices. Realize your potential by increasing your skills and knowledge.
This course helps support the first Public Commons in NYC. Washington Park is open every day, hosting a useful landscape for food, medicine, craft material and bird & pollinator support. Beds are constructed on contour to capture storm water. The 1.3 acre garden system was designed interactively with the community it serves and continues to evolve.
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture hopes to adapt the grounds at their historic Jacobean building near Prospect Park to have similar functionality. We are promoting a replicable model! Students will help design the new plantings as well as assess the building and other functional aspects of BSEC for the final design project. Individual design assignments will allow students to develop their skills using sites relating to their specific interests in this collaborative education model. Be part of the transformation into a carbon neutral future.
So here I am, on August 22nd, experiencing the last full day of an artist residency program I was lucky enough to participate in at wonderful WaveFarm.org. Wave Farm is...(from their website) "A non-profit arts organization that celebrates creative and community use of media and the airwaves. Our programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form."
The community radio station they operate 24/7 is situated on 30 acres of meadow, woods and pond, in the Catskill Mountains. It is drop-dead gorgeous, and a very exciting artistic and community-driven endeavor!
My artistic partner and I have been here for the last 9 days, doing a series of live broadcasts based on a poetic libretto I composed called "NIGHT." There is spotty phone reception and internet here on Wave Farm, which is actually a true blessing. It's so nice to be rather unavailable to talk and text, just mentally and emotionally texting with nature and reestablishing my citified, and so sometimes dwindling, kinship with it.
When I wasn't writing or prepping for the live radio broadcasts, I found myself watching the bees around the property--which seriously abound, and I do understand why. The wildflowers are truly wild here, their bold yellow and purple limbs cartwheeling up and around the deck, it's incredibly beautiful and irresistible. And they are so very busy! Bees, hummingbirds, butterflies all creating just this marvelous commotion in that thick, lovely tangle.
I've been intrigued by bees for a while, especially knowing the state of their survival is in peril, and have started doing a bit of research on them.
FACT: Bees smell with their feet, antennae and mouths.
I've also spent some time while in this residency, being very inspired by them:
Women who run with the bees
Today I ran with the bees!
Ok maybe not exactly running
But I more mindfully folded in with them,
Into those brash tufts of wildly purple lace cones
And that eye rush of bright goldenrod
Just
The most industrious beautiful fuzz bubbles on this earth I swear it!
If I could only pet them
I have such that small silly longing...
They have no time for me
Or you
They don't have time for anything but the wild plump drift from bloom to bloom
They don't look up
I have never seen such a determined flight
Such single-minded purpose! (don't tell me they don't have minds)
Herds and glides of them
Gentle glides of them
Their panties of pollen
Their dangling sunrise shirtsleeves
Their lovely gentle drift hanging heavy
In the damp soft rag of the air...
One afternoon, a storm moved in. The bees were in full swing, and I wondered what they would do once the rains started. I popped out when I heard the first drops, and only a few bees remained, huddled up under flowers. Makeshift umbrellas? Brilliant! But most were gone, back to the hives to wait things out.
Less than 24 hours ago, on one of the occasions I was able to access the internet, I got this event notice from SJC on FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/1664719450410395/
Wow, a BEE-vent! How wonderfully timely!
Here is a short explanation, lifted from the bee-vent page:
NYC Beekeeping Liane Newton will introduce the work of nycbeekeeping.org, and give a short talk on Bees, Climate Change and Complexity. We’ll talk with her about how you can get involved in beekeeping, what is working in NYC, including the Trees for Bees component of her program, and how it’s all “mutually intertangled.”
FACT: Bees dance!
I clicked "Join." I hope to see you there!
Patricia Kositzky
Sustainable Jersey City is a catalyst organization that educates, empowers and activates community stakeholders, to make Jersey City NJ a more sustainable place to live and work.
Our vision is for Jersey City to become the greenest and most sustainable city in New Jersey, with community stakeholders that are educated about and committed to environmental, economic and social justice.
