Plastic Bottles

Expanding Plastics

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This post comes to you from the Broadway Green Alliance
Expanding Plastics

Mayor Bloomberg at the press launch of Broadway Goes Green.

Mayor Bloomberg at the press launch of Broadway Goes Green.

by Noah Aberlin

Get ready to add all rigid plastics to your recycling bin-

NYC has expanded the residential recycling stream.

On April 24th Mayor Bloomberg announced that NYC will now recycle all rigid plastics. These newly included items go in the same clear bag or blue bin where all glass, metal, aseptic packaging (juice boxes, soy milks), and plastic bottles currently go.

Rigid plastics include yogurt cups, toys, hangers, cookie tray inserts, plastic cups, food containers, and more. Bloomberg said at a press meeting, “Starting today, if it’s a rigid plastic – any rigid plastic – recycle it…This means that 50,000 tons of plastics that we were sending to landfills every year will now be recycled and it will save taxpayers almost $600,000 in export costs each year.”

This announcement coincides with the development of the new recycling plant being built by the Sunset Park waterfront in Brooklyn, which will be the largest household recycling plant in North America. Because it takes 70 percent less energy to make plastic from recycled plastics instead of raw materials, it’s going to help further reduce the city’s carbon footprint. New York City will not only become more sustainable but will also create 100 jobs at the new plant. Plus, it will be powered by one of the largest solar installations in the city.

Keep a lookout for new recycling decals and posters that should be mailed to residences soon and remember it is recommended that New Yorkers should rinse out all containers before sorting them in recycling bins. While these new rules do not effect commercial recycling (i.e.: at the theatres) they do include the new Solar Big Belly public recycling bins that have been sited around town. There are 30 in the Times Square area so please seek them out and use them.

To recycle plastic bags, many supermarkets and drug stores have special collection bins. Film plastic (plastic wrap) does not recycle.

For more information and a detailed list of all recyclable materials visit http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/home/home.shtml

 

The Broadway Green Alliance was founded in 2008 in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Broadway Green Alliance (BGA) is an ad hoc committee of The Broadway League and a fiscal program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. Along with Julie’s Bicycle in the UK, the BGA is a founding member of the International Green Theatre Alliance. The BGA has reached tens of thousands of fans through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other media.

At the BGA, we recognize that it is impossible to be 100% “green” while continuing activity and – as there is no litmus test for green activity – we ask instead that our members commit to being greener and doing better each day. As climate change does not result from one large negative action, but rather from the cumulative effect of billions of small actions, progress comes from millions of us doing a bit better each day. To become a member of the Broadway Green Alliance we ask only that you commit to becoming greener, that you name a point person to be our liaison, and that you will tell us about your green-er journey.

The BGA is co-chaired by Susan Sampliner, Company Manager of the Broadway company of WICKED, and Charlie Deull, Executive Vice President at Clark Transfer<. Rebekah Sale is the BGA’s full-time Coordinator.

Go to the Broadway Green Alliance

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Greening Shakespeare

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This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa. Jun 6 – October 13 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Kellie Gutman writes:

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1935 and is one of the oldest and largest non-profit theatres in the United States.  They operate over an eight-and-a-half-month schedule, with eleven plays, three theaters and 780 performances.  Approximately 400,000 persons are in attendance at their facility in Ashland, Oregon.  The OSF has an operating budget of $26 million.

Katie Gomez, Physical Plant Assistant, is the Green Task Force Coordinator. When asked how the OSF promotes ‘greening’ their operations, she writes:

OSF has a long list of things we do to be more sustainably aware and green.  Besides recycling paper, one of the easiest things to do here, we are now recycling batteries, some plastics, and a multitude of items used in building sets.  Many costumes are reworked from many made before, from our vast warehouse of costumes.  We do not sell plastic bottles of water anymore – a container given or purchased is filled from fountains.  The Scene Shop uses denim insulation.  We use CFL whenever possible.  As soon as LED’s are more affordable, we will switch to those.  In some instances we do use them now.  This is just the tip of what we do here.  We are constantly trying to do more.

Katie added that although they have not done a production that is specifically “green”, the Green Task Force is working on promoting this idea to the Artistic Staff.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Elements: An Eco-Art Conference.

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Have I made it clear? I’m a conference junkie.

Ain’t nothing better than being in a room full of smart people and listening to them talk about the smart things they’ve done. With smart words and smart brains. And especially now, when the green conferences are sprouting up every-which-where, like volunteer plants or something, you can listen to the experienced and the earthy-heroic, all at once. Smart and savory, your basic brain food.

But, unlike most green, super green, shiny-slick-looka-me-green conferences (and boy, do I love those), the producers of the Elements Eco Art Conference were exclusively women, and women with a very clear stated agenda: they were The Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art.

That official part explains the special certificate bestowed upon the conference by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner. But it also explains the style of the conference itself. Held in the shiny-green David Brower Center, bereft of plastic bottles but packed with compostables and a small altar, Elements was a gathering of some of the women who have been doing this eco-art thing for a long time. In some cases, 10 years. In some cases, 40. In most cases, before you figured out that it was a pretty cool thing.

And so we heard from Susan Leibovitz Steinman and the Recology Artists in Residence. And so we heard from Tierney Thys and Andree Singer Thompson. In the meantime, the presenters talked through a stream of technical glitches, and you could make art postcards and trade them, and we all looked under our seats when somebody lost a notebook. Because despite the fact that much of the work discussed was ground-breaking, iconic or simply Hella Good, the focus never strayed from its purpose. That we were here for the art, not the artist, that we were gathered for a purpose, not a form.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Nobody was barefoot. There were no drum circles. There was a bit of a libation, but no sage. The refreshing thing lacking was the ego. The puffed-out-chest of “I’m smart and here to talk about my smartness.” Which I usually love. It was refreshingly absent. It was, simply, all about the work, and the places the work was from.

Maybe it’s just humbling when your power-point doesn’t work, or when you know everyone in the room by name, or when you just get to make art in service to the planet. And it doesn’t have anything to do with being a lady. But regardless, Leibovitz-Steinman said a smart thing: “Many young women today think they don’t need to be feminist . . . but the fact is we’re standing on the shoulders of these women.” She’s got a chart that lays it all out for you, all the way back to Silent Spring, the work of another grounded woman. Was she even a feminist?

I’ll be taking tomorrow to go over more of the smart details, but for now, my brain is fed.

Go to the Green Museum

A Picture Can Show a Million? | Unique Scoop

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Artist and activist, Chris Jordan creates amazing images that portray America’s consumption. Chris’ hope is that his images will have a different effect than raw numbers alone. Since simple numbers no matter how large can be rather abstract it can be difficult to connect with ones impact. Whereas a visual representation of vast quantities can help make meaning of 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds or two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

via A Picture Can Show a Million? | Unique Scoop.