Even if the rain goes sideways, we’ll be taking electronic items for
recycling today. We are collecting your E-Waste until 2pm today!!

Our friends at PUSH (People United for Sustainable Housing), the wonderful group developing a green zone on the West Side, are finalists in Changemakers competition for an award for sustainable urban housing. Go here to vote – you have to register first but it’s not a big deal:

www.changemakers.com/en-us/sustainableurbanhousing

PUSH’s project is the only one in the running (ten finalists) that’s not in the developing world. Ah, Buffalo – our little bit of the developing world, so close to home!

Next Wednesday, March 30, at 6pm, Buffalo ReUse will be part of a discussion at Medaille College about “Leadership in WNY”.

Some points of discussion:

• What goals for community improvement do you and your organization(s) work to achieve? How do these help contribute to building a civic and sustainable future for Buffalo and the region?
• Why do you work toward these goals? What is it about Buffalo’s history that makes these goals important? What is it about Buffalo’s history that makes these goals achievable?
• What perceptions of (or stories about) Buffalo and the region can sometimes be obstacles or barriers to reaching these goals?
• What opportunities and conditions exist to help you and your organization(s) realize these goals?
• Why should students learn to “read” and “engage” in writing the story of their community? What can they do to contribute to the long, hard work of building civic and sustainable communities? In what ways is personal success only meaningful in the context of community?
• What are the personal challenges and rewards of actively engaging in your community and working to make it a better place?

Medaille Website

Are you looking for an opportunity to grow your community garden, add a component to your neighborhood project, strengthen your youth program or neighborhood outreach efforts, learn strategies to address policy challenges, market your city farm project or create value added products? Then join us in Buffalo, NY:

March 11-13, 2011

for the Growing Green Spring Urban Agriculture Training!

Registration page is here.

The Massachusetts Avenue Project’s Urban Agriculture Training features many practical, philosophical, and experiential opportunities to learn from MAP’s success with urban, youth centered agriculture.

In addition to witnessing the components of a functional urban farm first hand, such as urban fish farming, composting, and value-added food production, participants will be able to engage and observe many of the successful elements in MAP’s youth training program, Growing Green. Attending the training also means being able to hear from regional experts on food system planning and development, and network with other beginning or established urban farmers, with training at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Innovation Center and hands on at Growing Green’s Urban Youth Farm. Only $200, this weekend workshop includes 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, a cocktail reception, and intensive, hands-on training opportunities.

Workshops include

• Moving Local Food Policy Forward with Diane Picard, MAP’s Executive Director
• Introduction to Urban Agriculture with Jesse Meeder, MAP’s Farm Manager
• Aquaponics with Jesse Meeder
• Compost and Worms with Jesse Meeder
• Urban Chickens with Jesse Meeder
• Youth, Social Enterprises and the New Food System with Zoe Hollomon, MAP’s Markets Manager
• Messaging for Local Food with Erin Sharkey, MAP’s Creative Director
• Developing Youth-centered Programming with Erin Sharkey, MAP’s Creative Director and several youth participants from the Growing Green Program.
• With a special presentation from Samina Raja, PhD- Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo entitled – Building Communities as if People Eat
• Introduction to Urban Agriculture will be offered for an additional $25 on Friday March 11 from 1-5pm

The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo (CFGB) will award three $3,000 grants for student-initiated environmental projects for Western New York. If you're a Facebook user, go to this link and vote early and often:

GROWWNY’s Facebook Contest Site

From BR friend and supporter Chris Llop:

You’re Invited!

Designing to Live Sustainably

A Competition That Consciously Challenges the Conventional Paradigm
COMPETITION PREVIEW EVENT
Join us as we work together to build support around this exciting project.

We request your feedback and continued involvement as we move forward.

Designing to Live Sustainably seeks to encourage sustainable living through collaboration and design.

Chris says:

Long story short, our team has been working to create a national sustainable design/architecture competition for the Buffalo-Niagara Region. We’ve made a lot of progress, and are holding this event to invite feedback from the experienced to fine-tune and have as much impact as possible. We’re also interested in finding synergies where what we are doing might relate well to the initiatives of others in the area.

FRIDAY JANUARY 28TH

6:00-9:00 PM

THE EIGHTS 888 MAIN STREET

DISCOUNTED FOOD & DRINK

Winter is a difficult time at Buffalo ReUse. If you haven’t noticed our store is cold. But our incredible staff and crew are tough and hardy and do a yeoman’s job under these hard conditions. Winter is also a difficult time financially for ReUse. The pace of deconstruction and salvage slow. Lower volumes of stuff come in and it’s hard to entice people to visit us when it is 10 degrees in the store.

Every Little Bit Helps!

Thus we are issuing this appeal to let you know you can help support Buffalo ReUse’s missions by donating old scrap metal items. It doesn’t have to be large amounts of metal either. The old rusty baking sheet in the pantry, that cigar box of little wire clippings grandpa saved years ago, the obsolete valve the furnace guy replaced when you switched to modern heating and you can’t throw away because it is metal, that pile of aluminum pie tins and take-out containers under the sink, Grandma’s pair of broken scissors . . . I think you get the idea.

Scrap It Yourself?

Of course you could take these items to the metal recyclers but at 15 cents a pound for steel you might get 25 cents for that rusty old baking sheet. And you’d have to wait in a long line of menacing trucks to wait your turn to pull up on the scale – it’s pretty intimidating. However for us old bits of scrap metal add up and help Buffalo ReUse push through the slow seasons.

Help the Environment!

But if that weren’t reason enough consider this, your pantry will be clutter free and you will be helping the environment as well. Environmentally metals have and still do exact a very heavy environmental toll. In America the legacy of our industrial past has left many terrible and toxic scars across the land. From mountains of waste rock destroying vast ecosystems and flooded mines and pits producing acidic mine drainage into water supplies, to increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other emissions from the fuels used to mine and produce metal, and thousands of former industrial sites badly poisoned with everything from solvents to PCBS to toxic metals. This only mentions a few of the problems. Nowadays much of this work is done in places like Africa, Asia, and South America and is introducing industrial-scale environmental ruin to these places and their people.

Toxic Mudslide in Hungary

A particularly bad recent example is the toxic red mudslide that occurred in Hungary. That mudslide occurred when a levee containing a lake of chemical wastes from aluminum mining and processing failed and the reddish colored mud/toxic waste flooded over the land. Tributaries of the Danube and miles of land were poisoned and will not be safe for generations. Aluminum is an especially troublesome metal because it requires approximately four tons of bauxite to obtain 1 ton of aluminum. It also requires millions of gallons of water and tons of caustic chemicals and huge amounts of electricity to refine it. Aluminum is one of the most environmentally damaging metals despite being one of the easiest to recycle. Recycled aluminum uses one-third of the energy virgin aluminum does and recycled aluminum does not require mining or produce toxic red lakes.

How Can I Help?

So please bring your scrap metal to Buffalo ReUse at 298 Northampton Street, Buffalo NY 14208, any time we’re open (Tues-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-4, closed Monday), and we’ll gladly accept your donation. If you have a lot of scrap, we can come pick it up – just call us at 716-882-2800 and we’ll see what we can do to take it off your hands. Metals may be old, rusty, twisted and bent but we ask you follow the guidelines below.

Metal should NOT:

• Be soiled with food, chemicals, human, and animal wastes etc.
• Be less than 75% metal (i.e. little or no plastic, paper, cloth etc. attached)
• Contain ANY glass (storm windows and metal frames)

We cannot accept or dispose of the following:

• Propane, acetylene, oxygen or any pressurized tanks, chemical sprayer tanks, fire extinguishers, oil drums or paint cans with residues, etc.
• Tires (rims WITHOUT tires are acceptable)
• Batteries, PCB containing light ballasts or transformers, asbestos wrapped pipes, mercury switches and controls, or fluorescent tubes

Finally, no processing (e.g. removing glass) can be done at Buffalo ReUse and we cannot dispose of ANY non-metal items that are not acceptable. We reserve the right to reject any metals for any reason. So if in doubt or you have extremely large loads please call ahead, 716-882-2800.