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Don't
Trash the Recycle An Initiative of the Westport PTA Council Green Committee
By Pippa Bell Ader 
Miggs Burrows along with second graders Annabel and Kyle placing some of the first "Don't Trash the Recycling" stickers at King's Highway Elementary School.
The Westport PTA Council Green Committee (consisting of Green Committee members from all the Westport public schools) noted that recycling in the schools is not as good as it could be: recycling bins are being contaminated with items that should be going in the garbage. School custodians cannot be expected to pick through the recycling, and must throw all the contents of a contaminated recycling bin into the garbage. What a waste!!!
A suggestion made by a committee member inspired a new program to educate the entire school system about the importance of good recycling … "Don't Trash the Recycling." In a true community effort, this idea has come to fruition. Miggs Burroughs, Westport’s famed graphic artist, has designed an eye-catching sticker, and GVI, a local grassroots organization, passionate about creating environmental and community change has funded the printing.
The kickoff is planned for tomorrow, Friday, April 30th, at all Westport schools with Green Committee members distributing the new stickers on recycle bins throughout the schools. Every elementary school child will get a sticker to take home on Friday and their parents will learn about the initiative via a special e-mail announcement. All schools will be airing a PSA this week to advertise the initiative. The hope is that the sticker will end up on all of Westport's recycle bins—we have the blessing of Parks and Rec, Town Hall, the Westport Library and the Westport Center for Senior Activities. Certainly many Westporters will be better aware of the importance of propoer recycling as a result of this initiative!!
Thank you for your participation and support!!!!
Community Gardens
WestportNow / Dave Matlow
Work got under way today on expanding Westport’s Community Gardens at
Long Lots Elementary School on Long Lots Lane. Workers from Westport’s
Kowalsky Brothers construction prepared the soil to add an additional 50
plots, according to Don Kowalsky, a machine operator.
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Wakeman Town Farm Welcomes 15 Summer Interns
WestportNow Monday, July 5
The Wakeman Farm summer interns include (l-r) Sanders McNair, Jesse Sussmane, Bo Gibson, Adam Levinson, Melanie Schneider, Peter Menz, Catherine Coughlin, Justin Honigstein, and Jack Hennessy.
Westport’s nonprofit Green Village Initiative (GVI) this summer is hosting 15 student interns to work at The Wakeman Town Farm & Sustainability Center on Cross Highway.
The interns will focus their efforts on a wide variety of projects including building raised garden beds, chicken coops, rabbit hutches and picnic tables.
They will also be maintaining the gardens, harvesting vegetables and assisting with the ongoing renovation of the Wakeman farmhouse, according to a news release.
The summer intern program is being led by Michael Aitkenhead, Staples High School environmental teacher and soon-to-be resident farmer at Wakeman effective Aug. 1.
He is being assisted by GVI members Monique Bosch and Dina Brewster who also serve on the Wakeman Town Board. The interns, predominantly Staples High School students, will work an average of five weeks during the course of the summer.
Summer interns include: Sanders McNair, Jesse Sussmane, Bo Gibson, Adam Levinson, Melanie Schneider, Peter Menz, Catherine Coughlin, Justin Honigstein, Jack Hennessy, Jocie Fifield, Danny Cooper, Emily Cooper, Ian Palmer, Nick Weir and Hillary Lempit.
In addition to teaming up with these summer interns, GVI worked with an energetic group of spring interns from Staples High School’s senior internship program. Spring interns included: Matt Brill, Andrea Sherman, Danny Carbone and Charles Stanley.
The Wakeman Town Farm & Sustainability Center, recently created by GVI, will function as an organic demonstration homestead and farm open to the public to educate and inspire the greater community about local healthy food production, responsible land stewardship and sustainable practices.
Westport Greening Initiative Take Root
Many
are working to carry the momentum to make Westport a model green town. By Nancy Burton November
29, 2009 Seeds
of change are sprouting in Westport. Staples
Culinary Arts students are tending, chopping, cooking and then chewing
on produce they’ve grown on school grounds. Dry
cleaning shops are trumpeting their "organic" processes that reduce
toxic chemical use and provide customers with clean and odor-free
clothing. Go-green
cognoscenti are formulating plans for a pesticide ban in an effort to
protect groundwater and the Long Island Sound. Residents
are taking the "Green Pledge" to reduce their carbon footprints by
switching to compact fluorescent bulbs, hanging laundry on the
clothesline and taking fewer road trips. And,
plans are underway to plow the yard of Wakeman Farm on Cross Highway
and raise organic vegetables there for sale to the community. These
and other initiatives are under way to improve the environment and
encourage a go-green way of life. The
town's Green Task Force says that's important when each Westport
resident adds 18 tons of greenhouse gases per year into the atmosphere,
according to an energy audit the group conducted last year. Multiply
that number by the population in town — 26,000 — and you have a
whopping 468,000 tons of greenhouse gases Westport adds to global
warming annually, according to the energy audit. Westport
wants to be the model green town, according to First Selectman Gordon
Joseloff, who plans to continue pursuing such initiatives that he says
have put Westport on the green radar screen.
The
event, which included live dance music, food and drinks, raised more
than $20,000 for Save the Sound—Connecticut Fund for the Environment,
and the Connecticut League of Conservaton Voters.
Eco-Fest 2010 at Levitt
Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
An overflow crowd turned out at Westport’s Levitt Pavilion for Eco-Fest promoting green initiatives. Entertainment was provided by the Westport-based rock group "A bad Time for Sarcasm."
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Ribbon Cutting at Community Gardens
WestportNow Saturday, July 24/ Helen Klisser During
On
hand for the ceremony were (l-r) Trish Williams, Lou Weinberg,
chairman, First Selectman Gordon F. Joseloff, Parks & Recreation
Director Stuart McCarthy and Janis Collins, chair of the Parks &
Recreation Commission.
There was a ribbon cutting ceremony today at the Westport Community Gardens on Hyde Lane marking expansion of the gardens. The gardens doubled in size due to increased demand for garden plots. The original 30 gardeners have expanded to almost 100 members.
Library Talk Sells the Idea of Local Farming
By James Lomuscio WestportNow
Tonight’s
panel included (l-r) Dina Brewster, Amy Kalafa, Sherri Brooks-Vinton,
Sal Gilbertie, and moderator Dan Levinson. Dave
Matlow for WestportNow.com
With talk of vermin control, deer fencing,
root cellars, and
above all, supporting the local farmer over faceless multi-national
growers, tonight’s meeting seemed more like a Grange rally than the
typical gathering in the McManus Reading Room at the Westport Public
Library.
But make no mistake. Many of the 135 who gathered for the
panel discussion “Creating a Local Foodshed” were serious growers.
It did not matter if they gardened in containers, a 400-square-foot
patch in the backyard, the Westport Community Gardens, or were fortunate
to have
enough land to farm on the large scale.
They all seemed linked by a love of the soil, locally grown produce and
organic gardening.
The discussion, part of the Series on Sustainable Living co-sponsored by
the library and Westport’s Green Village Initiative (GVI), featured Sal
Gilbertie of Gilbertie’s Herb Gardens; Dina Brewster, a
teacher-turned-farmer who works at The Hickories, a Ridgefield farm;
Weston filmmaker Amy Kalafa; and cookbook author Sherri Brooks Vinton.
“When I went into this five years ago, I never expected to be speaking
at the Westport Library about the local food movement,” said Brewster, a
former English teacher at the Bronx High School of Science.
“But it wasn’t long before I began to lift my head up from the row of
beets and look at the movement.
Brewster said her love for agriculture preceded the Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) movement that has sprouted in recent years, and she
soon
discovered that being a farmer did not mean a “scary and
isolated”existence.
“In Fairfeld County it is becoming a community event,” she said. “...The
number of people becoming interested has been powerful.”
Her comment underscored the rebirth of community farming in Westport and
surrounding towns, as evidenced by the two-acre Town Farm opening at
the
old Wakeman Farm on Cross Highway and the burgeoning of farmers’
markets.
Dan Levinson, GVI’s co-founder and chairman who emceed the event,
reiterated that local, pesticide-free farming is key to protecting the
planet, avoiding health problems and recreating a sense of community.
Part of tonight’s
audience at the Westport Public Library McManus
Room. Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
“We think local food is really a big deal,” said Levinson, noting that
the idea is catching on with the burgeoning of edible gardens around
town and demands for local, organic produce.
Levinson acknowledged the presence of Michael Aitkenhead, a Staples High
School environmental science teacher and Connecticut Teacher of the
Year,
who has been appointed farmer-in-residence at the Town Farm.
Gilbertie, a third generation commercial grower with farms in Westport
and Easton, said he became interested organic farming in the 1960s after
he saw
visitors to his family’s herb gardens nibbling on plants that had been
sprayed.
Today, when other farmers want to lease some of his land in Easton,
Gilbertie said he insists grow organically. He said some farmers are
initially hesitant but soon realize it is not difficult.
Kalafa said she and her husband raise about 50 percent of the vegetables
they eat each year. Kalafa became interested in organic produce due to
her own food allergies, she said.
Her passion for locally produced food developed after visiting her
in-laws in France, where she said the average family grows their own
vegetables and shuns processed food.
“I began to recognize more and more the goodness of growing organic,”
she said.
According to Brooks, the current farm movement is “about supporting the
farms that are closest to you.”
“We have absolutely no business buying apples from China,” she said.
“Latch onto a local farm and do not let it go.”
Brewster and Gilbertie, however, both acknowledged that local farming is
a long way from sustaining the region’s food needs.
“It’s about trying to hold onto farms that already exist,” she said,
“and it is about education.”
Gilbertie agreed, “There will never be enough food produced in Fairfield
County by local farmers to feed everyone.”
“No one is going to be tearing down their houses to build farms,”
Gilbertie said. “But we have to educate people, and it has to begin in
the schools.”
He said that teaching children how to grow their own food can excite
them about agriculture, and they in turn can influence their parents to
plant a garden.
Podcast of
Panel Discussion:
http://www.westportlibrary.org/events/podcasts/
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