Today, we tip our hat to a couple of locals who are making the East Village a greener, cleaner place.
Steven Burke Christine Datz-RomeroAt the Union Square Greenmarket one Saturday morning, Christine Datz-Romero milled around the back of her utility van, handling clear bags of what looked like dirt. Wearing airy gardening clothes and a friendly smile, she moved with a calm energy and a spryness that belied her age of 53.
The material in the bags was compost. Ms. Datz-Romero, Manhattan’s mystic of food waste, was there to sell it, teach about it, and collect materials to make more of it.
Since 1994, Ms. Datz-Romero and the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which she co-founded 25 years ago, have run a collection service that takes local kitchen scraps, diverts them from landfills, and turns them into compost – a rich organic material that helps to provide plants with nutrients and to sequester carbon when added to soils.
The group currently collects four tons of food waste per week, from 1,500 households. Read more…
Ian Duncan Two bloodgood plane trees in front of the Village East apartments on Avenue C have been cited as a danger by residents.There they are. The pair of them, standing on Avenue C as plain as day, unaware of the trouble they’ve been causing.
They being, not two juvenile delinquents, but twin bloodgood plane trees that recently arrived unannounced on the sidewalk in front of the Village East co-op.
The issue of arboreal interlopers blew up at a Community Board 3 parks committee meeting on June 16. Anne Johnson, a board member and resident at Village East, said it was unfair of the parks department, acting with the Lower East Side Ecology Center, to plant trees without consulting residents.
“We want them placed somewhere else,” Ms. Johnson said at the meeting. “They are a danger,” she added, arguing that they present an obstacle to wheel chair users.
Currently the trees are bounded by bright yellow tape stamped with the word “caution.”
In an e-mail message, Ms. Johnson emphasized that residents were displeased by the placement of the trees and others approached by The Local last week seemed similarly miffed. Village East has its own active buildings and grounds committee and Ms. Johnson cited one resident’s concerns that the trees will distract observers from Village East’s existing planters.
Read more…
