Tips for Green Living

Green It Yourself (GIY) is a continuing blog series about upcycling everyday things to make the perfect gifts and more. Do you have some Green It Yourself ideas? We want to hear from you!

Looking for another way to get more from your fresh produce? We are going to show you how to grow vegetables from the leftover bits and pieces. Reduce, reuse and recycle and get the most out of your produce. This week we will be re-rooting a potato to plant in your garden come spring. I was at the Lexington Co-Op and there was a great deal on fingerling potatoes, so naturally I had to have them. I stored them in my cold, dark pantry and forgot about the poor little potatoes. Here you will learn how to bring new life to your potatoes.

You will need:

1 potato (fingerling, russet or sweet potatoes will all work!)
Toothpicks (All I could locate was a chopstick and it is working great so far)
A glass of water

In November of 2012, the Western New York Environmental Alliance (WNYEA) presented its 2013 Action Agenda. The agenda contains 10 planks from 7 of the Alliance’s Working Groups, all dealing with environmental issues impacting the Western New York Region. To learn more about the Action Agenda items of the WNYEA and their progress, get involved in the Alliance through the Working/Process Group Meetings, signing up for a listserv, or visiting the WNYEA section on GrowWNY. Or continue reading to learn about the latest Growing Working Group meeting.

On March 6, 2013 the Growing Working Group held their regularly scheduled meeting. The key focuses of this meeting were:

• The Quarterly meeting that the group is hosting for the WNYEA; this included discussing the event logistics and the presentation flow and topics.
• Reviewing a draft letter from the Growing Group in support of the Food Policy Council for Buffalo and Erie County. The group went through this letter, line by line, to make sure that it expressed all the concerns of the group.

The group discussed how they will use the upcoming WNYEA Quarterly Meeting to educate the rest of the WNYEA about their 2013 Action Agenda item. To get ready for the Quarterly Meeting, the group reviewed a list of questions and confirmed three panelists for a presentation on food policy and food policy councils:

Have you ever seen something happening in your neighborhood that you wish you could stop, but you didn’t know how? Like a truck running for an extended period of time, forcing your neighbor’s kids to go play inside because of the fumes? Or smoke billowing out of a nearby industrial plant that tells you that you will not be going for a walk tonight because the stench is nauseating? Well, there is something you can do about these things, and the answer lies at your finger tips: Text us!

Through the support of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Grow 716, a community journalism project, has been created so that you can report what is going on in your neighborhood.

Currently, we are working with the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York to hold polluters accountable!

• It’s illegal for a truck to idle for longer than five minutes. Don’t put up with the fumes! Text TRUCKS to 877877 to report them.
• Have you stepped outside only to be greeted by a foul odor? Report it! Text STINK to 877877.
• Do you see dark, dangerous looking smoke? Let us know by texting SMOKE to 877877.