There are a few hours left to contribute to your favorite organizations, cause or program. With online donations making it even quicker and easier to do so, I urge you to take a moment to contribute.
NYCSubwayGirl donates a portion of performance contributions to organizations who help to make this world a better place. I call them The Champions I Support.
Supporting with a gift of any amount goes a long way.
I hope you join me.
April 22, 2014
Today is Earth Day, I rode my bike to Union Square to the Earth Day celebration. I remembered the very first Earth Day, celebrated in my childhood town of Middlefield, CT. There we learned about recycling newspaper and how to compost. We're still teaching children how to be better steward's of this planet. At Union Square, Anti-Fracking information and petitions to the Mayor and Governor were available, which I signed. Surprisingly there was a lot of corporate presence, Toyota, Zip Car, Enterprise, United Airlines. Some games for the kids learning ways to recycle. There were recycling depots for everything from plastic to E-Waste. I watched a guy push a cart quite a few blocks with about 8 old computers stacked ontop of each other to be recycled!
Here in NYC the trash is unbelievable and sometimes overwhelming to think how any recycling could make a difference. I am often times disheartened by the lack of recycling by office buildings and restaurants, they can do so much more, but there has to be a willingness to do it and an educational point about cause and effect. One only has to spend a (sleepless) night in NYC to hear the 100's of Garbage trucks to understand just how much we waste,
Earth Day NY info for events throughout the week
I've been riding a bike in the city since 1996, it's a wonderful way to get around town. The city now has an incredible amount of bike lanes and a bike share program. When CitiBank created the program, it was not without an amazing effort from City Government to give up so much prime real estate to be able to station and park bikes throughout the city. When I heard there were cries that the program was losing money to the tune of 2 million, I thought, but can you put a price on the advertising that Citibank gets everyday? Plus the numbers came in after a late fall start and a very cold winter. Today by the looks of the amount of empty bike stations and the increased amount of people zipping around the city on bikes. I'd say CitiBank has a win win situation. I would have preferred the program be sponsored by the City of New York and not "The Citi of Bank" and I am sure there are amazing not for profits that could benefit from taking over the program, should Citi decide it's too expensive, but hopefully not with another subsidy -bailout from the City.
Bike riding is Green, but dangerous. To ride a bike on the streets of NY is an exercise in full on attention and sometimes very close calls of accidents. I can't believe the bike riders I've seen without helmets, texting, riding the wrong way, riding on sidewalks.
Still and all, I love riding my bike in the city.
My building has a bike room. I'm lucky.
Happy Earth Day, get out and explore the outdoors of this amazing city. And do think about how you'd like to be a better stewart for our planet. Consider starting a electronics waste e-waste collection at your work and building.
NYC and recycling E-Waste programs sponsored by Lower East Side Ecology Center can help.
past blogs:
Earth Day 2013 free download of my song Jungle
Earth Day 2012 My 10 Actions for Earth Day every day
Earth Day 2011 commentary about Japan's earthquake and BP Deep Water disaster
Earth Day 2010 Thoughts for Earth Day the 3 R's- Reduce ReUse Recycle