May 2024
Sustainable Warwick Minutes
May 15, 2024
Meeting chair: Michael Helme
Trees: Our meeting started with a presentation by Karen Emmerich, Chairperson of the Town of Warwick Tree Commission and past President of the New York Urban Forestry Council. Almost 10 years ago Karen revived the Town of Warwick Shade Tree Commission, which now has seven members who are all knowledgeable arborists and tree enthusiasts. For a number of reasons that Karen explained, tree populations throughout Warwick, Orange County and New York State are declining, which makes it important to continue planting many tree varieties and lots of them. Sustainable Warwick funded 5 trees that the Tree Commission planted in Mountain Lake Park for this year’s Arbor Day and has provided funding and volunteers to help plant more than 20 trees at Wickham Woodlands. We look forward to future opportunities to support the Tree Commission.
2024 EV Initiative: Project Drawdown considers the adoption of electric vehicles to be an important climate solution. In recent years the volume of electric vehicles produced has been accelerating, which means the technology behind them will develop something like what happened for personal computers and smartphones – in the years ahead they’ll rapidly become cheaper, safer and cleaner, not to mention really fun to drive. We plan to create a new web page and have community presentations about EVs. In addition, we’ll have an in-person meeting/picnic for our June meeting at Wickham Woodlands Park (see details below), where EV owners will be invited to show their cars and share their experiences. SteeringCommittee@sustainablewarwick.org
Committee Updates
The Pollinator Pathway Committee continues to sell our gorgeous “Pollinators Welcome!” signs. The Committee also plans to meet the morning of May 29th (exact time TBD). For more information or to get involved contact pollinators@sustainablewarwick.org.
Zoom Garden Plot is in its 5th season. Meetings are usually held the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month, but we’ll break for Memorial Day and meet again on June 9th. Want to join us? Contact Garden@sustainablewarwick.org to receive the Zoom invitation prior to the meeting.
Coolest Recycling Drive accepted 149 appliances from Warwick and Chester, and since then in Ulster County another 272 appliances have been collected. A press conference for the collective “Hudson Valley Coolest Recycling Drive” will be held in New Paltz on Tuesday, May 21st, at 11 AM, and the livestream will be available here. For more information contact cleanenergy@sustainablewarwick.org.
The Compost Committee estimates they have composted 3,680 pounds of food scraps in 2023. Since the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that every pound of food thrown away results in 3.8 pounds of methane gas, our committee’s efforts have avoided the emissions of nearly 14,000 pounds of methane. Using 20-year global warming potentials, that is the greenhouse gas equivalent of nearly 1.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide, or the emissions one would expect from 128 gasoline powered vehicles driven for one year. Go team!
They will be actively accepting food scraps each Sunday (9AM to 2 PM) at the Warwick Valley Farmers’ Market. The committee is looking for just a few more volunteers for the compost booth in June from 11:30 to 2:00 PM. Available dates are June 9, 16 and 30. Please reach out to Christy at garden@sustainablewarwick.org to be added to the schedule.
Transformation Trails Fundraiser: Sustainable Warwick has completed its $8,000 fundraising campaign to support Transformation Trails! Transformation Trails is now a separate entity under Community2gether, and they have completed installing the occultation cloth where the first pollinator meadow will be planted in the spring of 2025 (check out this video). One reason for holding our June meeting in Wickham Woodlands Park is to celebrate the completion of our fundraiser that supports this development of the park. For more information or to get involved, reach out to ttwarwickinfo@gmail.com.
Sustainable World Book Club: Our Book Club enjoyed reading The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas in May and will be reading a novel, The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton, for the June 11, 2024 meeting. Contact BookClub@sustainablewarwick.org for more information.
New Business and Discussion Topics
Supporting Local Farmers: Several members are undertaking the project of updating our Local Growers Guide. More volunteers are needed—want to help? Reach out to Garden@sustainablewarwick.org.
June Meeting Plans: For our next monthly meeting (June 19th at 6 PM) we will meet in person at Wickham Woodlands Park. The plan is to:
have a potluck picnic (let’s make it a zero waste event)
celebrate our contributions to Transformation Trails
see and hear about EVs from local EV owners
A Final Note: Riverkeeper will host a webinar featuring a conversation between longtime Riverkeeper Boat Captain John Lipscomb and Environmental Filmmaker Jon Bowermaster, moderated by Riverkeeper President Tracy Brown. That will be June 4, 2024, 6 PM, via Zoom. Register here.