Introducing North Philadelphia urban kids to being in Nature

One of the most important thing we can do as a society is to support children in developing a wonderous, reverent, informed relationship with Nature.
Here is what a few dedicated educators are doing to introduce second graders from North Philadelphia to Nature.

GreenFest Philly is today: Sunday September 13th

The fourth Philly GreenFest is taking place today  Sunday September 13th from 11 am to 6 pm at 2nd and South Street in Philadelphia.

The Philly Green Fest offers “green” activities for the whole family:

“More Ass, Less Gas” – Live from the Philly Naked Bike Ride

Riding your bicycle is a totally Freeing Experience:

You can feel the wind blowing in your ears,
You can actually smell flowering trees,
You can feel insects flying into your forehead,
You can park anywhere,
You can go where most cars would never dare going
No gas to pay, no parking tickets,
You are out there, living life more fully.

The Philly Naked Bike Ride added another dimension
to the freedom of riding your bike: NAKED BICYCLING

Cherry Hill Has a Vision for a Sustainable 2020: Can they do it?

Sustainable Cherry Hill  (SCH) has a vision for the year 2020.  In a remarkable 3 day visioning retreat,  100 community members — there by invitation only — hammered out a vision for what actions need to be taken to develop a sustainable community by the year 2020.

Narberth Greens Develops Turnkey Energy Challenge: Is your community ready to turn the key?

Avi Loren Fox of Narberth Greens

PhillyEcoCity recently spoke with Temple environmental studies major Avi Loren Fox, who is amassing quite a resume as an environmental change agent in Narberth and beyond.  Avi  founded Narberth Greens (NG) which recently won the nonprofit award from the Lower Merion Environmental Advisory Council for its efforts in encouraging sustainable practices, including recycling, town cleanups, and home-grown vegetable trading.

Neighborhood Bike Works: The Hub of the Bicyle Culture

Find out what Neighborhood Bike Works and the “Bicycle Lifestyle” is all about right here >>>

This four minutes video was filmed and edited by Greendocs:
Julia Hoff, Bunker Seyfert,Heather Craig and Kathleen Monahan.

Read on…

Philly Compost launches

Let’s connect these 2 facts together…

1. Methane has 72 times the global warming power of carbon – per NOAA and the recent article in Grid magazine by Tanya Seaman
2. Backyard or onsite composting offers the highest environmental benefit among organics management strategies because of the decrease or elimination of transportation impacts. – per the COOL2012 website

Food scraps dumped into land fills slowly decompose while producing a lot of methane which is 72 times more damaging to our Earth climate than carbon. And, in my opinion, it is considerably easier to reduce the amount of food scrap discarded into landfills. Philly Compost proposes to help us systematically compost our food scraps.

Short Film on West Philly Pedal Coop wins National Geographic Competition

The theme of the 2009 National Geographic Society film contest was: “Preserve your Planet”.

The winner of this year national competition is a short film about the West Philly’s Pedal Co-Op.

The film was a collaboration of Bruce Pinchback, Dylan Steinberg, Bunker Seyfert, Mathew Sullivan and Brian Honniger, all students at Drexel University on an idea from Jacques Sapriel who runs PhillyEcoCity.com

See the film right > here or in the video widget that you will find in the right hand side bar, bellow the search window.

Also included are interviews with Alex Mulcahy of Grid Magazine, Tim Dunn of Books through Bars, Megan from Trophy Bikes and Challahman Michael Dolich of Four Worlds Bakery!!

PhillyEcoCity includes several posts about the Pedal Coop:

- For more details on the Pedal Coop.

- Here is a short film showing how “Four World Bakery”, a West Philadelphia commercial bakery moved its equipment using the Pedal Coop as its movers.

The Earth Day of Service: Wednesday April 22nd

Earth Day returns on Wednesday, April 22.  For its 39^th anniversary, a coalition of environmental nonprofits and service organizations representing thousands of members throughout the region is joining together to promote Earth Days of Service.   Ask your organization to join!

The events will be jointly promoted on the website of the Greater Philadelphia Environmental Network, www.gpen.org and on PhillyEcoCity.com.  Each event on the GPEN calendar will be linked to its sponsor organization’s web site, and participating organizations will be given a hot button to link to the group calendar.

Anytime during the month of April, participating nonprofits offer the community opportunities for environmental service: trash clean-ups, invasive vine removals, bird counts, stream monitorings, tree plantings, etc.  The possibilities are as endless as our organizations’ respective mission statements.

But there’s a twist!

How do you move your business when you are committed to a zero carbon footprint??

See how a West Philadelphia Baker who is committed to a zero carbon footprint, moved his business  from the basement of his house to a new location.

This video links two stories previously published on PhillyEcoCity on:
- Four World Bakery: the sustainable bakery

- The Pedal Coop