A very green Community Day for New Castle

October 3, 2008
by Laura Gurfein

Last Saturday at New Castle Community Day, many of the 75 exhibiters’ booths were looking to paint the town green. The event, which drew many visitors to the Chappaqua train station parking lot despite the damp and gloomy weather, featured many stations with sustainability tips for the community, and even a vegetable oil powered bus.

One of the most noticeable efforts toward recycling and sustainability at Community Day was the large distribution of reusable shopping bags by New Castle Democrats, Houlihan Lawrence, and the town of New Castle, whose bags read: “Yes, we do so like green bags and hamlets!” Many residents used the bags to gather up free pens, magnets and pamphlets given out by other organizations, as well as free plants gifted by NewCastleNOW.org’s gardening columnist, Shobha Vanchiswar.

Carbon footprints measured by carbon calculator

Another attraction was a laptop with a Carbon Calculator, on which residents could calculate their carbon footprints. The display, provided by the national organization Local Governments for Sustainability, was part of a larger effort to calculate the entire carbon footprint of New Castle.

“Hopefully we’ll have the final number by the end of 2009,” said Jon Arneth, a member of Local Governments for Sustainability involved in the project. “So far we only have government buildings, and we’re looking to expand to houses and businesses.”

New Castle sustainability initiatives

Town supervisor Barbara Gerrard, who acknowledged that wearing green to Community Day “was not an accident,” is looking to expand on that plan. “We are looking to make sure that every commercial building is at least LEED-certified,” said Gerrard. LEED, The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a national organization whose rating system is used to certify that buildings are environmentally efficient. To be certified means that buildings meet certain minimum requirements.

Gerrard also mentioned that the town’s vehicles are switching to hybrid power.

The program “Neat to the Street,” encourages every resident to take responsibility for more than just their own property, explained organizers Phyllis Furnari and Kathie Lenihan, who recruited people to sign up for the town clean-up day in May. 

At the booth for the Sustainability Advisory Board, which recently changed its name from the Solid Waste Advisory Board, residents could purchase compost and recycling bins. Taking up a small part of that booth was Silent Earth, an environmental club at Horace Greeley High School. They collected signatures on green stickers that were mounted on a poster board, representing residents’ pledges to “go green.”

New Castle is already one of the leading towns in Westchester for recycling. “About 50 percent of the town recycles,” said Bart Carey, a employee of the New Castle Department of Public Works.