By Annie Kravet, TEAC Volunteer

Food Storage on the go: Stop packing school/camp/picnic lunches in plastic baggies and switch to reusable options! Reuse glass jars with lids to store snacks, or use tupperware, etc. Other ideas: carrot sticks and other non-messy snacks can be wrapped in a cloth napkin. 

Food storage at home: Save money and stop buying single use items like tin foil and plastic wrap, and switch to reusable items like glass jars or tupperware. Cover food in the fridge by placing a plate on top of a bowl, and save and wash your old pasta sauce jars for food storage. 

Say goodbye to paper towels: Use your kitchen towels instead, and/or cut up old t-shirts, and have a stack of small rags ready to go in a basket on the counter. These can easily be rinsed out, hung to dry, or tossed in with the laundry and reused. 

Make iced tea using loose leaf tea instead of buying from the store or using a tea bag, which are often are made with plastic. To make a cold-brew iced tea, combine tea and cool water in a pitcher (ratio of about 1.5 ounces of tea to 16 cups of water, but you can play around with the amount to get a flavor you like best). Cover the pitcher and let it sit in the fridge overnight (or for around 8 hours). Strain out the tea leaves using a tea strainer or a cheese cloth, and pour over ice to enjoy a refreshing cup of tea! 

Make your own popsicles with reusable molds or wooden sticks! You can freeze home squeezed juice, lemonade, or even smoothies into delicious frozen treats. Making your own at home cuts down on wasteful packaging. 

And of course, shop at the TaSH to support local farmers! Did you know the TaSH has gone “zero waste”? That means all prepared food vendors have compostable packaging (or are actively transitioning). Make sure you throw food, untreated paper, and compostable cups from market vendors into the compost bins at the market. Some of the compostable cups look a lot like plastic, but are marked compostable, and can’t be recycled. Make sure these go into the compost containers at the market. Ready to start collecting food scraps at home? You can bring your household compost down to the bins in the train station parking lot.

Food scraps collection starter kits are available for sale at the Warner Library, Tarrytown Village Hall, Tarrytown Senior Center, Tarrytown Rec Center and the Sleepy Hollow Village Hall.

By Dean Gallea, TEAC Co-chair

The Village of Tarrytown will be serving as the host community for Cornell University’s 2022 Climate-adaptive Design studio!

The semester-long Phase I studio will last from September through December. The Village of Tarrytown was selected from among seven applicants to be a host for the studio, as a result of a competitive application process that was open to all waterfront communities on the tidal Hudson River.

Student Design of a sustainable shoreline in Poughkeepsie - by Shen Hope from CaD 2021

The Climate-adaptive Design (CaD) Studio is a program led by Professor Josh Cerra, Cornell University Landscape Architecture Department, in partnership with the NYSDEC Hudson River Estuary Program. The CaD Studio is the first step in a three-phase process to inspire, advance, and implement climate adaptation and resiliency projects in Hudson Riverfront communities.

• Watch a 5-minute video on the CaD Studio

• Visit the CaD Studio webpage 

• View concept designs from previous CaD studios

The CaD Studio links Cornell University graduate students in landscape architecture with high flood-risk Hudson Riverfront communities. Together, they explore design alternatives for more climate-resilient and connected waterfront areas. Community stakeholders - including TEAC - are engaged throughout the studio to help inform the design process and support more usable results for the municipality that the student design teams are partnered with. We look forward to working with the Cornell team towards the betterment of Tarrytown’s climate resiliency!