Hope Town Zero Waste Program

IDEA Relief and Friends of the Environment will be launching a marine debris removal program for Green Turtle Cay this December and January. There are 3 positions available for recent high school graduates (within 5 years). Please click on the link below for the application. We look forward to an exciting and successful program to remove debris generated by Hurricane Dorian from our mangrove systems and waterways!

UPDATE: POSTPONED The event for this Saturday ("Sustainable Saturday On Da Beach") is POSTPONED until the beginning of November (TBD). We know people are excited about the event and so are we! However we would like to wait until there is clear directive on Covid restrictions and events. Please note that Driftwood Farms will be at Jared Park from 4 - 5:30 on Saturday to pickup produce, and Friends of the Environment will be giving away tree's through virtual requests and pickup schedules. Thank you for your understanding, we will post again with event details soon!!!

Join us for a great "Sustainable Saturday On Da Beach" this Saturday (October 24th, 2020) from 5pm to 7pm! Live Music by Journey, Matti, Summer and Jazzi! Hope Town Zero Waste will be selling the ZERO WASTE PRODUCT and dispersing the HEIRLOOM SEEDS from our BAKER CREEK order. ... For those that ordered seeds, it would be great to have a little "Seedy Saturday" seed trade! Pls bring a way to seed trade (i.e. little envelopes etc.). I will have a pencil/marker to make on them what seeds you are trading :) The ZERO WASTE products for sale are: Reusable Dishwasher Safe 9x9 Food Clamshells for Take-Out Food Take-Out Cutlery Packs Reusable Ziplock Bags Reusable Sandwich Bags Beewax Food Wraps Mason Jar Drinkable Lids Reusable Paper Towels Reusable Diapers Reusable Sanitary Napkins Wool Balls for the Dryer Reusable Tissues Reusable Make-Up Remover Pads FRIENDS, in partnership with Sustainable Lifestyles and Min of Agriculture, Abaco, will have coconut palms to give away in support of the Bahamas 100K tree planting initiative. We will also be selling reusable bags that were designed by Skylar Ogden, a Hope Town student to support The Bahamas’ initiative to ban single use plastics. Skylars’ design depicts native flora and fauna. Air2O Bahamas Neil & Rachael from Air2O Bahamas will be showcasing and selling various reusable water containers and bottles, and offering free samples of Air2O water -- "Pure drinking water made from air". Driftwood Farms will be selling 8oz bags of Asian mix, salad mix, kale, arugula and swiss chard. Selling for $5. We look forward to seeing you there!!!

This is what your collected aluminum cans look like when they are condensed with thousands others! We then load them into a container for shipment to the recy...cling depot in Florida! Just imagine if we could capture every single can, so it wouldn’t end up in the landfill & we could distribute even more funds for the kids! #CansForKids #cleanupthebahamas #environmentalawareness #doyourpart #collectyouraluminumcans #recycleinthebahamas See more

Good evening Abaco, We are going to be placing an order for Heirloom Seeds from Baker Creek (phenomenal seed bank and store!). If you are in Abaco and would like to order seeds as well, please PM with the exact items and total for your request. I will consolidate the request to try and purchase through a local vendor before contacting them directly if we have enough volume. If you are interested, click the link below for their website and catalog:... https://www.rareseeds.com/store DEADLINE: Monday September 14th, 2020 If you would like to check out a great documentary on the importance of heirloom seeds, seed saving and seed banks, check out: https://www.seedthemovie.com Have a great night!

Hope Town Zero Waste Market Is Here!!! The Abaco's are rebuilding and starting again. It has been a long journey, and I cannot imagine for those that went through Dorian, and stayed throughout. It is a new normal and one that catches me quite often when I see the repairs of places that were in disrepair and now coming back to life again. There is so much hurt within the rubble, and so much hope for a new future. I am learning to appreciate both of these emotions and balance t...hem everyday. I find we must rejoice in the happy moments and celebrate rebirth, as we equally mourn loss. Our Hope Town Zero Waste Program has slowly begun again and we are so excited to announce that our Zero Waste Products have arrived (albeit in packaging - you win some, you lose some)! We look forward to our program fully up and running soon, and hope to see it on other islands in The Bahamas as well with the new July Ban on polystyrene and plastic single use items now in effect. Kristal Ambrose, look it how far it has come! Justin Higgs and Amanda Lightbourn Higgs, thank you for bringing the program into the school Eco Club and all the hard work the students put into the compost program! I look forward to starting that again in the new school year if possible (note: the Waste Diversion Scoreboard is being rebuilt)! Monica Cook and Sabine, thank you for replanting the garden after the storm and feeding neighbors with fresh organic produce, not to mention expanding the garden with two more beds for this season (note: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds are on the To-Do List next)! Clay Wilhoyte, the recycling and waste bins are on their way from, thank you for starting the program again with us! We look forward to beginning again! Ryan Knowles Sara Pearce Knowles and Doug Plourde and Nancy Joyce Plourde, thank you so much for doing the pilot compost program at On Da Beach to quantify the volume of raw food waste produced each week for three months! This is the starting point for creating a new food waste diversion system. Ryan, we wish you all the very best in school abroad!!! Thank you to Danielle Wells for helping me during these months to get things going again, I cannot express my gratitude enough. And a HUGE THANK YOU to Katy Cash for everything you do! The items for the HTZW Market are: Reusable Dishwasher Safe 9x9 Food Clamshells for Take-Out Food Take-out Cutlery Packs Reusable Ziplock Bags Reusable Sandwich Bags Beewax Food Wraps Mason Jar Drinkable Lids Reusable Paper Towels Reusable Diapers Reusable Sanitary Napkins Wool Balls for the Dryer Refillable Water Containers with Dispenser We look forward to setting up our market soon! Stay tuned for details!

Check it out! Friends of the Environment Virtual Summer Camp!

Good evening, I hope all is well and that you are staying safe during these times. We are putting together the HTZW Youth Volunteer Certificates. Anyone who's child participated in the program, please send the following details to [email protected] before May 1st, 2020 to be included in the certificates. I apologize in advance for those of you that sent me this information before, if so, please also re-send it again (excluding Ryan Knowles, we have your details for the ...compost pilot program with On Da Beach, thank you!). >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Full Legal Name Age Portion (s) of the program they were a part of (School Pilot Compost Program, Urban Garden, Creation of Away Song, Bahamas Plastic Movement Warrior Workshops and videos, DIY make your own videos etc.). Number of hours for each portion of the prgram >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Please feel free to PM or e-mail if you have any questions at all. We look forward to exciting new aspects of the program ahead, but we would like to thank and acknowledge those that were an amazing part of our program to date! Warm regards, Juliette Deal

Post Hurricane Dorian Update: The clean-up has been well underway in Hope Town for a few weeks now. There is a strong momentum to rebuild better and stronger infrastructure. We are suffering losses in different ways. So many have lost so much and our community is working hard to recover. We are forever grateful that there were no souls lost in the hurricane. We are mourning the physical loses though as we process what happened and begin again. There has been a tremendous amo...Continue reading

Thank you Monica Cook and Sabine for posting this and re-planting the garden! In the wake of hurricane Dorian and the enormous amount of loss we have experienced as a community, to see that our community garden made it and the rain barrels put to good use is just amazing!!!

Hope Schaffer-Colling thank you so much for sharing this, it makes my heart soar! We are all recovering from our losses and this brings light back into the room again! You girls rock!!! Rachael Thomas Aberle

We are so excited to announce that our first round of recycling has been shipped to Nassau, received, weighed and the bags returned to Hope Town with success! We collected and recycled 225lbs of Aluminum in cans from 4 locations in Hope Town from December 2018 to July 2019. This is only from these locations, imagine what we can do with more participation and bins... Speaking of which, we would like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Bahamas Environmental Protection Foundation (https:...//bep-foundation.org) for donating $20,000 to Hope Town Zero Waste to buy more bins for the island that have been purchased, and are on their way!!!!! Ariane and Charles, thank you so much for supporting our program and this important initiative!!! Next we will be sending out a letter to businesses and rental home agencies to see if you would like to participate as well! In the next few days we will also send out an update of all of the things HTZW has been working on over the last two years. Some of these initiatives are just beginning and others well under way but need support to take them to the next level. We thank all of the volunteers that have put in their time and effort to make all of it happen!!! NOTE: WHY THE ALUMINUM CANS MUST BE UNCRUSHED The cans have to be uncrushed because we ship them to Cans for Kids in Nassau who feeds the uncrushed cans into a machine that reads the barcode on each one. The machine calculates how many cans go into what is called a densifyer, and then crushes them down into a specific weight and size. These densified cubes of aluminum are then palletized and shipped to a recycler in the US. If they cubes are not the size and specification the recycler requires they give less money for the aluminum or can reject the shipment all together. This also has to do with shipping requirement into the US. For any participating Cans for Kids programs, we must ship them uncrushed aluminum cans for this reason :)

Bahamas Plastic Movement and Hope Town Zero Waste teamed up for an amazing two days of youth based workshops and adventure on single use plastics! Thank you to our incredible youth group that showed up in force and full of excitement and the following organizations and people that made it an incredibly successful two days: Bahamas Plastic Movement Kristal Ambrose Tiny McKinney ... Charma Morley Captain Errol Thurston Fishing For Plastic Bill Atherholt Jay Sky Productions Clint Russell Hope Town Zero Waste Amanda and Justin Higgs And all the volunteers that showed up to help! THANK YOU!!! Nicole and Damian Jana and Ed Corbo Harry and Caroline Johnson Tajera

How is it that we have never heard of this? Would you buy one?

NEW SITE, NEW MOVEMENT!! VISIT THE PLASTIC FREE 242 WEBSITE TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT THE BAN. https://www.plasticfree242.com #PLASTICFREE242 #242BAN2020 ...#MOEH242 #PLASTICBANBAHAMAS #PLASTICFREEBAHAMAS Bahamas National Trust B.R.E.E.F. Bahamas Agricultural & Industrial Corporation Bahamas Information Services Hope Town Zero Waste Program Friends of the Environment Young Marine Explorers Bahamas Chamber Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organization

More of this, please.

We are so excited to announce the Hope Town Zero Waste commercial compost pilot program with On Da Beach and Ryan Knowles! The photo of the bin is the volume of food waste diverted in just one week. Ryan is tracking the weight for each collection that will be posted on our waste diversion scoreboard soon. Although food waste and compostable materials may not seem like an important stream to divert, it is extremely important as it makes up over 40% of our waste stream. If you... can imagine what that means for our environment and the logistics involved to collect, manage, truck, freight, truck and then burn weekly. Compostable materials also contribute to green house gas emissions in dumps and landfills when they breakdown. This is a great opportunity for us to calculate how much food and compostable material one establishment can divert in a given time. Way to go Ryan and Doug, thank you for launching the pilot program as part of Hope Town Zero Waste!!!