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What’s New

Workshop on Visible Mending: The Gift of Repair

As part of Earth Month at Hopewell Valley Central High School, the Youth Environmental Society at HVCHS is hosting Philadelphia community organizer and artist Shari Hersh on Saturday, April 26 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. She will be presenting a workshop on Visible Mending: The Gift of Repair. Visible mending, the art of repair and maintenance, is an investment in the ethos of sharing, communing and mutuality.

The event is $10 (which gets you a mini repair kit) and is open to the public. Participants are encouraged to bring blue jeans or other cotton/linen clothing that needs mending. (Knits and clothing with a high percentage of spandex are not appropriate for this technique.)

Location: Hopewell Valley High School Community Room

More information: https://sites.google.com/hvrsd.org/hopewellvalleygreenweek/visible-mending-workshop Questions may be directed to carolynmcgrath@hvrsd.org.

Bike Drive on April 12 POSTPONED

The Mercer County Planning Department and the Mercer County Park Commission are hosting a bike drive for the benefit of the Boys & Girls Club Bike Exchange. If you have a bike that you no longer use, please consider donating it to the Bike Exchange at either of two locations:

  • Historic Hunt House at 197 Blackwell Road in Pennington (Google Map)
  • Ranger Headquarters at Mercer County Park in West Windsor (Google Map)

Date: Saturday April 12, 2025 POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER
Time: noon – 4 p.m.

More information about the Boys & Girls Club Bike Exchange can be found here:
https://www.bgcmercer.org/bgc-bike-exchange

Community Conversations: Recycling – Beyond the Basics

Update:
A recording of the presentations is available on YouTube. Click here.

Original announcement:
Please join the Pennington Environmental Commission on Thursday, February 27, 2025 from 7:00 to 8:15 pm for a Community Conversation on recycling. There will be speakers and an open Q&A for community participation. We look forward to seeing you there. The event will be held via Zoom.

Containers Made of #5 Plastic (polypropylene) Can Now Be Recycled in Hopewell Valley

Starting December 2024 residents in Hopewell Valley (and other Mercer County municipalities served by MCIA’s hauler) can put plastic containers labeled ♷ (#5) in curbside buckets for recycling. These include:

  • Yogurt and sour cream tubs
  • Condiment bottles
  • Amber colored medicine bottles
  • Beverage caps
  • To-go meal containers

The containers should be empty and rinsed out so there isn’t any food or liquid residue, and must not have been used to hold toxic or hazardous substances. Remove caps from bottles, too.

Scrap Metal Collection on Feb. 8, 2025

The Hopewell Valley Green Team will host a scrap metal collection on Saturday, February 8, 2025. Please bring your assorted scrap metal (nothing extremely heavy) to the Hopewell Township Public Works Building between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. and we will make sure it is recycled for you. Volunteers are needed to staff the event—please contact us if you’re interested: hvgreenteam@gmail.com.

Acceptable materials are listed here: https://hopewellvalleygreenteam.org/recycling/recycling-events/

HVGT at Hopewell Harvest Fair

On September 21, 2024, the Green Team will participate in Town Square at the annual Hopewell Harvest Fair (rain date September 28) from 9:45 to 4:00. The event is held in the fields and parking lot at Hopewell Elementary School on Princeton Ave. Please come to our booth to learn about reducing the amount of single-use plastic and about recycling scrap metal. And kids can play our Plinko game “Plink the Plastic” to win prizes.

This year a Sustainability Sponsor, Dandelion Wishes, is funding a water station – so remember to bring your refillable containers! Wallop Water’s trailer bar triple-filters and chills water which is dispensed by a bank of spigots.

Returning to the Harvest Fair is One Compost Can with their bins to collect food waste and other organic material (such as lollipop sticks and paper soiled by food). TerraCycle, too, will be on hand to divert hard-to-recycle products like coffee cup lids, plastic utensils and clamshell food containers. Standard yellow bins for Mercer County’s recycling program will be available to collect aluminum cans, #1 and #2 plastics, and regular paper/cardboard. Let’s strive to make it a zero-waste event!

Our booth last year (on a gusty day in mid-October because the original date was rained out):

Those Confusing ♻︎ Symbols

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that recycling symbols on plastic consumables are confusing. As CBS News reported on July 31, 2023, the agency advocates changing some of them. The official comment cited in this report, issued by the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission, reads in part:

EPA recommends that the FTC address confusion created by the chasing arrows symbol and the resin identification codes by revising the Green Guides to reflect the intention of the ASTM standard for resin identification coding. EPA believes the use of the RIC with the chasing arrows symbol constitutes a misrepresentation and violation of claims prohibited under Section 5 of the FTC Act – “A representation, omission, or practice is deceptive if it is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances and is material to consumers’ decisions.” Consumers generally understand the chasing arrows triangle to represent a universal recycling symbol and interpret it to mean that the product is recyclable, and its use with the resin identification codes influences consumer decisions on how they dispose of plastic products.

According to ASTM standard D7611/D7611M, the intention of the coding system was never to determine the recyclability of a product, but to determine resin composition and quality control measures before recycling. Not all resin codes can be recycled currently in the United States. Resin codes 3-7 cannot be recycled in most material recovery facilities and do not have strong end markets. The issue is not the resin codes themselves, but the implication that all of them can be recycled. This implication is made when the numbers are combined with the chasing arrows symbol, which is why the combination becomes deceptive or misleading. As such, the current ASTM standard no longer uses the chasing arrows symbol to surround the number and has switched to an equilateral triangle. Moreover, California passed SB 343, which prohibits the use of the chasing arrows or any other indicator of recyclability on products and packaging unless certain criteria are met.

EPA believes updates to the FTC Green Guides “recyclable” claims can be a tool to reduce consumer confusion that contributes to recycling facilities receiving many plastic materials that they do not accept and cannot recycle, which adds a financial burden to facilities and taxpayers to haul, process and ultimately incinerate or landfill this contamination.

Download and read the entire comment by EPA on Green Guides Review, Matter No. P954501, here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2022-0077-1366

Food Waste Pick-up Services In Hopewell Valley

Residents of Hopewell Valley are able to subscribe to regular curbside pick-up of their food waste by two local services:

Both services provide finished compost to subscribers for use in gardens/yard. Some of the great benefits of diverting food waste from the landfill into compost are described here as well as on each of the services’ websites.

Decarbonize Your Home

For HV Green Week in April 2022 the Hopewell Valley Green Team hosted a virtual forum, “Decarbonize Your Home.” The HVGT and local experts outlined a variety of options and provided many resources which are now summarized here (energy efficiency), here (electrification) and here (renewable energy).

A video recording of the webinar can be viewed on YouTube here.