Events

We have good news to share – we have surpassed our goals for the Seal the Cracks campaign! Thanks to the inspiring leadership of 93 local businesses, nonprofits, campus groups, and residents, we have raised $12,214 and offset 611 tons of greenhouse gas as of Election Day.   In addition to these contributions, we were also supported by over $2,000 of donated services and goods from a dozen area businesses and nonprofits. Thanks to all the media support and our events, hundreds of county residents have learned about our local carbon offset program and all the good it does in our community.

Thank you all!!

We’ve already notified area contractors that we have grants available from the Finger Lakes Climate Fund. And our little campaign team has met to identify next steps to keep building support and movement toward our goal of having carbon offsetting as much a part of our local lifestyle as recycling.

Special thanks to Ellen Harrison for chairing our campaign committee and to Anna Odell for being our exceptionally able project assistant. We’re so grateful for your energy, leadership, and dedication!

We’re excited to announce our participation in the upcoming “day of giving” for our community on Friday, August 28!  Organized by the good folks at GiveGab, it’s an opportunity for everyone in our county to come together in support of local nonprofits that are so important to the placemaking, quality of life, and shared future of our region.  Sustainable Tompkins has put together an online fundraising portal for The Sustainability Table — a way to support our work as we support our local sustainability movement.

Your gift today means we can keep “home room” open for the many volunteers and community leaders who gather here to work on behalf of stewardship, justice, and plenitude.  It costs $15 a day to keep the doors open, or $450 a month.  Please help us reach our goal of $5400 to keep this resource for the movement secure for the next year.  Or be a different kind of One Percenter and donate $54 to the campaign!

The conference table in the Sustainable Tompkins office has seen a lot of action over the years.  Its residue of invisible fingerprints of shared ideas, strategic organizing, renewed commitments, and challenges to the status quo can be seen out in our community as new infrastructure, policies, enterprises, and social norms pushing us forward to new systems of living and working together. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, Sustainable Tompkins will again host the Earth Day Ithaca celebration on Sunday, April 19, from Noon to 8PM, bringing the community together for a day of celebration, eco-activism, and entertainment. This year the event is co-sponsored by a Tompkins County Community Celebrations Grant and GreenStar Cooperative Market, and will be held at The Space (at GreenStar,) featuring local inspirational speakers, entertainers, musicians, poets, earth-friendly exhibitors, and more. The program has been expanded to include an open mike Earth Jam/Poetry Slam, with the voices of today’s poets, rappers, and small music acts to perform 10-minute sets. Folks interested in tabling or volunteering, please contact Joey Diana Gates at solkitchen1@gmail.com or call (607) 644-5525.  Schedule of events below:  Read the rest of this entry »

All the seats were filled at the January 22 presentation on the alternatives to expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, hosted by the City of Ithaca in council chambers. Brice Smith did a masterful job of explaining the results of our energy modeling to compare the viability of heating with methane vs using ground-source or air-source heat pumps.

Our presentation was very well received by those attending, and we enjoyed a lively Q&A session after the talk.  This is a topic that is new to many people and we are grateful for the opportunity to share our findings on the viable alternatives to expanding fossil fuel infrastructure.  We hope to come and present a very short version to City Council and Mayor Myrick at some point.