Roosevelt Island Earth Love Day Celebrates Small Steps To Make A Positive Impact On Earth And Local Community - Learn About Some Of The Volunteer Efforts Being Done By RI Residents

Last Saturday, April 22, was Roosevelt Island Earth Love Day. The activities took place at the Rivercross Lawn, across the street by Blackwell Park Plaza and the Riverwalk Commons.

According to Roosevelt Island resident and iDig2Learn founder Christina Delfico

Today is Earth Love Day. We added the word "Love" about five years ago around Earth Day. We want to celebrate All Things to keep our Air, Land, Water and Sky clean which is good for humans of course but it's also good for all that live in the habitat like the birds the bees the butterflies.

You'll find ideas here at Earth's love day that talk about refusing, reducing, reusing. What goes along with that is the protection of the nature we have, protecting planting and the stewardship but also trying not to do too much waste like if you go to take take out food you don't need the forks and knives and spoons you have that in your apartment. There's something called skip the stuff and you just can tell the restaurant no thanks I don't need those. 

So small steps to do better to make a positive imprint on the earth and not a negative one....

Green Roosevelt Island Neighbors (GRIN) Anthony Luongo is concerned about Blackwell Park Trees being cut down by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC). According to Mr Luongo:

We're actually trying to take an inventory of the trees in Blackwell House Plaza. We understand that there's scheduled to be some construction in the future.

 I believe there are 160 kind of substantial trees in the potential construction zone and we'd like to make sure that they know that we care about those trees and that we need these trees. If they need to be taken down or something needs to happen to them, we would hope that there would be a discussion with folks that know about those types of things and a real conversation about that before any of them were taken down ... 

Carter Burden Network Roosevelt Island Older Adult Center Lisa Fernandez reports;

We received from the Office Of Addiction Services and Supports the proper medicine disposal bags. 

You take your medicine, open the bag, take your meds, dump it in, add a little hot tap water, pour it in,  seal it, shake it, put it in the trash. 

Keeps it out of our ecosystem, out of our water system. Simple.

You might not feel like lugging it to Duane Reade or CVS wherever they have the collection sites. 

Easy Peasy

Roosevelt Island Garden Club member Julia Ferguson with a group of volunteers worked on Riverwlk Commons Plantings and adds:

We're very happy to have worked with Matt Kibby, our Horticultural director on Roosevelt Island. We were able to order a lot of perennials shrubs and flowers... ... We've been hoping to work on this area for some time and this is a great opportunity.... it's been a really fun day...

 

 There was also Yoga Mediation with Roosevelt Island resident and Island Om owner Jax Schott on the Rivercross Lawn

And outdoor chess 

with NY Public Library Roosevelt Island branch Manager Carlos Chavez too.