Green Living Through Living Green Things

Amid the coronavirus crisis it’s easy to forget about – or not want to deal with – the climate crisis.

One good way to deal with both crises is to surround yourself with green. Two local organizations that are doing a lot of that are Speak for the Trees and Boston Food Forest Coalition.

Speak for the Trees is working to increase the amount of tree cover in the city of Boston by encouraging care of existing trees and planting new trees.

Boston Food Forest Coalition is a non-profit community land trust that builds and supports food forests in city neighborhoods. Food forests mimic natural woodland ecosystems but with food-producing trees, shrubs and plants.

Help these two organizations help Boston grow greener – literally and figuratively.

Promoting Local Sustainability Even During a Pandemic

Feeling like it’s difficult to address climate change amid a pandemic?

Shoutouts to three local efforts that are continuing to address sustainability in spite of the times:

Although the pandemic has upended our bring-your-own-container effort at local restaurants – for the moment, anyway – there’s still a way you can help keep containers out of our landfills.

Cleenland is a locally owned bulk cleaning supply store that encourages folks to bring their own containers to refill with many types of soap – shampoo, laundry detergent, dish detergent etc.

The brick-and-mortar store is in Cambridge, but they also do delivery. They come to Roslindale on Tuesdays, hauling the large soap containers in the back of a truck so you can, keeping distance, safely fill your own containers. Cleenland also carries related items all chosen with sustainability in mind, including things like hair ties that are made from sustainable materials and designed to last a long time.

The Dorchester Food Co-op initiative is continuing to sign up members, and is starting design work on the new store. They're holding a series of Zoom community design planning sessions with their members – 835 and counting. Click “Select A Date” to sign up to attend a planning session. And if you’re not a member you can join now to help them reach their August member-owner signup goal!

Meanwhile, a Mothers Out Front chapter has formed this year in West Roxbury and is also welcoming Roslindale members. Mother’s Out Front is a national organization whose tagline is “mobilizing for a livable climate”. Although it’s Mothers Out Front, anyone who wants to create a livable climate for all children is welcome to join.

The local chapter is holding Zoom talks on sustainability, pressuring utilities to fix the hundreds of local gas leaks, organizing letter/tweet/email campaigns to influence decision-makers, and gearing up to organize sustainable living tours when it’s once again safe to do that.

There’s more information on the new chapter here: https://ma.mothersoutfront.org/west_roxbury