Sustainable eating is all about choosing healthy and nutritious foods, while also making sure we’re taking care of the environment. You can eat more sustainably while also supporting local farmers and educating yourself about its benefits and positive impact. Grow NYC makes it easier to transition into sustainable eating in the city.

GrowNYC is a hands-on nonprofit which improves NYC’s quality of life through environmental programs. It supports a network of New York area farmers’ markets to ensure fair access to fresh, high quality and healthy food for all New Yorkers, they also educate children about gardening and recycling. 

Education

GrowNYC‘s educational program aims to promote environmental and community lessons among schools, senior centers, and anyone interested in healthy eating and sustainability. If you’re interested in your kids learning, you can sign them up for Greenmarket Youth Education’s school tours of the farmers market. They also offer field trips, presentations, and more for senior centers and community-based organizations. There are options for anyone wanting to learn about healthy eating. Currently, they also offer online events for those interested in gardening in the city, reducing food waste, recycling, and more!

They focus on helping neighborhoods that have limited access to healthy and fresh foods. There are many ways you can be part of this initiative by either attending these programs or volunteering as well. Learn more about it here.

Farmers Markets & Food Accessibility

Farmers’ markets are important for many reasons and are critical to our local communities. They increase access to affordable, fresh, and nutritious foods, while helping local family farmers who are already having a hard time competing with bigger marketplaces. 

Grow NYC GreenMarkets helps ensure a continuing supply of fresh, local produce for all New Yorkers. If you’re a shopper looking to buy fresh, healthy, and local fruits and veggies, you can visit one of their 50+ Greenmarkets farmers markets. If you’re a business owner, you can buy from their Grow NYC Wholesale. For both shoppers and buyers, they offer great online options as well, making it more convenient and easily accessible. Also, if you have a home garden, they even offer free farming courses for beginners where you can learn how to sell your produce at the farmers market. 

Zero Waste Programs

Grow NYC can also help you with reducing your carbon footprint by making resource conservation easy for all. They have multiple programs that can help you reduce your waste and repurpose it. 

• GrowNYC Compost Program operates residential Food Scrap Drop-off sites and partners with community composting facilities to make compost locally easier and more accessible. Composting is one of the easiest ways we can help the environment, where we can turn waste into a resource. You can start composting in NYC with their multiple drop-off locations.

• Stop ‘N’ Swap is a free event where people can find new homes for unwanted items or find new items they can use. You can bring clean, reusable, portable items such as clothing, housewares, games, books, & toys that you no longer need, and you do not need to bring items to take something home.

• Clothing Collections are a great way to give your clothing a new purpose. Every year NYC residents discard nearly 200,000 tons of textiles, causing major negative impacts on our environment. GrowNYC’s Clothing collection programs aims to recover as much usable clothing as possible for distribution to second-hand markets.

How is Renaissance involved?

Our mission at Renaissance Power & Gas is to help you make more sustainable choices for your home, while saving money. We provide cleaner electricity to your neighborhood. We offset 100% of the carbon output generated by the power we supply through purchasing carbon credits.

At Renaissance Power & Gas we put our money where our mouth is by making donations to green causes as a regular part of our business. We are proud sponsors of a variety of organizations, like Grow NYC, all of which are dedicated to making improvements to our communities and to our natural environment.

Sign up today with us at Renaissance Power & Gas and join us in our mission to help local communities and the environment.