The Waterside Co-op

Environmentally Sustainable Practices

at the Waterside Co-op

We recycle. Before the blue bins arrived we contracted with Recycle Plus.

We compost. There's a compost bin in the backyard as well as at Waters Community garden across the street.

Food: We are 95% vegetarian, 70% vegan. We order from a local CSA to purchase local organic produce. We cook together with seasonal vegetables. We sprout, make healthy smoothies, have local organic teas, and are good cooks. We ferment (saurkraut, kombucha, and more..), forage, garden, and experiment. There's lots of good food around. We cook together pretty often. It's informal. We have many potlucks.

We have used sustainable materials in the co-op house, such as sustainable wood bamboo flooring and recycled denim insulation.

We are tv-free. We use a laundry line. We have a manual lawn mower for our tiny patch of grass. We garden. We grow vegetables in the parkway. We grow natives grasses and flowers. We have a log innoculated with oyster mushroom spores (thanks Rob!) We don't water our tiny lawn. Our downspouts are disconnected and there's a rainbarrel and a rain garden

We do our best to use green cleaning products. Admittedly, somehow some windex got in the house. We are working to correct this. Here's a link for a nice 1-page guide to simple non-toxic cleaning products. Why should you make it yourself? Because in the store, the cleaning supplies often have toxic ingredients that hurt people with asthma and are bad for the river. Here's another page with more green cleaning links..

We have no cars and bike everywhere instead.

We host the Waters School Media Lab where 7th and 8th graders make videos to teach their community about what they learn in the ecology program.

We help organize for environmental causes in our neighborhood to make changes on a bigger scale.