Sustainable Finger Lakes

06/11/2026

The Tompkins County chapter of our Neighborhood Mini-Grant program has expanded to include Cortland and Cayuga counties, becoming the Cayuga and Owasco Watersheds chapter. Our April 2026 round of grants to simple projects by local residents will build community resilience and environmental stewardship through food gardens, wild plant management, and waste reduction initiatives. https://sustainablefingerlakes.org/2026/06/10/april-2026-neighborhood-mini-grants-support-gardens-and-waste-reduction-in-tompkins-and-cayuga-counties/

Image: Graphic of April 2026 awardees.

This spring, the Tompkins County chapter of the Sustainable Finger Lakes Neighborhood Mini-Grant program expanded to include Cortland and Cayuga counties, becoming the Cayuga and Owasco Watersheds chapter. The April 2026 round of grants to simple projects by local residents will build community res...

05/14/2026

"Let’s start with something uncomfortable: sustainability doesn’t begin with government laws. Consent of the governed doesn’t begin at the ballot box. It begins with self-governance. One person. Then that person-in-community."

https://sustainablefingerlakes.org/2026/05/13/suspending-our-malaise/

Image: Article author Patrice Lockert Anthony. Photo provided by Tompkins weekly in 2024.

Tompkins Weekly, 5-13-26, by Patrice Lockert Anthony Let’s start with something uncomfortable: sustainability doesn’t begin with government laws. Consent of the governed doesn’t begin at the ballot box. It begins with self-governance. One person. Then that person-in-community. Therein lies the...

05/04/2026

04/22/2026

For most people in the Finger Lakes Region, the threat of wildfires has typically been something far away in the western states. But the infamous red dawn of...

04/06/2026

Applications are due May 1 for our Spring 2026 round of Neighborhood Mini-Grants in Schuyler, Seneca, and Yates Counties, for local residents who seek to improve quality of life in their neighborhoods and need a little help covering the costs.

Sustainable Finger Lakes is accepting applications for our Spring 2026 round of Neighborhood Mini-Grants in Schuyler, Seneca, and Yates Counties, for local residents who seek to improve quality of life in their neighborhoods and need a little help covering the costs. The Neighborhood Mini-Grant Prog...

03/19/2026

"Since 2022, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has been working with the public and parallel advocacy groups to put forth the (bigger) Better Bottle Bill (BBB) to increase the number of items eligible for the deposit/redemption systems such as coffee and wine bottles. The new bill also proposes that the redemption fee be raised to 10 cents per item. Despite all costs associated with these transactions increasing over the years, this 5-cent fee has never changed and according to Jade Eddy, the owner of MT Returnables, in Queensbury, NY, almost 200 redemption centers have closed since 2023 alone."
https://sustainablefingerlakes.org/2026/03/17/for-worse-or-for-a-better-bottle-bill/

SFLX website post image: Nick Moe at his counting machine at the Trumansburg Redemption Center. Photo provided by Tompkins Weekly.

(Tompkins Weekly, 3-11-26, by Joey Diana Gates) In the efforts to reduce waste the mantra, “Refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle,” is very familiar. This hierarchy of actions offers the best ways to keep food packaging out of landfills. While efforts to encourage Refuse/Reduce such as Bring Your Ow...

03/08/2026

Tompkins County residents: Applications for Spring 2026 Neighborhood Mini-Grants are due April 1. Contact us to request an application form.

Image: Graphic announcing the April 1 application deadline.

Do you have an idea for a project to make our community more sustainable, resilient, or inclusive? Need a little help in covering the costs? Sustainable Finger Lakes is accepting applications for our Spring 2026 round of Neighborhood Mini-Grants in Tompkins County. An application deadline for Schuyl...

03/05/2026

Scientists and New York legislators assert the impact of electricity and water use by data centers, and seek a state moratorium on this new and needless industry.

Our Finger Lakes Forecast webinar on March 11 will continue this conversation. To register, see the comments below.

Image: The decommissioned Cayuga Power Plant in Lansing, NY, proposed future site of a TeraWulf data center.

(Tompkins Weekly, 2-18-26, by concerned Danby community members) We acknowledge that Water is Life and that we are living on land continuously inhabited by Indigenous GayogohÓ:no people. There is a book of Iroquois teachings written by Tom Porter (Sakokweniónkwas), titled And Grandma Said…It’s...

02/26/2026

Our first Neighborhood Mini-Grant for a Yates County project is in the news, along with other grants the Dundee Library recently received. Thanks to Library Director Dusty Baker for this praise: “These grants allow us to meet people where they are and respond directly to what our community has told us they need.”

The Dundee Library is expanding its reach this year after securing several local and regional grants to support new programming, literacy tools, and community health […]

02/02/2026

"Healthy Food For All (HFFA) was founded in 2006 to help low-income households gain reliable access to locally grown produce while supporting nearby farms via Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). What started with just a few farms feeding 18 households has grown into a nationwide best-practice model helping to nourish approximately 2,000 community members annually with food from over a dozen family-owned farms in Tompkins County.

"Responding to the upsurge in food-insecurity during COVID-19 in 2020, HFFA expanded beyond the 'traditional' CSA model that grows produce for member households and launched a pilot 'Pantry CSA' to help nourish people relying on emergency food assistance during the health and economic crisis."
https://sustainablefingerlakes.org/2026/01/30/healthy-food-for-all-pioneers-the-regions-first-csa-food-pantry/

Image: Here We Are Farm staff distributing their produce at the Enfield Food Pantry. Photo provided.

(Tompkins Weekly, 1-14-26, by Elizabeth Karabinakis) Healthy Food For All (HFFA) was founded in 2006 to help low-income households gain reliable access to locally grown produce while supporting nearby farms via Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). What started with just a few farms feeding 18 hous...