5 Easy Ways Hudson County Residents Can Help the Community & Planet
Live in Hoboken? Want to know some of the easiest ways to connect with and help your community and the environment? Check these out!
1) Too Good to Go — The most direct and delicious way to save surplus food in your community.
The largest business-to-consumer marketplace for surplus food has made its way to Hoboken! Download TG2G, input your location, and see what food is “too good to go” near you!
How it works:
Historically, many restaurants, cafés, supermarkets, bakeries, canteens and wholesalers have thrown away their surplus food instead of donating it, feeding their staff with it, or selling it at a discount. This is wildly stupid and hard to believe but sadly it’s true.
When it comes to donating, many businesses have felt that they were putting themselves at risk for potential lawsuits if for some crazy reason they were to get sued because someone either got or claims to have gotten food poisoning. However, this is nonsensical because the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 provides limited liability protection for people, businesses, food banks, etc. who make good faith donations of food and grocery products to non-profits that feed the hungry. This means that restaurants or grocers, or even backyard farmers, who donate their goods to the needy in good faith are protected by law, both civilly and criminally.
When it comes to feeding their staff, I’ve consistently heard the craziest excuse from various grocery stores — they somehow believe that by feeding their staff surplus food it will encourage their staff to steal…? Kings Supermarket Hoboken North is the most recent grocer I heard this ridiculous excuse from. If this bothers you as much as it bothers me, check the footnotes of this post for more info on how you can voice your concerns & ask them to change their policies ASAP.
When these food businesses throw away their food, they are wasting the food AND all the resources that went into making it and getting it to their establishment. On top of that, most don’t compost, and sending all this to a landfill or incinerator is extremely expensive. Plus, what a missed opportunity for making some money from this food that would sell more easily at a discount.
Enter TG2G. Instead of wasting their food, businesses are able to set up an account on the platform, decide what type of products they will sell at a discount, the price they will sell it for, and when the products will be available for pick-up. The businesses decide what they will offer in their “surprise bags” so they can easily get certain products off the shelf that would otherwise have gone to waste, and not be obligated to offer everything off their menu.
As a user, it’s super simple: download the app, input your location, and see what food is “too good to go” near you! I can’t recommend this app highly enough! Some of my favorite restaurants that use the app in Hoboken are GFG Cafe are Choc-O-Pain. Depending on the type of establishment, you can choose from either a “meal surprise bag” or a “bread and pastries surprise bag”. With the app, you can reserve one of these surprise bags, for usually around $3.99 (for $12 worth of food) or $5.99 (for $18 worth of food). It’s a great way to try new restaurants, save some money, save food from going to landfill, and support local businesses!
2) Charity Quest — The easiest, most effective way for Hoboken residents to learn about and sign up for local volunteer opportunities.
Frank DiCola, a Stevens graduate and a member of the Hoboken Food Pantry’s Senior Leadership Team, developed the app when he realized that there wasn’t an easy way for him to discover volunteer opportunities in Hoboken. He also felt that just showing up during open volunteer hours was intimidating, a feeling many can relate to. Hence the birth of the Charity Quest app: a convenient all-in-one experience that shows all the volunteer opportunities in town and lets people easily sign up for them.
It’s a great app for EVERY resident to have on their phone, even if they aren’t sure when they might be able to volunteer or how much time they can commit. The fact that you can discover volunteer opportunities on the fly, and know how long the volunteer shift is before signing up, really takes the pressure off.
When you sign up for the app, you’ll find yourself looking at all available volunteer opportunities in a map-view of Hoboken (though you can change it to a list view if you prefer). There are a few clear benefits to downloading the app:
It’s easy to find and sign up for volunteer opportunities
Removes any potential room for intimidation by including as much info as possible about any given charity “quest” so volunteers feel confident walking in the door for their first volunteer session
There’s a gamified point system so volunteers can earn rewards for their charitable efforts with discounts and bonus programs at local businesses. Their first official sponsor is H&S Giovanni's Restaurant and Pizzeria located on Washington Street. Anyone who volunteers through the app can use their earned points at the pizzeria for discounts.
Any local businesses looking to partake in the program should email Frank at contact@GameRevenant.com.
A few of the charities on the app include The Hoboken Shelter, Hoboken Food Pantry, Hoboken Housing Authority, Clean Green Jersey, and Write on Sports. Opportunities range from distribution prep, packing bags, loading and unloading trucks with food and supplies, translating Spanish, financial accounting services, social media services, community clean-ups, and much more!
The app is financially backed by two small businesses right here in Hoboken: Prime Cycle and H&S Giovanni's Restaurant & Pizzeria.
3) Irys — An app that helps facilitate two-way engagement between Hoboken, JC, Bayonne, and Newark residents and the Resilient Northeastern NJ Project Team as our communities moves forward with action plans to address long-term solutions for flooding caused by climate change.
First, some background:
As part of the federal government’s Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), which made $1 billion available to communities struck by natural disasters in recent years. $15 million of this was awarded to New Jersey. From that award, $10 million was used to fund Resilient NJ, an assistance program to support local and regional climate resilience planning by bringing together planners, engineers, designers, and other experts to address the flood related hazards we’re all way too familiar with. The remaining $5 million has been used by the NJ DEP’s Bureau of Flood Resilience to develop a toolkit of best practices for regional stormwater infrastructure systems.
Resilient Northeastern NJ is part of the larger Resilient NJ program and is a joint effort between the NJ’s Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Jersey City, Newark, Hoboken, Bayonne, Hudson County, Ironbound Community Corporation, and HOPES Community Assistance Partnership. The program will identify and implement flood risk reduction strategies to improve long-term environmental and economic resilience in our region and WE THE PEOPLE have been called to help provide valuable input on these projects!
Now, back to Irys:
The Irys app has been launched in collaboration with Resilient Northeastern NJ as a tool for residents in Hoboken, JC, Bayonne, and Newark to engage in two-way engagement with the actual “decision makers” for climate change resiliency planning. Resilient Northeastern NJ is primarily focused on reducing our flood risk and helping our community become more resilient to the rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
The app is a great way to quickly see when the next event or community forum is taking place, read recent announcements about the program, and see what other residents in your community are sharing. Due to the fact the app is fairly new, I’ve run into some glitches when attempting to submit my feedback on the app. Instead, I recommend using their website to submit lengthy feedback, answer their survey questions, and browse through their many incredible resources.
It’s so important for every single person in our community who has been impacted by our constant flooding to at the very least answer their quick survey, but also to provide feedback about what you would like to see changed, removed, or added in the community to help with flooding. For example, I’d like to see our shorelines restored with marine life to filter the water, increase biodiversity, sequester carbon, and act as a protectant against soil erosion and high-tides. I’d also love to see more green space near the water and in all areas that are in the flood zones.
The bottom line is YOUR VOICE MATTERS and now is the time to speak up about the flooding in your community!
4) PlasticScore — The Yelp for Zero-Waste!
FINALLY there’s an app to review restaurants based on their plastic usage and other (zero) waste operations!
It’s easy! To review a restaurant, simply answer a few questions about your experience in the app and a rating will automatically be calculated based on your responses. These ratings create healthy competition between businesses to reduce waste and help eco-conscious consumers make decisions about where they will dine and spend their money!
One of PlasticScore’s big goals is to collect enough data so that the ratings can be licensed to larger review platforms, like Yelp! By licensing their ratings, we will see HUGE systemic transformation in the restaurant business and how they work with waste.
Let’s help PlasticScore collect as much data as possible here in Hoboken! Download the app and start reviewing!
5) Buy Nothing Group — An exchange for hyperlocal gifting that promotes community and sustainability through the act of reusing, repurposing and sharing goods amongst our Hoboken neighbors.
The Buy Nothing Project is a global network of community-based groups that encourages the giving of goods and services in preference to conventional commerce and wasteful disposal. Every member is part of the group to offer and request gifts; share, lend and borrow things (like decorations for birthday parties!); express gratitude; and build strong & generous communities.
Right now, the easiest way to join Hoboken’s Buy Nothing Group is on Facebook. It’s super simple — if you have something you don’t want anymore and it isn’t completely trashed, offer it up on the Buy Nothing Group. Snap a couple pics, add a brief description, and post! Neighbors interested in the goods will leave a comment and then you can coordinate with them to exchange the goods. The Hoboken groups is quite active and there are always cool goodies being posted like furniture, art, plants, knick-knacks, dog accessories, baby toys, kitchenware, and so much more!
One of the my favorite parts about this group is all the posts about curbside finds. While it’s unfortunate a lot of our neighbors put things out on the curb that people in our community actually need or want, it’s great that we have this platform to help increase the odds that someone will pick it up before the garbage truck does! Speaking of curbside, check out the instagram account @HobokenCurbside! They post a lot of great finds there, too.
The Buy Nothing Project launched their beta app for a small handful of communities, but Hoboken isn’t one of them, so Facebook is the best place to engage with the group! Since most groups have strict geographic boundaries to keep the groups hyperlocal, you will have to answer questions about where you live in order to be accepted into the group.
Hungry for more?
Learn more about how the Good Samaritan Act Provides Liability Protection For Food Donations here.
Do you think it’s totally messed up that Kings Hoboken North location doesn’t donate their surplus or nearly expired food to the Hoboken Food Pantry which according to Google Maps is .1 miles away and a 2 minute walk?! They don’t even let their staff take the food home from the salad bar! And guess what?! They don’t compost it either! They send it straight to the landfill (which is expensive AF) and contribute to methane and carbon emissions. Let’s come together as a community and petition that they donate their food. Until I set that up, please feel free to give them a piece of your mind here.