| | PEDAL PEOPLE NEWS WINTER 2025 Greetings from the Pedal People Press! A simple, informative newsletter to support our collective path to sustainability. | |
CONTENTSEnd of year review 500,000th pickup Pop Up Free Store - details and donations Recycling reminders and tips Norwottuck Rail Trail cleared by DCR this winter Bike Lab Pedal People’s Heavy Rotation Check Us Out on Social Media!
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END OF YEAR REVIEWThanks for your support through the past year! Here’s a quick numbers roundup to celebrate our achievements. - We completed our 500,000th pickup! More on that below
- We welcomed 8 new amazing members to our collective: Geve, Vincent, Eli, Carlos, Will, DD, Juan and Eric.
- We hauled over 1000 tons of trash (in 2024… not in one go)
- We saved 14,213 cubic feet of food waste from landfill that is happily reentering the carbon cycle as compost and renewable energy!
- We recycled 59,071 cubic feet of paper. If you lined all that paper up side by side… it would definitely blow away in the wind and create a huge mess.
| | 500,000th PICKUP - STATE SENATE RECOGNITION If you haven’t heard us bragging about completing our 500,000th pickup yet, well… you have now. If you don’t believe us, here’s a photo of the certificate we received from the US Senate to prove it! | | | |
POPUP FREE STORE - DETAILS AND DONATIONSWe’re excited to announce that the pop up free store “Redistro” is running this winter at the Friday Breakfast at First Churches of Northampton. The first pop up went great, with lots of folks finding much-needed warm clothing and supplies :)
Pedal People is asking for clean, good-condition items to donate to these Winter pop ups. The most needed items are men's clothing, but here are some other highly requested items: - Sleeping Bags and Tents
- Warm Socks
- Gloves, hats, mittens
- $5 Gift Cards for Dunkin' Donuts
- Large warm jackets
- Hand warmers
- Long underwear
- Men's and Women's underwear and bras
- Purchase from our Amazon wish list
To donate, please fill out this google form or email cjackson@pedalpeople.coop to set up a donation drop off to the church directly.
Come check out the free store and the free breakfast, Fridays, 8-10 am, 48 Elm St in Northampton (enter through the side entrance on Center St.) | | Cozy garb at Redistro’d first pop-up! | | Some of the Redistro team at the Friday breakfast :) | | | | HELPFUL REMINDERS AND RECYCLING TIPS | |
Your plan with us will specify a trash amount (if any). 30 gallons is an average size trash barrel, or about 2 standard 15-gallon kitchen bags. We charge for trash by weight or volume, whichever one is greater, assuming up to 1 pound per gallon. Additional trash is $4 per 10 gallons or pounds, if your Pedal Person has space to take it. Advance notice or an extra pickup may be necessary depending on how much extra you have. | |
For weekly pickups, we'll take a maximum of four 14-gallon tubs (which we provide) of recycling per pickup. For biweekly or monthly pickups, we'll take a maximum of three 14-gallon tubs. Note that cardboard, when flattened and left outside of the tubs, also counts towards these totals. (For example, a biweekly pickup may be thought of as having 2 14-gallon tubs of paper and containers, plus several medium sized pieces of cardboard.) If the worker has space, extra recycling may be taken for $4 per 14-gallon tub. | | Compost pickups are included in the cost of any level of trash service. We'll take up to 8 gallons of compost per pickup. If we have space, additional compost counts towards one's trash totals, after which it's an extra $.25/pound. Regular amounts above all of these levels can be arranged. Contact us to discuss your specific situation. See our FAQ and the ten reasons to switch for more information. | | | | TIPS TO MAKE OUR RECYCLING LIVE'S EASIER | | Paper Want to keep lots of loose paper from blowing away and make it easy for us to throw into our totes? Chuck it all in a paper grocery bag, like this photo beautifully demonstrates. | | | |
CompostCompost bucket getting icky? Food bits getting frozen in your bin? Throw it all in a compostable bag first. Most local supermarkets use these as produce bags (but still double check it says compostable on the bag). So after they’ve served their time in the fridge, bag your scraps in them and give them to us :) | | | | BPI Plastics On the subject of compost, any packaging that says BPI compostable plastic must go in your compost bin. They can’t be recycled with other containers. If you don’t use a compost bin, just keep them to one side of your tote, and we’ll separate them ourselves. FYI River Valley Co-op uses quite a lot of BPI plastics. Lots of disposable coffee lids are also BPI plastic. | | | |
…pill bottles can go in with recycling, right? No sorry…They are considered medical waste, and should go in with your trash 🙁
| | | | WHO TAKES WHAT IN THE VALLEY? Pedal People recycle a lot of stuff. What we’re able to recycle isn’t always up to us, and is a slowly moving target, but for most of our customers this guide remains accurate in terms of what we can haul for our weekly, biweekly or monthly trash/compost/recycling customers. (Of course we offer many other services too)
What about the bits and pieces you accumulate at home that we can’t haul? Here’s a handy directory for reuse, repair, and recycling in the Pioneer Valley.
… but who recycles the bikes? Here's an interesting article about how bike parts get recycled.
“When bikes die, their bodies become… stuff?… new bikes maybe, and the antelope ride the bikes.... and so… we are all connected in the great Cycle of Life!” | |
PLOUGHING THE NORWOTTUCK RAIL TRAIL | | Nothing like a clear trail! It's a plowerful thing... | | In our last newsletter, we mentioned that the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) had committed to a pilot program of clearing the Norwottuck Rail trail from snow this winter, since they own and manage the trail. The section is between Woodmont Street (near the railroad tracks) in Northampton through Hadley to Swift Way in Amherst. The action comes after years of advocacy to "Plow the Trail" | | | | Now that winter is underway and we've received snow since early December, we can report back that this has been a big success for trail users! Since early December DCR has cleared snow in a very timely manner, allowing folks to use it as a safe transportation corridor and for winter exercise and mobility, and preventing it from being covered by iced-over bootprints (which can create dangerous conditions, and sometimes make bike commuting impossible). One of our Pedal People worker-owners biked from Northampton to University Drive on December 24th after a snowfall (to pick up some gear at Hampshire Bicycle Exchange, a staunch Pedal People supporter), and took this photo showing the cleared path. We're grateful that this piece of infrastructure and recreational space is remaining accessible, and advocate for it to continue being a priority in the winters to come | | BIKE LAB WINTER 2025 Join us at Bike Lab on most Saturdays from 11:30am-2:30pm at 12 Northern Ave in Northampton! Check out our website for current info about what dates Bike Lab will be running in Winter 2025. The next Bike Labs will be 2/15 and 3/1!
Got questions about Bike Lab, or can’t make it on Saturdays? Contact Ruthy by email or call/text 413-341-2522 to set up a time to learn about riding safety or bike maintenance at 8 High Street in Florence! | | | | PEDAL PEOPLE'S HEAVY ROTATION What we've been reading and listening to lately! - “What Class are You?” is a series from the podcast Rumble Strip. It’s a series interviewing folks from around VT and NH about how they view the class they live in, and their present conditions. It’s a candid and heartfelt view into cultural placement, that is more telling than asking for political feedback. In Pedal People I pass by the survival center and food kitchens in Hamp each day, and sadly the lines are longer than I’ve ever seen them. Comments I’ve heard from the Food Bank of Western MA officials say that survival center usage is higher now than it was during the pandemic. This podcast does a great job to highlight real people and their worlds, ones that we don’t always recognize from our perspectives. There is a new series of “What Class are You?” episodes out from this year as well-worth listening to. - Ben J
- “The Wonder of Stevie” The Wonder of Stevie is a feel-good 6-part podcast series charting the brilliance of Stevie Wonder at the height of his creative powers. It features musical insights, historical and cultural context and interviews from great artists, critics and political figures like the Obamas, who co-produced the series. - Will
- A small but powerful book that is supporting me in examining my relationship to technology (and how it affects my attention, mood, and connection to others) is "How To Break Up With Your Phone" by Catherine Price, supplemented by a lovely podcast where Brene Brown hosts Esther Perel to discuss "the New AI - Artificial Intimacy". Brene Brown's podcast series explores what it means to be pushed to live beyond the human scale in our fast-paced, information-heavy world, and Catherine Price's book shares about how to set boundaries in these conditions. While it can be a bit daunting to acknowledge the costs of modern technology - how it changes our brains, fractures our attention, makes us more unhappy - I find this book and podcast gave me hope and inspiration to create boundaries so that I can be more fully present, and hopefully show up in my community in a more grounded and effective way. The world needs more of that from all of us! -Adele
- “Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea” by Tracey Williams. “Adrift” follows the story of a shipping container of almost 5 million Legos–mostly sea themed sets, of all things–that fell from the Tokio Express cargo ship in 1997. Almost 30 years later, pieces of these iconic sets are still washing up on beaches all over the world. Filled with beautiful photographs and formatted in a way that sometimes feels more like looking through a treasure hunter’s scrapbook than anything else, Williams explores questions like: why have some of the pieces been found all over the world (flowers, pirate ship rigging, the coveted octopus even more rare dragon pieces) while some types that we know were in that shipping container have never surfaced at all or are only just surfacing now (like, ironically, the lifeboat pieces)? What can the journey of these intrepid little building blocks tell us about ocean currents and the ways plastic is affecting our world? How can paying more attention to the little details of our surroundings teach us about finding joy in small discoveries? I absolutely loved this book, and more than once sat friends down to show them the photos and list off facts that fascinated me. The way it uses imagery to make the information engaging makes it accessible to both kids and adults. It ignited my curiosity to learn more about the way plastic travels after it leaves human hands and human use, and taught me a lot about the current (heh) state of plastic, oceans and the climate. I highly recommend it for Lego/ocean/environmental enthusiasts of all ages. - Geve
| | CATCH PEDAL PEOPLE ON INSTAGRAM If you’re on social media, make sure you’re following us to meet your friendly neighborhood haulers and to stay up to date on goings-on in the collective! Find us @pedal_people_coop.
Bike on, Pedal People | | | | Our mailing address is PO Box 415 Northampton, MA 01061-0415
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