The Keep This Handbook

RECYCLING

All six towns have the same rules for what can and can’t be recycled.

CAN

METAL CANS

• Primarily food and beverage cans • Empty and clean wash

PLASTIC CONTAINERS

• Bottles, jars, jugs and tubs • Empty, wash clean • NO caps or lids

GLASS CONTAINERS

• Bottles and jars • Empty, wash clean • NO caps or lids • NO ceramics, NO window panes

PAPER AND PAPERBOARD

• Office paper, junk mail, newspaper, magazine, paperboard boxes • Empty and flatten, NO shredded paper • NO pizza boxes • NO books with bindings

CORRUGATED CARDBOARD

• Empty and flatten • Remove packing tape • NO pizza boxes • NO waxed boxes

TRANSFER STATION RULES • Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, West Tisbury

• Dual sorting system • Cardboard and paper go together • Plastic containers, tin cans, aluminum cans and glass go together

• Oak Bluffs (local drop-off)

• Dual sorting system • Cardboard, newspaper and paper go together • Everything else single stream

• Tisbury (local drop-off)

• Dual sorting system • Cardboard and newspaper together • Everything else single stream

• Oak Bluffs Bruno’s Drop-Off

• Dual sorting system • Separate cardboard • Everything else single stream

Bruno’s and ABC’s Pick-Up Recycling Rules:

• Single bin, don’t need to separate materials

Aspirational Recycling

• If you’re unsure about whether some thing is or is not recyclable, it’s better to throw it out. If recycling bins are contaminated with too many non-recyclable materials, the entire bin will be thrown out. “When in doubt, throw it out.” • ABC’s & Bruno’s • No-waste policy: if there is any nonrecyclable material, bin is thrown out • MVRD • Similar, but more materials-dependent. Food waste and oil contamination are more no-tolerance, whereas materials like plastic bags and styrofoam are more tolerated. • The biggest mistake Don Hatch of MVRD sees: • Putting plastic bags, plastic wrap or cellophane plastic in recycling

COMPOSTING

CAN NOT

• Recyclables in a garbage bag • Garbage • Plastic bags or plastic wrap • Food or liquid • tyrofoam items or packaging materials • Clothing or linens • Tanglers (hoses, wires, chains) • Electronics

HOW-TO • ACCEPTED ITEMS

• All meat and fish (including bones, lobster shells and egg shells) • All dairy • Grains, nuts, seeds, flour products • Fruits and vegetables • Tea bags (staples removed) • Coffee grounds and coffee filters Recycle, compost, volunteer, • All flowers • Paper napkins and paper towels • Unless they have toxic products write your rep, that will not break down with high buy secondhand. heat on them • UNACCEPTABLE ITEMS • Large amounts of oyster, clam, The • little neck, mussel shells. Contact the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group to recycle these! Fat/oil/grease

‘Keep-This’

Simple, Smart, Sustainable Handbook

• Small amounts in the form of leftover prepared foods is fine • Compostable serviceware • IGI piloting this in August • Plastic or trash of any kind • Compost buckets available for free at IGI’s offices in West Tisbury or at town transfer stations. To request a bucket, email office@igimv.org or call 508-687-9062 • Drop-off locations (currently all free) • Transfer stations in all towns except Aquinnah • Chappy ferry dock • IGI’s farm • Best way to reduce food waste is still to shop and cook mindfully, repurpose foods that are close to expiring (smoothies! soup!), and even reorganize your fridge to be more aware of perishable items

VOLUNTEERING

• Polly Hill Arboretum grounds volunteer Volunteers are welcomed to work with staff staff at the 70-acre West Tisbury public garden on activities like planting, pruning, weeding and mulching. Volunteers can learn more about gardening and apply their new skills to their own landscape. PHA will provide tools, but volunteers should bring gloves and wear outdoor attire. Volunteers welcome from 9 am - 12 pm on June 3, July 1, August 5, September 2 and October 7. Contact Ian Jochems for more information at ian@pollyhillarboretum.org. Have fun getting in touch with your green thumb! • Glean with Island Grown Initiative Located in West Tisbury, Island Grown Initiative is a non-profit organization that works to build a regenerative and equitable food system on Martha’s Vineyard. Volunteers can help Island Grown Initiative harvest fresh local produce for Islanders in need. No experience is needed as your field captain will provide a harvest demonstration and tools. Gleaning lasts for around two hours and volunteers may even keep a share of the harvest for themselves. To sign up, go to igimvg. org/volunteer.php. Happy harvesting! • Great Pond Foundation The Great Pond Foundation is a nonprofit organization focuses on enhancing the health of the Edgartown Great Pond. While volunteer opportunities are currently limited due to COVID-19, future volunteers are encouraged to assist with their Ecosystem Monitoring Program and educational outreach events. Potential volunteer opportunities include aiding in water quality and biodiversity data collection, conducting surveys of pond species, helping staff with demonstrations of scientific concepts and assisting with science communication. These opportunities are especially perfect for anyone with an interest or background in STEM! For updates on volunteer opportunities, email science@ greatpondfoundation.org. • Community Greenhouse of Martha’s Vineyard Community Greenhouse of MV is a community organization in Oak Bluffs to gather and grow food and plants and learn together. They have a range of year-round volunteer opportunities for all mobilities and level of expertise. On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am - 12 pm, volunteers can work inside and outside to help with weeding, pruning, seeding, planting and beautifying plants - really any activity that nurtures thousands of beautiful plants and vegetables. Members have the added benefit of picking fresh produce! There is no need to sign up for these days, one can simply show up. Toni Kauffman, who helps with volunteers, has described this opportunity as “soil therapy,” so make sure to check it out!

REPRESENTATIVES

Got something to say about pending legislation? Want your voice heard?

STATE

• Governor Charlie Baker

617-725-4005; Twitter: @MassGovernor; Instagram: massgovernor

• State Senator Julian Andre Cyr

617-722-1570; Julian. Cyr@masenate.gov; Tw: @JulianCyr;

• State Representative Dylan A. Fernandes

617-722-2013; dylan.fernandes@mahouse.gov; Tw: @RepDylan; Insta: dylan1fernandes

FEDERAL

• Senator Ed Markey

617-565-8519; Tw: @EdMarkey; Insta: edmarkey

• Senator Elizabeth Warren

617-565-3170; Tw: @SenWarren; Insta: elizabethwarren

• Representative William R. Keating

508-771-6868; Tw: USRepKeating

SECOND-HAND STORES

Reuse, repurpose, refashion.

Chicken Alley Thrift Shop

38 Lagoon Pond Rd, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 Hours: Sunday - Monday, closed; Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 5 pm Sells, nearly everything! Clothing, furniture, dishware, glasses, decor, knickknacks, etc.

Martha’s Closet

79 Beach Rd #9, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 Hours: Sunday - Monday, closed; Tuesday - Friday, 11 am - 5 pm (Sat. to 6) Sells women’s clothing

Second Treasures MV

61 Beach Rd, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568

Hours: Sunday, 12 pm - 5 pm; Monday, 10 am - 5 pm; Tuesday - Wednesday, closed; Thursday - Saturday, 10 am - 5 pm

Sells antiques, collectibles, jewelry and artwork

Want something else included? Email us at editor@bluedotliving.com

Continued from page 51 writing detailed descriptions, and a lot of that information is pretty darn good.”

For lovers of history or seekers of treasure, the Atlas of Life offers a tantalizing combination of detective work and scavenger hunt. Pelikan told me about one butterfly, a species of wetland skipper called a black dash, which hasn’t been seen on the Island since the 1930s. “That doesn’t mean it’s not here,” he said. “It just means that maybe somebody hasn’t looked in the right place.”

There are many species like this, and the question they pose is one that has driven some birders to the brink of madness: Is it truly gone, or are we not looking hard enough? “One record is all you need to demonstrate the existence of something in a place,” Pelikan said. “Demonstrating absence is of course, logically, a lot harder. As the number of total records increases without that species being among them, the odds of it being here get steadily lower, and lower, and lower.”

“If we can find a little population of black dash,” he said, “that would be great to know, because we can try to protect it, we can learn what sort of resources are characteristic about that site, and maybe that will suggest some other places to look.”

A little can go a long way. “If we could get 20 people looking at butterflies, and posting pretty much every butterfly that they saw on iNaturalist,” Pelikan told me, “I would think that would give a very good distribution map for where you could find them, and how widely distributed each butterfly species is. That’s not a huge amount of work, and it’s not unrealistic to think of that happening over the next few years. And then you would have a sense of which species are rare and where they occur.”

Pelikan draws inspiration from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, whose Atlas project has more than 5 million records, and has identified species new to the region, rediscovered ones, and generated a volunteer-driven tapestry of biological communities around the state.

Community observation, especially coupled with solid advice from professional naturalists on the Island, is an avenue toward building a core competency in the Vineyard community that might come in handy in all sorts of ways.

For example, Pelikan pointed to the popularity of regenerative or restorative agriculture on the Island, where farms try to manage their land in a way that benefits the ecosystems in which they are enmeshed. “It would be great to have a bunch of people who had the skills to do the monitoring to support that,” he said, “so a farm could introduce some kind of change in how they manage their land, and we could have people who had butterfly skills to do periodic butterfly surveys, as volunteers, to document any changes that were occurring.”

These observations do more than nurture a personal checklist. They start to trace, faintly at first, the comings and goings of an immensely variable community of life. Biologists can use them to track the arrival of invasive species, to evaluate the richness or peril of a landscape for a given creature, and to track which conservation measures are having a positive effect on the landscape.

“The main take-home for the project for me would be the social engagement,” Pelikan said, “and how important it feels to share my love of studying the natural world. I can say that of the 82 species of butterflies that are known for Martha’s Vineyard, I’ve had 44 in my yard. And it’s a humble yard; it doesn’t take much to get impressive biodiversity if you’re paying attention. Taking pride in that sort of thing would be such a huge step in terms of protecting what we’ve got, and getting to understand it better.”

For info, visit mval.biodiversityworksmv. org, or email info@biodiversityworksmv.org. email info@biodiversityworksmv.org.

Supporting the Island’s biodiversity

The M.V. Atlas of Life project is funded by the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation, which has strong Vineyard ties, but supports conservation initiatives in many other places. Warren Adams, a strategic advisor for the foundation, wrote, “With the growing impact of climate change and the omnipresent pressure of development, protecting the Island's biodiversity is a Herculean task that will require the concerted effort of many individuals and organizations. We hope our work with the Martha's Vineyard Atlas of Life and other initiatives the foundation is supporting — to increase the supply and use of native plant species, study and protect endangered species both on land and in sea, and build community with online and on-the-ground education and outreach — will make a material difference. And we hope that any successes here on Martha’s Vineyard can be exported off-Island."

Betsy and Jesse Fink have been using their Island property Refugia as a living laboratory and have utilized iNaturalist to catalog its biodiversity. Betsy wrote, "I feel that being able to identify and connect with what’s around us helps us better appreciate the uniqueness of a place, and in turn, encourages us to take greater care of the land. We are thrilled that Matt Pelikan, whose knowledge on this subject runs so deep, is leading the Martha’s Vineyard Atlas of Life initiative at BiodiversityWorks. Matt is an Island treasure unto himself and we are proud to support him as one of our current Fink Fellows.”