Photo credits: Recycling center: Marie Veth L to R: Village employee, Jared; Village Trustee Matt Veth; Village employee, Samir; and Mayor Tom Howley
By Peter Lyons Hall
Many visitors to the Lakeside Farmers Market in Greenwood Lake know its reputation as a source of fresh produce, fruits from local orchards, fresh prepared foods, and artisanal products for the home. But it also evolved into one of the region’s most important collection points for composting, plastics, and recently old electronics equipment.
Grow Local Greenwood Lake has been collecting compost from food leftovers and uneaten comestibles from residents for several years now at the market. Food waste can add as much as 25% of greenhouse gas emissions to landfills. The program has been an important ingredient into a town-wide effort that is currently under review as it looks for ways to reduce costs of waste stream management and redirecting materials that can enjoy a resurrection as a new product rather than have a final resting place in a landfill.
The Greenwood Lake Lions Club began a popular “Bags to Benches” program months ago that asks Farmers Market visitors to bring in plastic bags and packaging materials from the store, from the pantry (ziploc-style and reclosable plastic bags, cereal liners, bread bags), and from the front door (dry cleaning bags, bubble wrap, plastic containers). Then the club sends them to the Trex® company that converts the materials into benches made from its composite decking that will be used in local parks throughout the community. Earlier this year the Elks also initiated a successful refrigerant container recycling effort that reclaimed dozens of harmful refrigerant gases from being introduced into a landfill site or accidentally mixed into recycled materials that would have interrupted a recycling facility’s sorting process.
The recent success of the Elks initiative inspired the Village of Greenwood Lake to offer an e-waste recycling program during Saturday, September 27, 2025, when dozens of eclectic artifacts from recent decades made their appearance at the DPW recycling center. Materials such as iron, gold, aluminum, palladium, platinum, lithium, copper, and plastics play crucial roles in the manufacture of high-tech electronics products that are used in many aspects of our lives. These materials are extracted from the earth, transported, processed, refined, and incorporated into various devices that can use large amounts of energy and produce greenhouse gas emissions, pollute the environment, and deplete our natural resources. Reducing the extraction of these materials can save natural resources, conserve energy, and reduce pollution. Village Mayor, Tom Howley, remarked that “Some of the stuff that we throw away is valuable but we wanted to make it easier for residents and seniors who would have had to take these materials to the County waste recycling center in New Hampton. Instead, they were able to bring them here to the Village; and we are considering if we can do this again in the coming months.” Here is a final tally of what the e-waste recycling effort collected:
- TVs: 74
- Laptops: 49
- PCs: 41
- Monitors: 41
- Keyboards: 36
- Cell phones: 23
- Tablets: 14
- Scanners: 14
- Mice: 10
- Printers: 7
- Routers: 6
Designing and manufacturing electronics, plastics, and food packaging with the environment in mind is critical for developing more sustainable products. Communities are beginning to review source reduction, also known as waste prevention, because we are running out of space for landfills. As the population increases real estate has become much more expensive. If we become smarter about the products we produce that have less impact on human health and the environment and that use less materials overall, we can recognize that the more we rely upon recycled materials, the cost of living will decline while simultaneously its quality will increase.
Lakeside Farmers Market, https://villageofgreenwoodlake.gov/lakeside-farmers-market, is open every Saturday from 9AM-1PM on Windermere Ave. in Winstanley Park. Its vendors are a valuable resource for not only information about the community but what’s for dinner tonight. Whether its fresh baked sourdough bread, pumpkin soup, gluten-free baked goods from the Muffin Man, homemade delicacies from Hudson Valley Pantry, or scrumptious fresh-picked produce from J&A Farms, the Lakeside Farmers Market will always offer visitors a memorable gourmet treat.
