Grid Magazine May 2025 [#192]

GAS MONEY

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publisher Alex Mulcahy

managing editor

Bernard Brown

associate editor & distribution

Timothy Mulcahy

tim@gridphilly.com

deputy editor

Sophia D. Merow

art director

Michael Wohlberg

writers

Marilyn Anthony

Tim Bennett

Gabriel Donahue

Dawn Kane

Emily Kovach

Adam Litchkofski

Julia Lowe

Bryan Satalino

Ben Seal

Jordan Teicher

Iryna Teslia

photographers

Chris Baker Evens

Matthew Bender

Troy Bynum

Adam Litchkofski

Julia Lowe

illustrators

James Boyle

Bryan Satalino

published by Red Flag Media

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Content with the above logo is part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoiceeveryvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.

Banking on Our Trust

Back in february, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed by former Mayor Michael Nutter that left me feeling confused. The piece argues for the role of fossil gas in the home energy mix for Philadelphians, because, Nutter claims, renewables are simply too expensive for low-income households. Yes, this is the same Michael Nutter who, in 2009, created the City’s Office of Sustainability and set aggressive encergy savings and greenhouse gas reduction targets. Nutter was so impressively green that Grid put him on the cover in 2012, poshing on a green roof.

This green credibility is, of course, why the fossil fuel industry pays Nutter and other retired Democrats to sell their message to the public.

Nutter is a member of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a group funded by gas companies and unions to convince the public that, although methane produces carbon dioxide when burned and is a powerful greenhouse gas when it leaks from transmission systems, fossil gas is environmentally friendly. This affiliation was omitted from the original op-ed.

It turns out that Nutter had told The Inquirer that he had no conflicts of interest, which is, of course, not true.

Nutter selling out is sad, though not surprising. When he was leaving office, he told The Inquirer: “I want to do something really radical in my life … making money for the first time ever.” (The same article points out that, as mayor, he earned $177,679.) Plenty of politicians leave office and then cash in, leveraging the strength of their government connections to lobby for the powerful. If you want to get a meeting with an elected official, who better than one of their former colleagues to open the door?

But Nutter’s op-ed goes a step further. He isn’t meeting behind closed doors with old colleagues; he is addressing his former constituents, leveraging our trust to sell the fossil fuel industry’s message, all while hiding his role as a shill.

It’s cliché to say that we shouldn’t trust politicians, but the broader point is that we should trust policy recommendations based on the facts, not the messengers. Those facts remain the same as they were in 2009: even the residents of a poor city like Philadelphia can play a part in fighting climate change, particularly with the leadership of sincere public officials. We can provide financial support for swapping in electric versions of stoves, water heaters and furnaces. Our City-owned gas utility can explore geothermal network heating, a truly low-carbon and ultimately affordable method of heating a dense city like Philadelphia (though, as we reported in January, Philadelphia Gas Works has no progress to show on that front).

I can’t say what Nutter actually thinks. Maybe he would be writing op-eds about the importance of fossil gas even if he weren’t a member of an industry-backed lobbying group. Maybe the money has nothing to do with it. Maybe, but the journalist in me tends not to believe in such coincidences, and the Philly environmentalist in me can’t help but feel betrayed.

Weightless, Yet Weighty

In the absence of mitigating treatments, volunteers survey the damage of bird-window collisions story and photos by adam litchkofski

Every Wednesday morning during spring and fall migration seasons, Peter DeStefano walks the brick sidewalks of Independence Mall in Old City in search of birds — dead ones. A volunteer for Bird Safe Philly, DeStefano combs the areas where, because of an abundance of large windows, migrating birds are most likely to meet their demise. Man-made infrastructure is a huge problem for migrating birds. Over a billion (with a b) birds die each year from crashing into buildings in the United States alone. Bird

Safe Philly — a partnership between the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, National Audubon Society, Valley Forge Audubon Society and Liberty Bird Alliance — advocates for bird safety and tracks a portion of these migratory bird deaths in the city. On the lookout for birds who have met a terrible fate, volunteers traverse a variety of spaces in Philadelphia.

On this particular April morning, there are no dead birds for DeStefano to discover. The

yawning sun peaks out over the buildings lining the eastern side of Independence Mall and through clouds lingering from the previous evening’s rain showers. Lively birds sing from perches on the branches of blossoming sycamores and atop the Liberty Bell Center’s ivy-draped trellises as Philadelphia wakes up for another spring day. DeStefano found two dead yellow-bellied sapsuckers the previous week but says the migratory season hasn’t yet gotten into full swing.

DeStefano, who has been associated with Bird Safe Philly for two years and birding

Volunteer Peter DeStefano patrols Independence Mall to find bird-window collision victims.

If someone decided to treat the windows, maybe the bird wouldn’t have met its end.”

— peter destefano, Bird Safe Philly volunteer

for 30, is ecstatic about his volunteer work. “It’s crazy to hold [a bird] in your hand!” he exclaims. “To know that a bird migrated and survived thousands of miles to get here and to feel how weightless it is is fascinating.” At the same time, finding a bird is not a victory. “If someone decided to treat the windows, maybe the bird wouldn’t have met its end.”

After his walk, DeStefano sends a text to the Bird Safe Philly group chat: “No birds for pickup.” At Ciocca Subaru in Grays Ferry, however, a different story unfolds.

Nina Chung, a former environmental educator and amateur birder, walks the perimeter of the dealership on Thursday

mornings. She says she finds up to three dead birds per walk at the concrete foot of the showroom’s giant glass walls. And as migration season picks up in the coming weeks, she is certain she’ll find more.

“It’s just a really cool thing to be a part of. Picking up a small bird that died from a collision is a powerful experience, because they are often so light and fragile because of their hollow bones,” she says. “To be part of an effort trying to save them from unnecessary human-caused deaths is a poignant and wonderful thing.”

Several places in Philadelphia — Sister Cities Café and PATCO’s newly redesigned

Franklin Square Station — have treated their windows. According to the Bird Safe Philly website, applying dense patterns, like dots or artwork, to a glass surface allows birds to recognize the windows as the impenetrable barriers they are. The cost of application varies from building to building, but Audubon claims that “the price is often just 5% higher than standard glass.”

There are ways to advance Bird Safe Philly’s cause, though, even if you don’t have decision-making power over glass installation. “We are always looking for more volunteers,” Chung says, noting that any of the city’s many birding clubs can provide a path of entry into bird appreciation and advocacy. She also encourages residents to participate in Bird Safe Philly’s Lights Out Philly program by turning off or blocking as many external and internal lights as possible at night during birds’ spring and fall migration seasons. “It’s the biggest and easiest thing you can do to help migrating birds.”

Greenery reflected on glass confuses birds, causing them to crash into windows.

CLEAN BREAK

Tallow skincare company uses locallysourced ingredients to make sustainable soaps story and photos julia lowe

The internet’s latest viral skincare ingredient might surprise you. Many are raving about the many potential skin benefits of using soaps and moisturizers made from beef tallow — yes, rendered cow fat. While the popularity of these products has been on the rise since about 2022, one Philadelphia-based soap company was years ahead of the tallow trend.

Melissa Torre, owner and founder of Vellum St. Soap Company, says that tallow skincare isn’t a fad; it marks a return to the skincare of ancient human history.

“Humans were using animal fats for their skin for eons,” says Torre. “It’s only since about the 1930s and 1940s that we started using synthetic oils.”

Tallow is the rendered suet – raw, solid fat – of beef, deer, goat or mutton. Once the fat is melted and rendered into tallow, it can be used immediately as a moisturizer or blended with other ingredients to make balms, soaps, candles, and many other products.

The lipid profile of animal fats makes them effective at moisturizing human skin, Torre says. Not only is tallow a rich, thick substance, its fatty acids are more like the oils produced by our skin than the plant oils commonly used in skincare products, like coconut and palm oils. Their similar molecular size and structure make tallow’s lipids more easily absorbed by our skin.

Torre herself had been a user of coconut

oil-based moisturizers for years. But after suffering for over a decade with chronic eczema caused by a wheat allergy, she turned to her grandmother, who was the one to suggest that she try using animal fats to moisturize her skin.

“My little hillbilly Nana looked at me like I was an idiot and she said, ‘just put some bacon fat on it.’ And Nana’s always right, so I did, and it worked – literally within two days. And within two weeks, I had basically no sign of it left,” says Torre.

Using leftover bacon grease and other food scraps from her bakery, Cookie Confi-

dential — which dealt in unique flavor combinations like chocolate and bacon — Torre began making soaps and salves for herself and friends in 2015. Soon, a friend who worked at Whole Foods encouraged Torre to pitch her product to the grocery chain, and she built a logo, name and brand for the business overnight.

Vellum St.’s name is an homage to Fight Club: Paper St. Soap Company is the fictional soap company set up by the main character. And fittingly, vellum is a material made from calfskin that was historically used to wrap bars of soap.

Humans were using animal fats for their skin for eons.”

melissa torre, Vellum St. Soap Company

Once Vellum St. hit the shelves of Whole Foods, Torre could no longer rely on food scraps from the bakery to source her animal fats. When local chefs and butchers with surpluses of stored tallow asked Torre if she could use it, she answered the call to save the tallow from going to waste. There were even plans for Torre to begin using the suet from Whole Foods’ in-house butcher department, but Amazon took over the company less than a year later.

“I decided to pull my product from their shelves. And in hindsight, it was the best thing that I ever did,” says Torre.

A decade later, Vellum St. has grown to a company of three, is sold in stores across the region, and even ships internationally. Their product line includes a wide range

of both tallow- and lard-based skincare products, including soaps, solid lotions, lip balms, and salves across a range of scents. Their flagship scent, Fat Marshmallow, is completely free of essential oils.

“Fat Marshmallow is by far the product that I recommend to everyone. And if it were up to me, it’s the only thing that we would sell,” says Torre. “We slow-infuse the tallow over days with real vanilla beans and marshmallow root.”

The vanilla in Fat Marshmallow is sourced from Singing Dog Vanilla in Phoenixville. Vellum St. also works with Bottle Underground in South Philly to secure upcycled glass for 80% of their product packaging. Most of Vellum St.’s ingredients, including the tallow itself, are also sourced locally.

“I prefer 150 miles or less,” says Torre. “But if there’s a farm that’s 500 miles away that is delivering to this area anyway, and I like their farming practices, it seems kind of silly not to utilize that.”

Over the years, Torre has moved away from using buzzwords to label her products, like “grass-fed,” “organic,” and even “sustainable.” Especially as the tallow market has grown, Torre feels that these labels have lost meaning, so she hopes the stories of her ingredients speak for themselves. Above all, she believes in sourcing as thoughtfully and ethically as possible.

“No matter what it is — I don’t care if it’s a tomato or if it’s a cow — if you’re sourcing from a farm that is not taking the whole of its environment into consideration, what you’re doing is bad for the environment,” says Torre.

Vellum St. Soap Company products are available at all locations of Kimberton Whole Foods. “They completely catapulted our business. Being in their stores has made us so much busier and gave us such a huge new audience.”

Melissa Torre started using animal fat when her grandmother advised her to put bacon grease on her chronic eczema. She now sells tallow-based fluffs, lotions, bars and balms throughout the Philadelphia region and on her website.

The Third Way

Is expansion of community composting — access and capacity — the answer to Philly’s food waste conundrum?

by tim bennett

In my previous two columns, I discussed a number of ways that the City could launch composting dropoff programs, either on its own or in partnership with private composting companies. A third way forward would be an expansion of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation’s Farm Philly Community Compost Network. Based on a program in Washington, D.C., the Community Compost Network builds three-bin composting systems at community sites that are run entirely by volunteers. Currently, of the nine active sites listed on the Community Comipost Network website, only one — Liberty Lands Community Gardens — is accepting food scraps from the general public; the others accept drop-offs only from members of the host site. Farm Philly has announced that additional sites have been selected and bins are being built, but the timelines are not publicly available.

I am a big fan of the Community Com-

posting Network. (Full disclosure: Bennett Compost has conducted training for Farm Philly in the past.) Some changes should be implemented, however, to make it a more robust composting solution.

First, new sites should be required to offer public drop-off hours. Having these sites open to the public for at least an hour or two per week would broaden the network’s reach and make composting more accessible to more people. And we know the demand is there. The one site that does accept food scraps from the general public is only open for drop-offs one hour per week, but, according to reporting by Grid (#186, November 2024), they have stopped advertising the program because of overwhelming demand.

A second change would be to partner with either the City’s Department of Sanitation or a private compost company to provide the sites with compost collection bins that could be hauled away for composting at other locations. One concern that sites

have about accepting outside material is being overwhelmed by the volume of material dropped off. Third-party involvement would alleviate this concern. The Sanitation Department is currently exploring the idea of a few unmanned drop-off bins; co-locating them with the Farm Philly Community Composting Network would both make these sites less likely to be contaminated with non-compostable materials and increase these sites’ capacity. And if collaboration with the Department of Sanitation doesn’t pan out, a new partnership could be developed with a private compost company (similar to the relationship Bennett Compost has with Parks & Rec to compost food waste from after-school programs at recreation centers).

The third change I’d suggest would be widening the geographic spread of the dropoff sites. According to the Farm Philly website, there are currently no sites in South Philly, West Philly or Southwest Philly and only one site each in Northeast and Northwest Philly. This leaves large swaths of the city without any access to this program. As additional sites are added, priority must be given to neighborhoods that don’t currently have access. Additionally, the City should work to identify neighborhoods with lower usage of private compost services and prioritize building sites in those neighborhoods. Targeting such neighborhoods will ensure that more total food waste is collected and composted, a more desirable goal than merely giving those already composting more options for how to do so.

This third way for Philadelphia to responsibly handle its food waste is less ambitious than what I outlined in previous columns. What it lacks in ambition, though, it makes up for in potentially lower costs and rollout time. And we have to start somewhere, Philly. Let’s do this! ◆

tim bennett is the founder of Bennett Compost. Alex Mulcahy, publisher of Grid, is also a partner.

An expansion of the Community Compost Network could capture mountains of organic waste.

Bakery Bravery

Quakertown “microbakery” offers smallbatch, sourdough goodies inspired by grandma by

marilyn anthony

As many people discovered during the COVID-19 boom in home baking, if you want a challenge, try baking with a sourdough starter. Iryna Teslia embraced this challenge, and sourdough became the basis for everything she produces in her micro-bakery, The Bread Anatomy — from traditional Ukrainian holiday breads like paska and kolach to all-American chocolate chip cookies.

Before Teslia moved to Northeast Philadelphia from her village in western Ukraine in 2009, her grandmother taught her to bake. Although Teslia’s grandmother used commercial yeast instead of sourdough starter, she produced rich, crusty breads and delicious cookies and sweets using a communal, wood-fired oven in her village. Teslia fondly recalls helping her grandmother mix and bake all kinds of satisfying foods. She carried a memory of those tastes with her to America.

It took several years in the United States, though, before Teslia found the time to resume baking. “When we started a family and I stayed home to raise my kids, I started baking again,” she recalls. Facebook posts about sourdough caught her attention, and she gave it a shot. “When I tried it the first time, I thought the bread was so-so, but everyone told me it was delicious,” she says. One

Sandi Pierantozzi’s pistachio torte was inspired by a slice of heaven found in Sicily.

Before I didn’t open a bakery because I was worried it would not be good enough. You have to work at it. Don’t be scared to try new things.”

iryna teslia, The Bread Anatomy

experiment led to another, and after moving with her family to Quakertown, Bucks County, in 2016, Teslia converted a room in her house into a “micro-bakery” equipped with a commercial mixer and oven.

Baking with sourdough may seem simple enough. To make a starter, a would-be baker adds water to flour and “feeds” it for several days in a warm environment. The starter becomes a living thing, requiring regular attention to keep it viable. “It’s like caring for a child,” Teslia says. “If you forget about it, things turn out different.”

Teslia kept experimenting, giving her products away to friends and family who finally convinced her to start selling her baked goods. She named her small business The Bread Anatomy because in baking every ingredient works together in balance, just like the various parts of the human body. Teslia still uses her grandmother’s recipes but has greatly expanded her product line. Her children, ages 10, seven and three, serve as a sort of focus group, asking for new items such as green bagels for Eagles games or a Pokémonthemed birthday cake.

Until she is able to afford her dream of a retail bakery and café, Teslia sells her products online. She takes preorders and offers porch pickups from her home. This May through December, The Bread Anatomy will table at the Coopersburg Farmers Market on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Retailing directly to the public is another experiment 39-year-old Teslia is willing to try. Launching The Bread Anatomy has taught her a thing or two. “You have to try not to be scared about learning to bake. Before I didn’t open a bakery because I was worried it would not be good enough. You have to work at it. Don’t be scared to try new things.”

GRANDMOTHER’S UKRAINIAN RYE BREAD

by iryna teslia

Grandma’s traditional sourdough rye bread from West Ukraine is a beloved, dark and hearty loaf with a wonderfully sour flavor. Baked in her wood-fired clay oven, it was a symbol of love and tradition. Kneading the dough by hand was a way to connect with the past, honoring generations while creating a nourishing gift for the future. Here’s her authentic recipe to recreate this timeless bread at home.

FOR THE STARTER

100 grams rye flour

100 grams water

10 grams sourdough rye starter

In the evening, mix the rye flour, water and starter. Cover and leave it to ferment overnight.

• Mixing the dough: Combine all ingredients and knead the dough until it becomes  elastic.

• Bulk fermentation: Place the dough in a transparent oiled container, cover it and let it rise for 2 to 2.5 hours at 77 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough should grow

FOR THE BREAD

200 grams sourdough starter

250 grams whole wheat flour

150 grams rye whole grain flour

250 milliliters water

20 grams honey

10 grams salt

in size, becoming a fluffy structure.

• Shaping the dough: Shape the dough into an oval or round loaf on a floured surface. Seal the seam by rolling it in flour. Let it rise in a proofing basket for about 60 to 90 minutes at room temperature.

• Preheating the oven: While the dough is proofing, preheat your oven to 480 degrees with a baking stone and a large, flat pan of water.

• Baking the bread: Bake with steam for 10 to 15 minutes, then open the oven door, reduce the temperature to 390430 degrees, and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes.

King of the Shill

Former Mayor Michael Nutter is representing gas industry interests that aim to drive a wedge between environmentalists and marginalized communities by jordan teicher

In february, The Philadelphia Inquirer published — in print and online — an op-ed by former Philadelnphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Titled “We should support an affordable, inclusive energy transition,” the article made the case that “we must act fast on the seriousness of climate change and do so responsibly, without losing sight of the affordability and reliability we all deserve.” By that, Nutter meant that we must continue to expand natural gas infrastructure. Solar home arrays and electric appliances, he argued, are “out of reach” for marginal-

ized communities; natural gas, meanwhile, is “the most affordable option for energy-burdened households.” Banning natural gas, he wrote, raises energy prices and represents “ideological rhetoric missing reality on the ground.”

If the article read to some like a gas industry press release, that’s because, essentially, it is. Since 2023, Nutter has been a member of the leadership of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a group funded by fossil fuel companies like EQT Corporation and TC Energy as well as labor organizations such as Teamsters National Pipe-

line and Pipeliners Local Union 798. Since its founding in 2020, the organization has spent millions of dollars on advertising and public relations efforts designed to position natural gas as a climate solution.

Nutter’s op-ed was undoubtedly part of that strategy. But in initially describing the author of the piece, The Inquirer failed to mention Nutter’s aff iliation with Natural Allies.

“When we received this pitch, we specifically asked the mayor about any potential conflicts with this piece and he denied that there were any,” Inquirer opinion editor Richard Jones tells Grid. “We also didn’t see the mayor’s connection to Natural Allies pop [up] on any of our usual pre-publication checks; we only learned about it after we were notified by a reader, and we immediately updated the post with information about his affiliation.”

Nutter’s natural allies affiliation caught The Inquirer by surprise. But it was old news for Alan Zibel of Public Citizen and Kenny Stancil of the Revolving Door Project, co-authors of an extensive 2024 report about Natural Allies. They extensively investigated Nutter and other Democratic politicians — including former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan — who’ve joined the ranks of Natural Allies. (Neither Nutter nor Natural Allies responded to requests to comment for this story.)

The arguments in Nutter’s op-ed are ones Zibel and Stancil had heard him make before. In April 2024, for instance, Nutter appeared at the annual convention of the National Action Network, a prominent civil rights organization founded by Al Sharp-

ural gas partnered with renewables is the most immediate, affordable and accessible way forward to keep energy bills lower and reduce carbon emissions.”

Appearances at events for Black Democrats are crucial to Natural Allies’ strategy. According to an internal strategy document Public Citizen obtained, the organization believes that “success for the natural gas industry will be rooted in whether … [they] can message to the left and the Democratic base of black and Latino and age 18 to 34 voters as effectively as … [they] have messaged to the right.” In other words, Stancil says, “they’re trying to drive a wedge between the environmental community and the civil rights community.”

The way Stancil sees it, Nutter, as a Black former mayor of a Democratic city with significant Black and Hispanic populations, is perfectly positioned to advance this goal:

When we received this pitch, we specifically asked the mayor about any potential conflicts with this piece and he denied that there were any.”

— richard jones, opinion editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer

ton. “We believe certainly that natural gas is a part of the clean energy solution,” he said on a panel at the event. “Everybody’s not putting a solar panel on their house. And I can’t put a windmill in my backyard. But I know when I get home tonight, the place is gonna be nice and toasty because [gas] is there all the time. It’s available, it’s reliable, it’s affordable and it’s going in the homes of over 500,000 people in our city.”

In September, Nutter brought a similar message to a panel conversation, “Powering Black Communities: Shaping Energy Policy for a Sustainable Future,” at a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation legislative conference. “It is important that our energy policy choices do not leave historically marginalized communities behind as we move toward a more diverse energy mix,” Nutter said on the panel. “That is why nat-

“Nutter and his fellow Natural Allies cochair, Kendrick Meek, are leveraging their identities as Black men to argue that fracked gas will benefit Black communities.”

Those supposed benefits of natural gas, Stancil argues, don’t hold up. Expanding exports of liquefied natural gas, he says, would drive up prices, forcing Pennsylvania consumers to pay $16 billion more on gas bills. Leaks in the gas system pollute the air — disproportionately in low-income communities — and home gas appliances release hazardous chemicals. And when it comes to emissions, Stancil points out that there’s mounting evidence that liquefied natural gas is actually worse for the climate than coal.

“This group is designed to put a sunny, friendly face on a dirty, polluting fuel that harms the climate and consumers and com-

munities,” says Zibel. “Their tactics are misleading and duplicitous.”

Those who remember Nutter’s tenure as mayor may not be entirely shocked to discover that he has become a fossil fuel lobbyist. Nutter famously tried to sell Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW), the city’s publicly-owned gas utility, to UIL Holdings Corporation, a private utility company in Connecticut, for nearly $2 billion. The push came at a time when gas companies were angling to turn the city into an “energy hub” by developing facilities for exporting liquefied natural gas derived from the fracking boom in the Marcellus Shale. Nutter’s effort ultimately failed in 2014, when City Council came out against the deal.

Sam Bernhardt, then the Pennsylvania director of Food & Water Watch, was one of many Philadelphians who pushed back against Nutter’s plan. Privatizing PGW would have forced consumers to pay more for energy, he says, and turning Philadelphia into a gas hub would have had disastrous consequences for human and environmental health.

Given this history, Bernhardt says he’s not surprised that Nutter has become a fossil fuel lobbyist since leaving office. And the fossil fuel industry’s keenness to partner with Nutter is no surprise either. “That is the frequent tactic of those looking to take advantage of communities that are already disadvantaged, which is to capture elected leaders by dangling cash in front of them,” Bernhardt says.

It’s not clear exactly how much Natural Allies is paying Nutter. But according to tax documents obtained by HEATED, fellow Natural Allies affiliates Landrieu and Heidi Heitkamp, both former senators, received $210,690 and $185,266, respectively, for their services in just one year. Natural Allies is not, it’s worth noting, Nutter’s only gig. Since leaving office, Nutter has, according to his website, taken on more than 40 paid and unpaid roles, including serving as a board member of PECO and as an advisor to Airbnb.

Nutter’s funders at Natural Allies also have diversified pursuits. While Natural Allies is, at least on paper, in support of an energy transition, its funders spend money

elsewhere opposing decarbonization. The methane gas utility National Fuel Gas, for instance, spent ratepayer money to advocate against legislation including the NY HEAT Act, the “most watched climate policy” of New York’s 2024 legislative session, which is designed to stop the expansion of the gas system and promote electrification. The NY HEAT Act still isn’t law.

In his work on behalf of Natural Allies, Nutter does make one solid point: Renewable energy is often out of reach for Philadelphians. “Electrification and an energy transition requires a monetary investment that certainly not everyone in Philadelphia is in a position to make,” says Daniel Farmer, a campaign coordinator with Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania (PSR PA).

But Farmer maintains that Nutter comes to exactly the wrong conclusion about how to address that inequity. Instead of doubling down on an unsustainable energy source, he says, we should be investing more in programs — “programs like Solar for All and even larger programs on the national scale like the Inflation Reduction Act” — that increase access to renewable energy.

Farmer grew up in West Philadelphia, where he still resides. He believes that some of his neighbors might remember Nutter’s time as mayor fondly and be inclined to hear him out on the merits of natural gas. As an environmental organizer, he finds that worrying, because, more than many, he has seen the detrimental impacts of natural gas. Soon after he started his job at PSR PA, he took a tour of communities in Southeastern Pennsylvania that are located near fracking infrastructure. In speaking with residents and doctors, he learned about the calamitous health effects that many are experiencing there.

“For anyone who still thinks that oil and gas is the way to go, I would encourage them to go out to those communities and see whether they think those asthma rates are worth it, that those cancer rates are worth it,” he says. “I would encourage even former Mayor Nutter to go out to some of these communities and see what he thinks we should be investing in exactly.” ◆

GUN VIOLENCE DOES NOT END ON THE CRIME SCENE

Join us for a conversation about the long-term effects of gun violence at the launching event of The People Left Behind podcast.

MAY 6, 2025 // 7:00 - 8:30PM PUBLIC TRUST, 4017 WALNUT STREET

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Vivek Ashok, Associate of the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Michelle Kerr-Spry, TraumaInformed Specialist and Behavioral Health Generalist and Director of Programs and Development for Mothers In Charge

Terrez McCleary, founder of Moms Bonded By Grief

Ellie Rushing, Justice and Injustice Reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Julien Suaudeau, writer, filmmaker, professor and podcast host

Afea Tucker, Philadelphia Community Engagement Reporter at The Trace

A Terrible Thing to Waste

Opportunities exist for Philadelphia to lead the nation in recycling again. Private companies and advocates tell us what needs to change by ben seal

It has been five years since the pandemic disrupted Philadelphia’s recycling program, leading to service delays that stretched on for weeks and consigning the contents of so many blue bins into trash trucks headed for the landfill. “That was the first huge blow for an already beleaguered system,” says Nic Esposito, former director of the City’s Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet. The recycling rate — the portion of the total waste the City collects that is recycled — suddenly fell

from around 20% to a dismal 8%, erasing years of progress, while residents lost faith that their efforts toward waste reduction were actually being rewarded.

Half a decade later, with a new mayor in office and an outspoken emphasis on a “cleaner, greener Philadelphia,” the stats have improved slightly, but faith has hardly been restored. The City claims a diversion rate of 13.1%, which would place it well behind every major American city except Chicago. Perhaps more damning, those who

have devoted decades to ensuring that our materials have a meaningful afterlife don’t believe we’re on a path toward progress.

“Recycling will only happen in this city if the mayor is committed to it,” says Maurice M. Sampson II, the Eastern Pennsylvania director of Clean Water Action and the City’s first recycling coordinator from 1985 to 1987. “If you don’t have that commitment, it doesn’t happen, because the Streets Department responds to whatever the mayor wants. We have a system driven by the pol-

The politics of waste lead to low recycling rates in Philadelphia, according to Maurice M. Sampson II.

itics of trash, not the practicalities of trash.”

As t he global plastics crisis worsens, landfills run out of space and incinerators like the one in Chester, Delaware County, heap environmental injustice on their neighbors, it has never been more important to keep materials out of the waste stream. And yet Mayor Cherelle Parker’s proposed budget aims for just 1% annual improvements in the City’s recycling rate over the next two years. Without a significant step forward, a citywide composting program to recycle organic waste — the largest component of the municipal solid waste stream, currently destined for landfills — is nothing but a pipe dream, Sampson says.

But if an overwhelmed municipal government isn’t prepared to meet the moment, a collection of private entities and nonprofits stands ready to fill in the gaps, offering residents and businesses the opportunity to escape the single-use paradigm and take matters into their own hands. From construction and demolition debris to glass, food scraps and hard-to-recycle materials, they’re demonstrating the potential for

cycling law that set a target rate of 50% and followed by a solid waste plan in the mid1990s that projected 40% recovery by 2000. At one point, Philadelphia had “the most sophisticated recycling office in the country,” Sampson says, staffed by more than a dozen employees, plus interns and consultants. They conducted research, outlined shortand long-term plans and managed programs for recycling, education and promotion in residential, commercial and municipal office buildings. When San Francisco and Los Angeles sought to improve their programs, they came here to see innovative ideas in action. But while both now divert roughly 80% of waste, including organic materials, from landfills, Philadelphia’s program has never proved nearly as effective.

Under Mayor Michael Nutter (20082016), the City expanded the list of materials it recycled and began weekly collections, resulting in an improved recovery rate that reflected City Hall’s commitment, even if it fell below contemporary standards. But under Mayor Kenney (2016-2024) the commitment wavered, results declined,

We have a system driven by the politics of trash, not the practicalities of trash.”

— maurice m. sampson ii, Clean Water Action

Philadelphia to develop an effective circular economy — if only the City catches on.

“If you have a gold mine, don’t go digging in the sand,” says Alisa Shargorodsky, founder and CEO of reuse-oriented nonprofit ECHO Systems. “I’m really optimistic about the leadership of Philadelphia realizing that they have a gold mine and they need to tap into it. And the gold mine is the community.”

Alone or Together?

The history of recycling in Philadelphia is full of fits and starts, commitments and abnegations, Sampson says. Since his time as recycling coordinator, the City has decided four different times to develop full-scale programs, beginning with a mandatory re-

and then the pandemic dealt a body blow to what remained of the program’s efficacy. Today, we’re picking up the pieces, but our leadership lacks the dedication the moment calls for, according to Sampson.

“The goal of zero waste by 2035 has been abandoned by the current administration,” he says. “There is not a plan for recycling. We’re planning to clean up — and that’s terrific — but there’s no plan or money in the budget or expectation that we are going to go forward on recycling.”

As concerned as recycling advocates are about the City’s failure to outline a clear path toward an improved system, the lack of transparency about the program’s current process and performance only adds to the

frustration. As a member for 30-plus years of the Solid Waste and Recycling Advisory Committee, which was organized to advise the City’s waste management efforts, Sampson says he and his colleagues have been working for years to access transparent information about the City’s plans and policies and come up short. Getting accurate data on the recycling program “is like pulling teeth,” agrees Esposito, founder of zero-waste startup Circa Systems. (Esposito is the former director of operations for Grid.)

The City declined to make Kyle Lewis, its recycling program director, available for an interview for this story, instead offering a lengthy statement touting its increased collections staff and efforts to educate residents on what can and cannot be recycled. According to the City, “75 to 86 percent” of the 86,000 tons of recycling collected from July 2023 to July 2024 was processed for resale, with the rest “recycled outside of single stream or sent to a landfill” by Waste Management, the $20 billion company that holds the City’s recycling contract. That contract is up at the end of this year.

Among cities that have found progressive solutions to improve their recycling rates — including Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco — few have partnered with Waste Management, Esposito says. That’s due, in part, to the fact that the company makes money from landfills, limiting its interest in improving recycling rates.

“They are not your recycling partner,” Esposito says. “If you look at cities doing well with recycling, they’re getting vendors that have a vested interest in recycling this material.”

If the City takes advantage of the opportunity presented by the growing community of businesses invested in creating a more circular economy, recycling advocates say, something better is possible here, too.

“If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together,” Shargorodsky says. “That’s something Philadelphia hasn’t done a great job at. And for that reason a lot of organizations struggle unnecessarily because they’re not getting the support that they should.”

Disrupting the System

At the Bok Building in South Philadelphia, Bottle Underground offers a glimpse of

what could be. In 2016, Danielle Ruttenberg and Rebecca Davies opened Remark Glass, a glass-blowing company that gives used bottles and jars new artistic forms and keeps them from the waste stream. The community response to creative upcycling was so strong that they founded Bottle Underground four years later, providing residents and businesses a place to drop off used glass to be given new life.

Last year they collected nearly 147,000 pounds of glass that was made into crafts, broken down into glass gravel and sand for gardens, melted down to make new bottles or put directly to reuse with local vendors. Had it been placed into blue bins, all that glass would have been crushed in the back of a truck and likely turned into landfill cover.

For Ruttenberg, the key to improving recycling in Philadelphia lies in “system disruption” — finding better, more creative ways to separate materials and harness their value.

“It takes a new mindset to break the incumbent style that has been the status quo for such a long time,” she says.

Bottle Underground isn’t alone in its effort to develop a new standard. At Rabbit Recycling, businesses and households get complete transparency about the destination of the materials they recycle, whether they’re common items typically found in blue bins or those unwelcome in single-stream programs, such as batteries, Styrofoam, cork and plastic bags — “basically, your junk drawer,” co-owner Matt Siegfried says. Bennett Compost and Circle Compost offer residents five-gallon buckets and regular pickup of the organic materials collected by cities with more effective programs. Revolution Recovery and Richard S. Burns & Company help residents and contractors recycle construction and demolition debris. ECHO, meanwhile, enables restaurants and cafés to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics through a partnership with Re:Dish, which collects and cleans reusable wares.

Those operations, though, are an alternative or supplement to the City-run recycling program — and they put the onus on residents to seek out and pay for the privilege of a more circular economy.

“There’s a weight people carry when they put their recycling out knowing it’s going to

the trash,” Siegfried says. “In the city, your taxes go to this and people are choosing us instead, so there’s this humbling feeling that we do have something pretty interesting if people are willing to pay us.”

The Parker administration is doing its best to work with “a messy deal of cards,” Ruttenberg says, but recycling has taken a back seat to cleanup. And with so much interest and energy gathering behind the movement to improve our systems — to treat the recyclables as materials with value, rather than as trash — there’s an opportunity to build on what Bottle Underground and others are doing. Ruttenberg and her colleagues have received visits from City officials over the years, as well as some modest grant funding, but they have a vision for something bigger and more effective that would require full-throated municipal backing.

“They’re just squandering so much opportunity to engage these communities and businesses to improve recycling in Philadelphia,” Esposito says. “That’s where the real solution lies. If you had a creative administration that could figure out a way to contract with these companies, you would set up a national leader for recycling in the United States. It’s frustrating to watch.”

Esposito points to Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, both of which have passed zero-waste ordinances, as examples for Philadelphia to follow. Both contract with waste management companies for solid waste and single-stream recycling while also working with smaller entities on sustainable management of certain materials. Austin’s diversion rate is almost three times that of Philadelphia; Boulder’s is more than four

The small businesses pushing recycling forward in Philadelphia understand their collective potential. They’ve discussed what it would look like to work together rather than in their separate silos. If they partnered together, perhaps recycling could thrive here and Philadelphia could look more like the cities that once came here for inspiration.

“The City could get behind all of us and see that the way we operate is a better system,” Ruttenberg says. “We’re not going to jump out of single-stream tomorrow by any means, but I think there is a real opportunity for a circular processing center that would need the City to back us. And that would really bring us into a leadership role

in terms of environmentalism.”

Of course, even the most progressive, effective waste management system can only accomplish so much in an era of single-use plastics, ECHO’s Shargorodsky says. As long as packaging products in plastic remains the cheapest option for manufacturers, the tap will continue flowing at an unsustainable rate, bringing with it public health threats ranging from endocrine disruption to the accumulation of microplastics in our brains. Extended producer responsibility laws, like those common in Europe and slowly spreading in the United States, could help stem the plastic tide by making manufacturers responsible for the packaging they use, raising money to fund healthier systems while encouraging producers to contribute to a more circular economy.

“We cannot just be mitigating,” Shargorodsky says. “We need to be really progressively thinking about how to prevent this stuff.”

In the meantime, there are opportunities to improve the status quo in Philadelphia. The issue with recycling isn’t the public, Sampson says, but a municipal mentality driven by sanitation, not material recovery. He’s confident that recycling in Philadelphia has a brighter future, even if the solutions will come from the private sector. If our recycling rate has dwindled, that’s only because the City hasn’t committed to leading the way — and Sampson and others stand ready to push for something better.

Recycling was a central issue in the 2007 mayoral campaign, he says, and the program expanded meaningfully in the ensuing years. Today, illegal dumping has become a priority in much the same way. Tomorrow, perhaps, we’ll restore our focus on keeping recyclable materials out of landfills and microplastics out of our organs — and the results will follow.

“The current situation sounds bleak,” Sampson says, “but the long-term outlook if this is what we want is very doable. We just have to decide it’s what we want to make happen.” ◆

LET IT GROW the Gardening issue

The outdoors is surging with the warmth and light of spring. Birds are singing. Flowers are blooming. Shoots are sprouting. Your neighbors are digging in the soil. No matter the color of your thumb, you may feel the urge to get your hands dirty and plant something.

Indeed, now is the time to get those tomatoes and squash seeds in the ground if you haven’t already.

But spring isn’t the only season to cultivate friendships with photosynthesizers. Fall is best for planting perennials and the prime time to pop native seeds in the fridge for cold stratification through the winter. Then you can start drawing up spring plans all over again.

And you don’t have to go it alone. Resources like the Discovery Center’s seed library can jump-start your native plant journey, and Heroic Gardens accepts volunteers to beautify public and private spaces in the region while helping military veterans heal from trauma.

Whatever plants you tend, remember to do it cleanly and quietly, with electric or, better yet, human power. We hope that this issue gives you some ideas for your own garden now and through the seasons.

Home Grown

A

new native seed library at Strawberry Mansion’s Discovery Center offers resources and education for planting pollinator-friendly gardens

On the first warm Saturday of the year, Taylor Bakeman organized a seed packing event to restock The Discovery Center ’s new navtive seed library. Just a few weeks after opening, its seed supply was already running low. A dozen volunteers spent the day counting and sifting tiny seeds of New York ironweed, anise hyssop and more than 20 other species into small manila paper envelopes, just the right size to fit into the drawers of a library card catalog. Bakeman, 28, a volunteer at The Discovery Center and a user of seed libraries throughout her upbringing in Arizona, brought the idea for a seed library to The Discovery Center during her Pennsylvania Master Naturalist training. She came

BY JULIA LOWE

up with the project to reduce barriers to growing native plants, after experiencing difficulties finding native seeds and plants at an affordable price.

“Being familiar with using a seed library and wanting to advance the accessibility of native seeds, I thought it was the perfect thing to have, especially in a place like The Discovery Center,” says Bakeman.

The Discovery Center, an environmental center run by Audubon Mid-Atlantic and Outward Bound in Strawberry Mansion, officially opened its seed library to the public on February 1. In a windowed corner of the main building, a pair of card catalogs — pine cabinets with small drawers, each labeled with a different plant species — sits on a table with a sign-out sheet and a native plants guide

Visitors are invited to check out — and keep — up to three seed packets per visit. Each packet is labeled with the species’ common and botanical names, plus its light, soil moisture, watering and cold stratification requirements, if any.

Minus the late-return fees, seed libraries work much like traditional ones — Parkway Central Library even has its own free seed library with vegetable, fruit, herb and flower seeds. With a mission of making native seeds as accessible as those of popular garden crops, The Discovery Center’s library now serves as a resource for free packets of high-quality, verified-native seeds.

The library is also a continuation of the work that The Discovery Center and Audubon Mid-Atlantic have been doing

Taylor Bakeman (left) and Meagan Mendoza see the Discovery Center’s native seed library as a boost to gardeners’ ecological restoration work.

Do you have a yard? Do you have community gardens? Do you have a tiny strip of land between sidewalks? That can be a restored habitat. And I think people are looking for a way to take that action and be a force of good for the things they care about.”

TAYLOR BAKEMAN, volunteer

across Southwest Philadelphia with the Pollinator Network, a partnership between the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), Thomas Jefferson University’s Park in a Truck program, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum and the National Wildlife Federation.

With the network’s grant funding provided by the NFWF Delaware River Watershed Conservation Fund coming to an end this summer, Bakeman and staff at The Discovery Center hope to use the seed library to continue connecting Philadelphians to native seed.

“We’ve been able to do a lot of on-theground work helping to install native plants in a lot of gardens and vacant lots across the neighborhoods,” says Robin Irizarry, manager for the Delaware River Watershed Program for Audubon Mid-Atlantic. “But this is an additional way that we can help provide resources to gardens who are trying to introduce more biodiversity to their spaces.”

SOWING NATIVE SEEDS

The word “native” refers to all plant species that could be originally found in a particular area. In the case of this library, its seeds are from species native to the Philadelphia region. And many species, like narrowleaf mountain mint and wild bergamot, can be found on the land surrounding the East Park Reservoir.

“Not only are they going to be ready to be grown in the ground that we live on already, but they’re going to be beneficial for the pollinators and other wildlife that use them, either as food, habitat or to nest,” says Meagan Mendoza, program coordinator for the Delaware River Watershed Program.

Pollinators such as birds, butterflies and bees are responsible for about a third of the world’s food crops — but many of their populations are declining globally due to habitat loss and disease.

Many of our region’s insects have specific

relationships with certain native plant species, says Irizarry, and these delicate interactions support critical bird populations, which in turn support other wildlife. “In the springtime especially, when birds are raising young, most of those birds are predominantly finding insects for their young to eat. They need that protein, and being able to provide the full web of plants that’s necessary to support all the critters that we enjoy seeing in our neighborhood is really important.”

The seed library has a range of educational materials with information for growing native plants and a suggestion box where users can offer feedback. Bakeman also curated a cheat sheet with notes and tips for each of the 24 species currently in the library, so that visitors of all skill levels can take advantage of the seeds.

In addition to supporting critical wildlife, she hopes that community members can use the seed library to combat feelings of hopelessness about the future of our environment.

“Do you have a yard? Do you have community gardens? Do you have a tiny strip of land between sidewalks? That can be a restored habitat,” says Bakeman. “I think people are looking for a way to take that action and be a force of good for the things they care about.”

In the weeks since the library’s launch, Mendoza has already observed folks with a variety of gardening experiences checking out seed packets. “I’ve got some native seed connoisseurs. But I’ve also seen a little kid and his mom come up, and he had just learned about native seed, and he just wants to try and learn and see if he can do it. So there’s a very large range of people that we’re reaching with this. It’s supposed to be accessible for everybody.” The seed library has distributed more than 1,200 seed packets as of the end of April, Mendoza says.

Bakeman and Mendoza acknowledge that there is a learning curve when working with native seeds. Unlike everyday ornamental plants, many native seed species require cold stratification, a process of exposing seeds to cold, moist conditions to break dormancy and encourage germination. One stratification technique that Mendoza and Irizarry are trying this year is growing seedlings in milk jugs that are

refitted into mini-greenhouses.

Making one is easy: empty and rinse a milk jug, then cut it in half horizontally. Then, after filling the bottom of the jug with soil and planting and watering the seeds, tape the top of the jug back on and leave it outside through the end of winter. “You can let it go through that freezing and thawing process during the winter, rather than having to put it in the fridge,” says Mendoza. “It doesn’t work every single time, but it’s a cost-effective and accessible way for people to start cold stratification.”

Bakeman says that the milk jug provides an “ideal scenario” to let nature take its course with stratification. “It’s sort of beautiful if you look at it: the ecosystem has finetuned itself so well to drop the seeds at this time, make sure they’re exposed to cold for this time and make sure they’re coming up in just the right conditions to thrive.”

PUTTING DOWN DEEPER ROOTS

Since the opening of The Discovery Center in 2018, the East Park Reservoir is once again accessible to community members after being closed to the public for 48 years. The seed library is one of many projects that are deepening ties between The Discovery Center and the surrounding neighborhood, and its launch this spring has led to budding collaborations between the center and Strawberry Mansion High School.

Matthew Byrne, 35, a science teacher at the school, began having his students work with native plants about four years ago. After the pandemic, and having spent a few summers working with native landscaping on his own, he felt that planting native seeds would be a transformational activity for his students — one that could also help beautify the campus.

“Being the only neighborhood high school left in North Philly that’s not charter, I think it’s important that we have a green and welcoming space,” says Byrne. “With the native plants we started growing a couple of years ago, we finally were able to see some monarch butterflies in the milkweeds last year.”

In Byrne’s biology and elective science

Being the only neighborhood high school left in North Philly that’s not charter, I think it’s important that we have a green and welcoming space.”

MATTHEW BYRNE, teacher, Strawberry Mansion High School

classes, his students learn how to stratify, germinate and grow native plants. He says native plants are an important learning tool in his classroom, because they teach students about the diverse wildlife that exists in Strawberry Mansion and in nearby Fairmount Park.

“I want to try to push the idea of students taking these [seeds] home and starting their own gardens,” Byrne says. “In previous years, we haven’t had enough, but with the seed library, now we have an excess.”

The Discovery Center’s classroom partnership with Byrne has not only expanded his seed stock and provided a free resource for his students; Mendoza says that the cen-

ter also provides lessons on native plants and pollinators and on-the-ground support with planting natives on school property.

Earlier this year, Byrne’s students planted several varieties of native plants using the milk jug method. Many of the jugs have already sprouted seedlings of dense blazing star, swamp milkweed, sneezeweed, gray goldenrod and New England aster. When these plants are big enough, some of them will find permanent homes in the garden beds lining the school’s entrance.

“That front area, four years ago, had nothing there,” says Byrne. “Now, we’re hoping to have a fully native landscape out there.”

Strawberry Mansion High School teacher Matthew Byrne uses milk jugs to start seeds for native plantings.

Power Flower

Easy-to-grow mountain mint is popular among pollinators

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY

BRYAN SATALINO

Southeastern Pennsylvania is home to a variety of superpowered plants that are veritable buffets for a cadre of native pollinators, and mountain mint is no exception. According to research by the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, Pycnanthemum muticum was identified as the most attractive plant to pollinators among 86 native species and cultivars evaluated over a three-year period. Naturally, this plant makes an excellent addition to any garden for those looking to support our native pollinators. ¶ We often think of honeybees as the driving force of pollination, and while European honeybees play a vital role in our food production, native insects are the foundation for the health of our natural ecosystems. Here are a few of the most effective pollinators you might see zipping around your backyard.

Native bees are highly effective pollinators frequently observed on mountain mint

Hoverflies mimic bees but are flies. Particularly drawn to mountain mint’s flat, open flower clusters, they play a valuable backup pollination role.

Butterflies & skippers are less efficient than bees but important for biodiversity and some longer-distance pollination. to mountain mint for nectar and incidentally help pollinate while foraging.

Bumblebee

Margined calligrapher fly

Sweat bee

Silver-spotted skipper

Thread-waisted wasp

Great spangled fritillary

Eastern tiger swallowtail

Transverse banded drone fly Leafcutter bee

Sand wasp Peck’s skipper

Growth and Transformation

Nonprofit connects veterans with the healing power of gardening STORY BY

When Navy veteran Salome Jeronimo moved to Philly in 2020, the pandemic was raging. During their first two years here, they didn’t get to explore much of what the city had to offer.

That changed in the summer of 2022, when Jeronimo signed up for a 10-week plant-care course at the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in University City. The workshop was organized by Heroic Gardens, an Elkins Park-based nonprofit with a mission to “introduce and surround veterans with horticulture as a form of personal healing.”

That class turned out to be so much more than a chance to learn about plants and gardening. It lit Jeronimo’s path toward finding community.

“I’m a Black, queer woman, and in the service, I dealt with a lot of racism, sexism and transphobia — I was with people where I didn’t always feel safe,” they said. “For a long time I was not proud of calling myself a veteran … [but] after taking this workshop and meeting the other vets there, that feeling started to change. I met people who I now consider part of my created family.”

Through that class, Jeronimo also met Collie Turner, the founder and executive director of Heroic Gardens. Turner urged Jeronimo to sign up for a yard transformation, another service Heroic Gardens offers, where volunteers clean up and beautify — with plants — veterans’ outdoor spaces.

In October 2023, when Jeronimo’s yard cleanup was scheduled, they decided to widen the scope of the project.

“I said to Collie, ‘I have a lot of low-income and elderly neighbors — if there are a dozen sailors coming here, can we make it a block cleanup?’” Jeronimo remembers. Turner agreed, and Jeronimo organized

EMILY KOVACH

their neighbors, secured food donations and contacted the press. On the day of the cleanup, CBS Philadelphia covered the story; the neighbors were thrilled with the positive attention and the cleanup crew’s efforts. The experience was so emboldening for Jeronimo that they started their own nonprofit, the Sisters Affirming Sisterhood Project, which provides free clothing to trans women. Turner advised and motivated them every step of the way.

“It’s so meaningful to have someone in your life believe in you, someone who’s also had to take a leap of faith,” Jeronimo says. “Everyone who enlists takes a leap of faith — it’s a gigantic step — but for a lot of us, it’s the last time we do something like that, because we get hurt, inside and out.”

TAKING ROOT

When Turner founded Heroic Gardens in 2018, it was indeed a leap of faith. After a long career in advertising, she was looking for a new focus and a way to give back. The inspiration came from her close relationship with her grandfather, a World War II veteran, with whom she had spent a lot of time working in his vegetable garden.

“My grandfather was out in his community and his church, trying to help whoever he could — veterans are always looking for ways to serve,” she says. “I thought, ‘What is my next act, and how can I serve?’”

She knew that, in some capacity, she wanted to offer landscaping services to veterans. She had no nonprofit experience and started attending networking events and applying for every grant she could find. At first, however, no one would give her the time of day.

“In year one, not one person returned my phone calls, and that had everything to do with the fact that the veteran community is tight-knit and I’m a civilian,” she says.

Heroic Gardens got its first win in 2019, when Philadelphia Veterans Comfort House in West Philly invited Turner and some volunteers to do a significant land transformation, clearing out swaths of bamboo, plant-

COLLIE TURNER

Navy veteran Salome Jeronimo found community through a Heroic Gardens workshop.

ing trees and building raised beds in its backyard. The women in the shelter would sit on the porch and chat with the Heroic Gardens crew, requesting specific herbs that they wanted to use in their cooking.

Soon after, Turner began researching horticultural therapy and enrolled in Temple University’s Horticultural Therapy program. Her education confirmed what she’d always intuitively sensed: gardening helps you feel better.

A growing body of scientific research has found that gardening can reduce stress, fatigue, depression and pain while boosting cognition, bone strength and immune function and bringing other physical and emotional benefits. Studies conducted by VA Medical Centers show that participants in horticultural therapy programs report reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity, particularly in terms of depression, anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

There’s an element of what we do that’s life-changing.”

COLLIE TURNER, founder, Heroic Gardens

Jeronimo draws a direct connection between putting their hands in the soil and their PTSD recovery.

“With PTSD, you create a life where everything is set in stone because losing control feels like a personal failure,” they say. “Gardening showed me that some things are outside of your control, and those lessons have translated outside of gardening. I give myself a little more grace.”

FLOWERING

Now, more than five years in, Heroic Gardens has served more than 1,300 veterans, powered by 25,000 volunteer hours and more than 100 supporters, including individuals, foundations and corporations.

It offers three main services: land/yard transformations in the Greater Philadelphia area; horticultural therapy classes for veterans and their caregivers; and virtual workshops, where veterans meet online monthly to work on gardening projects that are mailed to them.

The impact of the work has wide-reaching ripple effects, which Turner has observed over time.

“[The veterans] learn about self-care and worth, and the domino effect is that they lose 20 pounds, get a haircut, get a job … I’m not saying we’re directly responsible for that, but there’s an element of what we do that’s life-changing,” she says.

Jeronimo adds that, in their case, Heroic Gardens also created new connections with their neighbors.

“That cleanup really brought us together as a block. A home across the street just got torn down, and my neighbors and I are planning to take it over and start a little vegetable garden,” they report.

The newest Heroic Gardens project is a veteran-run sunflower farm in Pennypack Park, slated to open in July. Located at the intersection of Torresdale Avenue and Megargee Street in Holmesburg, Northeast Philly, the farm will be a healing space that will also include raised beds growing vegetables and herbs for the neighbors. Its main function, however, will be veteran workforce development.

“We meet so many veterans who say, ‘I’d love to do [gardening] for a living, but there are no jobs,’” Turner says. “We said, ‘Ok, let’s make some jobs.’” ◆

Volunteers help Salome Jeronimo upgrade her West Philly garden in 2023.

Spreading Sweetness

South Philly beekeeper expands operation and educates others

BY GABRIEL DONAHUE

On a windy March afternoon, Mark Berman poured a pile of sugar onto a piece of newspaper to feed one of his 13 bee colonies. Berman was providing the sugar supplement because the night temperatures were still dipping into the 30s, but there were signs that spring — and honey production — had begun. One hive over, worker bees came and went, bringing back pollen they had packed into flakes and stuck to their hind legs.

Honeybees are Berman’s passion.

A decade ago, the 54-year-old took a class with the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild (PBG) that changed his life. Within about a year, Berman was overseeing two hives on his South Philly rooftop.

“I was just so taken by this demo that they gave,” he says. “It was a whole sensory experience — the smoke and the smell of the wood and the wax and the honey, and here we are in the city keeping bees, and it’s just fascinating to me.”

Berman owns Anna Bee’s Honey, a small business he named after his daughter, now 17. He sells raw, unfiltered honey extracted from his hives and beeswax candles that he makes in the basement of his Pennsport home. He sells his products online, in a few local shops and at festivals and pop-ups. He also hosts a popular “ be a beekeeper for a day” experience that teaches attendees about honeybees and allows them to get up close and personal with the insects. Berman’s current colonies are housed at

Worker bees produce honey at the Growing Together Community Garden in South Philadelphia.

Growing Together Community Garden in South Philadelphia, owned by the Church of the Redeemer Baptist. The construction of an education center relieved him of his previous plot at Bartram’s Garden, but the move was ultimately better for Berman and his bees: he finds they are healthier and happier in their new, sunny home.

“I have the space, the openness,” he says, “and the church has been extremely welcoming and happy to let me thrive here.”

Berman expanded from nine hives to 14 last spring, though he lost one over the winter. He has added hives by diverting swarms (when a group of bees breaks from the colony and starts a new one) and even sold a few to other local beekeepers. As Berman increases his hive count, he wonders what might be the best next step for Anna Bee’s. Last year, the bees produced 400 pounds of honey, a figure expected to increase after this season’s collections, which typically end in September. With such numbers, a partial shift to wholesale could make sense, Berman says. But his business is still both a one-man operation and a side gig; Berman has a full-time job as a creative director.

For now, he’s taking this season as usual, bringing in a few mentees from PBG to lend a hand and get an immersive learning experience. In fact, Berman now teaches for PBG, passing forward the knowledge and experience he has gained since his first lessons with the group a decade ago. That educational aspect is especially important to Berman’s business model.

“I’m kind of introverted. I wake up anx-

I never would have thought I’d be a beekeeper, but here I am. Now it’s something that’s ingrained in me.”

MARK BERMAN, Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild

ious about presenting to a group, but once I’m here doing it, I’m so in my element and feel so comfortable, and it’s so incredibly rewarding and relieving,” he says.

At a morning class just a few weeks after that windy March day, the hives get a post-winter inspection as 14 students clad in beekeeping suits look on. The lesson is focused on hive cleaning and treatment for the transition from winter to spring.

A woodsy smell lingers in the air as attendees take turns using a bee smoker, or smokepot, to blow smoke on the bees to discourage their activity and send them back into the hive while human hands inspect for signs of eggs, larvae, pests and swarming. Hundreds of bees buzz around the group.

The previous indicators of spring’s imminence have made way for full-blown production as new, white honeycombs fill the frames that Berman removes from the hive boxes. He tells his students that these can only be made with nectar, meaning that the bees have been busy gathering the substance and making space for more. Despite its urban setting, the plot’s location is actually ideal for honey production, sitting between the Schuylkill and Delaware riv-

ers and the flora that thrive around those waterways.

Many of the students are just beginning their beekeeping journeys, hoping to learn more before fully investing in the craft. PBG member Julia Murphy is taking classes with Berman and others to garner skills to assist with the beehives at The Spring Gardens community garden, where she works. Murphy says she’s glad PBG offers such educational opportunities.

“The world can never have too many beekeepers, right?” she asks. “We’re entering this really interesting historical moment in human history where we are going to need all hands on deck to help repair our planet and our agricultural system. We need to create these connections between people.”

That sentiment is why Berman and some other Philly beekeepers are in the early stages of developing a honey co-op to easily pool resources and knowledge. What Berman loves the most about the trade is that he’s always learning something and problem solving, and he says he can’t go back.

“I never would have thought I’d be a beekeeper, but here I am,” he says. “Now it’s something that’s ingrained in me.” ◆

Mark Berman teaches new beekeepers through the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild and tends the hives of his business, Anna Bee’s Honey.

Overbearing

A single tree on Temple’s campus will boast dozens of different fruits BY

DAWN KANE

On March 14, a seven-year-old tree, which had arrived grafted with 15 varieties of stone fruits, was planted alongside a natural dye garden before a crowd of about 50 community members at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Sam Van Aken grafted 15 additional varieties onto the tree the next day and will return each year for five years to continue grafting until the tree bears 40 different fruits — including pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries and almonds — that are native to or have historically been planted in the region.

“I started to look at the fruit themselves as cultural objects,” Van Aken says. “They’re

almost like artworks; they have a particular provenance, a specific history of where they’ve traveled … and embedded within that object are people’s narratives.”

A college trip to Europe led to driving ambulances in the Bosnian War, which then led to working with dissident artists in Poland. When he returned to the United States, Van Aken knew the power of art. What Van Aken, who grew up on a farm, did not know was that making art of consequence would lead him back to his agricultural roots.

A professor of art at Syracuse University, Van Aken is also an internationally-recognized contemporary artist, creator of the Tree of 40 Fruit and the Open Orchard

project on Governors Island in New York City. He is also the Tyler School’s 2025 Jack Wolgin Annual Visiting Artist.

The visiting artist program, endowed by the late Jack Wolgin, a Philadelphia real estate developer and philanthropist, to support art at a diverse public university, brought Van Aken to Temple in March, where he spent a week working with students and faculty in the art and horticulture departments. The visit culminated with the planting of a Tree of 40 Fruit in Tyler’s courtyard.

Both the tree planting and Van Aken’s public lecture began with recognition of the Tyler School’s ongoing responsibility to steward the land with the Native peoples who formerly lived in the space it now occupies. Van Aken designed the Tyler tree with varieties “either documented or believed to have been cultivated by the Lenape,” including Indian blood cling peach, wild-goose plum, Chickasaw plum, beach plum and chokecherry.

His “work and practice truly embody Tyler’s mission,” says Nichola Kinch, Tyler

Artist and horticulturalist Sam Van Aken plants a “Tree of 40 Fruit” at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

School associate dean for academic affairs.

Professor (and Grid contributor) Bryan Satalino’s informational design class is working in teams on a 20-page care manual for the tree, giving students experience in project management, illustration, typography and content writing. “We saw that visuals would have a huge impact in keeping these trees alive,” Satalino says.

“We’re making sure it’s easy for people to read and understand,” says Madison Edelman, a junior studying graphic design. “I’m ecstatic to be a part of it. It’s definitely helping me grow as a graphic designer.”

“Typically, I’ll either be invited to come in as a visiting artist, or I’ll be invited in because

people are interested in trees,” Van Aken says. “It was a really amazing experience to have a week where I could focus on it all.”

Approximately 70 saplings — each primed to produce several varieties of fruit — have gone home with students. Any that remain, Kinch says, are destined for the Temple Community Garden

Van Aken, a Reading, Berks County, native, thought art would offer a path away from farming. After returning from his studies in Poland, he began his career with media pieces but eventually began grafting plants. His great grandfather’s ability to graft had become, in his mind, a kind of magical power.

When he decided to create the Tree of 40 Fruit, the number being auspicious in the Bible and as the unfulfilled promise of reparations, he had difficulty finding enough varieties of stone fruit in New York, which surprised him since a century prior, the state had been home to more than 2,000. The effects of our commercial monocultures became apparent.

When an agriculture experiment station in New York State that Van Aken describes in his 2014 TedxManhattan talk as the single orchard that contained “heirloom, native, antique and hybrid varieties” going back 150 to 200 years was about to be torn out due to a lack of funding, he took up the lease and later found himself as the sole steward of two dozen varietals.

Van Aken developed the farm into a nursery, where he continues to start his trees from root stock. He began his effort to conserve fruit varieties by creating unique copper plate botanical etchings, and later he developed the Open Orchard project on public space in New York City.

As the plant hardiness zone map in Syracuse has risen 10 degrees in recent years, he says he has had to turn to Canada for hardy varieties that can withstand early thaws followed by hard freezes that have become typical in our region.

Van Aken is currently working on a book about the Open Orchard project and focusing on weather-related projects. He says he will continue creating the copper plate etchings because “it’s a way to sneak stuff into museums.” ◆

Clean and Quiet

Philadelphia is making moves to ban toxic and noisy gas-powered leaf blowers BY

GABRIEL DONAHUE

Imagine the dirtiest engine legal in the United States. It’s an engine responsible for an annual 30 million tons of carbon dioxide, 21,000 tons of fine particulates and 68,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, which are harmful to human health and the environment, PennEnvironment reports.

A heavy-duty truck or SUV may spring to mind, but this dirty engine actually belongs to lawn equipment — specifically, the two-stroke gas-powered leaf blower and its relatives. (Two-stroke means it burns both gas and oil.)

One leaf blower produces the same emissions per unit time as 15 cars. Locally, this variety of lawn equipment annually emits the CO2 equivalent of adding nearly 13,000 cars to Philadelphia’s streets, plus other harmful pollutants that contribute to the city’s rank as the country’s fifth most challenging metropolitan area for asthma sufferers

That’s why the volunteer group Quiet Clean Philly, alongside a coalition of environmental organizations, is pushing for Philadelphia to follow the lead of dozens of municipalities — including its sister city Baltimore — to phase out or ban this equipment and incentivize going electric.

In addition to lobbying for a ban, Quiet Clean Philly educates residents about both the negative impacts of two-stroke leaf blowers and the battery-powered alternatives available to replace them. Cofounder Seth Lieberman has even offered his personal leaf blower to neighbors to try out. Neighborliness is another reason Quiet Clean Philly cites for making the switch to electric: aside from all the pollutants they emit, the most notable nuisance of traditional leaf blowers is that they’re extraordinarily noisy.

“A lot of what I talk about is asthma and cancer and emissions, but a lot of people really can’t stand the sound,” Lieberman says.

Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. introduced legislation in December to ban gas-powered

leaf blowers, stating, “The City of Philadelphia finds the use of gasoline-powered leaf blowers impairs the health, social welfare and quality of life of persons residing and working in Philadelphia, and also adversely impacts the environment.” The proposed ban comes as City workers use leaf blowers to wrangle garbage in Philly streets as part of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Office of Clean and Green Initiatives

Seth Lieberman hopes to convince Philadelphians that swapping gas-powered lawn equipment for electric is the right choice for the environment.

To demonstrate alternatives, PennEnvironment set up tents outside City Hall on April 1 and showcased electric equipment’s comparative effectiveness and lower volume.

“A lot of people, when they think of electric equipment, think of a plug-in leaf blower they had in the early 2000s or something like that, and they don’t necessarily realize how far the equipment has come in just the past few years,” says Ellie Kerns, PennEnvironment climate and clean energy advocate. “Generally, the consensus was that people were really impressed by the equipment and just how powerful it was.”

GREEN PAGES

BEAUTY

Hair Vyce Studio

Multicultural hair salon located in University City servicing West Philly & South Jersey since 2013. We specialize in premier hair cuts, color & natural hair for all ages. (215) 921-9770 hairvyce.com

BIKE SHOP

Trophy Bikes

We specialize in the ingenious Brompton Bicycle, made & designed in London to save you time — and space — with its fast, compact fold. Open Wed-Sat, 12-6 pm at 133 S. 23rd St. On the Web @trophybikes

BOOKS

“100 Things to Do in The Nude”

In this novelty cartoon collection, veteran illustrator and cartoonist Roy Miller Jr. suggests 100 fun and frivolous things for you to do. In the nude. Available on Amazon. tinyurl.com/NudeCartoonBook

Books & Stuff

A lot of what I talk about is asthma and cancer and emissions, but a lot of people really can’t stand the sound.”

SETH LIEBERMAN, Quiet Clean Philly

The City Hall demo was supported by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, chair of the Committee on the Environment, who said in a statement that Councilmember Jones has her “full support.” The legislation has been referred to the Committee on Public Safety.

“Imagine if we just decide to live with each other and live on the Earth in a way that really sees the sacred in our next-door neighbor, in our little patch of land we have, in the trees,” Lieberman says. “It’s not just, ‘Let’s get rid of these horrible machines.’ It’s really more affirmatively, ‘How do we build a sense of really seeing that sacred in each other, in the community and seeing these little patches of land we have as earth?’ It’s not from us. We have to care for it, and in the city, that’s hard to do.” ◆

They can ban books in our libraries and schools, but they can’t ban the books in your home library. Grow your home library! Black woman-owned online shop for children, teens & adults. booksandstuff.info

COMPOSTING

Back to Earth Compost Crew

Residential curbside compost pickup, commercial pick-up, five collection sites & compost education workshops. Montgomery County & parts of Chester County. First month free trial. backtoearthcompost.com

Bennett Compost

The area’s longest running organics collection service (est 2009) serving all of Philadelphia with residential and commercial pickups and locally-made soil products. 215.520.2406 bennettcompost.com

Circle Compost

We’re a woman-owned hyper-local business. We offer 2 or 5 gallon buckets & haul with e-bikes & motor vehicles. We offer finished compost, lawn waste pickups & commercial services. 30 day free trial! circlecompost.com

EATS

The Franklin Fountain

The Franklin Fountain now offers returnable reusable pints of ice cream in Vanilla Bean, Chocolate & Caramelized Banana! Our ice cream is made with PA dairy & all natural ingredients. franklinfountain.com

EDUCATION

Kimberton Waldorf School

A holistic education for students in preschool-12th grade. Emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, nature, the arts & experiential learning. Register for an Open House! (610) 933-3635 kimberton.org

Shop your values at these local businesses

ELECTRICIAN

Echo House Electric

Local electrician who works to provide highquality results on private & public sector projects including old buildings, new construction, residential, commercial & institutional. Minority business. echohouseelectric.com

FARM

Hope Hill Lavender Farm

Established in 2011, our farm offers shopping for madeon-premise lavender products in a scenic environment. Honey, bath & body, teas, candles, lavender essential oil and more. hopehilllavenderfarm.com

FASHION

Philly AIDS Thrift

As a nonprofit thrift store, our goal is to sell the lovely, useful items that people donate & distribute the proceeds to local organizations involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS. phillyaidsthrift.com

Stitch And Destroy

S&D creates upcycled alternative fashions & accessories from pre-loved clothing & textile waste. Shop vintage, books, recycled wares & original fashions. 523 S 4th St. stitchanddestroy.com

GREEN BURIAL

Laurel Hill

With our commitment to sustainability, Laurel Hill Cemeteries & Funeral Home specializes in green burials and funerals, has a variety of eco-friendly products to choose from, and offers pet aquamation. laurelhillphl.com

GREEN CLEANING

Holistic Home LLC

Philly’s original green cleaning service, est 2010. Handmade & hypoallergenic products w/ natural ingredients & essential oils. Safe for kids, pets & our cleaners. 215-421-4050 HolisticHomeLLC@ gmail.com

GROCERY

Kimberton Whole Foods

A family-owned and operated natural grocery store with seven locations in Southeastern PA, selling local, organic and sustainably-grown food for over thirty years. kimbertonwholefoods.com

MAKERS

Mount Airy Candle Co.

Makers of uniquely scented candles, handcrafted perfumery and body care products. Follow us on Instagram @mountairycandleco and find us at retailers throughout the region. mountairycandle.com

RECYCLING

Philadelphia Recycling Company

Full service recycling company for office buildings, manufacturing & industrial. Offering demo & removal + paper, plastics, metals, furniture, electronics, oils, wood & batteries philadelphiarecycling.co

WELLNESS

Center City Breathe Hello, Philadelphia. Are you ready to breathe? centercitybreathe.com

Learn to create gardens that are not just beautiful, but support the health and biodiversity of our entire ecosystem, too!

The Morris Arboretum & Gardens’ Certificate in Ecological Horticulture offers avid home gardeners as well as horticulture professionals the opportunity to develop skills in creating and maintaining landscapes that are grounded in sound ecological principles and practice.

Taught by regional horticulture experts, this classroom and fieldbased program is a series of 12 courses geared toward developing a deeper understanding of sustainable landscape design and management.

Study the environment in the heart of a green city

Siobhan Whadcoat Director, Professional Masters Programs in Earth and Environmental Science

Looking for a career in the environment? What nearly every industry looks for in a candidate, according to Dr. Siobhan Whadcoat, is evidence of strong communication skills, teamwork, data analysis, and practical experience. In Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies program, she says, “we put an emphasis on those things across the curriculum.” As Program Director, Siobhan works with faculty and experienced professionals to address today’s pressing issues and incorporate the skills that future professionals need.

And in Philadelphia, the MES program is uniquely positioned to offer opportunities for hands-on experience and partnering with local organizations. “Philadelphia is no stranger to a whole host of environmental issues and challenges,” explains Siobhan. “The Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers are tidal, so sea level rise impacts Philadelphia. It’s an old city, so the infrastructure is old, which has implications for our water and our sewer and stormwater systems. There are big problems with urban heat and heat stress. But Philadelphia is also a city that has pushed ahead in efforts towards sustainability and making the city greener, so there is a ton of opportunity to see how these issues are managed in an urban environment.”

To learn more about how Siobhan and her team help prepare students for their future careers, visit: