How can my community become more eco-friendly?

More and more communities are moving toward an eco-friendly lifestyle. Sustainable living communities are popping up all over, where they are specially built to be as green and environmentally friendly as possible. So what do you do when your community is already established but has the drive to change to a more sustainable way of life?

Our team at Waste to Energy Systems has compiled a list of easy ways to help your community take the next steps toward sustainable living.

1. Community Gardens and Composting- this offers a two fold solution: it helps reduce garbage sent to landfills by composting food waste and produces fruits and vegetables for the community. If there is not enough space for one large community garden and composting station, the new trend of replacing lawns with gardens would be a great option!

2. Creating a Car Share- Your community can set up its own car sharing program or set up an arrangement with an already established car share company. Many offer this option to communities that are moving in a greener direction. Adding this program is also shown to increase the amount of walking, cycling and use of public transportation of car share communities. This creates a healthier environment and a healthier population!

3. Setting Community Energy and Water Use Goals– By setting a goal for the community as a whole, it will help increase awareness of how much each home uses. This will inspire your neighbors to watch their usage of both electricity and water, which in turn will help eliminate unnecessary waste of both resources.

4. Retrofitting Homes with Energy Efficient Solutions- Turning your roof into a green roof, changing your lighting to energy efficient bulbs, adding efficient insulation to your home or installing a low flow toilet or shower head to conserve water. All these options and more can be used to update your home to be energy efficient.

5. Invest in a Community Renewable Energy Option- Solar panels have always been the go to for residential renewable energy and for a single home, it still is. However on a larger, community scale, a new option, which allows communities to rid their neighborhood of waste and create heat and electricity, is a gasification system. A small scale gasification system like the bioHearth® from Waste to Energy Systems can provide larger communities with a way to have more energy independence.