Tips for Going Green Inside Your Own Community

Going green is an important thing for every community, big or small. Why? Adopting green policies and lifestyle decisions inside your community helps protect the environment from global warming. It starts small, and collectively can make a difference.
Global warming is a serious issue and concern, which is why the community should gather together to do something about it and make a difference. People like working together. Elizabeth Condon, Director of Communication at Weatherize DC says, "People like the idea of lowering the costs of home energy efficiency upgrades, having the momentum of working with others to make sure they get it done, and creating local jobs for people from disadvantaged communities in the process."

There are many things that you can do to protect the environment and to get the community on board with going green as well.

Provide a List of Tips to the Community

There are many methods of going green for the community but one of the main problems is that lots of community members are not aware of the tips and techniques that can help them protect the environment. As a community member, you can create a list of green tips for your neighbors and friends so that they know how to do their part. You can talk to them about using faucets with lower water pressure, reducing the amount of junk mail received by cutting back on catalogs and magazines, paying bills online via the paperless option, using cold water to wash clothes instead of using hot water. These are just some of the many small methods that can make a difference for the entire community.

Set Days for Cleaning with Incentives
Cleaning is always a good thing for the environment and it is even better when the entire community is willing to gather together to keep the streets clean and free of dirt and debris. You can set specific dates for cleaning and offer incentives to get people to come out of their house and help. Fort Collins, Colorado encourages citizens to have a neighborhood-wide clean up and end it with a pizza party for volunteers. The types of incentives you can offer will vary, but free ice-cream or raffle tickets to win a fruit basket or other prize would be ideal.

Promote Recycling

Over the past few years, there has been a major emphasis put on the importance of recycling. While there are people who already know how important it is to recycle, some of the members of your community may not realize how much a difference recycling can make. You can explain to your community members that recycling helps to reduce the amount of garbage that ends up being placed in landfills and that it helps the environment because items can be reused instead of entirely replaced. Beaverton, Oregon had huge success with this tactic and provided material sorting, public education and financial incentives which helped the community achieve a 59% recycling rate.

Switch to Solar and Teach Others 

You can make the decision to go solar and educate others on the importance of solar energy. Solar energy comes from the sun, which is a natural resource, thus resulting in less harmful and toxic chemicals being released into the air. With less chemicals released into the air, there will be much less pollution and better air quality for the entire community. Solar panels and a solar power system would need to be installed. The process is not difficult when the right company performs the installation of these panels and systems. Once everything is installed, you would be able to start relying on solar power and energy while cutting down costs and doing something positive for the environment. You can depend on places like an alberta energy providers for natural gas supply as well. There are many different regions, aside from Alberta, that have been using a natural gas supply. There are people in the United States, Germany, and areas of Japan who are relying on natural gas and solar energy/solar power for their home or building.

Do what you can to encourage your community to go green. It can be something as simple as passing out some tips, or something as complex as switching to solar panel technology. They key is doing something, small or large, to make a difference.