Households play an essential role in the creation of more environmentally sustainable communities. Between 50 and 90 percent of a community’s natural resources are used at the household level with up to 75 percent of these resources wasted through inefficiency and lack of awareness. Households are also a major source of a community’s environmental pollution through auto emissions and toxic chemicals entering the groundwater. In most communities, the financial burden of this inefficiency and environmental pollution falls on municipalities as the primary accountable party responsible for providing services such as water, water treatment, landfills, roads and environmental quality.

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The Green Living Program is simple and strategic. Five to eight neighborhood households—an EcoTeam—meet seven times over a four-month period, with the help of a step-by-step workbook. Choosing from a series of practical actions, the team supports one another to reduce water, energy use and waste, buy green products, reduce air and water pollution, and encourage other neighbors to get involved. More than increasing awareness, the Green Living Program enables people to change the way they live—measurably.

Depending on the community, participants in the Green Living Program achieve the following average resource savings per year:

41%-51% less garbage sent into the waste stream 25%-34% less water used 9%-17% less energy used 8% reduction in vehicle miles traveled 16%-20% less fuel used for transportation 15% fewer CO2 emissions $227-$389 saved through more efficient use of resources

• Direct financial savings.

Substantial financial savings are possible by serving more people, over longer periods of time, delaying the need for new landfills, roads and utilities to be built and operated.

• Enhance community environmental quality.

Communities will be cleaner, safer, and provide higher quality places to live through reduced air and water pollution, fewer problems with toxic and hazardous substances and less traffic congestion.

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pdf  Table of Contents

pdf  Sample Actions

pdf  Sustainable Lifestyle Assessment – Garbage

 

A tool enabling municipal decision-makers and citizens to evaluate how sustainably the community is using its natural resources. For more information click here.

What benefits are associated with a Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign (SLC)?

This campaign attracts financial resources from government agencies and private utilities that are invested in educating citizens to better steward the community’s natural resources. This benefits the citizens, local government, the environment, neighborhoods and the overall livability of the community. Many of these benefits are brought together at the block level. As neighbors work together they build more socially cohesive, safer and healthier blocks to live on. Whenever possible, neighborhood visioning processes are held in which citizens who have been on EcoTeams work side-by-side with municipal officials, using the program to determine what’s needed to create more livable neighborhoods. A final benefit is the development of citizenship skills. Many of these campaigns begin or are sustained because citizens lobby their local government officials and encourage them to fund it. Local governments experience citizens doing the right thing. Citizens discover they do make a difference.

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