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Proposed environmental program stresses community
By David Steinkraus
They say you should think globally and act locally, and a new program being planned by Sustainable Racine would teach people how to do the
acting.
In combination with EnAct, a Madison organization, Sustainable Racine will work to create neighborhood groups that would learn about environmental issues and what actions people can take in their own homes to have an effect.
What's good about this program is that it's more than urging people to recycle aluminum cans, said Bonnie Prochaska, executive director of Sustainable Racine. "It's practical lifestyle tips." It gives people insight into how much greenhouse gases their lifestyles generate, and then let's them consider, for example, carpools for transporting children to sports, she said.
Initial funding came last week in the form of a grant from the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network. That money will be used to prepare an activity guide for participants, said Rebecca Grossberg, 32, the EnAct program manager. Still in the application phase is a larger grant that will fund the program. EnAct would hire a full-time coordinator to be housed at Sustainable Racine and would help that person set up the neighborhood action teams.
The program In the EnAct program, teams of five to 10 households are assembled and typically meet in a member's home or somewhere else. Each group meets for four months.
In its two years of existence the Madison program has had 135 households participate, with about six or eight active at any time, Grossberg said. Only about 10 percent of the households that have signed up have been unable to complete the program, she said.
The program guide takes each participant through a series of topics: solid waste, transportation, energy, water conservation, water quality, and food. People learn the background of each issue and what they can do to reduce their impact on the environment and save money. At each meeting, people commit to making one or two small changes in the coming week, Grossberg said.
"They might want to dial back their thermostats at night or change light bulbs to compact
fluorescents."
On average, households completing the program have saved $281 annually, says the EnAct Web site: http://www.enactwi.org/ Each house has also saved 4.1 cubic feet of landfill space, 570 kilowatt hours of electricity, and reduced the number of miles driven by only one person by 1,126.
After completing the program, some people have chosen to continue carpools or cooperation to collect recyclables, Grossberg said.
Incubation EnAct was also instrumental in the start of Community Car, a program which allows people to sell their cars and buy shares in cars available for use as needed. "One of the things we do is we act as an incubator for new ideas and new businesses," she said. Community Car has become an independent, for-profit company.
EnAct also hopes to reach into Milwaukee, Grossberg said.
"There's interest there. We've actually met with people there about Community Car too. That's not happening yet."
Reaching out Initially, the Racine program would cover the greater Racine area and the watersheds of the Root and Pike rivers, Prochaska said. If there's interest, it may eventually stretch farther west, she said.
If the large grant doesn't come through to fund the one-year pilot, Sustainable Racine will explore links to area churches, Prochaska said. Some area Lutheran churches are already involved in a program to reduce their impact on the environment. Grossberg said about one-fifth of the Madison area programs have been in centers of faith.
"We have to have more of an impact, and we have to have less of a footprint, on our world," Prochaska said.
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