Putting My Mission Where My Mouth Is

Last night was this month’s meeting for my town’s Sustainable group that I discovered two days ago and we braved the dipping temperatures to take in what this committee is all about. None of us were disappointed and came out even more jazzed to do more! There were eleven of us in attendance at the meeting plus two guest speakers and other absent members were referenced as the night went on so it was clear this is a decent sized group with a common goal in mind.

That goal includes efforts such as Local First -- an initiative to promote the environmental and community building aspects of shopping for products and services in our own towns first, 150 Households -- an effort to encourage 150 residents to sign up for the New England Wind Fund which will allow for the town to garner one 2kW photovoltaic panel and The Energy Smackdown -- a contest including 3 town teams with ten families per town pledging to reduce energy consumption over a one year span. My brain was swimming in a sea of beautiful, algae free, carbon low, green water by the end of the meeting just thinking about the ability to get involved with some of these efforts as well as those proposed for the coming year’s focus.

At the end of the evening the Webmaster and I chatted about this blog and the fact that the committee website is receiving a major overhaul in the very near future. He asked if I would allow an RSS feed from here on the main website and also if I would be interested in doing some content rich article writing on pertinent local information. Um, hello of course I am interested! Yippie! It made me feel great to know that I can use my own area of talent to provide back to this amazing group.

As we drove back to my Mom’s to drop her off we all discussed some of the ways we are already making differences but also some of the things we do that, according to what we discussed during the evening, are not very sustainable and what the trade offs are for each choice we make. In the end all of us are committed to make a concerted effort in helping to protect the planet and that is what truly matters. It will be fun to get out there and become even more involved with our local community to further enhance those commitments.