In 2018, The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District is celebrating the Year of Vital Neighborhoods with Sustainable Cleveland. Vital neighborhoods are the foundation of Cleveland. Through volunteering, education, or simply getting to know your neighbors, all members of a community can come together to create a greater Cleveland.

As we reflect on milestones (cinder blocks?) of 2017 for recycling organic waste at Baldwin Wallace University (BW), this is a great time of year to reflect. We cleared 59,000 pounds or 55 cubic yards of organic waste recycled. Whether it is about the 39,726 pounds or nearly 29 cubic yards of compost (that broken down from the raw waste weight of 59,000 pounds) directly used to benefit education or the 204 cinder blocks removed to shape a new 35-foot by 35-foot growing area raised bed, truly the use of organic waste for higher education has inspired my team at BW.

New Year means a fresh start, right?  Have you made your New Year’s resolution yet?  A new year can often call for new habits! Have you considered using 2018 to make your life a more sustainable one? There are so many ways to make your day to day life more sustainable, here are 10 to get your 2018 off to a green start!

Not many of us spend much time thinking about our garbage, much less what it is comprised of. At Rust Belt RIders, we think about it obsessively. For the past four years we have helped businesses, organization, and schools - over 60 and counting, manage their waste stream. More specifically, we help them manage their food waste. Why food waste? Well, in short, because there is a LOT of it. Studies suggest that roughly 40% of all the food grown in the United States is thrown away. This material has some pretty serious downstream impacts too, impacts that we would argue, need to be addressed in a far more systematic way than it currently is.

Why care about food waste?

Let’s not kid ourselves – 2017 was not all roses for sustainability. The U.S. federal government has been busy rolling back environmental legislation at a furious pace, including the Clean Power Plan, and the U.S. is now the only country on Earth that has backed away from the Paris Climate Agreement.

(Cover image credit: Milwaukee magazine staff) 

The expansion of parks and natural areas, community gardens, urban farms, green roofs, landscaped boulevards, bike paths, trails, schoolyards, recreational areas, and other public open green space in Cleveland were all celebrated during 2017, the Sustainable Cleveland Year of Vibrant Green Space.

Looking to the Sun and Catching the Wind: Generating Green Jobs in Northeast Ohio

CAPTION: WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY ALONG THE LAKE IN FRONT OF THE GREAT LAKES SCIENCE CENTER

Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy and author of Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature. Mark will be the keynote speaker at the 2017 Sustainable Cleveland Summit.

Integrating equity in city climate action planning has been prioritized in a few cities across the country, most notably to date Portland, Oregon and San Diego, California. Other cities, like Seattle, have led efforts to increase equity in programs, policies and procedures across city operations for many years. Learning from some of these examples while creating a plan best suited for Cleveland neighborhoods is an over-arching goal for the Office of Sustainability.

In 2013, the City of Cleveland led a year-long process to develop the Cleveland Climate Action Plan (CAP), which outlined 33 actions to move our city towards emissions reductions and more climate resilience through measures in six focus areas. In 2017, in accordance with the commitment to update the CAP every four years, the Office of Sustainability has focused on doing just that, however, with a different approach.