An inter-departmental staff team urges town council to create a Green Team.
Saskia Holditch said, in a presentation to council Monday, they found the town could improve on recycling at events.
The suggestion grew out of a brainstorming session on how Pelham could improve waste problems.
“We need to educate town staff and people who attend town events,” Holditch said. “We need to make the town more environmentally friendly.”
The staff said introducing new policies for construction would help. They include LED street lights and low maintenance landscaping.
“It’s a lot cheaper to do on paper than to do retrofitting afterwards.”
The staff came up with three ideas to steer in the right direction identify: a corporate Greenhouse Gas Emission goal and vision; identify quantitative and qualitative benefits of reducing the carbon footprint; and designating a sustainable leader and team.
“We did not name a name, but we felt it should be someone at a director level or above,” Kim Holland said of the potential leader of the Green team.
The team will have its hands full, she said, using existing greenhouse data while going straight to the problem areas, such as garbage disposal at the town.
Pelham does have an energy plan, but Holland said the “nuts and bolts” of the project will be discussed by the leader and green team.
Holland said the first year could be spent just educating council and staff. It would meet with staff to determine waste and recycling audit, while completing waste audits at town events.
Within a year, the goal is to have the mayor and council endorse a corporate greenhouse gas emission vision to continue with the best practices.
“It’s not just recycling or LED lights – there are other ways of doing business that can help us to reduce our carbon footprint,” Mayor Dave Augustyn said.
“That could go into development agreements and other initiatives.”
Council will now decide whom to appoint as leader. The rest of the Green team will be made up of volunteers.
