Haven't joined the Cleaner Contra Costa Challenge yet? Now is the time to get sustainable! This free website (available in both English and Spanish) provides a list of actionable steps you can take to save water, energy, waste and money. When we work together as a community, we can hit some impressive goals- like saving over 1000 tons of CO2 by the end of this year! Bonus- you can also earn prizes along the way. Why not check it out?
We are running a Fall Challenge and are this close to meeting our goal to get 500 new households to join by the end of November (currently at 466). We’ve also saved 35 more tons of CO2 since starting the challenge in September. Very impressive!
To help our sustainability efforts, try our November Actions of the Month:
- Offset Air Travel: Traveling for Thanksgiving? Instead of feeling guilty about CO2 emissions from the plane, you can instead pay a small fee to offset the travel. A trip from SFO to LAX only costs about $8 to offset CO2. Carbon offsets fund many types of projects, from building wind turbines to capturing methane from landfills to planting trees and restoring forests.
- With Thanksgiving coming up, remember to Make A Meal Plan to reduce food waste. Over 40% of food ends up in the trash in the USA. Do your part to make a difference! Store leftovers, share with family, or if you can…
- Compost it. CA has a goal to divert 75% of waste from the landfill. One way to help with this is to compost. The new law this year states that both yard and food waste can go in the green bin, even meat and bones (for most areas). Food that ends up in landfill doesn’t receive oxygen and therefore cannot breakdown efficiently, producing more methane. Composted food turns into soil that can be used by farms and gardens.
Be sure to check off any action that you have completed on Cleaner Contra Costa Challenge in order to have your points, water savings, and CO2 reduction count for Contra Costa.
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