Ideas from MyGreenATL launch
BY Ken Edelstein • October 13, 2009
Part of crowd at Candler Park Fall Fest
Greener schools, local foods, recycling and the sad state of public transit in Atlanta seemed to be the top concerns of 400 or so folks who stopped by the My Green ATL booth last weekend at Candler Park Fall Fest. Here’s your chance to add to the voices we heard there.
Fall Fest marked the beta launch for this website — and for our attempt to inform and connect Atlantans interested in the environment. It was an amazing experience. Now I know why artists, craftspeople and community groups do the festival-booth thing: It is absolutely thrilling to listen to and talk to so many people who genuinely are interested in the work you’re doing.
Plus, there was a heartening amount of interest in My Green ATL. The feedback from festival goers — and from readers who comment on this site — will help guide our efforts to dig up information and to connect people who care about specific issues. I’d love for this to be a joint effort in which readers not only suggest topics, but also offer leads. Find out more about how My Green ATL works on our About Us page.
Some of the ideas at Fall Fest came from folks who recently had moved to Atlanta. A couple who had moved here from LA complained that Atlantans simply are “behind” other parts in the country in just making sustainability part of everything they do.
“This city makes it less easy to be green,” said Joanna Krause, who recently moved with her husband from Boston to Sandy Springs. “It’s more difficult to be green. It’s not obvious how you do things like recycle or use public transportation.”
Someone else — I think he’d come here from California — said people don’t even talk about sustainability and the environment in Atlanta. That surprised me a little bit. I realize that the South is conservative and has been slower to embrace environmentalism, but — at least in intown Atlanta — the amount of interest in things green has increased to the point that it seems pretty prevalent.
My Green ATL will look at thorny environmental issues — the impact of coal-fired power plants, for example, and the reasons behind our recent floods. But we also want to share success stories, such as Emory University’s sustainability initiatives and Interface Floor Coverings campaign to reduce its environmental impact to zero. And, more than anything, I want My Green ATL to be a resource, both in the sense that we provide useful information and in the sense that we’ll help to connect people with online and in real life.
About three-quarters of the way through last weekend’s Fall Fest, I got a brilliant that I should have had before the weekend started: To get folks to write down their concerns and interests. The question I asked was simple: What do you want to see on My Green ATL.com?
OK, here’s the deal: I’ll some of the answers for you below, but I want you either to add to the list or to offer some additional thoughts on ideas that already are written below. Then, you’ve got to keep coming back to the site for followup coverage. OK?
“Where can I recycle AA batteries?”
“Public transportation!? Why is ATL so behind?”
“Why are there NO bike lanes in places there is room for them? Midtown?”
“Municipal composting.”
“Solar installations.”
“How to’s. Things like rain barrels, gray water, recycling, making your house more energy efficient.”
“Community cleanups. Public recycling.”
“Air pollution/air quality near sanitation treatment plant in Smyrna, Ga.”
“Want to get more people to recycle.”
“Local healthy food in town.”
“The African-American life expectancy is 14 years less [than whites'].”
“Free energy? Solar power systems, etc.”
“Re-use.”
“Co-housing/coop living.”
“Getting my baby’s daycare to use cloth diapers.”
“CSAs” (community
“Greenspace”
“Sustainable food for kids”
“Letting natural light into schools”
“Growing my own organic food”
“Xeriscaping”
“Surface runoff. Water quality issues”
“Conservation education”
“Local sustainable farming”
“Yes! Local sustainable farming”
“Affordable alternative fuel vehicles and machinery”
“How do I start recycling and using less waste in a public school (I’m a teacher in Cherokee County)?”
“LEED for homes”
“The Marta buses — can they switch them to be like the ‘Cliff’ buses at Emory?”
“Bike racks, bike paths, bike showers”
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