How can we help the environment, help preserve our biodiversity, protect our clean air and water, and stop climate change? For these answers, we don’t need to look any further than our own Aurora Sustainability Plan. Our plan was written in 2019 by the Sustainable Aurora Mayor’s Advisory Board. The main authors were Karen Wan, Caryl Riley, Bernina Perkins, Karen’s college age son, Alex, and me, Mavis Bates. These are the climate champions who gave so much time and effort to create this comprehensive and well-written plan that won the 2020 Kane County Plan of the Year Award. We aligned our plan with the Metropolitan Mayor’s Caucus and added three new focus areas on resilience, environmental justice, and climate change.
You can find the plan on the City of Aurora website at: https://www.aurora-il.org/DocumentCenter/View/6793/Sustainability-Plan-2019
The good news is that we have this great plan already approved by the Aurora City Council and ready to be implemented. Every one of us can look at this plan for what we should be doing in our lives to help. Most of these things are common sense, every-day actions that are pretty easy to do. Some of them are hard. But all of them are great ideas for how to live a sustainable life and help to save our beautiful planet.
The plan has nine focus areas, including
- Climate change;
- Community development and land use;
- Education and engagement;
- Energy efficiency, conservation and management;
- Environmental justice;
- Resilient community;
- Transportation and infrastructure;
- Waste minimization, reuse, and recycling;
- Water quality and conservation.
Just looking at this list should give you some ideas of what we all need to do. Stopping climate change means reducing our dependence on highly polluting carbon fuels such as coal and oil and gasoline. We need more solar panels, more electric vehicles, more people walking and less driving. More LED lightbulbs, which can save money and the planet at the same time. Energy efficiency is all about saving energy and money—your money. Better insulation, better windows, better energy saving appliances, are all ways to be more energy efficient, use less energy, help us make a transition to renewable energy, and save money. The planetand your pocketbook both win—at the same time.
Environmental justice means ensuring that all neighborhoods in the city will have equal access to clean air and water. Resilient communities mean planning for the next 100 years to be as healthy and safe as the last 100 years, through preparation for the changes to come.
We all know we need to keep recycling as much as possible, and reusing and reducing what and where we can. How about using a washable, reusable cloth rag instead of a paper towel? Or how about using cloth bags at the grocery store instead of plastic? Our beautiful city needs our help to make these wonderful goals become a reality. Will you help? The Earth hopes so.
To learn more please come to the Aurora Greenfest June 8 at the Prisco Community Center. www.auroragreenfest.com.