They’re looking forward to an adoption date of somewhere around mid-June.
It’s been a process of many months of planning, changing, and perfecting, but the organizers behind PlanIt Green are finally ready to introduce their idea to the world.
Actually, they’ve really been doing the introductions since the beginning of the year, visiting various boards and committees in Oak Park and River Forest to outline the environmental sustainability plan and ask for input. Before that, they spent fall of 2010 designing a draft plan based on input from everyone from community leaders to neighborhood kids.
But now that everyone has all the information, the PlanIt Green project managers are ready to enter the final phase of the project: Implementation.
“I think our residents are really understanding the need to be more sustainable,” said Sue Crothers, a member of the PlanIt Green core team, at a meeting of the River Forest village board of trustees earlier this month. Her environmentally-conscious home was built years back, Crothers recalled—one of the first of its kind in River Forest. Back then, it was a bit of an anomaly, and neighbors weren’t sure what to make of it. Now, they’re asking for numbers to her contractors.
“It’s been a lot of change,” she said of their sustainability efforts in the past few years. Some people attribute it to the poor economy; some to environmental activism and awareness. Crothers thinks it’s both.
The project is an Oak Park and River Forest Community Foundation initiative; a plan to create a more sustainable lifestyle in each of the neighboring villages. But it’s not just matters of composting and recycling they’re concerned with. The PlanIt Green project is all-encompassing, organizers say. It’s designed to create sustainable communities, where there were none. It asks the villages to participate in decreasing water consumption, diverting a higher percentage of waste from landfills, and decreasing overall waste consumption.
It includes plans to develop a framework for helping local businesses become more “green” in terms of energy consumption and preserving natural resources. For food in general, the project asks residents to work towards cultivating more land to grow their own fruits and veggies. Or, they can purchase locally-grown products to support local farmers and gardeners.
It’s all summed up in a nearly 100-page comprehensive guide for the Oak Park and River Forest community, including homeowners, business owners and governmental bodies.
“I think we’ve got such momentum in the village,” Crothers said. “We’re the first school district in Cook County to have 100 percent of our school buildings composting…We’ve moved forward so much.”
Gary Cuneen, advisory board member for PlanIt Green and director of Seven Generations Ahead, said it’s possibly the first plan of its kind in the county that joins the efforts of two communities.
Cuneen said actual implementation is twofold. It will involve searching for funding sources, such as grants, outside of the community; and mobilizing residents to take action on the plan.
“We have no current plan for this other than we’ve done some things in village hall to make us more energy efficient,” said John Rigas, River Forest Village president. “What I don’t want this to be is the plan that goes on the shelf.”