The numbers are impressive. After just 10 months,
The Black and Gold City Goes Green campaign has encouraged Pittsburghers to reduce their carbon dioxide emission by 1,874,896 pounds.
The campaign, launched in March as the action plan of the
Pittsburgh Climate Initiative, works across sectors to get the entire Pittsburgh community to take small but important steps toward reducing our city's carbon footprint. The program reaches out to the higher education community, municipal offices, businesses and individual Pittsburghers.
"I think we've definitely had a lot of success this year," says Dr. Joylette Portlock, who oversees the campaign as part of her role as outreach coordinator for western Pennsylvania at
PennFuture.
Portlock says the campaign has offered Pittsburghers useful tips on environmentally friendly changes they can make in their daily lives and gives them a platform to report their progress. Many Pittsburghers have embraced the idea of making these small changes to reduce carbon emissions.
In order to encourage organizations throughout Pittsburgh to get involved, The Black and Gold City Goes Green organizers created a competition to see how many people each organization could recruit to make these "green" changes in their daily lives. The results were announced this morning: Winners include Sustainable Pittsburgh, East Liberty Development Inc., the United Jewish Federation and Chatham University.
Looking ahead, Portlock says, the campaign is assessing the progress they've made in 2009 and making plans for further work in the coming year. "We're looking at building on our success and engaging more people going into next year," she says. "It's been a good year and I think we've learned a lot, too."
Writer: Melissa Rayworth
Source: Dr. Joylette Portlock, PennFuture
Image courtesy of Pittsburgh Climate Initiative/PennFuture