While the community stays home and stays safe in response to the COVID crisis, work continues on the Sustainability Strategy. In March we held a waste focus group and met 1:1 with the Community Resiliency Coordinator for the Kalamazoo County Response Consortium (KCRC). We had great discussions in both meetings about what Kalamazoo needs to do as a community to react to and prepare for worsening impacts of climate change.
Waste Focus Group Meeting
The waste focus group’s recommendations centered around how to encourage less waste, more reuse, recycling, and composting. Action ideas and suggestions included:
Responsible supply chain (extended producer responsibility)
Promoting local zero waste businesses
Piloting shared neighborhood composting sites
Education and resources for home composting
Working with recycling vendor to increase materials accepted through City program
Better recycling contamination reporting
Incentives for zero waste events utilizing City property
Kalamazoo County Response Consortium Meeting
During the meeting with KCRC we learned about the amazing work our emergency and crisis response agencies and nonprofits are doing. While we have had a number of unfortunate crises over the past several years, the positive outcome has been increased training, organization, and planning from all sectors. During our discussion we did identify several ways we could be more prepared as we anticipate climate change to be a threat multiplier in our community. Suggestions included:
Increasing the number of businesses and nonprofits with emergency action plans
Evaluation of data post-crisis to better inform future decision-making
Expand the list of resources and facilities available during emergencies (including an inventory of City resources)
Explore Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs and gauge neighborhood interest in training