A new city program hopes to encourage Louisville residents to work together to make their neighborhoods more sustainable.
The Green Living Neighborhood Certification Program was launched Tuesday. It allows neighborhoods—which are defined here as 10 or more housing units—to band together and earn points for various sustainable initiatives.
“There’s eight different sustainability achievement categories, such as energy, health and wellness, water conservation, to name a couple,” said Brightside Executive Director Gina O’Brien.
Individual buy-in is necessary for any one neighborhood to achieve certification, she said. None of the categories are neighborhood-wide; instead, they require individual households to do things like exercise regularly and maintain a vegetable garden. Once a certain percentage of households do a particular activity, the neighborhood gets the points.
Once certification is reached, O’Brien said the neighborhood will be given a logo to use on its website or newsletter.
“There is truly an opportunity for us to engage in a really important conversation with the community at large, and teach sustainable living practices as everyday living, which is so critical,” she said.