The Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council Sustainability Committee has taken a leadership position demonstrating how to live sustainably, incorporating sustainable principles in meetings and events and inspiring stakeholders to take actions toward sustainability during the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

Using the idea that our efforts to meet our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, the committee carefully evaluated what actions it could take to increase sustainability. The starting point was incorporating sustainability into Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council Meetings by encouraging the reuse of PRNC branded water bottles and tumblers rather than providing water in disposable plastic bottles. The PRNC provided the reusable bottles which stakeholders bring to meetings. These bottles promote the PRNC and ultimately reduce reliance on petroleum. Each one liter recyclable water bottle uses a quarter liter of petroleum to recycle it. None is used in making the tumblers and by not providing the recyclable bottles, none is used to recycle them.

Also, by way of demonstrating how to incorporate sustainable practices in our meetings and Council activities, we save paper by no longer providing multiple copies of paperwork for review. Instead Board Members review items ahead of time and one copy is available at the meeting. To reduce oil usage, Board Members also try to take public transportation to City Hall meetings whenever possible.

Considering that animal agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gases, we want to encourage stakeholders to consider becoming vegan. We now offer a vegan dinner option at our meetings.

Because discarded food is the leading contributor to methane in the atmosphere, we made arrangements in advance of our 2017 Holiday Party for excess food to be used by Genesis House, part of the Hope of the Valley Mission.

Moving beyond our meetings, we wanted to have an event focused on sustainability. Our Second Annual Earth Day was just that opportunity. We provided education on sustainability to stakeholders and encouraged them to try sustainable products. We included a vegan food option, planted 50 more trees in our community, and ran the event using solar power.

As part of our advocacy, we joined the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance where we are fighting for the elimination of gas powered landscaping equipment. Amazingly, this type of equipment will create more ozone pollution than all the passenger cars in California by 2020. We would like the City of Los Angeles to go electric with its municipal landscaping. The City of South Pasadena has demonstrated that this is possible and has already done it.

We continue to explore more options to increase sustainability and educate our stakeholders on them, because we know that sustainability is not an all or nothing proposition. Our ideas include donating clothes to charity, donating clothes with holes to H&M for recycling, donating shoes to the YMCA, donating sneakers with holes to NikeGrind where they can be made into new products, eating vegan sometimes, meatless Mondays and more!

“I cannot do everything, but still I can do something, and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something I can do.” Edward Everett Hale.

We invite you to join us brainstorming and implementing new ideas. We meet the third Tuesday, 6:30pm at the Porter Ranch Library. Ride your bike or walk and join us! For more information contact SusanGorman-Chang [at] PRNC.org.

Sustainability Year In Review 2017-2018 PowerPoint Presentation