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Click here to see minutes from previous meetings. Minutes from most recent meeting below.
Sustainable Scituate meeting minutes 10/19/11
Scituate Food Pantry Community Garden On Sunday 10/23, garden volunteers are meeting to close down the garden for the season and discuss plans for next year. It was a tough season with all the rain, but most people did pretty well, considering. The chief concern for next year is creating a better system for timely harvesting and transport of crops to Tuesday morning food pantry drop-off.
Recycling The town is gearing up to order another batch of recycling bins to replace/supplement existing bins. Sustainable Scituate is working to get sponsors to split the cost of each bin with the town. Many thanks to the sponsors who have already signed up: Cohasset Yoga Center - Mary Norton Hingham Institution for Savings Dr. Gordon Price Village Market - Jim McGinnis
Volunteers will be at the transfer station over the 10/29-10/30 weekend to collect donations and hopefully additional sponsors to support the recycling bin investment. We still need a few volunteers to help collect – particularly on Sunday morning. Let us know if you can help! emailsustainablescituate@gmail.com Kathy and Jay will be presenting a proposal to the Waterways Commission in early December for boater-accessible recycling in Scituate Harbor. Boater trash is collected by a private vendor and the recycling option is not utilized. Offering recycling would cost more up front, but costs would be recouped quickly due to revenue generated by selling the recycled materials. Option B would be to see if a number of harbor businesses would join together with the boater area to have their recyclables picked up.
Solarize Scituate This pilot project is wrapping up at the end of the month. Among the 4 participating towns, Harvard had an extraordinarily positive response, while the other 3 towns (Scituate included) were close in terms of number of sales and total kilowatt hours. There was some discussion as to why Harvard did so well - possibly because it is a small, close-knit, 3,000-person community with great enthusiasm that generated tremendous momentum as more and more people signed up. One of Scituate’s biggest hurdles was all our trees/shade. Of 300 homes surveyed, 180 did not have enough sun to make the solar investment worthwhile. We look forward to results of surveying/data collecting to find out why people did or did not choose to invest in solar energy as part of this project. Some towns, Scituate included, are exploring the idea of a “solar community garden” where panels would be installed on town land and individuals could buy in. This idea is in the very preliminary stages of discussion. Governor Patrick will be visiting Scituate’s transfer station in early November to do a sort of “ribbon-cutting” type press event around the solar array project that is in progress there.
375th Anniversary Bike Tour The kickoff was Sunday 10/16 – a sunny but very windy day. There were some participants, and this is intended to be an ongoing do-on-your-own-time tour of Scituate’s many interesting historical sites. A Scituate history lecture series will be held at the GAR hall as part of the 375th anniversary as well.
PR Emily reported on a PR workshop she had attended led by Nancy Murray Young (who writes Scituate’s “Around Town” column) at Scituate Library. The main points were: make your news/events interesting and unique so you will stand out; have updated press materials and web presence; nurture relationships with media people, submit releases in an accessible and complete format, and offer expert consultants to speak about relevant topics; be very clear in your outreach about your mission and goals – who you are trying to reach, what you want them to do, and what they will get out of it. |
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