Annual Sustainability Report Now Available; Showcases Highlights from FY15
The City of Naperville recently released its Fiscal Year (FY) 15 Environmental Sustainability Report, which tracks progress on a yearly basis toward previously identified environmental sustainability goals.
In FY15, the City focused its efforts on three goals: improving recycling at special events, educating consumers on how to make better purchases to reduce waste and energy consumption and providing community education about the benefits of native and natural landscaping. Each fiscal year, the City publishes a Sustainability Report that analyzes how its long-term plan goals are being met and other ways the City is becoming more environmentally sustainable.
Notable success stories from 2014/2015 included:
- New Household Hazardous Waste Facility – This facility opened on Feb. 21, 2015, and is one of four permanent facilities in Illinois. Previously located at Fire Station No. 4, the facility quickly became undersized after the program took off, causing residents to wait in lines for sometimes over an hour. This new location will minimize that long wait time as much as possible while also improving efficiency and protecting the public and employees from hazardous fumes through spill control, sprinklers and ventilation.
New Recycling Cart Program – During FY15, the City established a new recycling cart program. After a 2012 survey completed by residents reported that almost 50 percent of them used more recycling bins than just the 22-gallon totes provided by the City and that over 63 percent wanted a recycling cart program, the City responded with its cart program. The program offers residents the option of a 32-, 64- or 95-gallon cart. In addition to providing residents with adequate sized containers, the carts minimize animal pilferage and blowing trash.
This program is expected to increase the City’s current diversion rate of 29.98 percent. A diversion rate is the amount of trash diverted from a landfill to being disposed of by other means, such as recycling. After this year’s rise to 29.98 percent, which stopped back-to-back years of decline, the City is closer to reaching its long-term goal of a 40 percent diversion rate.
- LED Streetlight Conversion – Another project that was partially completed during FY15 is the LED streetlight conversion. Phase one, completed in FY15, converted 1,742 streetlights away from high-pressure sodium (HPS) to LED fixtures on arterial roads. These fixtures will annually save the City $75,000 and 1.7 million kilowatt-hours. The LED conversion project will continue into FY16. Phase Two and Three efforts handle residential streetlights, which make up 75 percent of the City’s total streetlights.
The projects highlighted above are only a few that the City has been working on in FY15. To read more about these projects—which fall under five categories of Leadership and Education, Resources and Energy, Transportation and Mobility, Waste Management and Recycling and Development and Infrastructure—and to learn about how Naperville is decreasing its environmental footprint, read the entire Sustainability Report at www.naperville.il.us/enviroteam.aspx.
