Politics & Government

Maplewood as a Mecca for the Green Movement

Sustainable Jersey Holds Information Meeting in Maplewood

On Thursday, March 12, more than 50 people representing municipalities from throughout central and north Jersey came to Maplewood Town Hall to learn how to be more like Maplewood.

They were there to learn about Sustainable Jersey, a new certification program that provides a blueprint for making communities more sustainable and that gives those towns access to grants.

Some clarification: Sustainability isn’t just about hugging trees. It’s about “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs,” said Maplewood Tonwship Committee member Fred Profeta. Added Randall Solomon, Executive Director for the New Jersey Sustainable State Institute at Rutgers University, “My definition of sustainability is not having a stock market crash, not having the World Trade Center destroyed, not having New Orleans under water.”

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In other words, it’s bigger than recycling and hybrid cars, but it does start there.

As Profeta noted, Maplewood is recognized as one of the 10 leading towns in New Jersey in pioneering environmentally friendly programs and sustainable development. He rattled off a list of accomplishments: Maplewood has pledged to reduce greenhouse emission by 20 percent by 2015, offers 25 percent discounts on parking permits to cars that get 35 mpg or more (50 percent to electric vehicles), has a jitney services that takes 300 cars off the road daily, pledged to change 5,500 incandescent bulbs to low-energy fluorescent bulbs in 2007, decreased energy consumption by 4% in 2007, has a LEED silver certified police station that saves $60,000 in energy costs per year, is home to the first biodiesel station in New Jersey, and hosts the sustainable family festival Green Day annually in Memorial Park.

Find out what's happening in Maplewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Sustainable Jersey is the brainchild of Profeta and Mayor Meryl Frank of Highland Park who started the NJ League of Municipalities’ Mayors’ Committee for a Green Future three years ago. That group partnered with several other entities including the NJ Sustainable State Institute at Rutgers University and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to devise the Sustainable Jersey program.

Under this program, towns can follow a list of criteria and are given tools and financial incentives to meet those criteria.

“It’s all in one place” Profeta said, making the effort to be green easier. Towns need to score 100 points to gain basic certification. Sustainable Jersey is still developing criteria for Silver and Gold level certification.

Interested municipalities can visit the website www.sustainablejersey.com to register. There is an interactive list on the page where you can click to see how your town is doing (do you have buy local programs? green fleets? a solar energy demonstration project?). The first step in the process is to pass a resolution stating your intention to certify. Then you must designate a contact, complete the online registration form and identify actions your municipality is considering adopting and areas where training and support would be helpful.

If a municipality wants to access the first round of grants available exclusively through the program, they should register immediately in order to submit grant applications before the May 7 deadline (ten grants of $10,000 will be awarded and four grants of $25,000; the grants can be used toward meeting criteria).

You’ll notice the application process is entirely electronic—no paper. Now that’s leading by example.


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