By Frank Mustac, Contributor
Leaders of the Hopewell Valley Green Team are looking for an infusion of new members.
Joanna Held, chairwomen of the Green Team, spoke at a Hopewell Township Committee meeting earlier in December, saying that the number of Hopewell Township members on the team has dwindled “due to members moving away and moving to other job responsibilities.”
“So I hope that in the new year when you are finding people to fill all of your boards and commissions that you will seriously look for additional members for our Hopewell Valley Green Team,” Ms. Held told Hopewell Township Committee members.
“If you are looking for some possible candidates, our Green Team can suggest some folks to you,” she said. “We would love to have any candidates who you feel share our vision of making this valley more sustainable.”
The Hopewell Valley Green Team serves three municipalities – Hopewell Township and Pennington and Hopewell boroughs.
Part of the organization’s mission, according to its website, is “focusing the attention of our municipal leaders on green issues, grants and initiatives that can save tax dollars and improve the quality of our citizens’ lives, both short and long term.”
Another of its missions is “advocating for energy efficiency of existing building stock and the implementation of renewable energy technologies.”
“The Hopewell Valley Green Team was established to carry some of the vision the Sustainable Jersey program,” Ms Held said.
Sustainable Energy is a nonprofit organization that seeks to support communities as they pursue sustainability programs.
“As a Green Team, we are helping all of our municipal governments and our residents to be more sustainable,” Ms. Held said. “The team has representatives from all three municipalities who have been named by the representatives of our three governing municipal bodies.”
She said that in 2016, the Green Team organized two very popular Styrofoam recycling events, in addition to five separate recycling events at the Pennington Farmer’s Market, where they collected “hundreds of pounds of number 5 plastic.”
“I think there was a six-foot high stack of egg cartons and many other items that we then took to places where they were converted into something that would be long lasting, rather than be going into landfills,” Ms. Held said.
Though a majority of the group’s efforts were spent collecting and recycling items, some time was spent working on a “visioning plan” for the future, with a focus on doing more than just recycling.
“We started reaching out to our residents and also to the different organizations around the valley to talk to them about what they see as a sustainable Hopewell Valley going forward,” Ms. Held said. “Is it more recycling? Is it more energy efficiency? Is it green buildings? What is it that we should be doing? We want to talk to a broad array of groups to get more ideas.”
With the coming year, Ms. Held said the group is looking to take input from other local organizations to find effective ways of helping the Hopewell Valley community.
So far, the group has already begun talks with the Hopewell Township Environmental Commission, as well as the Hopewell Township Historical Preservation Commission and the Hopewell Business Association.
Ms. Held said the group is still actively looking for partners.
“If you have ideas of groups that we should talk to, for example, we’d like to talk with the Hopewell Valley Arts Council,” she said. “We’d like to talk to some of the churches – anyone you think would be good. We’re open to going around talking to people, collecting ideas from a broad range of folks.”
One thing that the group has already begun working on is the Hopewell Solar Challenge, which is supported through Sustainable Jersey, which she called a “high priority.”
“We are going around trying to convince people to start using a solar web portal, which will give people a bid (from solar companies) for putting solar panels on their home, and also will help them compare different bids and different ways to finance,” Ms Held said. “It’s a safe way for people to get information about solar panels, rather then getting cold calls that they’re accustomed to getting on the phone.”
