Solutions Hub
Carbon pollution is destabilizing our weather patterns. Although it might be difficult to imagine, you are critical to minimizing the effects of this pollution!
You can take steps in your own life and collaboratively, by participating in civic life. In fact, nearly every aspect of our lives offers an opportunity to reduce the amount of carbon pollution we—collectively—add to the atmosphere.
Forging Resilience has identified solutions that are effective at reducing carbon pollution, relatively easy to install or adopt, and ready to be adopted community-wide.
Browse this page for a multitude of starting places. More solutions will be added in coming months, as well as additional resources for how to think about you can take action.
Finding a starting place
Our civic life is our public life, created as we connect with each other and build our futures together.
Fundamental to democracy, civic life is the responsibility of active participation in our society and is rooted in inquiry and civil dialogue.
Some organizations advocate starting big and help individuals to make the biggest change in their life that they have the capacity and power to make. This is a great way forward! If it interests you, you will find links below to organizations that specialize in supporting this type of action.
But for many of us, carbon pollution is just one of our concerns, which often leads to the question:
Are small steps useful in this global challenge? The answer is a resounding YES!
Small steps are particularly effective when taken in collaboration with others. Collaborating can be as straightforward as talking with friends and neighbors about the actions you’re taking, or as complex as advocacy for solution-focused laws.
This sort of collaboration is also known as participating in civic life. Forging Resilience focuses on such participation because it is fundamental to our democracy and to the resilience of our communities. Our communities gain strength and resilience when more people participate more often in civic life.
The Your Actions section of this page details two ways to think about your civic life. Our hope is that it offers many onramps to your more robust participation in civic life.
Our Solutions
Our guide to solutions that work.
Each solution we highlight helps forge community resilience because each is selected for:
- how effective it is at reducing carbon pollution and minimizing the effects of climate change
- its relative ease of installation or adoption by individuals and households
- how ready it is to be implemented in neighborhoods, across communities, and by local government.
Modest steps, taken by many, can reap great rewards.
Expand each solution banner to learn more about why it is a solution to carbon pollution. Each solution identifies what you can do in your own home and how you can collaborate with others to scale the solution to your entire community.
Reducing Food Waste
How does food waste contribute to carbon pollution?
Food waste contributes to carbon pollution in two ways, one at production and the other at consumption:
- The resources used to produce and distribute food are wasted. The growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, and storage of food is resource intensive, with each step emitting greenhouse gases. If that food is wasted, the resources used are also wasted.
- Food and food scraps are usually sent to landfills, where they release methane as part of the decomposition process. Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping more energy per molecule than carbon dioxide (CO2). Methane has a global warming potential about 25 times that of carbon dioxide.
To learn about how “global warming potentials” and “carbon dioxide equivalencies” are calculated, visit this article.
What can I do?
Here are a few simple steps you can take today—pick one (and then another)!
- Learn what food expiration labels mean by visiting this USDA webpage. Then put that information to use in your own kitchen.
- Learn how to store foods so they stay fresher, longer by visiting this Department of Health and Human Services webpage. Make use of this information to save money on groceries.
- Compost! Learn how (and why!) to compost at home by visiting this Environmental Protection Agency webpage.
- Learn more about how much of a problem food waste is in the United States (ReFED report, From Surplus to Solutions) and globally (Project Drawdown).
- Talk with people across your community about how, together, you can get food to those in need, before it goes to waste. Many communities have directories of food pantries and other food services in the region, such as this one from Chautauqua County, New York.
- Talk with local officials to see about bringing community composting to your community. Visit the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to learn about one way to establish community composting.
Do you have any community-specific resources?
If you are a resident of one of our pilot communities, specific resources will be coming soon! You can also check out our guide to action, below.
Rooftop Solar
Coming soon!
Insulation
How does poor insulation in buildings contribute to carbon pollution?
“Heating and cooling account for 50 to 70% of the energy used in the average American home. Inadequate insulation and air leakage are leading causes of energy waste” (U.S. Department of Energy). Inadequately insulated homes need to use more energy to make up for the leaking heated and cooled air. Insulation is one type of weatherization that can prevent these leaks.
To learn about how electricity is produced, visit the U.S. Energy Information Administration. To learn about environmental impacts of electricity generation, transmission, and use, visit this page.
What can I do?
- Learn about the benefits of insulation and how it works so that you know what questions to ask about your home and community buildings. Check out these resources:
- US Department of Energy, How Insulation Works
- Energy Star, Seal and Insulate
- Get a no-cost energy audit of your home or apartment and financial assistance to make improvements. Many state governments offer no- or low-cost energy audits of your home if you use approved contractors. Find yours at the U.S. Department of Energy’s How to Apply for Weatherization Assistance page.
- Take action! You can hire a professional or start a DIY project to implement the recommendations of an energy audit.
For those of you wanting a DIY project, check out these resources:- Do it Yourself Guide to Sealing and Insulating with ENERGY STAR® – A do it yourself guide to seal attic and basement air leaks, evaluate attic insulation, ensure safe building improvements, and reduce your home’s energy profile.
- US Department of Energy, Building America Solution Center (technical assistance guides for many kinds of weatherization and home improvements)
- Encourage the manager of the building that you work or live in to conduct an energy efficiency audit and implement improvements. Like for residential weatherization programs, many states offer benefits to small businesses that are interested in an energy audit.
- Encourage local government officials to create additional financial and technical assistance programs for those in your community who are most at-risk from heat waves and deep winter freezes.
How can I get financial support for this?
The federal government and many states have programs to help people afford home improvements such as installing insulation. Check out these from the federal government:
- USA.gov Weatherization Energy Programs (funding, tax credits and rebates, technical assistance resources)
- US Department of Energy, Weatherization Assistance Program
- US Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Star, Insulation Tax Credit (find tax credits, rebates)
How can I help others to take this action?
Maybe your home is already well insulated…there’s still opportunity to help out! Municipal buildings, school district buildings, and companies can all see lower heating and cooling bills as a result of weatherization. Here are some steps you can take:
- Talk with friends, family, neighbors, and elected officials about the benefits of weatherization. Share with them your experiences, tips, recommendations, and lessons learned!
- Ask local government officials what they’re doing to improve building insulation requirements and benchmarks.
- Learn about how much, collectively, installing new types of insulation could help limit carbon pollution. Visiting Project Drawdown’s page on Alternative Insulation is a great starting point!
Do you have any county-specific resources?
If you are a resident of one of our pilot communities, specific resources will be coming soon! You can also check out our guide to action, below.
Your Actions
Your guide to different ways to take action.
Each one of us belongs to multiple social networks—and not just the online social media types! Gardening, book, and running clubs; pet and children parental acquaintances; service organization and professional association membership; and our neighborhoods, workplaces, and places of worship. Participation in these activities reflects a vibrant civic life. Interacting with our communities creates connections with others and offers opportunities to talk about your hopes, concerns, and actions.
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
– Jane Goodall
In the coming months, this section will offer several ways of thinking about your networks and the opportunities for action that they offer.