Business owners and managers, we feel you. Running a business is hard work. Employees have to be supported, customers need to be served and bills have to be paid. You have a multitude of decisions to make every day. So what if we give you credit for making the right ones? Industrial and commercial buildings alone [...]
At its first meeting of the year, City Council received a report and viewed a video highlighting initiatives accomplished during 2015. Items ranged from the swearing in of Asheville Police Chief Tammy Hooper to the City earning a national award for its SimpliCity search engine. You can view that video at the bottom of this [...]
Packing peanuts cluttering up your life? What about Styrofoam from holiday shipping? These items don’t go in your regular recycling bin but you can responsibly dispose of them during Asheville GreenWorks next Hard to Recycle event, coming up Jan. 16 in Asheville. They are accepting a lot of things that we tend to accumulate: old cellphones, used [...]
As America Recycles Day approaches on Nov. 15, we tip our hat to the many Asheville households dedicated to sustainable living practices. And as a City we want to encourage everyone to get involved with this initiative. “America Recycles Day is a national initiative to learn about and highlight individual’s consumption and curb the amount [...]
The City of Asheville strives to be a leader in sustainability, stating in the City Council’s Strategic Operating Plan the goal of taking sustainability practices to the next level by implementing ways to reduce city-wide solid waste. With the Zero Waste AVL recycling program, the City is making strides towards reducing the trash sent to [...]
The City’s Zero Waste AVL survey about waste reduction strategies has just concluded. Thank you to the 1,100 citizens who participated, answering questions about their preferences going forward to reduce the waste stream Asheville’s citizens and businesses generate. The initiative continues with two informational meetings coming up, where people can hear presentations about the options under [...]
When it comes to sustainability and conservation practices, the City of Asheville has proactive goals. Since its inception in 2008, the City’s Office of Sustainability has worked to reduce our municipal carbon footprint, first by 2% every year, then bumping the goal up to 4% every year starting in 2010. The City installed the LED lights [...]
Asheville’s new Chief Sustainability Officer Amber Weaver describes herself as a true environmentalist who also understands the importance of integrating multiple aspects of sustainability within our system. As such, she works to integrate innovative approaches to waste reduction and recycling, smart energy use and greener living. Though she worked in energy and environmental project management in [...]
Sustainability. Environmentally friendly. Green. These words not only apply to earth-friendly principles, they now also can apply to financial bonds. They are called “green bonds” and the money used – as well as the profits returned – finance environmentally friendly or sustainable projects. Asheville is the first municipality in North Carolina to issue green bonds. Money [...]
This video outlining the City of Asheville’s accomplishments in 2014 was shown to Asheville City Council at Council’s January 30 retreat.
This spring, the City of Asheville Fire Department took up a nation-wide challenge to see which of its three battalions, throughout the department’s 12 stations, could make the biggest reduction in energy use over a three-month period. With the results tallied in June, the winner is Battalion 2 with a total energy reduction of [...]
In 2011, the City of Asheville began a project to replace all streetlights with LED lighting, saving money and energy and helping achieve Asheville City Council’s goals for reducing Asheville’s municipal footprint. The Office of Sustainability has announced that the next phase of streetlight replacement is underway, focusing on major traffic corridors in the [...]