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 [...]
Hey Asheville residents – Have you seen this sticker? Perhaps it arrived in the mail, or maybe you saw it on a neighbor’s blue recycle bin. Know what it means? If you are recycling correctly over the next six months, you could win a $50 worth of free groceries! How? The Recycle and Win program, [...]
Two City of Asheville parking garages will been seen in a different light thanks to the City of Asheville’s participation in a newly implemented energy efficiency program with Duke Energy Progress. Utilizing the Duke Energy Progress Small Business Energy Saver Program, the city will replace lights inside the Wall Street and Rankin Avenue parking garages with [...]
November is “Recycle It!” Month in Asheville and throughout the month, the City of Asheville’s Office of Sustainability is offering tours and information that spotlight the city’s commitment to solid waste reduction. Halloween may be over, but the Upcycled Halloween Costume Contest continues through November 5, with voting running through November 24. So submit those costume [...]
Question: What has 4,860,948 pounds of glass, 6,631,612 pounds of paper and nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic? Answer: The first year of Asheville’s Big Blue recycling program. The Zero Waste AVL program, featuring the blue single-stream recycling carts, rolled out in April 2012, and numbers show an increase of 4,240,000 pounds – or 2,120 tons – [...]
Asheville Police Officer Boyd McCaskill says he gets a lot of thumbs up from passers by when he is patrolling his beat in the Downtown Business District. Some of that can be credited to the community outreach and increased visibility of the APD’s downtown unit, but he also thinks it has to do with his [...]
The holidays mean big gatherings, big meals – and big piles of discarded paper, shopping bags and boxes. The EPA estimates that household garbage increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. That makes the holidays a great time to utilize recycling opportunities in Asheville and fill up those Big Blue bins [...]