In
recognition of the increasing number of Earth Day/Week/Month activities in the
greater Tacoma area, The City of Tacoma Office of Environmental Policy and
Sustainability (OEPS) has created an online Earth Month Events Calendar, where local
residents can learn about various environmental volunteer and educational
opportunities in the month of April. View the Earth Month Events Calendar to see how you can get involved.
The image above, in honor of Earth Day, is word art made up of individual pledges from the South Sound Sustainability Expo. People were asked to write an answer to the question, "How will you create a more sustainable South Sound?" Thanks, everyone!
In
March, the Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability relocated from the
Tacoma Municipal Building to the Center for Urban Waters in order to work more closely
with the Environmental Services department. We’re appreciating the perks of
working in a LEED® Platinum-certified facility, as well as the new experience of
bike-commuting to and from sea-level!
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The 8th-annual
South Sound Sustainability Expo was a huge success! Held at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center in early March, the Expo featured nearly 100 vendor displays. More than 1,500 attendees explored new and simple ways to live more sustainably around topics such as
rainwater harvesting, solar technology, bicycling, sustainable building
materials, and gardening. Attendance increased 71% from 2014, with 65% living in Tacoma and 21% living in other areas of Pierce County.
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 The
2015 Expo featured a Book-Movie-Music Swap activity where hundreds of books,
DVDs, and CDs were swapped, and a screen printing activity that went non-stop! The event led to increased community knowledge of local organizations and sustainability resources, and was made possible by the City of Tacoma’s Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability with support from Pierce County, Tacoma Public Utilities, Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union, and Goodwill. As one attendee said, “The size of the crowd on such a beautiful South Sound day shows how much sustainability means to our citizens.”
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The City
and its partners are planning a full slate of over 20 bicycle-related
activities in May. We’ll kick things off with the annual Bike Swap
(May 2), the largest bike event in the South Sound region, where people gather
to buy, sell, and trade bicycles and gear. Organized bike rides will occur throughout the month, including
the family-friendly Kidical Mass ride and the history/fashion-themed Tweed
Ride. The month-long Bike Everywhere Challenge encourages residents to bike for
transportation, logging their trips on piercetrips.com to be entered into prize
drawings. Check out all the Bike Month programming at BIKE253.com, and join us
in biking Tacoma!
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 For the past several months, Healthy Homes, Healthy
Neighborhoods (HHHN) staff and volunteers have been active in Tacoma’s Dometop
neighborhood, engaging with residents about local health and sustainability issues.
In addition to their door-to-door outreach and education efforts, program
organizers also arranged a number of special events that emphasize community
partnerships and highlight local resources.
On Saturday, March 28, HHHN—along with Council Member Marty
Campbell, MetroParks, and other partners—hosted a Dometop walking tour. Over 125 participants walked through McKinley
Park and up Strawberry Hill, looping around the neighborhood and through the
McKinley Business District. The urban hike brought residents outside
and onto streets and sidewalks that are not commonly used for recreation or
community activity in this traditionally underserved Eastside neighborhood.
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 In February, a community breakfast event drew over 100 community members and provided a venue for neighbors to connect with each other and with local sustainability resources. In the months ahead, HHHN will host an Edible Gardening workshop at Dometop Community Garden in Rogers Park; a clean-sweep event to clean the safe routes to Blix Elementary School; and a depaving event, where community members will remove unneeded pavement and replace it with rain gardens, reducing local surface water pollution and beautifying the neighborhood. For more details, visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/HHHNDometop
(photo credits: Scott McElhiney)
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Energy is building around the 10-year
collaboration known as the Puyallup Watershed Initiative (PWI), a network of over
100 local organizations (including the City of Tacoma) working for
sustainability in the broad area between Tacoma and Mount Rainier. PWI has formed eight “communities of
interest” (COI’s)—groups of individuals, organizations, and/or partnerships
that share specific values, interests, or concerns related to the health of the
watershed and its communities—and the OEPS has representatives on two of them:
Environmental Education and Active Transportation. Find out more about this
exciting, long-term program at www.pwi.org.
 The spring workshop series at the City of Tacoma EnviroHouse (located at the Transfer and Recovery Center, 3510 S. Mullen St.) will include presentations on solar power, rain barrels, depaving, and more! Workshops are free, but advance registration is required. (Note: If a workshop is full, please register for the waiting list.)
April
11, 10:30 AM. Home Energy Audit: Tools to DIY.
April
18, 10:30 AM. Backyard Chickens: Getting Started.
April
18, 1:30 PM. Gardens: Planting for Summer & Fall Harvest – NEW!
April
25, 10:30 AM. Native Plants to Enhance Your Habitat.
May
2, 10:30 AM. Solar Power: How It Can Work for You.
May
9, 10:30 AM. Yard Waste & Worm Bin Composting.
May
16, 10:30 AM. Depave and Go Green.
May
17, 1:30 PM. Rain Barrels: How to Make & Maintain.
May 30, 10:30 AM. Residential
Rain Garden How-To.
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Emily is
from Dedham, Maine. She joined our office September 2014 as a member of
AmeriCorps. Subsequently, she has spearheaded the 2015 South Sound
Sustainability Expo, researched municipal disposable bag ordinances, and
assisted in Bike Month 2015 planning. Emily also helps to manage the City of
Tacoma’s Green Events program and EPA Energy Star Portfolio Manager initiative,
which benchmarks the energy use of City-owned buildings.
Although
she doesn’t consider herself a “city person,” Emily enjoys living in Tacoma.
She appreciates the landscape, the beautiful surroundings, and what she
describes as the “sense of local identity.”
She is
drawn to sustainability because it touches on a lot of the issues she’s
interested in, including green space, active transportation, and local food—particularly
community gardens. She enjoyed planning the Expo since it was a feel-good event
that brought together so many people and organizations with different interests.
Emily is
a vegetarian, but when asked about her “guilty pleasure,” she confessed to taking
the occasional bite of meat. (Her most recent transgression was half of a free hot
dog.) She has also been known to eat an entire batch of no-bake cookies
herself.
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The City of Tacoma is teaming up with hundreds of organizations across Puget Sound to challenge residents to commit to at least one Sound-healthy action during May’s Puget Sound Starts Here Month. The goal is to raise awareness that Puget Sound is in trouble due to a variety of pollution sources, and empower residents to make a difference through simple actions and local volunteer opportunities.
The highlight of PSSH Month in Tacoma will be the free Family Fun Day at Foss Waterway Seaport, on May 30th from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. The full calendar of Tacoma events is listed below. Learn more about the bounty of Puget Sound and how you can help protect it at www.PugetSoundStartsHere.org.
May 2nd – 10:00 am-2 pm – University of Puget Sound Memorial Fieldhouse – 7th Annual Bike Swap
May 9th – 10:30 am-Noon – EnviroHouse – Yard Waste and Worm Bin Composting Workshop
May 12th – 5:00-8:00 pm – Center for Urban Waters – “Urban Waters Symposium” hosted by the Puget Creek Restoration Society
May 16th – 10:30 am-Noon – EnviroHouse – Depave and Go Green Workshop
May 17th – 1:30 pm-3:00pm – EnviroHouse – Rain Barrels: How to Make & Maintain Workshop
May 30th – 10:30 am-Noon – EnviroHouse – Residential Rain Garden How-to Workshop
May 30th –10:00am-2:00 pm – Foss Waterway Seaport- Puget Sound Starts Here Family Fun Day
May 31st –1:35pm – Cheney Stadium – Puget Sound Starts Here with the Tacoma Rainiers
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