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Sustainable Sunnyvale Newsletter - Oct. 2024 |
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Climate Action Scoreboard: Our Road to Carbon Neutrality by 2045
Keep up with Sunnyvale's leading climate solutions! The Climate Action Scoreboard is updated with our 2022 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and key drivers the City is targeting to reduce our emissions. The data shows Sunnyvale's emissions are back to pre-pandemic levels as of 2022. This increase was expected as we returned to our pre-pandemic lifestyles.
While the upward trend is disappointing, it illustrates how our daily behaviors impact emissions. Our actions matter, and together, we can significantly impact our environment.
Arriving just in time is Game Plan 2028, our five-year plan intended to get us to our 2030 target. Our new target has us striving to reduce emissions by 85% below 1990 levels by 2045. That gets us to carbon neutrality and in alignment with the states' goal.
To reach these goals, Game Plan 2028 sets ambitious Moves that focus on:
- Increasing clean energy sources
- Increasing electric vehicle adoption and supporting alternative transportation
- Decarbonizing buildings by encouraging a transition from natural gas use to all-electric
Find resources and ways to reduce your footprint at SunnyvaleClimateAction.org.
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Free and DIY Halloween Costumes
Think about the last time you bought a new Halloween costume for you or your kids. Have any of you worn the costume more than once? Is it sitting in the back of your closet or - even scarier - in a landfill somewhere? You don't have to buy anything new this year to create a spook-tacular costume.
Save your money, avoid landfilled waste and find inspiration in our DIY guide:
- An Olympic athlete: your favorite workout clothes, an old trophy or a lanyard with a cardboard circle taped to one end. Go the extra mile by painting the cardboard gold or yellow.
- A farmer: plaid or flannel shirt, blue jeans, a straw/cowboy hat and fresh produce to accessorize. If it's a kid's costume, they can bring along stuffed animals in a basket or wagon.
- A hippie: Flower-print clothes, anything with fringe, bellbottom pants, sunglasses and a headband.
- An animal: this depends on what you already have! Use leopard-print clothing for a jungle cat, feather boas for birds, headbands to make animal ears or pipe cleaners for insect antennae.
- A witch: Any combination of black clothing and an optional broom as an accessory. This look hinges on the classic "witch hat" - if you don't have one, borrow from a friend or make your own out of black construction paper.
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Trash Capture Devices: Helping Keep the Bay Clean
Did you know that the storm and sewer systems in Sunnyvale are separate? Anything that goes down a drain inside a building is called wastewater. Wastewater flows to the Water Pollution Control Plant in Sunnyvale and is cleaned before being discharged into the San Francisco Bay. Water outside that flows into nearby storm drains travels through the storm system. Unlike wastewater, there is no treatment process for water in the storm system before entering the San Francisco Bay. To help keep trash out of the Bay, Sunnyvale has installed hundreds of inlet-based trash capture devices (TCDs). These devices are steel baskets with tiny holes installed inside of a storm drain. They collect debris while allowing water to filter through the holes in the basket.
The Environmental Services Department’s Water & Sewer field crew is responsible for regularly cleaning TCDs and storm drains. The crew uses vacuum trucks to remove the collected trash and debris from inside the storm drains and TCDs. Some areas in Sunnyvale produce more trash than others and the field crew maintain those TCDs more frequently. With the rainy season approaching, our crew is working hard to keep Sunnyvale's storm system clean.
While TCDs are effective, they cannot remove everything. Trash and chemical pollution can still reach the Bay. Here's how you can keep Sunnyvale's storm system and San Francisco Bay pollution free:
- Always place trash in a proper receptacle
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Always picking up after your pet
- Taking your car to a car wash instead of washing it in your driveway
- Make your own non-toxic pesticides
- Regularly maintaining your car to avoid oil leaks
- Properly disposing of hazardous materials by following the Household Hazardous Waste guide.
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Compost Workshop
Saturday, Oct. 12, from 10 a.m. to noon
Murphy Park Building, 250 N. Sunnyvale Ave.
EV Expo
Saturday, Nov. 16, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
City Hall, 456 W. Olive Ave.
Event in South parking lot on All American Way.
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