In May 2011, my time as an SCA Sustainability Fellow with the Allegheny County Sustainability Program has been great. Thanks to Sustainability Manager Jeaneen Zappa, I have been involved in a wide variety of roles that support the sustainability manager’s efforts to make Allegheny County a cleaner, more cost-efficient organization. In addition to the usual daily administrative tasks of scheduling meetings and delivering documents to County partners, I have continued to be engaged in numerous projects with a wide variety of organizational partners.
I also have been heavily engaged in writing and crafting the Allegheny Green newsletter, which is a task that I particularly enjoy as it lets me break free of the bureaucratic chores and be creative. The latest newsletter for the month of June is being edited and I’m looking forward to getting started on stories for the next edition.
I have continued the work with the County’s internal “Departmental Green Team” and its various sub-committees to identify and support energy efficiency measures that are happening within each respective County department. A number of specialized committees (training, communications, etc.) have been organized and will be meeting throughout the next couple of months to discuss the various roles and how these committees can assist the sustainability manager.
The drafted “intranet” resource page, designed to assist and inform County employees on what can be recycled and where it can be recycled, is nearing the review and editing stage and we hope to have that up and running soon.
Also, I have been assisting the Coordinated Weatherization Campaign by working with project partners to write and edit a "white paper" report on the annual progress of the campaign.
In the month of May I attended several meetings with partners to gather data and to brainstorm how best to present this data to the public and to foundation funders.