Newsletter
NEST NEWS:
November 2022
November 2022
Sustainable Naperville Schools
Imagine your kids riding to school in electric school buses, no longer having to breathe the polluted air from burning diesel. Envision every school rooftop covered in solar panels or thriving with plant life... read more
...Think about money redirected from heating and cooling school buildings to educational opportunities for students because the buildings are now highly energy efficient. Picture healthy school lunches that do not create mountains of plastic and food waste.
This is the vision of NEST’s new School District Engagement team. This team formed to work with both District 203 and Indian Prairie School District (District 204) on sustainability. In September and October, we had the chance to meet with the superintendents and other administrators from both districts. Here are some of the things we learned:
Both districts understand that they have the responsibility to undertake sustainability measures.
District 203 is writing a sustainability plan.
District 204 is preparing a Facilities Master Plan, which will consider efficiency upgrades, solar, and electric vehicle charging. They understand the need to be “future-ready” so that their buildings will last another 50 years.
Student voices matter. The more they hear from students, parents, and the community that sustainability is a priority, the more they will make it a priority.
Fiscal responsibility is a top concern, so demonstrating that investing in sustainability saves money over the long run is a winning argument.
The next step for the School District Engagement team is to work with the NEST Youth team to create and distribute a survey on sustainability priorities for students, parents, and staff. In addition, the team will be creating fact sheets, infographics, and white papers on a variety of topics, which we will share with the districts. We will also continue to work to develop positive, collaborative working relationships with decision-makers in each district.
A big thank you to all the volunteers who planned and participated in the meetings with the districts. A special shout out to our student members: Riley Leu (Metea), Vallabh Arun (Waubonsie Valley), Madie Weir (Naperville North), Milo Weese (Naperville North), Emma Orend (Naperville Central), Claire Savage (Naperville Central), and Grace Niketas (Naperville Central).
The next School District Engagement team meeting is November 8 at 7:30 on Zoom. All are welcome who share our vision for sustainable schools.
The Inflation Reduction Act and You!
We can all agree that saving money is nice. The latest technology can be cool to own. Working to save the planet can make you feel pretty great inside. Combining all three would be awesome. The Inflation Reduction Act allows every family in Naperville to achieve this level of awesomeness!... read more
...According to Rewiring America, with the Inflation Reduction Act, homeowners and renters are eligible for thousands of dollars in upfront costs or tax credits for energy efficiency improvements, heat pumps, solar, electric vehicle charging, and more.
For lower income families, starting in 2023 upfront costs are covered up to the amounts shown:
Electric Panel: $4,000
Electric Stove: $840*
Electric Wiring: $2,500
Heat Pump Water Heater: $1,750*
Heat Pump Air Conditioner/Heater: $8,000*
Heat Pump Clothes Dryer: $840*
Weatherization: $1,600
Whole Home Energy Reduction: $8,000 (up to $4,000 for higher income households)
Tax credits are available for any household (some available this year and others starting in 2023):
Battery Storage Installation: 30%
Geothermal Heating Installation: 30%
Electric Panel: $600
New Electric Vehicle: $7,500*
Used Electric Vehicle: $4,000*
Heat Pump Air Conditioner/Heater: $2,000
Heat Pump Water Heater: $2,000
Rooftop Solar Installation: 30%
*Also available to renters.
By adopting these technologies, a typical household can save around $1250 per year in energy costs.
If you want to calculate your own potential savings based on your household size and income, visit the IRA Calculator page on the Rewiring America website.
In addition to these incentives, Naperville Electric Utility and IMEA (our electricity provider) and the state of Illinois offer additional incentives, making the right choice for the planet the smart choice for your wallet. Details on how to access these incentives are found on our website.
Considering making these energy efficient, greenhouse gas reducing, cutting edge technology upgrades in 2023, but aren’t sure where to start? Email info@sustainnaperville.org and we will share our experiences and guide you to what will have the greatest impact. It’s time to #electrifyeverything!
Natural Resources Team Roundup
Before the settlers arrived and the steel plow was invented, this area of Illinois was covered in tall grass prairie. The loss of that habitat is one of the causes of biodiversity loss, including the reduction in populations of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and many plant species... read more
...When was the last time you saw a bison roaming through Naperville? Do you remember encountering many more birds in your backyard when you were younger?
Nature provides us with so many benefits, the technical term is “ecosystem services.” These services include management of stormwater runoff, air pollution reduction, oxygen to breathe, beauty and recreation, and holding onto carbon dioxide so that it doesn’t become climate pollution.
To enhance these benefits and ensure that they are there for future generations, it is critical that we address the biodiversity crisis. Thanks in part to the efforts of the NEST Natural Resources team, the City of Naperville is making strides in supporting biodiversity. The 2023 budget under consideration will dedicate funding to adding native plantings in multiple locations throughout Naperville. The City Council will be holding a budget workshop on November 9 where they will be discussing sustainability budget items, including this one. Once the meeting date is closer, you can signup to make a public comment here.
The Natural Resources team has also begun discussions with Naperville Public Library staff about adding native plantings at each of their libraries. To be part of those discussions, you can volunteer with the team at www.sustainnaperville.org/volunteer.
Progress is also being made in replacing highly polluting gas-powered lawn equipment. Under consideration at the November 9 workshop will be a proposal to incentivize the purchase of electric lawn equipment, after last year’s highly successful pilot program. In addition, Naperville Park District officials had the opportunity to view autonomous, electric lawn mowers that have the potential to replace gas mowers and address lawn maintenance staffing challenges. As the planet heats up, outdoor work will become more and more dangerous, so alternatives like this can help both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changing climate.
What We Learned on Our Trip to the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) by Anu Verma
Many Naperville residents aren’t sure what happens to the items they place in the blue bin after it leaves their curbside in the Groot truck. Under the single stream recycling system, we combine paper, aluminum, plastic and cardboard, and yes, glass as well, into our one blue bin... read more
...Often the perception is that material goes to the facility and gets magically turned into new products. The reality is not that! The NEST Waste Team had the chance to visit the Groot material sorting facility in Elk Grove Village, and found that this is where material from our blue bins goes through an intense sorting process to create various commodity streams (large bales of one type of item each) for sale to the market.
Single stream recycling was introduced in 1990 as a lower cost alternative to dual-stream collection, meaning we didn’t have to sort our paper from everything else in the bins. It requires that once collected, our items must be sorted elsewhere in order to be recyclable. What the people at Groot don’t want to see is “wish-cycling”. Wish-cycling is when people place items in their recycling bin whose recyclability they are unsure of, and hope they will end up being recycled. Unfortunately, when unrecyclable items get into the bin, it must be physically sorted out, slowing the process, costing more, and anything that is missed by the various sorting steps and gets into the final products is considered contamination of that product.
We saw the incoming recycling material in huge piles dumped into the building from trucks coming from all over the Chicago area. Materials are placed onto a multitude of conveyors that take them through both manual and automatic sorting steps. The automatic steps were things like magnets that pick up the iron-containing metals, a visual sorter that ‘sees’ the types of plastics and uses precise puffs of air to blow them off of the conveyor belt to a bin, and a super fast robotic arm that can pick things up with a vacuum and drop them into bins. Most cardboard is pulled out by hand, and paper is blown off of the line. It was all fascinating to watch!
Here are some important recycling Don’ts we learned:
Don’t drop the coffee cup with some coffee in the recycling bin or a jar of peanut butter with some butter clinging to it. Items should be clean and dry.
Don’t put medical waste in the recycling bin.
No plastic bags, dry cleaners’ garment bags or hangers, hoses, Christmas lights, or shredded paper. These items are called ‘tanglers’ since they tend to get caught up in the crevices of the sorting machinery, and must be manually cut out. This is a risk to the workers as it is dangerous to climb into the machines.
No lithium batteries!! They are a fire hazard (can, and often do, self-ignite) and are one of the biggest problems facing the waste industry today.
No potato chip or tortilla chips bags or mylar balloons - there is no process to re-manufacture this material currently.
And a few Dos as well:
Please leave the caps on all containers (milk jugs, laundry soap or your water bottle for plastic), on larger ‘juice box’ type containers, and on glass jars (even if the lid material is not the same as the container. The lids generally are too small to be sorted by machinery, and will drop through the process and end up in the landfill. If lids are left on, they will get into the recyclable commodity bales.
Do recycle your glass - there is currently a strong market that is looking for recycled glass to use in road base material. So you could soon be driving over that used pickle jar or wine bottle!
Do recycle your pizza box if it only has a couple of grease stains (prefer no cheese and definitely no sauce). If the bottom has heavy grease stains, tear off the top and recycle that, or vice versa.
The bottom line is - we don’t have a magical recycling system. Rather, we have a hyper-disposable material world and the vast majority of packaging products won’t ever get a second chance at life if we don’t recycle. If we can recycle correctly and responsibly at our end, it will be cheaper and more effective down the recycling process chain, and help to minimize our carbon footprint in the long run.
Making New Naperville Homes Future-Ready
At the November 1 City Council meeting, the Council will be considering the following agenda item: “Provide feedback on the items provided under the Discussion section and direct staff to prepare the necessary agreements and ordinances approving the Naperville Polo Club development (6 positive votes) - PZC 22-1-056.”... read more
...The proposed development is north of 119th St. and west of Book Road. A site plan is available attached to the agenda item linked above. The development would include 401 single family dwellings, retention ponds, soccer fields, and some open space. A portion of the development is to be set-aside for “affordable housing,” i.e., families making 80-100% of the annual median Naperville income
NEST will be making the following public statement at the Council meeting:
One of NEST’s priorities is to guide Naperville towards a sustainable future with significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from our buildings, both existing and newly built. While we expect more rigorous efficiency provisions in Illinois building codes in the next couple of years, we should start taking advantage of cost effective, inexpensive improvements in building provisions TODAY. Pulte’s Polo Fields proposed development is one of those opportunities. We encourage the City Council to use your influence to move Pulte towards making pragmatic, cheap, easy to enable enhancements in their plans so future residents can avoid retrofits costing many times more. Examples of these suggestions include adding a circuit for future EV charging, electric appliances rather than natural gas, solar-ready roofs, and cold climate electric heat pumps for heating and cooling. In addition, we encourage the preservation of the current natural resources on the site, including existing ponds and trees. NEST met with Pulte’s representative some weeks ago to discuss these future-ready solutions. Despite a cordial, respectful discussion, we noted no movement nor any interest to explore our suggestions. These are not radical ideas. Looking to the future, they are inevitable. Let’s get started now.
To learn more about what our Building & Development team is doing, email buildinganddevelopment@sustainnaperville.org. You can also volunteer at www.sustainnaperville.org/volunteer.
NEST Events
Join us every month for our public Community Meeting on the third Monday of the month at 7 PM via Zoom. Register on our website, sustainnaperville.org/events, to attend. The next meeting is on November 21 and our speaker will be Jeffrey Miller, Fox Valley Electric Auto Association FVEAA.org, discussing the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on electric vehicle adoption... read more
...You can also join us for our team meetings, which are typically posted on sustainnaperville.org/events and occur once or twice a month:
Energy team: every other Tuesday at 7:30. Contact chairenergy@sustainnaperville.org for the link.
Transportation team: first Thursday of the month at 7:30 on Zoom.
Waste team: first Wednesday of the month at Starbucks, 860 W 75th St, Naperville, IL 60565, 7 PM.
Building & Development team: first and third Wednesday of the month at 7:30 on Zoom.
Natural Resources team: fourth Monday of the month at 7:30, either via Zoom or in-person in downtown Naperville. Contact chairnaturalresources@sustainnaperville.org for more information.
Community Engagement team: fourth Tuesday of the month at 7:30 on Zoom. (November meeting has been moved to 11/14).
School District Engagement team: first Monday of the month at 7:30 on Zoom. (November meeting has been moved to 11/8).
Youth team: third Wednesday of the month at 4:00 PM at the Alive Center or on Zoom (hybrid).
All are welcome to join us to learn more and to contribute to making our community more sustainable.