09 Feb It’s National Green Week: Is Austin Greener?

Welcome to National Green Week. We’re midway through an event that originally was announced by the Green Education Foundation here in the USA in mid-January. Yet there’s far more buzz in the UK with what they have renamed it to be Go Green Week. They have already marked the first three days with Meat Free Monday, Travel Less Tuesday and Zero Waste Wednesday. They have a well-coordinated Facebook page and are culminating the week with a National Day of Action with students around the region committed to influence their government to transition to a low carbon future.

What’s greener in Austin? I have scanned Austin in search of events or news that would support National Green Week through schools, associations or corporations and need your help to highlight what Austin is doing in a new way to become greener (especially from our students’ level). We already know about Pecan Street project and other well-known initiatives that are making progress, so in the spirit of the Green Education Foundation, here are a few things that became greener this week:

–          According to the Texas Office of Sustainability , we now have 26 green roofs in Austin that have been added to our ecosystem, most of which are residential houses.

–          Austin’s EcoClean has been running a promotion to donate 5% of sales to the Theater Action Project (TAP) for every Wednesday this month. TAP follows previous non-profit designees that have received funds from EcoClean such as Hill Country Conservancy, SafePlace, Austin Lyric Opera, Save Our Springs (SOS) Alliance and Keep Austin Beautiful (KAB).

–          Bethany Waggoner posted an excellent blog article about “How to Become a Green Business in Texas.”

–          EcoCAR 2 sponsored a dinner at the Driskill hotel for networking between students and recruiters.

What other ways will Austin participate in, promote and/or enhance National Green Week?