For the October meeting of this group the guest speaker was Tamara Marcus, the recently hired Linn County Sustainability Coordinator. The original topic was to be about conducting activities in Mount Vernon to celebrate Electric Car Week. That changed to Tamara asking for citizen input on the Linn County wide Sustainability Vision, Goals and Objectives. Attendees were able to discuss their ideas and they will be included with the final version of this document to be presented to the Linn County Board of Supervisors after the election.
Updates will be coming to this group on the two solar farm projects in Coggon and Palo and from the Linn Clean Energy District. Glass recycling has now been established at the Bryant Road Public Works site. Mayor Tom Wieseler is being interviewed for selection to the Linn County Solar Farm Study Group, which will start their meetings in December.
The focus of the Mount Vernon Sustainability Committee has previously been on things the City can do to be more sustainable in their practices. Members are pivoting to also focusing on “green” habits that can be done by individual homeowners. That will include more articles like this in the Sun. Watch for Sun guest writers to communicate more on this.
The City Council is studying whether to keep this committee as an ad hoc group or to establish it as a codified standing group with full commission status. That discussion is continuing.
DID YOU KNOW….for the past month of September with Republic, Mount Vernon had 150.24 tons of garbage to the landfill and 22.69 tons or 13.1% extra that went to recyclables. For the month of September, total trash was 80.44 tons and recyclables were 18.76 tons or 18.9%. Will trash total amount keep going down and stabilize and will the percent that goes toward recyclables keep going up? Stay tuned.