Combat Climate Change Collectively
The ‘sharing your story’ aspect of the #LiveNetZero contest is exciting for us because it was something we had been working on already. Jen decided that a local community of climate change activists, or at least people who wanted to make a difference in their own lives, was something we should build. To that end we formed a neighbourhood group and are actively working to plan events and to grow the number of people involved in order to both learn from their experiences and have a larger number of voices spreading the net zero message.
We built a website { netzerodundas.ca } as a way to spread our knowledge and provide helpful resources for things we’ve either learned or have researched and decided to act on, such as items in our Home Energy Audit Report. Our group currently consists of people with a variety of knowledge but who share a common thread—we’re all doing what we can to move our households toward net zero. Almost everyone in the group has a heat pump. Some have solar panels. Some take water conservation and composting to a whole new level all while supporting pollinators and growing food for themselves. We had a small meeting the other evening and did a quick ‘pan-the-room’ style video about what a few of us were feeling and thinking as we concluded planning our first event, which I’ll mention below.
In this group there are a few people who haven’t done the home energy audit yet and are considering what upgrades they would be interested in and there are a few who have done it and are diving in and embracing this opportunity. We’ve discussed the Canada Greener Homes interest-free loan and what that can mean for people who don’t want to wait to improve their homes and we plan to push that option as much as we can. Outside of this group Steve has already had three friends ask for the info so they can look at making changes to their homes too! We’ll be doing a separate blog post on the process in case any readers want to know more as well.
Our first event is a walking tour of the neighbourhood with stops at a few houses to discuss what that homeowner has done and provide information (and hot cider 😊 ) about what we’ve learned through this journey so far. We’ll be discussing heat pumps, heat pump hot water heaters, mini forests, solar panels, the home envelope, and more. We’re excited to have a more hands-on interaction with our community as we collectively combat climate change.