Green Cities California

Background

The adoption of local environmental policies has a profound impact on environmental protection, and a well-crafted local ordinance can help shape state policy. The development of such legislation, however, is exceedingly time-consuming. Many small cities don't have the staff to support the research and development involved in creating environmental policies.

Large cities, which often operate independently, may unknowingly duplicate the efforts of others. As cities across the nation and the world move to "green" their practices, an urgent need has emerged for a centralized repository of information.

Green Cities California (GCC) is a collaborative of 10 of the most environmentally progressive jurisdictions in the state: Berkeley, Los Angeles, Marin County, Pasadena, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. GCC members are leaders in developing cutting edge sustainability policies and practices, and have proven experience solving urban environmental challenges.

Organization Mission

The mission of Green Cities California is to accelerate the local, regional, national and international adoption of sustainability policies and practices through collaborative effort. Green Cities California achieves its mission by working together on major initiatives, and by assisting other local governments in adopting and implementing sustainable policies and practices.

Their goal was to create an interactive, easily accessible, free online repository of best practices in sustainability policy that cities and counties can download and adapt for their communities. This resource is intended to accelerate implementation of sustainability policies and programs due to the fact that jurisdictions will not have to retrace the learning curve of leading urban sustainability pioneers.

Full Circle Fund Role

Full Circle Fund's Environment/Energy Circle became acquainted with the work of Green Cities California and found that the goals aligned perfectly with Full Circle Fund's Environment Circle's goals of doing our part towards halting global warming and making a positive contribution toward environmental protection.

Green Cities California was poised to create a website to provide easy accessibility to the highest bar of sustainability policies and programs in the country, but needed financial and other support to make this vision a reality. Together, Full Circle Fund's project team and Green Cities California have moved towards creating a web-based "Sustainable City Toolkit" which provides easy accessibility to the policy documents, performance measures, media outreach tools, etc., that any jurisdiction might need to accelerate their journey to sustainability.

Full Circle Fund's Environment Circle provided GCC not just funding but significant strategic support, marketing, consulting development, networking and technical assistance to help GCC with the development of the website. This website is now a central repository for environmental programs, ordinances and policies developed throughout the state in key environmental areas. The goal is to ensure the rapid spread of those best practices and speed up the implementation of sound environmental policies in cities and counties around the state, and ultimately drive state and federal programs.

The web site, www.greencitiescalifornia.org, provides everything staff and policymakers need to justify and directly implement new policy, including the document itself (ordinance, resolution or executive order), staff report, background research, legal analysis, and outreach and educational materials.

The site's content was created, and is maintained, by GCC member cities to simplify the process of developing policy and avoid repeating errors. Best Practices are organized around the seven categories of the Urban Environmental Accords: Energy, Waste Reduction, Urban Design, Urban Nature, Transportation, Environmental Health and Water.

Impact

Full Circle Fund's Green Cities project team:

• Assisted GCC with funding
• Provided technical and design resources
• Helped with agency selection, design reviews and feedback
• Secured partners such as the 11th Hour project, IDEO, Allison & Partners (a pro-bono PR Agency)
• Helped with launch and media outreach plan when the website, GreenCitiesCalifornia.org launched in October 2009.

According to Green Cities, GCC policies have resulted 1,633,302 plastic water bottles from being landfilled which saves GCC member cities over $1.6 million. GCC policies have also resulted in the conversion of over 665 million sheets of paper to 100% recycled content EACH YEAR which saves:

• 10 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions
• Almost 80,000 trees
• More that 23 million gallons of water
• More than 6600 barrels of oil

By supporting the creation of this tool and partnering with Green Cities California, Full Circle Fund's work continues to encourage quick dissemination of the most pro-active strategies on climate protection, green building, smart growth and other leading edge solutions to the fearsome environmental problems we face.

NAME: Green Cities California
LOCATION: Bay Area
WEB: greencitiescalifornia.org
GRANT TERM: 2008-2009
TEAM LEADS: Jack Oswald, Josh Becker, Victoria Lavi