Sustainable Ithaca

Credit to Rebecca James in the Syracuse Post-Standard:

You can build a better light bulb - one that uses less electricity and saves money - but how do you get people to use it?

Environmentalists from Cornell University, Ithaca and the nearby town of Caroline are betting that if you deliver a free compact fluorescent bulb to each person’s door, tucked into a reusable fabric bag, people will see the light.

On April 19, a team of more than 100 volunteers on bikes, on foot and in cars plan to deliver the bulbs to all 1,400 households in the town of Caroline, a sprawling, rural community in Tompkins County.

<!– if (parseFloat(navigator.appVersion) == 0) { document.write(”); } –>”We’re trying to show how a small, rural town can take matters into our own hands and say: This is up to us. Our international leaders and national leaders are not moving fast enough to protect our future,” said Dominic Frongillo, a Caroline town board member.

A Cornell junior from Pompey, Shawn Lindabury, wrote a grant that helped fund the project, which is aimed at increasing awareness about how people can live greener lives.

“A lot of people aren’t aware of the benefits of these bulbs,” Lindabury said. “We’re saying, hey, you can save $55 over the course of the lifetime of the light bulb and help reduce energy use in Caroline.”

The town of Caroline has about 55 people per square mile - the city of Syracuse has 10 times more per mile - but it has plenty of people interested in conservation. They started Energy Independent Caroline, an advisory group to the town that raised money so the town government could pay extra to buy electricity generated by wind power. It also has the lofty goal of getting the town to produce its own energy rather than buy it from utility companies.

“We have at least eight households that have renewable energy and at least a couple live completely off the grid,” said Frongillo, a member of Energy Independent Caroline who was also a youth delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December.

Teaming up on this environmental experiment is SewGreen, a group based in Ithaca that promotes sewing as a part of sustainability. It is recruiting people to make the 1,400 bags needed for the project.

At first, the bags were an afterthought - a way to deliver bulbs without using disposable plastic bags, but making the bags has turned into a community activity with a life of its own.

“People are putting so much effort into it,” said Wendy Skinner, coordinator of SewGreen. “The bags are beautiful and they’re all different. People chose fun fabrics with plaids, stripes and colors.”

About 600 bags have been made so far. A two-day sew-in held in mid-March attracted 20 people who turned out 180 bags. Another sew-in is scheduled for Saturday.

“It was like a big party,” Skinner said. “Several people said how unusual it was to sew in a group since sewing is thought to be a contemplative, individual activity.”