Do you value sustainable living? Have you wanted to make a greater impact in your community? The need for green communities has never been greater, with pollution – especially from plastics and emissions – at an all-time high. Fortunately, there are several ways you can help your community achieve greater engagement in eco-friendly practices. The following is a short list of ideas to inspire you.

A great way to get your community working together is to organize a group of volunteers who will plant and maintain a community garden. There are nearly 20,000 community gardens across the US at this time, and the benefits are enormous for both people and the communities themselves. Some of these benefits include greater property values, decreased crime rates, better community nutrition (and thus health) and increased sense of well-being for the citizens who live there. Also, people who volunteer in community gardens often come from all walks of life, and studies have shown they form bonds with people they wouldn’t necessarily socialize with otherwise, which improves community connections.

A second option is to have community awareness drives about clean energy such as solar, water and wind power. These can be held at the local civic center or library, or if you belong to a homeowner’s association, you can encourage your neighbors to sign up for electricity or water co-ops, or purchase power plans from companies committed to providing clean energy. This is also a great opportunity to examine the benefits of solar companies near me, since the energy from solar panels is passive and can often pay for itself within a few months to a year.

Not every city has recycling plants, and even fewer have composting facilities. However, composting is one of the smartest ways to reduce waste and add nutrients back into the soil, as well as trap carbon and keep the size of landfills down. You can organize community petitions to ask local lawmakers to instate composting requirements, and you can also talk to all your neighbors and friends about composting personally in their own backyards. It’s a simple process designed by nature, and everyone can benefit from it, including the city’s infrastructure.

One of the greatest problems humanity faces today is the reliance on single-use plastics for packaging, medical products and food service. This type of plastic waste can’t be recycled, so it gets dumped into landfills, the oceans and waterways. In fact, recent studies have shown that there is so much plastic waste in the environment that humans are inadvertently ingesting up to 2000 particles of plastic every week – the equivalent of eating a credit card! It’s going to take a huge effort from communities of people around the world to put a halt to the endless production of this plastic waste.  However, with every group of concerns citizens who protest, people can push back against businesses that produce these plastics and businesses that use them, both large and small.

Electronics waste also makes up a major part of the world’s landfills, and many of the components break down into toxic chemicals. Fortunately, a large part of them can be recycled if managed properly. You and your community can join forces and host an electronics recycling drive in order to prevent outdated devices such as TVs, computers and cell phones from taking up space in landfills and further polluting the environment.

Hopefully now you have some inspiration for getting your community involved in sustainable living. It may take a lot of people, time and work, but you can rest assured you’ll make an impact for your city, your state, your country, and even the whole world. And just think: the benefits will last for generations!