formerly citizens' greener Evanston

We humans must rapidly accelerate progress on two huge and intertwined challenges:

Minimizing Greenhouse Gases
Maximizing Ecological Abundance

We Evanstonians are building on our town’s record of leadership in tackling these challenges:

Among Evanston's many accomplishments:

  • Committed to and met the U.S Mayors Kyoto Protocol Climate Protection Agreement goals.
  • Established an "opt out" clean energy aggregation program for residents and businesses.
  • Adopted a zero emission strategy for its municipal operations to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
  • Became the first community in Illinois to adopt a large existing building performance standard, receiving national press coverage.
  • Became the first city in Illinois to earn National Wildlife Federation Community Wildlife Habitat certification.
  • Passed Environmental Justice and Climate Emergency resolutions
  • Adopted its 3rd climate action plan in 2018, calling for citywide carbon  neutrality  by 2050.
  • Evanston Township High School in 2024 became the 3rd public school district in the nation to adopt an ambitious sustainability policy.

We at Climate Action Evanston are speeding our city's progress in addressing  the climate crisis through:

Our programs

Beyond Waste Program symbol

Beyond Waste

In nature there is no waste: outputs from living things circle back to become useful inputs to other living things. This program works to speed up progress in extending the useful life of items and making more of Evanston's outputs valuable inputs.

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Edible Evanston symbol

Edible Evanston

Regenerative agriculture practices produce an abundance of nutritious foods, sequester carbon in soil, and heal ecosystems degraded by industrial agriculture. This program creates local community around adopting these practices and equitably sharing the resulting bounty.

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Energy

Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced through improved energy efficiency, reduced fossil fuel consumption, and the use of renewable energy. This program works to speed the transition to more efficient use of electricity to cook food, heat spaces, heat water, dry clothes, and power vehicles.

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Environmental Justice Evanston symbol

Environmental Justice Evanston

The harms caused by climate change and ecosystem degradation and the benefits derived from taking action to address them tend to be unfairly distributed. This program seeks to make them accrue equitably throughout Evanston.

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Go Evanston program symbol

Go Evanston

Personal vehicles typically are infrequently used and transport a single passenger. All fossil fuel powered vehicles accelerate climate change. This program works to reduce reliance on personal vehicles and increase sustainable transportation options.

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Natural Habitat Evanston

Conventional lawns and garden practices waste water, emit carbon and poison birds and pollinators whose populations are in dramatic decline. Natural Habitat works to return vibrant, buzzing life to Evanston public and private-owned landscapes.

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Our modes of impact

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We serve

Our members volunteer to get stuff done. For example, to plant trees, replace non-native invasives with native plants, tend crops in a food forest, and help people fix items so they'll last longer.

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We educate

We foster learning about climate change in our interactions with the public, city government, school administrators and their students, online at this website, in our newsletters, and at our events.

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We advocate

We advocate for making progress on meeting our city's climate goals: at city council, at street fairs, through initiating and signing petitions, and by leading campaigns to pass legislation.

And collaboration with many local partners

City employees

We work with the city to draft and then pass climate-related legislation, and work with departments to implement changes in practice to support the city's climate action goals.

Public schools

We've worked with high school student activists to push for climate friendly school and city policy, and with school district administrators to get their support. We've also worked with primary schools on creating their own native habitat gardens.

Northwestern

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Other not-for-profits

Recently we led the effort for passing a Healthy Building ordinance, involving x, y and z.

Businesses

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Property owners

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The case for joining Climate Action Evanston

In the United States, in the current political context, climate action at the local level is facing considerably less intense headwinds than at the national level. Most progress can be made in towns, like Evanston, that have strong track records and are committed to aggressive future action. Pioneering action in such locations have spillover impact, helping providing examples and guidance to later adopters to speed their progress.

We know, from first hand experience, that the activism we have provided has been critical to Evanston's climate accomplishments. As the city enters a new phase, in which the metaphoric low hanging fruit has already been plucked, we are redoubling our efforts to help Evanston shine as a model city to be proud of and for other communities to learn from.

You're Needed! Here Are Some Involvement Opportunities

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Join our more than 2,400 subscribers and get monthly updates on what’s going on with climate action in and around Evanston. It’s free.

Volunteer

Our programs are always seeking volunteers. Visit their home pages to learn more about the opportunities they offer.

Newsletter coordinator needed

Learn more Learn more

On a monthly basis we are seeking someone to gather content from our team of providers, use editorial judgement to clean up and sequence submissions, and prepare them for uploading to our newsletter template. See details in this position posting on VolunteerEvanston.

Although we’re a volunteer organization, we have expenses. Increasing our revenues allows us to budget to do more. Help us build the capacity to better support all our programs, or target your donation to a specific program.