Friday, March 29, 2024

Reaching Sustainability

Local company helps residents achieve maximum enviornmental friendliness

June 29, 2011

Nonprofit organization Michigan Energy Options, 405 Grove St., hosted a worm composting workshop Tuesday evening to teach people how to build their own composting bins. The organization aims to educate communities about different ways to live a more energy efficient life through a variety of programs and services.

Photo by Michelle Martinelli | The State News

In an effort to reduce her carbon footprint, Lansing resident Kiirsten Olson uses worm composting bins to efficiently dispose of her garbage.

Wanting to better the process and learn what she might not have been doing properly, Olson attended a worm composting workshop Tuesday at Michigan Energy Options, 405 Grove St., a nonprofit organization focused on helping people live more energy efficiently.

At the workshop, outreach and education manager Becky Jo Farrington and programs assistant Marissa Stern educated people about the process of red worms serving as decomposers and taught the group how to make a composting bin.

Like Olson, many people who attend the workshops — held at various times during the year — already have composting bins, but they want to confirm the best and most efficient method of composting.

“I have done worm composting already, and I do a lot of worm composting because I want to reduce my footprint and make sure I have as little trash as possible,” Olson said. “I think there’s no sense in sending it to a landfill if I can take care of it myself.”

With many local and statewide programs — especially with an additional office in Marquette, Mich. — Michigan Energy Options, or MEO, is driven toward education and providing assistance to those who want to live more efficient lives.

In addition to the composting workshop, MEO reaches out to children. Working with the city of Lansing, the nonprofit goes to elementary schools and teaches children how to build composting bins.

“It gets kids excited about recycling garbage,” said Stern, a recent MSU graduate. “They already know how to recycle, reuse and reduce — that they get taught when they’re very young, … and it has an impact on them when they go home as well.”

Reaching out
Started in East Lansing 33 years ago, the goal of MEO — previously known as Urban Options — is to share the benefits of energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainability and provide people with the means to implement necessary changes in their lives, executive director Dr. John A. Kinch said.

“If people begin to see the benefits of conserving energy both to their wallets and also the larger benefits to society, such as reducing climate change, they’re going to buy into it and become more of a lifelong practitioner of energy efficiency,” Kinch said.

Working with Lansing Board of Water and Light, a current MEO program is working with households struggling to pay utility bills. The free program helps people change their behavior — at little to no cost to their homes — to lower their utility bills.

Another program, in cooperation with the city of Lansing, is the energy fitness program for low-income homeowners or renters who live within the city limits.

Also a free program, Lansing has provided funding since 1989 for MEO to do home energy audits to identify areas where people could be more energy efficient and provide them with the tools to make the changes and save money.

“It’s an educational experience because we go in there and teach people how to (make energy changes) themselves as well as provide $100-worth weatherization kits they can use,” Stern said.

For people who do not qualify for the free audits, MEO still provides inexpensive audits for different income levels.

Although Lansing subsidizes MEO’s efforts, the city of East Lansing has not provided funding in more than 30 years, Farrington said.

Because of this, MEO provides the same services but for a fee to East Lansing residents, such as MSU alumnus Michael Belligan.

Following the audit through Belligan’s house, MEO provided him with a weatherization kit and demonstrations for how to apply the tools that were not self-explanatory. Since his audit in December 2010, he said he’s seen improvements with his utility bills.

“The most beneficial thing was they came through with the thermal camera and showed us parts of the house where there might be missing insulation or where we could use more,” Belligan said.

Split incentive problems
Although homeowners are open to MEO’s efficiency suggestions, renters — particularly college students who are not permanent residents — are more hesitant to make drastic changes because they have no real incentive.

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In a high-rental community like East Lansing, students might want to live efficient and sustainable lives, but this often takes significant investments to the property.

“(Students) pay high rent and can do things to cut energy costs, but why would a student buy a highly-efficient refrigerator when the refrigerator stays with the property?” Kinch said. “So the split incentive is a real issue, and I think it’s one that a community like East Lansing needs to address.”

Although there’s not a solution to the split incentive problems, MEO offers assistance to students and renters in other ways to help them save energy and lower utility bills without permanent changes.

“They’re extremely helpful (to students) in terms of teaching them weatherization techniques that are very accessible to them, like getting the tools at the hardware store for weatherizing windows and filling leaks around the house,” Stern said.

Statewide support
Despite much of the nonprofit’s work benefiting the Lansing area, the organization has many statewide programs.

Its compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL, program introduced CFLs to millions of people around the state by providing the substitutes for incandescent light bulbs at a reduced cost and showing people how to properly recycle them.

The lights also are made in warmer tones compared to the harsh lighting they once provided.

“They use 75 percent less energy than the standard incandescent, so they last a lot longer, and they use less energy over the course of their lifetime,” Kinch said. “Now that the cost is comparable to what an incandescent is, it’s a no-brainer that people should be moving to that.”

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