Ewing isn’t thinking small about sustainability. Mainly because thinking small is what has kept real sustainability at bay since it first became a buzzword 25 years ago.
Rather, the township’s effort towards sustainability is much larger than just recycling soda bottles and switching to energy-efficient light bulbs.
“It’s not just making businesses greener,” says Michael Nordquist, co-chair with Joanne Mullowney of the Sustainable Ewing Green Team. “It’s about contributions to the cultural and social fabric of Ewing Township.”
The Green Team’s efforts have not gone unrecognized — the township was awarded Silver Certification by Sustainable Jersey at the N.J. League of Muninicpalities Conference in Atlantic City on Nov. 15. Sustainable Jersey is a nonprofit organization that provides tools, training and financial incentives to support communities as they pursue sustainability programs. Ewing is one of only 39 municipalities in the state to achieve Silver Certification.
Sustainable Jersey’s certification programs work on a points-for-actions system. Silver Certification, currently the highest level of certification, means a municipality has earned 350 points — awarded for actions such as good land use measures, reducing the municipal carbon footprint, and implementing energy efficiency measures.
In addition to the Silver Certification, Ewing also won the Sustainability Champion Award for Medium Size Municipalities (towns with populations between 5,000 and 39,999) for receiving the highest number of points — 460 — in its population category. In fact, Ewing has the second-most points out of any municpality in the state excluding Woodbridge Township.
When not fighting the green fight, Nordquist serves as the interim executive director for the Center for Community Based Learning and Research at the College of New Jersey. He also teaches in the Department of Political Science there. He grew up in the Lehigh Valley, which he says has a similar, diverse cultural makeup to Ewing. So when he moved to the Hillwood Lakes neighborhood in 2012, it felt more like home than he might have expected.
At TCNJ, Nordquist helps connect students through the center to the community through lots of “small things” like community outreach events and programs. The kinds of things he says don’t seem like much individually, but add up to a lot.
Mullowney is a retired librarian who’s lived in Ewing since 1975. For years, she served as the IT librarian at the East Brunswick Public Library, where she led staff members through computer training. This background is why she serves as the Green Team’s website developer and as the person in charge of getting the word out online.
She lives in Hillwood Manor, across from Antheil Elementary School, where in her retired years she spends a lot of time building what she calls “a front porch community.” The kind of neighborhood where people sit outside and talk to the neighbors, because when neighbors talk and common directions rise, she says, things get done.
“That’s how I came to this,” she says of the Green Team. “I was a gardener.”
She means her own garden, of course. But getting outside and chatting with the neighbors over gardening led to getting involved in food drives and sustainability, and then in 2013, she joined the Green Team.
Both she and Nordquist make the point that the strength of the Green Team lies in the fact that it is a citizen’s organization. It’s not some unattainable office you’re elected into. Residents can join and make a difference, Mullowney says.
“It’s a great way to become an activist,” she says.
Ewing is one of only 39 municipalities in the state to achieve Silver Certification.
Nordquist says that the Green Team is trying to engage sustainability on an economic, cultural and social scale. If a town doesn’t have a vibrant and sustainable community overall, it’s not going to have any ongoing environmental stewardship. Weaving that social and cultural fabric means getting through to people in town through various ways, he says.
The idea of smaller engines and reusing old bottles was still something you had to be reminded to do 40 years ago, he says. Today, people don’t think so much about it. It’s actually more normal to separate recyclables than it is to throw everything into the same garbage bag.
Getting to that stage, though, has taken a long time, and getting further will take even more time and patience, Mullowney says.
Next up for the Green Team is the quality of life stage — things like bike paths and open space and parks acquisitions. Not long ago, these types of initiatives were seen as related to, but separate from other environmental efforts, such as more efficient HVAC systems in office buildings. Now they are recognized as part of the same environmental effort.
For Mullowney, baby steps is the key. The township has made a lot of progress over the past couple decades, she says, in part because it has done a little here and a little there that adds up. Getting to a sustainable future means recognizing that accumulation is a much more effective strategy than trying to eat the whole problem in one bite.
It also means recognizing that no one wants a lecture.
“People are tremendously busy,” she says. “That’s why we’re looking to build partnerships.”
Those partnerships are happening with several entities, such as the Ewing Arts Commission and the Ewing Historical Society, and with business and community organizations and neighborhood associations. They help the Green Team to expose people to what the Green Team is doing and how well it’s doing it.
Community visioning was one thing Sustainable New Jersey recognized Ewing for. It refers to the township’s efforts to reach out to people and ask what they wanted in terms of sustainability.
Mullowney says the key to finding out the directions people wanted to go in (they want more outdoor recreation and more cleaned-up brownfields like the former GM plant) was to not direct them, but to listen. Now that the township knows, she says, it can direct its actions towards making Ewing more sustainable.
More hard work is needed, Mullowney says, and that work needs to be concentrated on getting through to people a little at a time. That means being patient and working around the realities of people’s lives.
“If we can get them into the room, they will see what we are doing,” she says. “The issue is getting people into the room.”
Nordquist says the effort to get through to people also must face the reality that Ewing is a pretty diverse place. Different neighborhoods have different attitudes and different cultural fabrics. Part of the visioning the Green Team undertook was to find out what these different sections of town think.
Nordquist says that the Green Team is putting together ideas on how to communicate to different areas of town, because think about it: folks on Olden Avenue have a different Ewing experience than folks in Mountainview.
One way to get through is the children, he says. Another is older folks. Working-age residents have a lot of time commitments and a lot going on; it’s hard to get messages through to them. Children, on the other hand, are already receptive to learning, and older residents have more time to try new things. The problem with the latter, of course, is that older people sometimes aren’t interested in changing anything.
That’s why children are a good place to concentrate, Mullowney says. Working with the schools to convey the importance of being good environmental stewards is planting the seeds for a greener future.
So far, Nordquist says, the township in all official capacities has been extremely helpful and receptive.
“The town has been very supportive,” he says. “If they can find a way to make it work, they’ll support the initiatives we have.”
For more information about the Green Team, go to ewinggreenteam.org.
Members of the Ewing Green Team show off their Silver Certification at the League of Municipalities Conference in Atlantic City on Nov. 15, 2016. Pictured are Green Team member Evan Crumiller, Green Team member Joe Mirabella, Mayor Bert Steinmann, Green Team co-chair Michael Nordquist, Councilwoman Sarah Steward, Randall Solomon of Sustainable Jersey, Green Team member Mary Corrigan, Green Team member John Hoegl, Green Team co-chair Joanne Mullowney and township planner Chuck Latini.,
