Green, Organic and Healthy Living Articles

Got Planetary Emergency? Sustainable Ballard Heeds the Call! By Vic Opperman

Dear Neighbors,

Thanks to all of you for taking steps to create a healthier planet! With many climate scientists believing we are in a planetary emergency, everyone is on this spectrum toward sustainability, where all efforts count. Every morning I ask myself “What would Sustainable Ballard do?” Every day each of our choices add up to a huge impact! I tally my personalized checklist, which now includes how I will be good to the planet from the moment I wake up and start making carbon-related co2 decisions.  I brew the coffee (shade grown, purchased from a local vendor) and select how to get to work (walk, bike, scooter, bus, carpool, or Flexcar). I love telling my friends that I walk to work, or that my total gas amounts to less than $5.00 a week, and sharing how I do it. I love sharing ways to live simply, as each step brings me greater financial savings, greater peace of mind, greater health to the planet, and my favorite: greater time. 

When Sustainable Ballard began four years ago, the world was just starting to wake up to the climate crisis and peak oil, and "sustainability" was still a word we needed to explain. Since then, media attention and public awareness have increased dramatically, as we learn more about the dire circumstances we are living in. And every day we hear encouraging new stories of how people (including school children), organizations, companies, and governments are contributing to positive change for the sake of our planet. 

Sustainable Ballard, “A Blueprint for EveryTown USA,” builds community and takes action on a neighborhood level to counteract the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. With a membership of more than 900 neighbors and an active wiki-based web site (www.sustainableballard.org), we aspire to make changes in our own lives and in our community to create a healthier planet. 

Together, neighbors are getting out of their cars and walking, biking, carpooling, bussing, and scootering instead. We are growing our own food, raising chickens, capturing rainwater, and getting our homes audited for energy usage. We are going carbon neutral by buying carbon offsets and reducing our footprints. We are discovering the joys of eating local, buying local, building community, sustainable landscaping, and green building. We are enjoying our neighbors, schools, churches, businesses, and organizations.

Our flagship event is our annual Fall Sustainability Festival. Our 3rd annual festival (www.fest.sustainableballard.org) counted 5000 participants, filling the new Ballard Commons Park. This year, our festival will be 2 days, September 29-30, with even more interactive energy. 

We co-sponsored the 4th annual Eat Local Now dinner (www.eatlocalnow.sustainableballard.org) with BALLE and Ballard High School students. We served a totally local, gourmet meal to 320 guests, with food donated by local farmers, fisherman and ranchers, and prepared by celebrity chefs. 

We are delighted to see Sustainability Festivals becoming as common as Farmer’s Markets, and we are thrilled that mainstream festivals are adding sustainability as a major focus. The Ballard Chamber of Commerce (www.ballardchamber.com) has added a “Sustainability Corral” to its annual Seafood Festival July 28-29. The Chamber office is the first in Washington State to become carbon-neutral!

We’ve described Sustainable Ballard (SB) as a Blueprint for Everytown, USA. Over the past couple years, local groups like SB have been sprouting up all over, as neighbors act toward creating a more sustainable planet. We helped launch the newest adventure, called SCALLOPS – a group of 33 “Sustainable Communities ALL Over Puget Sound.” SCALLOPS groups can compare notes, share successes, troubleshoot challenges, and get inspiration and ideas from each other, so no one needs to waste precious time reinventing any wheels. We’re all in this together!

If you are in greater Ballard, come to SB! (www.sustainableballard.org), or there may be a SCALLOPS group near you (www.scallops.sustainableballard.org). And if there isn’t, why not start one? Get a few neighbors together, and talk about how you can reduce your carbon footprints and reduce your energy usage. There is no better place to start than right where you are — start building it and people will come! None of us do this alone — we are all part of a greater surge in the last great fight for the planet; finished with presidents that do not represent our values and blood shed in our name for oil. We can do much better than this and we are, one person at a time, trying one bold project at a time.

– Vic Opperman

Co-Founder, President 2004-2007
Sustainability Committee Chair
Sustainable Ballard - A Blueprint for EveryTown USA