The Green Matters e-newsletter is designed to give you a glimpse of important sustainability initiatives happening around the metro Atlanta region and beyond. Whether it's the latest research, new educational offerings, environmental stewardship efforts or potential funding opportunities, this e-newsletter will help you stay abreast of what's happening in this important subject area.
‘Water is All We Have’: The World’s First Full-Fledged 'Water Bar' Opens in Minneapolis
Bill Lindeke, MINNPOST
Hot on the heels of the new vegan butcher shop comes another groundbreaking self-negation. Within a month Northeast Minneapolis is going to have the first full-fledged water bar of its kind, an establishment where you can sit and drink a variety of local tap waters to your heart's content. Their delightful motto: “Water is all we have.”
Though I can’t help but chuckle, the Water Bar is no joke. It’s the culmination of work from a team of Minneapolis social practice artists who specialize in community
engagement, and the idea is to start calling attention to the importance of communal water systems. For the next year they’ll be serving Twin Cities waters to the masses and, they hope, starting conversations that could not be more fundamental to our everyday lives.
WaterSense is a program developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to label products that are 20 percent more water efficient than the average usage of products in that category. New homes with the WaterSense label are designed to reduce residential water use indoors, as well as outdoors, compared to typical new homes. WaterSense labeled homes are independently inspected and certified to use 20 percent less water than typical new homes.
The City of Roswell offers incentives for the development of
WaterSense Labeled New Homes through its Roswell Builds Green program. Incentives are not only permit/fee related, but also seek to help market projects via signage, website, and an awards program.
Make it Personal
How to Conserve Water at Home
For Every Room in the House with Plumbing
– Consider replacing old equipment (like toilets, dishwashers, and laundry machines).
In the Kitchen – When cooking, peel and clean vegetables in a large bowl of water instead of under running water.
In the Bathroom
– Repair leaky toilets. Add 12 drops of food coloring into the tank. If the color appears in the bowl one hour later, your toilet is leaking.
Laundry – When purchasing a new washing machine, buy a water saving model that can be adjusted to the load size.
Outdoors
– When mowing your lawn, set the mower blades to 2-3 inches high. Longer grass shades the soil improving moisture retention and has more leaf surface to take in sunlight, allowing it to grow thicker and develop a deeper root system.
Non-profits Go Green with The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta’s Support
Grants to Green provides environmentally focused knowledge and funding to strengthen nonprofits. This partnership between The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and Southface
encourages metro Atlanta organizations to renovate or build healthier work places that are energy, water and environmentally efficient. The ultimate goal is to improve a non-profit organization’s building structure to not only have less of an environmental impact, but also to increase the cost-efficiency of operations, ideally saving more finances to provide more services.
Grants to Green has impacted over 165 non-profit organizations in the 23-county region. Information for 2016 grant cycles, including guidelines, applications and deadlines, will be posted later this month on
The Community Foundation’s website.