An information session on the challenge is set for Wednesday at Theoretically Brewing (Photo courtesy Environment Lethbridge)

By Justin Goulet

Helping the Environment

Residents issued new environmental challenge

Jun 10, 2019 | 10:58 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – On the heels of Environment Week, local group Environment Lethbridge has put out the Intensive Green Challenge.

It builds off the group’s annual Green Challenge, where residents have been encouraged to take five different actions over a 30-day period to reduce their environmental footprint.

“This time, we’re focusing in with different households asking them to focus in one of four areas, so water, waste, food and then energy and transportation,” said Kathleen Sheppard, Environment Lethbridge’s Executive Director.

“Over the course of three months, those households will basically do a deep dive into that area and really undertake a variety of actions to try and reduce their environmental footprint along that theme.”

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Sheppard explained that the group is focused on ways for people to take their own steps to help the environment. She said they want to move beyond “the workshop approach” – where people learn about something, get excited but are not able to implement them once they get home.

“This will give people hands-on support,” she said.

“People will kind of meet in groups, they will have support from some of our team to help them really identify those actions, figure out which things are easy, which are maybe a little bit more difficult and sort of help them work through the process that way.”

This is the first time Environment Lethbridge has issued the Intensive Green Challenge, and Sheppard said they’re very excited about it. She noted that feedback to past initiatives has been positive.

“I think people really appreciate having the ability to identify different actions they can take and getting support to help them do that,” she said.

“Sometimes it can be really overwhelming – you know, there’s lots of different messages out there about ‘taking your reusable bags’ and ‘turn off your lights’ … this just gives people that extra support to help guide them through the process and I think everyone really appreciates that.”

An information session is scheduled for Wednesday, June 12 at 7:00 p.m. at Theoretically Brewing so residents and interested parties can learn more about the initiative.

Registration for the information session can be done here.

“Once we have people who are interested, then we’ll be asking people to sort of officially commit to the three-month program,” Sheppard said.

“We’re looking at four different groups and we’d like to have six to eight households in each, so I guess that’s about 25 to 30 households in total.”

The Intensive Green Challenge will start up on June 21 and run through to September. More details can be found at environmentlethbridge.ca.