Sustainable Moorestown’s mission is to promote the economic vitality, social equity and environmental quality of Moorestown, as well as act as an advisory committee for the township.
To help fulfill those goals, the volunteer-run organization is asking residents to complete a survey sharing their ideas and perspectives on sustainable issues that affect the township and our planet in the areas of transportation, energy, waste, water, environmental conservation and people.
“We have spent the past few months discussing as a team the different potential issues that community members could participate in or may have concerns (about) or need to learn more about,” said Sustainable Moorestown’s Sue Gilman. “We started with a very broad scope of issues and decided to narrow it down to a more feasible survey for people to complete.”
The committee looked at a variety of elements – such as transportation, environmental conservation and issues surrounding people in the community – and looked at areas where people may already be living sustainably. Sustainable Moorestown also looked at areas where people would like to learn more and see more initiatives taken to live sustainably, either personally or as a community.
“This is a summary of several months of work to decide what would be the most applicable for our committee to pursue further initiatives, whether recommendations to the town council or areas to develop community outreach,” Gilman explained.
“We needed to get an assessment of where people currently are as far as what they’re already doing in their lives to live sustainably.”
Sustainable Moorestown’s many accomplishments are listed on its website, including the committee’s launch of the Green Business Recognition program in September 2020, completion of the eighth year of energy tracking with the township in May 2020, and Moorestown’s eighth annual vehicle inventory with township staff in 2020.
When it came to the survey, Sustainable Moorestown also looked at the use of electric vehicles in the township, as well as how many residents use home solar. Gilman pointed out how the survey is a win win for residents and committee members, specifically when it comes to what people can learn from one another.
“If there are any areas where they might be interested in learning more information about something, perhaps our team could look into more community outreach and education to inspire people and inform people to take some more sustainable initiatives in their own lives,” she noted.
The survey includes open-ended questions such as, “What suggestions do you have for making Moorestown more sustainable?” and “How would you like to get involved?” According to Gilman, such questions were designed to help people share their thoughts on certain issues in ways that can’t be captured through yes or no.
“We really wanted to give individuals room to share and explore their perspectives, their ideas on sustainability, and there may be things that they’ve thought of that we have not,” she observed. “And it would be great to hear their perspectives.”
“We would like them to take that opportunity to share their perspectives if it didn’t quite get covered in the initial questions of the survey.”
The link for the survey can be found at https://sustainablemoorestown.org or the committee’s Facebook page.
