To promote sustainability within village operations, Vernon Hills is joining the Greenest Region Compact.
Trustees gave the go-ahead at their Feb. 2 meeting with the aim being to meet a series of goals on the village level to go greener.
Resident Simrata Keshav spearheaded the effort to get the village to join. Keshav has been heavily involved in the past in several other green efforts, including the founding of Go Green Vernon Hills-Lincolnshire, which is a citizens environmental group that offers resources and information “that will allow us to live more sustainably,” according to its Facebook page.
Growing up in the Middle East, Keshav said conservation of resources, particularly water since it was a scarce resource in the area, were instilled in her as a child. Little things, like turning off the water while brushing your teeth, were things always told to her by her parents. Food was another thing, with anything that is put on your plate needing to be eaten.
“My dad would always say … ‘A family that wastes would never be successful,'” she said, which she called a rough translation. “In a sense, God doesn’t look kindly on people that waste.”
Taking these values with her, Keshav, who has been a Vernon Hills resident since 2017, said she began these efforts when she noticed there wasn’t much of a sustainability presence in the area. To spearhead the effort, she began working with the schools in the areas and the village.
To start, she noticed that communities surrounding the village had programs that allowed food waste to be diverted from a landfill. She said food waste by itself has a large carbon footprint, adding that if it were its own country, it would have the third-largest carbon footprint in the world.
“We advocated for having that program for Vernon Hills,” she said. “It was the right thing to do for the environment.”
It was through this Go Green network the GRC was brought to Keshav’s attention. While she said the village had taken steps toward sustainability in the past, she said there needed to be a specific plan of action toward sustainability.
“These things cannot be one-offs anymore,” she said. “There has to be a … strategic plan to address climate change.”
Enter the GRC, which was launched in 2016 and is supported by the Metropolitan Mayor’s Caucus (MMC). The GRC was created as a sort of update to a pledge originally created in 2007, which at the time included almost 100 communities, according to the MMC’s website. The program is specifically aimed at municipalities.
Since then, it has grown to include about 140 communities and promotes 49 “high-level goals.” These goals involve working toward climate, economic development, energy, land, leadership, mobility, improving municipal operations, sustainable communities, waste and recycling, and water. Each category has a handful of goals.
Keshav said being in the GRC is like having a map. And even if you make the wrong turn, it might take a little longer to get there, but the guide still remains.
“It really is a great guide for the communities that adopt it because it helps to align them not just to regional goals, but national as well as global goals,” Keshav said.
Keshav said the village, particularly Assistant Village Manager Jon Petrillo, has been open to not just hearing the suggestions brought to them regarding sustainability, but working to make the various changes. This included amending their waste hauler contract to allow for organics collection.
“It was very commendable,” Keshav said. “When I speak to other communities, they’ve told us they’ve been fighting this (waste hauler) battle for years. So they were pretty amazed how Vernon Hills turned this around so quickly.”
At the board’s Feb. 2 meeting, Petrillo gave a presentation to trustees on what the GRC all entails. He also detailed some of the changes the village has made to promote recycling and sustainability, such as water bottle fillers installed in municipal buildings, and reducing plastic use.
Petrillo added at the meeting that there was no cost or commitment, as the municipalities are expected to undertake the goals in good faith.
“We’ve achieved a lot,” Petrillo said at the meeting. “We feel we have been leading the way. Maybe the one thing we need to do better is maybe putting it in the categories and defining what we’re doing. I think it’d be a tremendous achievement to say what we’re doing as we lead into Earth Day.”
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Following Petrillo’s comments, Mayor Roger Byrne said the village has been actively involved in making Vernon Hills more green. Several trustees also chimed in saying they were in support of it, with one calling it a “no-brainer.”
“We’ve been a tree city for (25) years,” Byrne said. “We’re doing this as we speak.”
Whereas some places are seeing hurricanes or wildfires, Keshav said central Lake County, as well as the broader region, are seeing more severe flooding, as well as extreme temperatures. She said these factors will continue to affect various things, like living and infrastructure, as well as disease.
Still, even with these looming issues, she said she feels excited about some of what has been going on. She cited various legislation that is being kicked around to help address some of the issues, such as single-use Styrofoam.
“People who believe in (climate change), they believe, yes it’s coming, yes it’s coming,” she said. “But it’s not coming anymore, it’s here.”