Transition Sooke shared a variety of green ideas with Sooke council recently, and Mayor Maja Tait said the new library could be at the top of the list towards creating a more sustainable future for the district.
Transition Sooke works year round to try and lessen Sooke’s carbon footprint, and has a vision for the community to become self-sustainable by 2050.
“We are at a crossroads of fossil fuels of the past and renewable energy for the future,” Marion Pape, a member of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, told council’s committee-of-the-whole on Nov. 6.
Some of the ideas pitched at the presentation included adding solar panels to public buildings, capturing methane from organics, providing climate smart organic lunches for children at school, encouraging residents to use an alternate form of transportation for every fourth trip, making community events waste free, promoting a buy local policy, supporting wind power, and to build a solar farm in Sooke.
Tait suggested that promoting residents to buy local, and using alternate forms of transportation such as carpooling, were good ideas for short-term goals in the community, as well as the possibility of having the new library use renewable energy.
“I don’t want to speculate as to what the library has in mind, but I think as the library has its plans formalized and we see what the building is actually going to look like, there could be an opportunity there to look at a more green, sustainable building,” she said.
She added that the district has been working hard on minimizing its waste output internally, but is looking for ways to encourage the rest of the municipality to do something similar.
“As we go forward we should be mindful of the need to move towards being a more renewable economy and plan for a more sustainable future, so I think their presentation just gave us a few ideas on ways to do that,” said Tait.
For more information on Transition Sooke, please go online to www.transitionsooke.org.