Using our land wisely helps reduce climate change.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) amounts to over 80% of our
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). We can work at reducing these emissions, improve our resiliency to climate change by intelligent land practices, and draw down CO2 already in the atmosphere by using our land effectively.
Planting trees and native plants in the landscape and using regenerative soil practices stores carbon in the soil, creates “biomass” that pulls more carbon from the air as the plants grow, helps hold soil in place, provides natural cooling, and dramatically increases storm water retention.
Planting native plants, trees, and shrubs supports native insects including butterflies like the Monarch, native bees such as Bumblebees, and thousands of other native insects that are useful in pollination of our food crops and many other plants.
Go Green Deerfield’s Land and Water team is a group of citizens dedicated to furthering efforts in our community that focus on the above environmental practices.
We plan to work in collaboration with the Village of Deerfield, The Park District of Deerfield, the Sustainability Commission of Deerfield, corporate, community, and not-for-profit partners in Deerfield, and aim to help promote programs, initiatives, and practices in Deerfield to accomplish the following:
- Increase the tree canopy (area of leaf coverage) to 40% by 2025, which approaches the approximate amount of tree canopy prior to 2012, when we lost thousands of Ash trees to the Emerald Ash Borer.
- Increase the Deerfield recycling rate to 60% by 2020, and adding an community composting program for food waste.
- Develop regenerative soil practices in Deerfield and across our entire area, which incorporates the return of organic material to the soil. This is done by using practices such as leaving leaves and grass clippings in yards, and reducing or eliminating pesticide use.