Sustainable Princeton to Launch Two Environmental Initiatives for Residents

Sustainable Princeton has received a $10,000 grant from the J. Seward Johnson Sr. Charitable Trust to conduct two pilot environmental projects in Princeton.

Housewarming and By The Yard encourage residents to save energy in their homes and eliminate pesticides from their lawns.    

Housewarming, a project with the New Jersey Energy Corps, will provide home energy improvement assistance to 10 homes in Princeton, with a focus on senior citizens. Participating households will receive an on-site consultation and help to make small home improvements to lower energy bills. Each household will be asked to share its electric bills before and after the project and report any improvements to Sustainable Princeton and the community.  

“The Housewarming project has been a dream of mine for some time," said Heidi Fichtenbaum, a Sustainable Princeton board member and LEED accredited architect with Farewell Architects, LLC. "By sharing information about the project with the community we can teach so many individuals about the benefits of energy improvements for their homes including saving money, fewer drafts and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

The second project, By the Yard, will provide households households that use lawn pesticides with pesticide-free options. Participants will receive a water test kit, rain barrel and a free lawn consultation. In turn, households will test water runoff and provide write ups about their findings.

Sustainable Princeton give out 100 lawn ornaments to families whose lawns are already pesticide free.  Sustainable Princeton will partner with the Whole Earth Center in Princeton on this project.