Imagine a father and daughter fishing in a nearby lake and eating the healthy and plentiful fish they catch, without the fear of PCBs, dioxins, and other poisons...

Imagine families living near a factory, having a meaningful voice in the decisions that affect their health, safety, and environment...

Imagine a worker actively participating in decisions that protect his or her health and safety, including reducing the use of toxic chemicals in the work place...

Imagine a manufacturer saving money and reducing pollution and long-term liability by integrating pollution prevention into the core business practices at a factory...

Imagine agency officials moving beyond oversight and beginning to optimize the connections between business, environment, and community...

Imagine a household buying safe and affordable locally-produced foods...

Imagine citizens choosing between a number of affordable, efficient, and environmentally-sound transportation options...

Imagine a community where many diverse sectors of society work together towards shared solutions to community problems...

These visions represent a piece of what we call a Sustainable Community. A sustainable community is our shared vision of a better tomorrow. The strength of a sustainable community lies in its ability to integrate economic, environmental, and social forces to forge innovative, enduring, and comprehensive solutions to current and future challenges. While our vision of sustainability is broad and far-reaching, the steps we take towards this goal must be concrete, measurable, and real.

The Environmental Sustainability Kit is a set of tools-ideas, procedures, and resources-to help local leaders, residents, and businesses work toward making their own communities more sustainable. While sustainability encompasses many things, from affordable health care and housing to a safe and clean environment, we have focused the Environmental Sustainability Kit on the environmental and pollution prevention aspects of sustainable communities efforts.

Pollution prevention has been shown to be a win-win solution for society, for the economy, and for the environment. In addressing and implementing pollution prevention opportunities in our communities, we can show real, demonstrable, and measurable successes. This can mean developing "Good Neighbor" agreements between residents and local industries, promoting policies that encourage pollution prevention, or creating community supported agriculture cooperatives. Building on initial success, the local community can turn to other problems-and take further steps toward the long-term goal, a sustainable community.

While the examples in this Kit focus on pollution prevention as a strategy towards a more sustainable community, the inclusive approach of the Kit makes it useful for any sustainable community initiative. Our social, economic, and environmental problems are interconnected. By inviting all interested parties to consider these problems, we have a better chance of arriving at enduring solutions that set our communities on a more sustainable course. We believe that the best way to democratize decision-making and invigorate public involvement is to bring many interests to the table in a multi-stakeholder team. Using pollution prevention and multi-stakeholder strategies, this Environmental Sustainability Kit attempts to help you create sustainable change, one step at a time.

How can you use the Environmental Sustainability Kit?

The following ten sections of the Kit are modular in nature and can be used independently of each other. Depending upon the needs of a particular project, we encourage you to use the sections that are most useful in the order that seems most appropriate. Each section has a picture associated with it that can be found on every page of the section. When other sections are referred to in the text, they will be set apart from adjoining text using the Brushscript Font. At the beginning of every section, a cover page provides a brief overview of the main points of the section. The ten cover pages taken together can be used to introduce a newcomer to the Environmental Sustainability Kit without overwhelming him/her with the entire document. Many sections have worksheets and examples to help you apply the ideas contained in the section, and resource lists to guide you to additional information. We hope that you find the Environmental Sustainability Kit valuable in your efforts toward creating a more sustainable community.