Athens-Clarke County Unified Government will launch its newly created Sustainability Office on Saturday, July 1.
The Sustainability Office is dedicated to enhancing Athens-Clarke County’s commitment to conserve resources, grow the economy, and foster an environment where all citizens have the opportunity to prosper. The main mission of the office is to promote innovative practices and policies to reduce the Unified Government’s environmental footprint.
Former Environmental Coordinator, Andrew Saunders, will head the office as the Sustainability Officer. Mike Wharton, who formerly served as the Operations Administrator for the Leisure Service Department, will serve as the Ecological Resource Manager for the Sustainability Office.
Staff for the Sustainability Office are able to work across many different projects including energy and water conservation, local agriculture, natural resource management, and transportation. Some of the first assignments the office will tackle are to develop the plans and structure necessary to conduct ecological stewardship at properties owned by the Unified Government, to create a sustainability internship and peer learning program used to monitor and incorporate new ideas into the organization, and to coordinate programs to save energy and water at public facilities.
Athens Clarke County Sustainability Office is the fourth program of this type to exist in local Georgia communities. The cities of Atlanta, Savannah, and Decatur each have staff dedicated to sustainability programming. The cities of Atlanta, Savannah, and Decatur each have staff dedicated to sustainability programming.
The Sustainability Office was one of the new initiatives included in the Unified Government’s Fiscal Year 2018 Budget that runs from July 1, 2017 until June 30, 2018.