If you want to support green energy in Quincy, come to City Hall on Monday, October 15th at 6:30 p.m. That’s when the city’s finance committee will discuss green municipal aggregation.

Municipal aggregation (also known as community choice aggregation) allows a municipality to purchase electricity in bulk on behalf of its residents and businesses. If Quincy were to join other communities nearby such as Brookline and Somerville and adopt green municipal aggregation, the city would increase the percentage of its electricity sourced from renewable energy. Electricity rates would likely stay about the same, and customers could easily opt out if they so chose.

During the committee meeting, Shelly Dein, Quincy’s energy and sustainability director, and Larry Chretien, executive director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance, will provide brief presentations on GMA.

To show your support for greening Quincy’s electrical grid, please join members of QCAN at the city meeting and write to thank the councilors who support the initiative: Nina Liang, Anne Mahoney, Ian Cain and Noel DiBona. Please also encourage your ward councilor to consider the benefits of green municipal aggregation.

How should we tackle climate change? “We need something like a moon shot, human genome project or Manhattan project,” says Charles DeLisi, a Boston University professor of science and engineering.

DeLisi knows firsthand the magnitude of what he’s proposing. In the 1980s, he helped spearhead the human genome project, a massive, worldwide effort that by 2003 had revealed just about every gene in our bodies.

Now, DeLisi is turning his attention to climate change and how to combat it, matters he’ll discuss in a free talk at the Thomas Crane Public Library (40 Washington Street in Quincy) on Tuesday, October 16, at 7 pm. The talk is sponsored by the library, the Quincy Climate Action Network, March Forward Quincy and the Quincy Making Waves Coalition.

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Those of us who recycle religiously like to think our discarded plastics and paper are ultimately finding their way into other useful objects. Unfortunately, now that may not always be the case.

Most municipalities in the United States have been shipping their recycled materials overseas. Although countries such as India and Vietnam accept recyclables, the bulk of reusable materials are sent to China.

Last year, China announced that it is tightening its standards, rejecting shipments that contain more than 0.5% non-recyclable materials. Common contaminants include plastic bags, styrofoam, and food waste (all containers should be rinsed).

Contamination results in thousands of dollars’ worth of fines to Quincy. Recycling properly, on the other hand, not only saves the city money but reduces our contribution to climate change because making products with recycled goods requires less energy – and therefore spews out fewer greenhouse gases – than making them from virgin materials.

So please read and follow Quincy’s new recycling guidelines to ensure that our recycled materials make it on to another life.

September 21, 2018

Until two years ago, Block Island, R.I., drew electric power from five noisy, polluting diesel generators that caused occasional brownouts across the resort community. But since December 2016, Block Island residents have breathed easier, thanks to the nation’s first offshore wind farm. The story of the five-turbine, 30 megawatt installation is told in the new documentary film Reinventing Power, which traces the meteoric rise of renewable energy across the U.S. The screening, cosponsored by Quincy Climate Action Network, the Massachusetts Sierra Club, and the Thomas Crane Public Library, will take place at the library, 40 Washington Street, Quincy, on Tuesday, October 2 at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and all are welcome.
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August 16, 2018

Dear Editor:

Last month, our state legislature enacted a bill that will help Massachusetts lower its emissions of greenhouse gases and slow the climate change that has been causing or exacerbating devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, record-breaking wildfires in the West, and sea level rise that contributed to the flooding from which we’re still recovering here in Quincy. Continue reading →

March 27, 2018

On Tuesday, April 10, Quincy Climate Action Network will cosponsor, along with the Thomas Crane Public Library and the Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station, the new documentary film Wasted! The Story of Food Waste.

In the film, solid-waste experts, along with celebrity foodies such as TV chef Anthony Bourdain and writer Mark Bittman, discuss how Americans can help save money, lives, and the planet – and experience some great new dishes – by taking a more thoughtful approach to food.  The movie will screen at 7 p.m. at the library’s main branch at 40 Washington Street in Quincy.

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