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Trudy Ingram, a locally based ecologist and environmental consultant with over 25 years of experience in natural resource protection and environmental permitting, will present “Go Green Ojai, Part II: A Model for Sustainable Solutions.” She will review how we in the Ojai Valley use—and misuse—nature’s resources.

“Everything we eat, wear, drive, buy and throw away comes from the earth,” Ingram says. “A community’s footprint is the land area needed to produce the resources and to absorb the wastes of that community.”

Following up on recommendations created at May 12’s event “Go Green Ojai, An Environmental Summit,” the Ojai Valley Green Coalition was looking for ways to establish goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and improving energy efficiency and sustainability in our Valley.

While acknowledging international, national and state environmental goals, OVGC had started with the premise that the Ojai Valley is a special place, with its own, unique set of environmental issues. But how to determine the special needs of The Ojai Valley? And how to measure how successfully Valley residents and businesses could make the adjustments necessary to develop the Ojai Valley into the “Model Green Community” of OVGC’s mission statement?

It turns out that five years ago Ingram partnered with Redefining Progress, a California research and policy nonprofit group, and GeoInsight International to calculate and map the ecological footprint of the Ojai Valley. Thus, OVGC found that we actually have one benchmark against which Ojai Valley residents and the various governmental bodies in our Valley can prioritize ways to reduce our planetary impact and measure the progress of those actions.

So, the OVGC is urging you, once again, to come to learn with them—free of charge—the actual ecological footprint of The Ojai Valley and help identify ways we can reduce that footprint.

Following Ingram’s presentation, the OVGC will demonstrate how each of us can create and calculate his or her own individual ecological footprint.