In 2018, the city of Duluth adopted a climate action plan with a goal of reducing emissions 80% by 2050 to help combat climate change. However, city controlled municipal emissions account for only about 4% of community-wide emissions.
The Duluth community, led by Ecolibrium3, drafted the Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan in 2020 to spread the city’s municipal goal community-wide. It consists of tangible steps residents can take to lessen their eco-footprint, from advocacy to consumer choices, with a goal of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030.
The challenge remains: how do we get people to actively participate in the climate action plan?
The Solution
The answer to the question of participation lies with GetGreen Duluth: a collaboration between GetGreen, Ecolibrium3, and Grid Catalyst under the common goal of engaging Duluth residents in climate action.
GetGreen is a mobile application designed to meet users where they are on their sustainability journey. The app is fully customizable, with the ability to add goals and actions that meet the needs of organizations and municipalities. For Duluth, this meant launching a Duluth version of GetGreen and molding the Duluth Citizens' Climate Action Plan into its own catalog of ‘green’ actions for the app.
GetGreen Duluth features more than 100 actions from the Duluth Citizens' Climate Action Plan, plus the 200+ actions from the standard GetGreen catalog. Duluth residents can download the app, take sustainable actions that directly benefit their community, and complete goals in a meaningful, measured way.
Ecolibrium3, Grid Catalyst and GetGreen worked in partnership to develop communication plans and spread awareness of the app. This included working with local environmental, municipal and energy partners, planning in-person events and leveraging local print and social media.
Results
The city of Duluth and it's community are taking meaningful steps to address the climate crisis, and in the process setting an example for other cities. The program launched November 1, 2022 with strong early results - the residents of Duluth reached over 25% of the engagement and action completion totals of the six month program in the first two weeks. The pilot program is scheduled to complete in May 2023.