Jenny Heins is a local friend who organizes the massive Seattle Green Festival each Spring. But her year-round day job is running an organization called Sustainable Ballard here in Seattle (Ballard is one of our more hip neighborhoods).
They began in 2003 with the express goal of reducing that neighborhood dependence on foreign oil. Consider a not-too-distant world where gasoline and oil are not available, or some incredibly expensive that very few people can afford it. Stop for a moment and think about just how significant of an impact that would have on your daily life.
What changes would you want/need to see happen to your neighborhood so your community could continue to function, to survive, perhaps even to thrive? Sustainable Ballard is one such experiment.
Sustainable Ballard is now playing with our certified green + certified Fair Trade soccer balls (and our nifty “one-sleeve” tee shirts). I asked Jenny (pictured here in the front row, second from right) to do a guest blog post on her thoughts about our sustainable soccer balls and their community. Here it is:
What would Sustainable Ballard do?
At Sustainable Ballard, we don’t wake up every morning asking “what perfectly sustainable things will I do today?,” but we are always trying to think about little (and big) ways that we can change our habits to support a more just, inclusive and ecologically healthy world.
So last spring when a few of us discovered that we loved to play soccer, many of us were on teams that play all over the city. Boy, that is alot of driving. So, what’s more sustainable? Local pick up games.
We found a field available on Sunday afternoons and started a regular scrimmage and advertised it to the whole Sustainable Ballard crew. We found about 15 people interested in playing, so we regularly had a good 3 on 3 scrimmage. Then one weekend another group of 6 or so people showed up at the same field at the same time to scrimmage. A group of friends who had all gone to Western together and now live in the Ballard area. Perfect.
We combined forces. And it gave us an opportunity to talk about sustainability with new friends from Ballard.
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jenny heins :: president
www.sustainableballard.org
