Our Reduce Your UseTMGrant road show continued this past week with deliveries in Nocona, Tyler, Dallas and Brownwood.
In Nocona we toured an old meat factory (complete with an unexpected narrative of what went on in the kill room) that will be Nocona Grace Place’s new food pantry location. What’s cool about being in the meat locker is that you can smell a hint of goodness in the smoke room and that they are keeping some of the architecture the same, including the big freezer doors. James and Gayle, who founded Grace Place, will purchase energy-efficient ceiling fans with their grant.
We took a drive down to Tyler to explore the Discovery Science Place. What a cool museum. If you have kids, you need to make this quick trip. (I didn’t have time to stop but I hear there is a great blueberry farm outside Canton that could round out a day trip.) The museum will be changing out its light bulbs to CFLs with its grant.
Interfaith Housing Coalition adminstrative offices are in a very old building. Facilities manager Tom says there is “zero” insulation in the building. “Not just a little, none,” he added. IHC’s Reduce Your Use Grant will go a long way to helping reduce their energy usage now that they’ll be some protection in the roof to keep that cool air in this summer!
Finally, we took a road trip down to Brownwood to meet with the Brownwood Beautification Commission. We got a video tour of the new community plaza that will feature:
- Solar lighting
- Permanent citywide clean-up events, in-town recycling and educational classes about environmental issues;
- Permeable driveway, parking area and walkways to demonstrate low impact and storm water friendly alternative to asphalt and concrete;
- Demonstration garden of native and well-adapted plants of this region to teach citizens low water usage gardening techniques;
- Compost; and
- Outdoor, hands-on learning environment for schools to use with specific sites developed that enhance curricula such as Waste In Place and Project Learning Tree.
Check out all the photos from our grant presentations on our Facebook and Flickr pages.
