About Sustainable Jersey
  
Sustainable JerseyTM is a certification and incentive program for municipalities in New Jersey that want to go green, save money, and take steps to sustain their quality of life over the long term.  Sustainable Jersey will have Required and Elective “actions” that municipalities can implement to receive the certification. These actions address issues such as global warming, pollution, biodiversity, buying locally, community outreach, green building, and sustainable agriculture.

Achieving the certification does not mean a municipality is "sustainable". Rather, it connotes that the municipality has taken the first significant step on a long journey towards sustainability.

Sustainable Jersey will provide municipalities that enter the program with a comprehensive package of tools, guidance materials, training, and financial incentives, to support and reward progress. Sustainable Jersey will provide direction and resources for municipalities to institute programs that address sustainability and green communities.

Sustainable Jersey is an initiative of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities’ Mayors’ Committee for a Green Future, the Municipal Land Use Center at The College of New Jersey, The New Jersey Sustainable State Institute at Rutgers University, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, the Rutgers Center for Green Building, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, and a coalition of NJ non-profits, state agencies, and experts in the field.

The Mayors’ Committee for a Green Future and NJ State League of Municipalities will provide recognition to “sustainable communities” - those communities that adopt, support, and implement a specified set of sustainability and greening initiatives. After the first year, the project partners will release a second round of actions, tools, and incentives, raising the bar and moving municipalities further down the road to a green future. The process is intended to be a long term effort that will build on past successes and become a staple among local greening and sustainability efforts in New Jersey..

Sustainable Jersey plans to accept the first municipal participants into the program in February 2009. Municipalities that complete the certification requirements will be recognized at an annual awards event held at the New Jersey League of Municipalities Conference in Atlantic City.