Okotoks residents can get a little help this summer to find ways to conserve water and energy at their homes.
The Town of Okotoks will once again have four conservation educators who will be out at community events and going door-to-door this summer.
The educators are able to help in a number of areas, from reducing water use to educating people about recycling initiatives and navigating through the new provincial rebate programs announced in recent months.
“There’s a lot of provincial programs that are coming out, so we’re going to try to educate Okotoks residents to take advantage of those,” said Dawn Smith, Okotoks sustainability co-ordinator.
She said the conservation educator program has evolved over the years since it was first developed a decade ago.
The Town is moving away from the door-to-door visits that have dominated their work over the years. Smith said the Town started to put more emphasis last year on being at community events and locations where people frequent, such as the Okotoks Recreation Centre, though they will still do some house calls.
“We’re discovering that with the way the community is structured these days a lot of people work in Calgary and they’re very busy so we find it’s very hard to get access to people,” she said. “Also, people are becoming less socially open to door-to-door, we’re getting less interaction and success at the door.”
With a range of new programs at the Town and provincial levels, education and awareness is also a key part of their job.
Smith said a priority for this year will be educating people about the Town’s curbside recycling and organics collection programs. She said it’ll help people to know how many different things can be put inside their green carts.
“People may not realize all the things that could be composted, it’s quite a diverse number of things,” said Smith.
She said they will also be raising awareness about ways people can reduce their energy use and ways to make their homes more efficient, as well as resources that are available from the town, including its DIY energy efficiency kits and rebates for home energy audits.
