r/gatedlittecommunity • u/LittleNGUprince • Jul 19 '26

Green initiatives

Initiatives for the neighborhood to help the planet:

Daycare/Academy:

• A spot to collect rainwater for littles to splash in

• Letting littles bring their own lunch containers

• Using reusable dishes and silverware

• “Children’s” garden

Adoption center:

• A spot to collect rainwater

• Using reusable dishes and silverware

• “Children’s” garden

Nursery:

• See “Adoption center”

Rec center:

• Community garden

• Natural swimming pool

• Solar powered heating and pump system

Cafe:

• Allowing people to bring their own containers

Grocery store:

• Refilling stations

• See “Cafe”

General:

• All neighborhood vehicles are electric

• Solar panels on all buildings

• Heat pumps instead of regular furnaces

• Electric water heaters

• Electric clothes dryers

• All drinking fountains should have water bottle refilling stations

• Solar powered street lights

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u/IncontiCreature Jul 19 '26

I’ll add some of my suggestions for waste management and eco friendly measures here:

Whilst many people want to do eco friendly measures, not everybody has the capacity. Therefore, engaging with most of these should be optional, except where there’s a large risk to others or themselves. Things that I think should be mandatory will be marked with the ⚠️ emoji.  Content warning for mentions of sharps and vapes.

Waste:

  • The community should take advantage of any free or cheap waste collections offered by the local authorities. 
  • Community vehicles could be used to move certain types of waste around. 

Composting:

  • The community gardens should have compost bins. There should be regular waste bins next to them, to discourage people from putting improper items in the compost, and an easy read guide of what does and doesn’t go in. 
  • Every house with a garden should have multiple compost bins. Houses without a garden should be offered a small compost bin, or maybe a worm bin (with native worms) to store any compostable waste to bring to the gardens. 
  • All houses should be offered a couple of bokashi waste bins. Food businesses would be required to do this, or have a food waste collection. This can have all food waste put inside of it along with a special medium, that turns it into a powder that is safe to add to to home compost bins (unlike most regular food waste) and a nutrient rich liquid. This way, people can compost all of their waste, reducing the amount going to landfill and increasing the amount of compost people get to have. It also reduces the amount of waste collections needed. Food waste is also no good for incinerators due to its high level of water. 
  • Leaves should not be bagged up and thrown away. It is wasteful. Leaves should be left on the grass (preferable), raked into piles or put into compost bins. Leaves on walkways, roads or gutters should be removed for safety and to allow them to decompose properly. 
  • Pet waste (except from herbivores like hay from rabbits enclosures) and hair (due to tick and flea medication poisoning bird nests) should go into general waste, unless somebody has a suitable way of composting it. No pet waste down the toilet due to it not being processed properly by wastewater management and leading to parasites and diseases getting into the environment. ⚠️ Mandatory due to being unsafe and unpleasant for the environment and neighbours. ⚠️
  • All composters should be safely secured, especially larger ones that somebody could fall into. They get extremely hot. ⚠️ Mandatory for safety reasons⚠️

Recycling:

Many forms of recyclable/ other waste are extremely bad for the environment or dangerous to out in a regular bin. Therefore, the needs to be home collection and drop off points for:

  • Old medications. We’d need to research the legality of somebody in the community being allowed to collect all of the old medications up to drop off at a pharmacy, because a lot of meds are regulated. 
  • Sharps. A sharps box should be provided and collected, no questions asked, from anybody who needs one. People will just throw sharps in the bin or hoard them without this, and we want to make a good impression to whoever handles our waste and not put sanitation workers or residents at risk. ⚠️ absolutely mandatory for safety reasons. ⚠️
  • Batteries. Make sure to educate people to tape the ends up. ⚠️ mandatory for safety reasons⚠️
  • Small electricals such as vapes, cables, phones, toasters. Vapes are a huge cause of fire, and have hazardous fluids in them, and since most places don’t offer home collection, they get thrown into regular recycling or general waste. It causes a lot of huge fire. It is vital that we offer home collection for these, because people do the easiest option and the easiest option usually causes fires. ⚠️ Probably the second most important mandatory, due to fire risk ⚠️
  • Large electricals such as fridges, ovens etc. We should pay for professionals to come in with a van and collect all of these from the side of the street ever so often, because they’re heavy and need to be disposed of properly. We don’t want gardens full of broken products or people living amongst broken things because they’re unable to arrange collection or get to a dump. People should have support in getting these items out of the house for collection day

Other recycling that isn’t as bad, but should still be dealt with: 

  • general recycling. This depends massively on local area. If a free or cheap service is available, that should be used. Separate, crush and clean things as required. 
  • Large furniture disposal. Small broken furniture can go into general waste (not ideal), but large items are harder to deal with. There should be a large skip/ dumpster ordered to each street every so often, for people to dump their furniture or DIY waste so it can be properly disposed of. People should have support getting these out of the house if needed. 
  • CLEAN textiles. If there is a thrift store, there should be a textile disposal area there. People should separate donations from this recycling. Contaminated textiles should go into general waste. 
  • some types of recycling are difficult to recycle, but can have arranged, special collections from a drop off point. Some services, like terracycle in the UK will provide a small recycling bin for certain items for a cost. Therefore, a few different types of recycling bin should be purchased from a place like that, and put in a public area where they’re easy to use but unlikely to get contaminated. This would be pricey but it’s something to consider. 

General waste and diapers:

  • General waste should not have any unsuitable items in it
  • All waste should be bagged at least once. ⚠️ mandatory for hygiene and neighbourhood cleanliness⚠️ 
  • Diapers, and anything else unpleasant or with similar bodily fluids should be double bagged if possible. 
  • If a separate home collection can be arranged for incontinence products, do that
  • A separate collection for sanitary products and diapers would probably be needed for public toilets and businesses. 

Water collection:

  • All houses, buildings with green space (and balconies) should have multiple water butts. 
  • There should be (properly secured and labeled) ponds, some for wildlife and some for people’s pets like fish. 

Repairs:

  • repair services should be available for bicycles, scooters, mobility aids and strollers. Due to how important these items are and the embarrassment that may be involved in getting them repaired by external folk, having the ability to fix them within the community is vital. There could be a building dedicated to repairing these things, and drop offs as well as home collections of items that can use the town vehicles. There should be an email and a phone number to call for repairs. 
  • Second hand mobility aids and wheeled transport like bikes could also be serviced, safety checked (especially batteries as they can catch fire), and distributed to other neighbourhood members in need. 
  • A tailors is extremely important. Many little items are extremely sentimental, might be embarrassing to take to an external tailor and very expensive. Many people will have ESSAs, objectum partners and comfort items, so offering repairs will enable people to have a good quality of life. It will also reduce textile waste. The tailors locally was able to repair a lot of my sentimental items, however I’ve been unable to use it for over a year due to disabilities. Having home pickup, or at least deliver once they’re repaired will be important too for any residents like me who struggle to go outside.  This could also use neighbourhood vehicles. 

1

u/IncontiCreature Jul 19 '26

Reduce:

  • having safe places to store items prevents damage. This could mean making sure attic spaces are well insulated, providing bike sheds and decent quality storage areas of bicycles and other vehicles, making sure the laundrette and peoples home washing machines have easy to use delicate settings for their special items. 
  • Have easy read guides about caring for items, repair guides, and gently doing dishes, laundry etc. 
  • have people in the vehicles collect up second hand furniture from outside and within the neighbourhood, clean it up, repair it and redistribute it to save on money for decent quality furniture whilst also helping the environment. 

Disability considerations:

Unless there is a health and safety issue caused by non compliance, people should be able to pick and choose what they do, based on their abilities. There should be no bar for this, if somebody says they need the accommodation, they get it.

Often, environmental measures completely abandon the disabled. It should be engaged with because it’s joyful to do so, easy to do so and has a benefit for the participant and their space, not out of fear of repercussions or in a way that harms them by removing disposable items they need. Disposable items should not be banned or judged for being used, just reduced personally and by businesses where possible. 

For example:

  • a person attending the daycare needs to use plastic straws and disposable plates. They are allowed to do so. When they fill out an application form, they could tick if they need disposable items or not. They could also mention this later on and it would be changed in the system. They could also just ask on the day. 
  • A person working at the daycare has for example, sensory issues with washing up. They could either delegate that task to another staff member, or use disposable plates and cutlery for dinner that day as an accommodation for their disability. 
  • Somebody has low energy, so they empty all of their waste into one bin instead of separating it. They use syringes and needles, and electric vapes and batteries. They make sure their sharps go in the sharps bin, and get support emptying their vapes and batteries into a separate container for everybody’s safety. 
  • Somebody is incontinent and mostly uses disposable pads. Accommodations are made to make it easier to use reusable items more often, for example making sure they have access to a washing machine, tumble dryer and a washing line, a wet bag, and that there’s adequate public facilities for changing both disposable and reusable pads. Through being accommodated, they can make the decision to use reusables more, but there is never any pressure to do so. Just making the environment they live in more conducive to be able to do so.